York University Course @ UWA Challenge Gallery

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York University Students at UWA Challenge Platform

The UWA 3D Open Art Challenge Gallery has been the venue for part of a 2nd Year Humanities and Culture Course, "In Other Worlds: Art and Artists in 3D Multi-User Environments" at York University, Toronto, Canada. Rasaec (RL: Lecturer C.Steele), is teaching the course to 30 students through December. UWA will be assisting York University by serving as a conduit between the students and artists.

RASAEC (RL: C Steele)

 

 In Rasaec's words, "For the most part, students in the course are new to Second Life, and  are curious and interested in how virtual art is being developed as a creative media by the art communities in Second Life. We take as our starting point the 6 definitve theses proposed by Georg Janick (Gary Zabel) of the Virtual Art Initative

http://www.virtual-art-initiative.org/Virtual_Art_Initiative/theses.html

 

Through these concepts identified as unique to virtual media, we are exploring not only reactive sculpture, and immersive spaces but also Machinima, music, performance dance as well as galleries and museums. While students must obvoiusly spend a considerable time on their own in-world, we also have 6 organized 'in-world field trips' throughout the term to develop the collaborative component and shared sense of discovery that is so integral to the in-world experience. Hopefully sometime this term we'll have Bryn Oh come in to our RL class as well.

 

We've be considering the unique characteristics of the art we've been experiencing relative to our experiences with art in RL. The students are finishing up their first assignments - a group project that compares and contrasts RL and SL artwork in terms of interactivity, immersion and POV, so I'm looking forward to seeing what they come up with. We just had Nuit Blanche Toronoto Oct 1, so I'm hoping a couple of the projects will use one of those exhibits too. They will also need to complete a series of case studies on specific art pieces, so I'm hoping they will animate these assignments by including interivews with SL artists.

 

It is important I believe, that people who do not identify as artists themselves begin to understand the aesthetic potential of virtual art to express human creativity and vision. Too often, virtual media is thought of only in terms of market value. It is also inspiring for non-artists to explore and engage with new art forms such as those presented in the UWA 3D Art Challenge. I've been teaching at the university level for almost 15 years now, and the reactions of my students as they first explored the exhibits last week demonstrated a level of wonder and engagement rarely seen in the sometimes dry and static environment of the ivory tower!"

 

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