Museums in 3D worlds: Second Life

Apart from the king web 2.0, Second Life has been one predilect subject of discussion in the 2007 edition of the Museums and the Web conference, held in San Francisco, in April.
What can museums do in a 3D world? Second Life residents collect and display, museums are created out of passion and can exhibit real artworks or amazing new virtual ones, play with what the virtual allows and the real world does not contain, and above all offer visitors in virtual museums new ways of interacting with exhibits.
Museums increasingly use the virtual 3D world as field for museographic experiments. The Exploratorium in San Francisco created a virtual museum called the 'Splo, offering visitors/avatars new ways of experimenting science and perception. Walk from the Sun to the moon to see how eclipses happen; fly through the solar system; experiment lack of gravity.
Interesting aspects arise also from the surveys carried on visitors in the 'Splo: it appears that visitors developed a high degree of identification with their avatar, so that impressions and sensations they experience through avatars are actually experienced and take effect also in reality (jumping on a trampoline gets visitors dizzy!!). See the paper presented by the Exploratorium team at the M&W 2007.

More about the 'Splo

For an overview of museums and their activities in Second Life, you may check the paper of R. Urban, P. Marty and M. Twidale, from the Universities of Illinois and Florida at M&W 2007.