MachinimUWA IV: Evie Fairchild's 'Intermission'

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'Intermission', by Evie Fairchild features numerous award winning artworks that had been part of the UWA 3D Open Art Challenge. This machinima is now part of MachinimUWA IV: Art of the Artists, which unites the powerhouses of virtual worlds, Artists and Machinimatographers!

Entries to the L$300,000 MachinimUWA IV close on the 10th of November and looks for the creation of machinima featuring artworks that are part of the UWA 3D Open Art Challenge.

Artworks Featured:
Here Comes the Sun by Sledge Roffo
Forest's Tears by Silene Christen
Uncanny Valley by Oberon Onmura
Butterfly Ball by Milly Sharple
Three Little Turns by Josiane Sorciere
Wizz-Pow-Blop by Artistide Despres
Minotaur of Carton by Typote Beck
Fly with the Wind by Josina Burgess
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MachinimUWA IV: Alessia Vegro's (Demaya) 'Revolution Life'

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'Revolution Life, by Alessia Vegro (Demaya) features numerous award winning artworks that had been part of the UWA 3D Open Art Challenge. This machinima is now part of MachinimUWA IV: Art of the Artists, which unites the powerhouses of virtual worlds, Artists and Machinimatographers!

Entries to the L$300,000 MachinimUWA IV close on the 10th of November and looks for the creation of machinima featuring artworks that are part of the UWA 3D Open Art Challenge.

Featured Artworks include:
Spring Box (Cherry Mmanga)
In Dreams (Blue Tsuki)
Salvation or... (Toughlove Sabra)
My World (Secret rage)
Omnibus (Solkide Auer)
Mirror Worlds (Fae)
Overlaps (Giovanna Cerise)
Within The Waves (Nish Mip)
Second Libations (Haveit Neox)
Gateway To Hell (Fuschia Nightfire)
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MachinimUWA IV: L1aura Loire's 'Transformation: Virtual Art on the Brink'

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'Transformation: Virtual Art on the Brink', by L1aura Loire/Professor Lori Landay, explains virtual art while featuring various award winning artworks that had been part of the UWA 3D Open Art Challenge. This machinima is now part of MachinimUWA IV: Art of the Artists, which unites the powerhouses of virtual worlds, Artists and Machinimatographers!

Entries to the L$300,000 MachinimUWA IV close on the 10th of November and looks for the creation of machinima featuring artworks that are part of the UWA 3D Open Art Challenge.

Artwork Featured
Swallowed Up by the Crowd, Fuschia Nightfire
Digital Glove, Misprint Thursday
The Matter of Ideas, Gleman Jun
Here Comes the Sun, Sledge Roffo
One and Four Timeboards, L1Aura Loire

In L1aura's words:

The best virtual art is a new kind of new media, using the particular properties of the virtual world to make metaphors manifest.

Virtual art can be seen as experimentation with what could become augmented reality, when the equipment for creating and experiencing it are more accessible to everyone.

When we break free from the constraints of the physical, we call attention to new contrasts; we may make distance evaporate, but does that mean we create closeness? If the experience of telepresence is to know that I am experiencing something where I know I am not, and teleaction is to affect change where I am physically not, what kind of aesthetic will have to emerge when our subjectivity is so connected to the perception that there is no distance between myself and what I see?

Live footage filmed by
Richard Cownie, Andrew Paonessa, Lori Landay

Edited by Lori Landay

Music generated with Otomata

For more information about Joseph Kosuth's piece, One and Three Chairs,
see the MoMA website:http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=81435

For my essay "Virtual KinoEye: Kinetic Camera, Machinima, and Virtual Subjectivity in Second Life," in The Journal of eMedia Studies, see http://journals.dartmouth.edu/cgi-bin/WebObjects/Journals.woa/2/xmlpage/4/art...

Original content: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License 2011
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MachinimUWA IV: Fuschia Nightfire's 'Art of the Artists'

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'Art of the Artists', by Fuschia Nightfire, is a unique deconstruction that features a number of award winning artworks that had been part of the UWA 3D Open Art Challenge. This machinima is now part of MachinimUWA IV: Art of the Artists, which unites the powerhouses of virtual worlds, Artists and Machinimatographers!

Entries to the L$300,000 MachinimUWA IV close on the 10th of November and looks for the creation of machinima featuring artworks that are part of the UWA 3D Open Art Challenge.

