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Slanguages 2011
SLanguages Conference 2011- Edunation Island - Second Life
Slur login to the sky conference centre:
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/EduNation/112/131/1004
The featured theme of this year’s 3-day online conference is 'Serious games' and 'Situated Learning'.
It hosts around 50 guest speakers and is attended by approx. 500 participants/ avatars. It takes place in Second Life on EduNation and on AVALON Learning and includes tours to other virtual worlds.
To attend the sessions in Second Life, you need to have an avatar, a 3D representation, which is free. To get an avatar you need to sign up at secondlife.com.
All of the program will be streamed in Adobe ConnectPro, which is a webconferencing software which allows us to screenshare our desktops, almost like a virtual window to a virtual world. You do not need to have an avatar to attend a session in Adobe and you can watch and listen to the keynotes, panel discussions, plenaries, presentations, workshops, tours to educational sims, demo language lessons, theatre plays, dance performances, variety shows and even the party all from the comfort of an Adobe ConnectPro seat (max 100).
Panel: „Virtual Cultures Research“ (Organization Prof. Dr. Undine Frömming)
Sa 17th, 2011 17:30 – 20:00 Uhr / 5.30 - 8:00 pm Berlin time | 8.30 am SL | 3.30 pm GMT
17:30 Uhr
Undine Frömming: Introduction: Situated Learning methods in Visual and Media Anthropology
17:45
Tobias Becker: Learning from Virtual Architecture
18:00
Manizhe Ali: Muslims and the Virtual
18:15
Emma Corbett-Ashby: Queer and Trans Experiences in Second Life: An Experimental Dialogue
18:30
Fidel Devkota: Constructing knowledge on virtual to real climate" (based on the production of machinima project (V)ice age).
18:45
Thomas John: Religiosity in a Virtual World: Reasons and Motivations
19:00
Elena Quintarelli: Conducting Fieldwork in Second Life: the Amazons of Aquarius (presentation and machinima)
19:15
Lidia Rossner: Art production in SL. The virtual platform of SL as an art medium that allows for experimentations with forms of creativity, self-representation, and collaboration.
19:30 Uhr
Christian Voigt: What can we learn from virtual nature in SL?
19:45 Uhr
Alina Trebbin: Waiting for Zowie - Notes from the Digital Uterus
This panel is the result of a virtual research experiment in the virtual world Second Life during three semesters form the year 2009 to 2011. Participating are around 50 students of the international M.A. Program in Visual and Media Anthropology at Freie Universität Berlin. The aims of the research was to discuss classic and current Virtual Cultures Research theory, including Cyberanthropology and ethnographic methods and to conduct or “simulate” ethnographic research in virtual cultures and environments.
The classes run by Prof. Frömming and during the winter term 2010/11 together with the Co-lecturer Samantha Fox from Columbia University. All weekly classes took place via Avatars and voice-chat in the virtual world of Second Life in the 3D-classrooms of Freie Universität Berlin on Edunation Island. This session presents a collection of the most interesting research reports and can be seen as an attempt to discover the challenges and limits of social anthropological research with an Avatar in virtual Cultures and Environments. Virtuality is no longer an issue that we can avoid or ignore. It is an essential part of our experience, influencing cultures and individual’s all over the world. The contributions of this panel will demonstrate that a research exercise in a contained, “safe” virtual environment enables students to proceed through the steps of ethnographic research, using classical methods in combination with methods of Visual Anthropology and to formulate the research results in their own paper or machinima project.
The essays will be published in a book "Virtual Environments and Cultures", Peter Lang Verlag (forthcoming).
The contributions of this panel
In his contribution Virtual Representations of the Middle East Conflict Tobias Becker describes his experiences during his research with his female avatar Jazmin Orfan. Becker participated in several virtual Koran lessons and observed different muslim groups in virtual places such as the Arab space, “Ummah of Noor,” Saudi Arabia, the Kingdom of Jordan and virtual Israel. He met Muslim people on their way to pray in virtual Mecca and chatted with Israelis on the skyscrapers of virtual Tel Aviv. Becker founds out, that „the impossibility for Israelis to visit Palestine and for Palestinians to visit Israel in the actual world can be overcome by the platform of Second Life by not having physical borders“. In so far virtual environments are meaningful political spaces, maybe not to overcome conflicts but to communicate about them and to reflect upon them.
Figure 1Virtual Koran © Tobias Becker
Manizhe Ali investigates Muslims and the Virtual in the question “how Muslims in Second Life might be different from those in real life". Her Hypothesis is: in virtuality Muslims could potentially be freer to debate religious issues. Would they be open to these discussions, or would they—and maybe the researcher herself,—bring our real-world prejudices, and practices into the virtual world?
