Synthetic Avatars

Following on from my thoughts about academic avatars I recently decided to spend some valuable personal time on a little experiment. It's turned into yet another project (sighs). I'm interested in creating avatars that not only resemble their owners but in fact are exact replications of their owners. I mean, going beyond the 'out of the box' SL avatars, and indeed beyond so-called 'photo realistic' skins, to photographic replications and anatomical recreations of avatar owners. This means transposing digital images into second life and mapping them onto the avatar framework as skins as well as taking accurate measurements of the physical body to transpose to the avatar. This process of recreation rather than simulation is actually much harder than it seems and somewhat of an art. The result is a realistic (if not spooky) likeness that seems short in comparison to everyone else in Second Life, most avatars being well over the equivalent of 7-foot tall in Second Life (as well as idyllically super-toned, muscular and attractive).

There are one or two services within SL that offer the photographic replication but these are very poor quality and fail to capture the essence of the user. I'll post more details on this as the project develops. The initial results are a little bit freakish and remind me of the film 'AI'. At the very least when I've perfected this technique my students should be able to recognise me properly, rather than having to make the contextual-based leap of similarity with my real self. More pictures to follow as time allows.

Net-G Students & and the Plugged-in Revolution

Here's an inspiring video that really presses home the need to engage students of the net-generation. Without the use of modern technology education will find it hard to communicate in a language that the modern student understands. As the language of academia moves more from the written word towards a 'vocabulary of experience', that is 'doing' rather than describing, modern technology can help us engage and motivate students in a way that paper books once did. I'm, of course, playing Devil's advocate here, I love books.



(Thanks to Eloise Pasteur's blog for putting me on to this video)

Academic Avatars

I've been thinking about the how academic avatars should differ from our real-life personas in Second Life teaching and research settings. Recently and was fortunate enough to come across Christopher Conway's article on a similar vein. I shall certainly be thinking about Milton's characteristics a little more from now. I'm currently being approached in Second Life on SL-Labs or by email at the rate of about 1 enquiry per day by parents of children with ADHD and/or Autism. It's hard to know how to handle all their questions about these huge topics when there are so many outstanding questions about these fields. A common theme is that there seems to be a huge number of people with Asperger's Syndrome using SL itself for therapeutic purposes or just plain fun. I always try to draw a professional line on advice giving that might influence decisions too much, that's a job for clinicians and multi-practice teams IMHO. But one thing that does strike me is the range of avatars I come across in a professional capacity within SL and how I must appear to them. Milton's AV looks a bit like me and that is the intention; so that students know who he is. I'm wondering if this is really that important. Do we need to have avatars that resemble us in order to be taken seriously? I've always been a little uncomfortable discussing the intricacies of the diagnostic procedure with a 40 year old mum (or dad) dressed up as an anthropomorphic sexy rabbit (or 'Furry'). Am I being prejudice? “Furries have rights too”, I hear you scream. Check out Christopher's article on the Inside Higher Ed pages. I'm just wondering what Goffman would have made of all this?

Virtual Psychology in Second Life

Over the last month I've been busy preparing a funding bid for Derby University to lead a massive collaboration between Ten different organisations including seven major UK Universities. We plan a community of Virtual Psychology in Second Life to advance knowledge, teaching, and research in virtual worlds via innovation and technology. If successful in acquiring research money, we will take the emerging field of Virtual Psychology to the next level with a variety of innovative projects in the virtual world. It is a very exciting venture and the process of putting the bid together has already led to a number of spin-off projects.