Works in order of appearance:
Aerie by Cherry Manga
Here Comes The Sun by Sledge Roffo
Primscape Dream V4 by Sledge Roffo
Turning the Tides by Nish Mip
Faun Androgyn Trinity by Claudia222 Jewell
Strange Tree by Claudia222 Jewell
Not Everything is Plain Black & White by Fuschia Nightifre
Real Life paintings by Nina Camplin (a.k.a Fuschia Nightfire)
Music by Obisdia featuring CoMa

In Fuschia's words:
My idea for this machinima was to take some of the installations at UWA that I found most aesthetically appealing and to deconstruct them and reconstruct them into RL paintings, then to use the actual painting process in the machinima.

With thanks to Cherry, Sledge, Nish and Claudia for giving up their time to do their 'walk through' bits for me!
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UWA & University of Kentucky Collaboration

Winthrop Professor Grady Venville

In October 2011, the first joint lectures between the University of Western Australia and the University of Kentucky took place. This came about via collaboration between UWA's Winthrop Professor Grady Venville, the inaugural Professor of Science Education at UWA and Dr Jennifer Wilhelm, Associate Professor of Science and Maths Education of the UK's College of Education.

The collaboration is beautifully described by Grady as follows:

I participated in my first second life lecture a month ago. I have been collaborating with a colleague, Jennifer Wilhelm, from the University of Kentucky for a number of years as we are both science educators and both present curriculum and methods courses for students who are preparing to become science teachers.

We try to incorporate innovative teaching methods into our courses to ‘practice what we preach’. For example, for the past few years we have my students in Western Australia and Jennifer’s students in Kentucky concurrently observe and record the phases of the Moon for a month. We then provide them with opportunities to communicate with each other through email or some other electronic medium to compare their observations. This enables them to recognise the similarities and differences in the way that people in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres see the Moon and to deductively work out the path the Moon takes as it revolves around the Earth and the relationship between the Earth, Moon and Sun that causes the Moon phases. We hope they can see the value of using similar strategies when they become teachers themselves.

This year Jennifer is delivering most of her lectures for this class at Kentucky University in second life. She invited me to do a combined second life lecture. Intrigued, I coerced my science education colleague here at UWA, Christine Howitt, to join me in Jennifer’s second life class. The plan was to enable ‘live’ discussion about what we were observing ‘down under’ with the Moon and Jennifer’s students could ask us questions.

Christine and I both created Avatars and Jennifer sent us both invitations to enter the University of Kentucky second life island. We practiced entering the University and teleporting to her classroom before the day of the combined lecture.

On the day of the lecture, Christine and I both woke early in the morning and logged onto second life from our homes at 6am while Jennifer conducted the class at 6pm Kentucky time. When we entered the class we could see Jennifer’s 12 students sitting on pods in the teaching space. On the ‘whiteboard’ were photographs of the Moon that I had taken from Perth and previously emailed to Jennifer next to photographs Jennifer had taken in Kentucky on the same day. The students asked us interesting questions and we discussed relevant issues such as whether the Moon is in the same phase at the same time in each hemisphere, which part of the sky the Moon traverses and the direction the Moon waxed and waned. 

The lesson was a great success because it enabled ‘live’ discussion across the hemispheres which is an enriching experience when trying to understand and explain the phases of the Moon. Our goal is for these pre-service teachers to see the ‘added value’ that platforms like second life can bring to teaching, whether they become primary, secondary, or tertiary teachers. 

Our next step is to have our students from Perth join the students in Kentucky for a joint lecture or workshop. We can see that as I have about 30 students in each of my workshops this will be a challenge to manage. We will have to think of creative ways of clustering or grouping the students to find an optimal number of Avatars in the same place.

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MachinimUWA IV: Giannis Piaggio's 'Theatre of War'

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'Theatre of War', by Giannis Piaggio, is a soulful rendition is Miso Susanowa's artwork of the same name, an award winning creation, part of the UWA 3D Open Art Challenge. This machinima is now part of MachinimUWA IV: Art of the Artists, which unites the powerhouses of virtual worlds, Artists and Machinimatographers!

Entries to the L$300,000 MachinimUWA IV close on the 10th of November and looks for the creation of machinima featuring artworks that are part of the UWA 3D Open Art Challenge.

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MachinimUWA IV: Veruca Vandyke's 'Dual'

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'Dual', by Veruca Vandyke, is a chilling creation that features a number of award winning artworks that had been part of the UWA 3D Open Art Challenge. This machinima is now part of MachinimUWA IV: Art of the Artists, which unites the powerhouses of virtual worlds, Artists and Machinimatographers!

