EVENT: Metaverse U 2.0 (Stanford, May 29-30)

The second iteration of the Metaverse U conference took place at Stanford University on May 29-30 2009. The goal of this event was to explore the cutting edge applications related virtual worlds and the open platforms that drive them. Unlike the previous edition, which was broader in scope and in themes, Metaverse U 2.0 was very focused and a bit geekier, but tremendously interesting nonetheless. Organized by the Stanford Humanities Lab and hosted by the mighty Henrik Bennetesen, the conference was streamed live on the electronect. All the videos will be posted as well, as we did with Metaverse 1.0. Same goes with the presentation slides. In short, watch this space.

The conference features a series of top class speakers including:

The amount of ideas shared during the past two days was staggering. I will mention just two speeches that really resonated with my own research and interest.

First, Sheldon Brown, director of the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts at USCD, presented his amazing work Scalable City, which I had never seen 'live' before. As you might know,

"Scalable City creates an urban/suburban/rural environment via a data visualization pipeline. Each step in this pipeline builds upon the previous, amplifying exaggerations, artifacts and the patterns of algorithmic process. The results of this are experiences such as prints, video installations and interactive multi-user games and virtual environments.

Throughout these artworks, a variety of computer concept buzzwords take on physical form. Wallowing in them provides equal measures of delight and foreboding, creating a vision of cultured forms that we are rapidly creating. The project neither indicts nor embraces this future, but offers an extrapolation of its algorithmic tendencies, heightening one's awareness of the aesthetics of the underlying logic as it becomes the determinant of much of our cultured existence.

Scalable City is a project by Sheldon Brown and the Experimental Game Lab."

To me it looks like a cross between SimCity, The Wizard of Oz, and Black & White. It's a video installation, it's digital art, it's a game, it's interactive, it's pure genius. I could this becoming a downloadable app/game for the PS3 in a non-distant future (think Linger in Shadows). I took a bunch of pictures which look extremely blurred because this thing is uber-dynamic. But I kept them becase I like the abstract-painting quality they possess.

You can see proper, high-res screen shots of Scalable City here.

Stanford Humanities Lab director Jeffrey Schnapp talked about the notion of the Augmented Museum, specifically about the possibility of using virtual worlds to enhance, expand, and enrich the museum experience. Stanford is currently working on a virtual world platform, codename Sirikata, which will hopefully address some of the issues that Schnapp discussed in his talk. In fact, Sirikata will be used for a series of art-related projects in the near future.

Sirikata Teaser from Sirikata on Vimeo.

Here are my notes:

Museums have always been related to the notion of space – tangible, material space.

Metaverses are not about replacing but enhancing and expanding existing spaces– increasing the quality of the object through the mixing of the real and the virtual – augmentation here is the key

Areas in which the metaverse play a key role

The visitor experience
1. Physical presence is no longer the norm
2. The new temporality of visitation (pre-blends into during blends into post) – pre-during-post not clearly defined as they used to be [visit, re-visit, expand]
3. Shifting expectations & needs re interaction (process as product, remix subcultures, serious play) - audience of different generations have different expectations about interaction and participation – there are contextual info (ex. Importance of video games and interactive media) reshaped expectations
The meaning of location

Mass tourism and travel alter membership-driven model of community
The (g) local reshaping of cultural markets [competitive markets fur cultural production and dissemination]
The multiplication of modes of off-site access and presence (beyond bricks and mortar identities)

Collecting, preserving, disseminating

The infinite vault as laboratory (on exhibit)
Education through process (not just product)
Archiving 3D content [2D catalogs are very weak]
The museum as a potential glass house

All these factors are leading us to the augmented museums, whose characteristics are

Porous walls
built on a public square – big or small as the entire world
Dedicated to the exploration of fusions and frictions between physical/digital – complementarity
Defied as much by naively digital as it is by physical programming
Multipurpose and multichannel's everything that is does
Has visitors demographics that include underrepresented audiences (the young, minorities) =- average age of the museum visitor in the US: 58
It is a theater of research where sho iw work in progress
opens up its own design and planning processes to public view [participation, and critiques

The augmented museum still does not exist, but it is coming up, and Stanford is building it.

Key aspects of the augmented museum

Editioning these exhibitions both in archival and remixable 3D versions
building a natively digital set of environments around the, that serves as infinitely extensible supports for the complex of exhibitions
Re-embedding these natively digital components into the physical space as the shows travel

Links:

Metaverse U 2.0 official website

Metaverse U 2.0: a selection of pictures

MATTEO BITTANTI

05/31/2009

EVENT: Metaverse U 2.0 (Stanford, May 29-30)

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