How is our relationship to physical space changing as space becomes “virtual”?  What do virtual spaces reveal about the people and circumstances that create them?  Those are questions asked by Annabel Wharton, Professor in Art, Art History & Visual Studies, in her research on Medieval and Modern Architecture.

Over the past few months, Wharton has explored Second Life, an immersive world inhabited by several million avatars representing real life humans, as well as Assassin’s Creed, a popular video game set in thirteenth century Palestine and Syria. She is examining the effects of digital architectures on those who navigate those virtual realms. In Fall 2009, she plans to teach a course on Jerusalem in which students will join her in investigating the power of architecture in these new media.

For the past four years, Wharton has been studying “pathological architectures,” seeking to understand and describe the ways that “sick” buildings affect the people who occupy them. More broadly, she is interested in how architectures act as agents in modifying the way humans live.  Her work in exploring architectures in Second Life and video games is preparation for the last chapter of her book.

“It’s impossible to understand space conventionally any longer; digital worlds and immersive spaces play too large part in our economy and culture to ignore,” Wharton said.

“I expected myself to be a kind of tourist in Second Life and in video games. But the space is invasive; it doesn’t allow you to be simply an objective observer. I have become subjectively engaged, in a way that surprised me. ”

Wharton also noted that, in Second Life, the spaces are created by the avatars themselves; both shaping and acting is an expression of their producers.  As opposed to “real” life, objects retain  reference to those who made them. A chair or a house in real life is anonymous; a chair or a house in Second Life, with a click of the mouse, reveals its creator. Search engines allow you to invite those makers to talk to you about their work.

For example, during the recent presidential campaign, Wharton explored the Second Life spaces created by Democrats and Republicans. Democratic spaces were functional, open, modern, information-centered. Republican sites were architecturally elaborate with classicizing buildings and the intimacy of Main Street. She drew from her observations conclusions about the working of the “public sphere” in immersive worlds.

For faculty thinking about integrating Google Earth, Second Life or video games into a course, Wharton suggests becoming familiar with the technology first.  She compares it to learning a new language or visiting a new city with its own culture and conventions. Each technology may take several weeks of learning its mechanisms and exploring its   the territory to feel “at home”.

With Second Life, Wharton recommends having students to visit a variety of spaces, some connected directly with the course contents and some not, in order to accustom themselves to navigating the space and interacting with other residents. But finally students can construct the historical sites they are studying in three dimensions so that they and other avatars may walk through them.

Most residents of Second Life are “in world” for social purposes or for entertainment—from soft-porn to “dancing for Jesus.” But groups engaged in politics, education, art and music are also active there. Avatars can walk around the Sistine Chapel and the Temple at Karnak or they can attend discussions of Obama’s Cairo speech with Egyptians, Turks, Iranians and other Muslims from around the real world. The first brief piece that Wharton wrote about Second Life described her first visit during the Gaza War to the newly opened Palestine Holocaust Museum (article at iReport).

“It is really worth investigating digital technologies,” Wharton says, “They give you a new means of rethinking your old assumptions—a central concern of education.”

Project Description:

Currently, archiving of dance performance for study by students is done on an ad-hoc basis with limited impact.  While video has been used to some extent, a two dimensional representation of dance has limited value when multiple performers are involved or when the views recorded do not provide essential information for students to study certain types of movement.

This project will create the initial stage of a prototype archive of basic ballet vocabulary using 3-D dance recording and archiving.  RFID tags, accelerometers, infrared emitters, and stereo video are among the technologies that will be explored for recording.  The use of virtual reality environments for archive access will be investigated, along with conversion to formal dance notation.

Tyler Walters, using advanced students in Dance at Duke, will collaborate with undergraduate students of Martin Brooke in the ECE undergraduate project class ECE 51, where the students will assemble the basic technologies for capturing and generating the dance data.  The initial prototype of the archive, first using video and later 3d representations, will be used as a teaching aid for Ballet Fundamentals, Ballet I, and Ballet II.

The Center for Instructional Technology is providing funding for the project in addition to loaning four high definition hard drive camcorders that will be used in the dance data capture process.

Project start date: 1/12/2009

Funding awarded:  $6,300

Caroline Bruzelius and faculty colleagues Mark Olson, Rachael Brady, Raquel Salvatella de Prada, and Sheila Dillon have developed a new gateway course, “Wired!”, that will integrate new technologies into the teaching of historical disciplines to prepare advanced undergraduates and graduate students to actively engage with and create new media in their scholarly work.  Students in the course will collaborate with faculty at Duke in Computer Science, Engineering and historical disciplines, as well as staff at the Nasher Museum and partners at an archaeological site in Italy to create projects that integrate scholarly research with multimedia documentation and presentation of their work.  The course will be taught for the first time in Spring 2009, with plans to make the course a regular part of the Visual Studies curriculum.

As part of the Strategic Initiative grants program, the Center for Instructional Technology is providing funding to purchase licenses for Strata Foto 3d software for use in the course.  In addition, the CIT is loaning the instructors a professional level SLR digital camera for the class.

Project start date:  1/12/2009

Funding awarded: $1,826