Figure 2 Praying in a virtual mosque © Manizhe Ali
With her essay Queer and Trans Experiences in Second Life: An Experimental Dialogue Emma Corbett Ashby uses her research togive an insight into the experiences of queer and transgender people in Second Life. Nearly all her informants told her that their motivation for joining Second Life “hinged on a sense of searching for something, of wanting something more than Real Life offered”. Emma Corbett-Ashby describes Second Life as a “social testing ground for different gender” and demonstrates with her interview data that virtual sexual role play enables people to experience homosexuality or transgendered sexuality that might be currently harder to come by in their own “actual” culture.
In his contribution Fidel Devkota presents his research Constructing knowledge on virtual to real climate, that is based on the production of his machinima project (V)ice age. Fidel Devkota conducted interviews in Second Life with several Avatars about climate change, which he presents as off-voice-comments in his machinima production (V)ice age consisting of remarkable shots of the “undisturbed” Second Life nature and apocalyptic Second Life Environments. He compares the Second Life data with his real life ethnographic fieldwork in the Himalayan region of Nepal (Mustang) which is highly effected by climate impacts.
Figure 3 Mountains in Second Life and in „Real Life“ ©Fidel Devkota
With stills from the machinima (V)ice Age: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dGONRZtfJg
Thomas John investigates in his contribution Religiosity in a Virtual World. Reasons and Motivations the questions why and how religion is acted out in virtuality. He conducted ethnographic research at The Anglican Cathedral and the Buddha Center in Second Life and in several other places of virtual religious communities. His research enfolds a variety of reasons for „e-religiosity“ e.g. some informants told him that they are too shy to join a Buddhist community offline or that they fear stigmatism from their friends and from their original religious community. At the other hand members of the Anglican Cathedral in Second Life talked about negative experiences with their local offline church-communities so that they substitute all real life church activities with Second Life church activities.
Elena Quintarelli describes in her machinima presentation The Amazon of Aquarius: an ethnographic journey through gender issues in Second Life her experiences during her intense ethnographic fieldwork among a group of Italian speaking women and transgendered avatars called “The Amazons of Aquarius“. Besides a lot of interviews and participation in daily rituals of the group, Elena Quintarelli was invited to participate at a wedding ceremony of two woman of the Amazon group in Second Life. She describes the one month preparation of the ceremony and the ceremony itself that had similar aspects of an offline wedding ceremony, inclusive the Italian tradition of keeping the bride’s dress hidden from her fiancée until the ceremony starts. It happened as well what often happens in marriages, the brides both arrived late to the ceremony.
Figure 4 The Amazons of Aquarius in Second Life. © Elena Quintarelli
Lidia Rossner explores in her contribution Art Production and its Conceptual Systems in Second Life the potential of a virtual space to facilitate creative processes. She examined 80 of the over 900 places in the category Art and Culture in Second Life and raises the questions: “Does art in SL have the characteristics to create new modes of viewer participation and experience?” Rossner sums up that the virtual world Second Life provides a space with the potential for new forms of creative output, self-expression, interaction and collaboration and she realized “that the avatar could be viewed as an art object, a designed social persona. It is through the avatar that concepts of self-representation, constructed identities and social relations are explored. Avatars assume the role of bridging the gap between the virtual and the real, as they are driven by humans navigating a virtual space”.
Abbildung 5 Beuys „Seven oaks“ in Second Life © Lidia Rossner
In her contribution From Wilderness to Virtuality. Virtual Nature and Landscapes in Second Life Christina Voigt describes her ethnographic fieldwork experiences in different virtual environments in Second Life. She raises the questions: “Are we looking for virtual nature, a “virtual Paradise” because “real nature” and physical paradise have been lost? What is natural and what is artificial? If we are a part of nature are the things created by our hands and minds also a part of nature? And as we perceive nature as an image through our eyes and minds, how do we deal with our image of nature” or in other words: “what can we learn from virtual nature?”
Figure 6 Encounter with Cobra in Second Life © Christian Voigt
The avatar falls and dies. It comes to life again after the user clicks with the mouse.The snake is an item from the Animal Island Shop and can also be bought for 399 L$ (Linden-Dollars)
Alina Trebbin describes in her contribution Waiting for Zowie. Notes from the Digital Uterus the processes of reproduction in Second Life, and she relates her own experiences with her avatar, Ziggi Juneberry, through research and virtual pregnancy. Trebbin classifies her research in the field of cyber-ecology, defined as “the science of plastic interaction between artificial and natural organisms” (Dyens 1994, 327), the artificial organism being the baby, the natural one the human user. In between is a third organism, the semi-artificial/semi-natural avatar that represents the human user and works as a bridge between her and the baby. Besides interviews and participant observation in various places that offer cyber pregnancy products and procedures, Trebbin raises the question: “Having a child in Second Life: how does that work”. She bought a pregnancy package and went with her avatar through the whole process of being “virtually” pregnant.
Figure 7 Virtual Baby boy in Second Life at the Sheesha Baby Factory. © Alina Trebbin
