Workshop Programme ;-)

Metrotopia Urban Plan

Video about Metrotopia Design

WEEK 36

Monday 31:

Introduction

Theory: Paradigms and semiotics

Practice: Introduction to Second Life (SL) and creation of avatars

Tuesday 1:

Theory: Semiotics

Readings: Chandler, Daniel pp. 13-83

Practice: Introduction to Metrotopia

Exercise 1:

An important first step when you move into a virtual world like Second Life is to create an avatar, decide on the avatar’s looks, clothings, accessories, etc., in order to present yourself to the other residents of the world.

Therefore, the first exercise of this workshop is to create an avatar and reflect on the choises that you made. Present your avatar and reflections to the other members of the group.

Wednesday 2:

Theory: Semiotics

Readings: Chandler, Daniel pp. 83-123

Practice: Linden Lab’s presentation of their virtual world

Exercise 2
Each time you log on to Second Life you are met with a picture chosen by Linden Lab; a picture which signifies the image which they want to convey of the world.

Therefore, collect a set of screen shots of the welcoming pictures and analyze them with reference to the semiotic concepts of semiosis and signification. Write a brief summary of your analysis in a SL notecard.

Thursday 3:

Practice: Music videos: Michael Jackson, U2, Queen, Robbie Williams

Exercise 3
I have collected some music videos from YouTube in a playlist which you can access from the big screen in your Second Life group rooms. They have been chosen to make possible two different semiotic analyses:

1) Perfomers’ self-presentation (Billie Jean – live concert, U2 live, Robbie Williams in Hyde Park)

2) Music videos as a mean of expression (Queen, Billie Jean music videos)

In your analysis you should make references to semiotic theory and concepts e.g. signification, semiosis, paradigmatic, syntagmatic.

Theory: Remediation

Readings: Bolter & Grusin, pp. 20-52

Method 1: Observation

Exercise 4:

Travel to your in-world group rooms (grp. 1 blue, grp. 2 yellow, grp. 3 green, grp. 4 red zen)

Find examples in Metrotopia which you find appropriate for an analysis that refers to the concepts of immediacy, hypermediacy, remediation (borrowing, reshaping, redefining).

Use the chat to communicate and coordinate your work. Copy and paste the chat discussion to a notecard and then edit and post it on the blog as a comment to my post: Remediation in Metrotopia.

Friday 4:

Exercise 5:

Travel to your group room in Metrotopia and then 1) choose a place in Metrotopia (museum, bazaar, library, gym, fight club, residential area) and 2) decide on a communication objective and purpose. Then 3) decide on a design that will help you communicate the objective chosen. Use the chat, copy and paste the chat discussion to a notecard to 4) use the notes to write a brief account of your reflections, thoughts and ideas about the design. Post the brief account as a comment to my post: Design in Metrotopia.

The Freudian Bench Talk

Video about Metrotopia as a Laboratory

WEEK 37

Monday 7:

Evaluation

Theory: Reception research

Video about Media Reception Experiments

Readings: Schrøder, Kim, Nordicom 1/ 2001

Tuesday 8:

Theory: Semiotics

Readings: Chandler, Daniel pp. 175-211

Group projects: Scenario and script

In the year 2050 fatal disasters are threatening humanity and the earth. Only your group can save the world and humanity! In order to do so you will have to develop mutants with supernatural powers. Go to the museum in Metrotopia to seek knowledge and inspiration from reading about the mutants that once were – way back in the history almost a hundred years ago. Then create new mutants that are like the old ones only now in a 2050 version and with different identities, persona and deeds.

Create the identity and persona of your supernatural mutants by year 2050. Write a brief account of their personal history, identity and deeds.

In order to fight the threats, a symposium of different groups of mutants with supernatural powers has been called to take place in Metrotopia. Each of the mutant groups have been asked to present to the symposium the threats that they see and also to show a design they have created that will help solve the crisis – be it a space ship, a giant earth covering or a firework of healings. To find out about the threats, the deeds and designs go and find knowledge and inspiration in the museum. What is the most serious of all the threats that you will have to fight? Find the answer to this question and discuss how to communicate it. Decide on a design that will help you fight the threats and solve the crisis. Then create the design.

Go to the symposium to present the threat, the design and the solution and be prepared to convince your fellow mutants about your solution.

Write the account about the threat, the deeds and design as it is seen by the end of the 2100^th century, that is, in year 2099.