Entries to the L$300,000 MachinimUWA IV close on the 10th of November and looks for the creation of machinima featuring artworks that are part of the UWA 3D Open Art Challenge.

Artists featured in the machinima include:
Bryn Oh
Lea Supermarine & Jarapanda Snook
Typote Beck
Anley Piers
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MachinimUWA IV: Paloma Bigbear's 'Titilina's Playful Visit to UWA'

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'Titilina's Playful Visit to UWA', by Paloma Bigbear, the first Argentinean artist to participate in any UWA event features numerous award winning artworks that had been part of the UWA 3D Open Art Challenge. This machinima is now part of MachinimUWA IV: Art of the Artists, which unites the powerhouses of virtual worlds, Artists and Machinimatographers!

Entries to the L$300,000 MachinimUWA IV close on the 10th of November and looks for the creation of machinima featuring artworks that are part of the UWA 3D Open Art Challenge.

Artists featured in the machinima include:
Claudia222 Jewell
Hypatia Pickens
Lilia Artis
Kobuk Farshore
Secret Rage
Rebeca Bashly
Fae Varriale
Ginger Lorakeet
Soda lemondrop
Cherry Manga
Faery Sola
and Igor Ballyhoo (of legend)

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MachinimUWA IV: Lala Larix's '3112'

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'3112', by Lala Larix features numerous award winning artworks that had been part of the UWA 3D Open Art Challenge. This machinima is now part of MachinimUWA IV: Art of the Artists, which unites the powerhouses of virtual worlds, Artists and Machinimatographers!

Entries to the L$300,000 MachinimUWA IV close on the 10th of November and looks for the creation of machinima featuring artworks that are part of the UWA 3D Open Art Challenge.

Artists featured include:
Nexuno Thespian
Haveit Neox

Vixen Quandry
paleillusion
Gleman Jun
Ginger Alsop
Arrow Inglewood
Oberon Onmura
Artistide Despres
Josina Burgess
Daco Monday
Thoth Jantzen
oona Eiren
Gfresh Botha
Pixels Sideways
Blue Tsuki
Luis Bunuel
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Green Dots Brings Universities in Perth & Geneva Together

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Joint Presentation by Students of UWA (Perth) &  UAS (Geneva, Switzerland)

The 13th and 14th of October saw a landmark event taking place in the evolution of UWA's presence in the virtual world. A joint marketing class was held by the University of Western Australia & the University of Applied Sciences, Western Switzerland (Geneva Business School) which took place in Virtual Dublin in Second Life.

Groups of marketing students from each university, some teamed with Second Life mentors from the UWA 3D Art Challenges ran a case study called 'Selling Green Dots in Second Life', an award winning case study created by UWA's Professor Wade Halvorson and enhanced in cooperation with Professor Sabine Emad of the University of Applied Sciences (UAS) to simulate the real world process of data collection and team work.

Following the information collection activity in Virtual Dublin, students came together in groups to analyse the case and present their proposed solutions. A winning team from each university was selected and prezes awarded.

"This is the first time we have included the information collection stage in an online case study class," said Professor Emad, "and the feedback from students was very encouraging." Students were divided into groups of four, each with a different role to play including a Marketing Manager, Finance Director, CEO and Second Life 'expert'. This enabled group members to come together, each bringing with them a different category of information, which needed to be shared with the group in pursuit of a solution.

The winners were Sean Wrigley , Mark Pui & Ayman Sherbini (assisted by Stylianos Ling) from UWA and Alizée Decooninck, Marjorie North, Alice de Preux & Aurora Barbieri of UAS.

Of the experience, Stylianos said, "I enjoyed the international collaboration atmosphere. I found the idea of mixing students with experienced SL avatars brilliant! UWA's sustainable innovation in Virtual Worlds is an example for all universities that  seek excellence in teaching & research"

Commenting on the winners, Prof Halvorson said, "What I found most interesting in these presentations is that they were less descriptive than the presentations of the other groups.They didn't just summarize the case content, but really used analytical tools to view the information under a different angle.This paid off."

UWA Winner - Sean, Mark & Ayman

UAS Winner - Alizee, Marjorie, Alice & Aurora

UWA would like to acknowledge the assistance of the Second Life mentors linked to the UWA 3D Art Challenges who so generously gave of their time and experience to assist with this activity, including quadrapop Lane, Miso Susanowa, Reslez Steeplechase, Eliza Quinzet, Josiane Sorciere, Neeks Karu, Fiona Blaylock, Winter Ravenheart, Forceme Silverspar, Stylianos Ling,  secret Rage & Eliza Wierwight.

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