The Federal Art Project

SECOND LIFE

of Oregon Academia

Second Life (secondlife.com, SL) is an innovative 3D virtual immersive environment with amazing opportunities and a great future. Sometimes loosely referred to as a game, it is actually more. In SL, we can of course follow somebody’s game scenario: levelup, complete missions, or earn new armor. However, we can develop all the scenery way beyond, ourselves, how we want. This is a 3D social network, a world we live our second life and call each other residents, not players.

“What relationship to and use for graphic design does SL have?,” you may ask. In the virtual, you can practice 3D-modeling, lighting and photography, composition and color harmony, scripting and texturing, advertising, and even negotiate with clients. Let’s listen to Oregon academic Secondlifers.

Dr. Jonathon Richer,

Salish Kootenai College (MT) On a small grant from the NorthWest Computing Council, in collaboration with SLOOG, a Spanish company, Eloise Pasteur, an SL coder and designer, and California State University’s merlot.org, we created a tool for tagging and categorizing educational locations in SL. This tool, once “worn”, allowed people to tag new places anywhere in SL and, through a series of descriptors, to classify them by educational use in the MERLOT database.

Working with Richter at University of Oregon Center for Advanced Technology in Education (UO CATE) at that time, I used his tool to discover 20+ educational locations in SL. Besides locations with “incidental” educational value, there are virtual campuses for many universities and colleges deployed there. They are educational by definition.

In 2009-12, UO CATE had a collaborative NSF grant with Lane Community College (LCC) - Simulation and Game Development Initiative (SGDI) with the goal to stimulate enrollment in computer science classes. Within the project, I replicated building #1 of LCC and developed two islands. The study involved 985 students - 829 from colleges and 156 from high schools. All students were required to create an online identity to engage in the 3D virtual environment throughout the entire term. The project was a success, and the students enjoyed the environment.

Dr. Jon Louis Dorbolo,

Oregon State University At OSU, we manage Beaver Island built in 2011 in SL by lead designer Kimmy Hescock. It was a gathering space for students of InterQuest, an online philosophy course that I created and taught. Learners used avatar modification to explore identity and the personal phenomena of “immersive reality” to address epistemological issues.

Béatrice Moissinac, a machine learning researcher, used Beaver Island as a model for a grant project from the USDA to develop immersive strategies for influencing health behaviors - the WAVE~Ripples for Change Childhood Obesity Prevention.

The island attracts OSU faculty and students interested in immersive environments. A notable instance is a 3D tutorial for Veterinary Medicine students learning to diagnose and treat damage to a dog’s larynx. Professor

Sarah Nemanic established significantly higher course outcomes for students using the 3D tutorial.

Oregon State University in SL Inworld photo by Kimmy Hescock

Beaver Island is one of my favorite places in Second Life. There is something enjoyable in visiting virtual places that you currently cannot travel to in the real world, say, because of COVID-19 limitations. Some residents design their real-life locations to be fanciful but OSU was built close to its authentic look. Strictly speaking, the campus was not replicated exactly but its most remarkable halls make OSU recognizable with characteristic Beaver’s spirit.

Sylvia Ashbourne, Math Instructor, Pacific State University The PSU Math Project was located in SL as a part of the NW 21st Avenue Project, a non-profit venture started by Ty Magpie and dedicated to showing the world a slice of real-life Portland and also bringing Portland artists, musicians, and small businesses together through the SL virtual reality platform.

Then we moved PSU to the Portland Connection, where we had replicas reminiscent of the downtown area, including Pioneer Square, Oregon Coast, Portland Zoo, Japanese and Rose Gardens. I felt, after visiting other University buildings, that it was important to include the community around the University scene, not just have the University alone.

Portland State University in SL Inworld photo by Dusty Karsin The University of Oregon had three buildings in SL: Hedco (College of Education), Rainier (UO CATE), and Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. Working at CATE projects managed by Lynne Anderson-Inman and related to art education, science education, and virtual reality (ESTRELLAS, STILTS, STELLAR), I replicated the second and the third buildings and developed the island of CATE. Oregon teachers met there for professional activities. Development of virtual venue spaces and presentation functionalities is an interesting field of instructional design, and SL offers rich affordances for this.

Show must go on! Some countries opened their embassies in SL; some universities offered their classes in SL; some singers arranged their concerts in SL; police had their operative training in SL; artists and museums exhibited their artwork in SL; finally, some people found their spouses in SL. One day Second Life will become a part of our real everyday life, and virtual reality designers are up to it!

Teacher session at University of Oregon in SL Inworld photo by Ulad Slabin

Out Of Step Books Gallery&

an interview with co-owner

SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING: Out of step books (OOSB) has been serving the community for over a decade, raising curiosities and adapting to different artistic mediums. Originally started as a bookstore it quickly became a space for fine art exhibits, lowbrow art publications, tattoos, beer drinking and community drawing. Next time your in Eugene OR, and need some rad inspiration in your life then go put your peepers inside the OOSB & Gallery.

submit your also Dr. Jinxi Caddel art at WORDS + DESIGN + PHOTOGRAPHY SETH PEMBERTON 45 oosbooks.com