Second Life

Situations and Collaboration between Second Life Consensual Landscapes and Scenarios

A MaNet Action Research Project

This project brings the resources and expertise of three partner MaNet Institutions together; Liverpool ICDC, Folly Lancaster and Salford University, to undertake collaborative research into the possible assimilation of, and between, virtual online communities and the built and human environment. This is a mixed realities research project that will address the current virtual community developments and needs such as Second Life. The three partner investigators will establish a networked Second Life environment in the North West to make feasibility test and prototype practice based research experiments between the Lancaster, Liverpool, Manchester triangle.

• Peace Games
• They Live in Second Life

This is a speculative research project and each member has taken a specific area of interests as an individual starting point that concerns the umbrella research question. It is envisaged that these research strands will meet at a point of convergence towards the middle of the project that will be manifested in a number of possible outcomes and new directions, that will include practical applications as well as future research funding.

Linking phenomena and actions within virtual space

This research will establish and test the linking of simple phenomena and actions within virtual space with reciprocated actions in actual space and visa versa. It will explore non verbal communication e.g. breath or wind causing the grass to move or a cloud to shift across our virtual real estate in Second Life, or a stone thrown into the pool within our Secondlife causing ripples to spread out within a real pool. It will begin by establishing a protocol to allow trandsducers and sensors to send and receive information between the real and virtual environments. It will also exploit video links to send real time images of analog events such as the spreading out of ripples from the stone thrown into the virtual pond back as a digital real time echo into the water within Second life creating the perception within the virtual world of a complex analog mirror of that action. When effective tools have been established they will be used to explore poetic and gestural resonances which could contribute to the experience of emotion, presence and community which define the larger intention of this collaboration.

Peter Appleton - Reader in Creative Technology
International Centre for Digital Content
Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool Digital
Faraday House, Edge Lane, Liverpool, L7 9NW
p.appleton@ljmu.ac.uk

Emotional Machinations of social networking sites

This part of the research is interested in exploring how the emotional machinations of social networking sites can be made visible to users of these sites when they are away from their computer screens in some form of small portable hand-held device like a computer mouse. The device would have several built in physical blush responses that can be sensed in the real world when someone is engaging with your personal content online. For example the device appears to beat faster when someone’s gives you a nudge, a buzz or a ten out of ten, or perhaps changes colour depending on the number of profile views you have received that day. A web based virtual version of the device would be the bridging point where data is collected from various social networking sites and then sent in emotion packets to the device probably via SMS and/or Bluetooth.

Taylor Nuttall - Chief Executive
Folly, 6.4.4 Alston House,
White Cross, Lancaster, LA1 4XQ
taylor.nuttall@folly.co.uk

Exploration of presence on Second Life

This aspect of the research project will examine the notion of presence within the social networking environment of Second Life. Identifying the Second Life community needs through online evaluation of user dynamics and aspirations. The first stage of research will also look closer at the artistic needs and developments so far in this environment and propose initiatives for beyond screen and keyboard applications that will interface to Second Life using the following practice based research experiments.

• To explore the notion of live-ness in Second Life.
• Research into live imported motion capture to Second Life
• Establish audio and visual input/output between Second Life and first/real life.
• Develop an interactive video installation between Second Life and first life.

The second stage of this research will tie into the experiments undertaken by Peter Appleton that mirror and actuate ‘real life’ phenomena in virtual environments, and also implement aspects of the emotional machinations research undertaken by Taylor Nuttall.

Paul Sermon - Professor of Creative Technology
The University of Salford, Research Centre for Art & Design
Centenary Building, Peru Street, Salford
Greater Manchester, M3 6EQ
p.sermon@salford.ac.uk