Group discussions

Wednesday 9:

Theory: Design as Communication

Readings: Roland Barthes (1994). The Semiotic Challenge, pp. 156-159

Method 2: Observation

Readings: Hine, Christine, pp. 141-157

Group decisions

Thursday 10:

Theory: Design in virtual worlds

Readings: Lunenfeld, Peter pp. 112-129

Communication and design

Project work and in-world meetings

Friday 11:

Communication and design

Project work and in-world meetings

Exercise 6:

Write a brief account about your chosen figures and their personal history, identity and deeds. Post the presentation on the blog and comment on the other group presentations

Designing Collaboratively

Video about Designing Together

WEEK 38

Monday 14:

Communication and design

Project work and in-world meetings

Readings: In-world texts

Tuesday 15:

Communication and design

Project work and in-world meetings

Readings: In-world texts

Wednesday 16:

Presentation and evaluation of design

Video production

Written reflections to be posted on the blog

Thursday 17:

In-world events in Metrotopia

Video production

Friday 18: Showtime

Reader

• Bolter, Jay G and Grusin, R. (1999). Remediation. Understanding New Media. Cambridge Mass., London: MIT Press. pp. 20-52.
• Van Leeuwen, Theo (2005). Introducing Social Semiotics. London and New York: Routledge. pp. 3-26.
• Lindhof, Thomas R. (1995). Qualitative Communication Research Methods. Thousand Oaks, London, New Delhi: Sage Publications. pp. 27-61, 132-163
• Guimaraés, M. (2005). Doing Anthropology in Cyberspace: Fieldwork Boundaries and Social Environments. In: Christine Hine (Ed.): Virtual Methods. Issues in Social Research on the Internet. Oxford, New York: Berg. pp. 141-157.
• Barthes, R. (1994). The Semiotic Challenge. California: University of California Press, pp. 156-159.
• Mitchell, W. (1999). Replacing Place. In: Peter Lunenfeld: The Digital Dialectic: New Essays on New Media. Cambridge Mass., London: The MIT Press, pp. 112-129. RUCs book store.
• Schrøder, K. (2001). Beyond the Pioneer Days. Where is Reception Research Going? Nordicom 1, 2001.

Textbook

• Chandler, Richard (2007 2^nd Edition). The Basics of Semiotics. London and New York: Routledge. pp. 1-123, 147-227. RUCs book store, appr. 130 DDK.
• Electronic texts and videos: Available in the Library on the virtual island Metrotopia in Second Life

Venus and the four moons

Our story
In Ancient Egypt, an evil race of male aliens-reptilians came to earth to live among human beings in disguise. Their evil mission was to make The Earth their living place and to rule it by oppressing human race and by destroying the feminine sex in general. This oppression has been lasting for centuries till this day, with some rebbelion of women with the urge to get back their rights.
The aliens-reptilians have been living on our Earth for centuries and it was impossible to recognise them between normal human males. As far as the reptilians have always been in the position of some governing authority, including politics, religion, or other “leading’ position and in the disguise of a normal person, the human males have never distinguished them and they all were governed by them as well as human females. One great difference was that female gender in general could disguise those ruling aliens, but men could not. That was because of the extraordinary and powerful ability of women to predict or foresee things, that is called feminine intuition or the sixth sense. From ancient times women had that spendid ability to distinguish between normal males and aliens. But as far as aliens have always been in a leading position, they made everything in order to oppress women, so that they could not “open the eyes” to all the male human beings and of convince of their existance. That would simply mean the end of their domination and evil intentions. That is why female gender was harshly subordinated.
As it was mentioned before, the rebellion for the female rights and the end of male domination have occured from time to time but the biggest wave of feminist movement took place in 1960’s and from that time women are gaining more and more rights and power and rising from the male subservience. The male alien authorities are worried and frustrated as they are in danger of being recognised. They are now planning an attack and a huge invasion which is to take lace in 2050.
The four super heroines and goddesses of immense power and beauty – Nyx, Ishtar, Athena and Isis- are going to save the world from the horrible disaster of 2050 and save the women from being purged and destroyed.

Goddess Athena, Venus

One of the goddesses

Goddess Athena
The Goddess Athena was born long time ago on one of the four moons of planet Venus. The moon, which is unknown for anyone, only for its citizens, is named Venitha. It is a moon that has a matriarchal system, which means that there are no discriminations between the social or family status and that any person living on the moon is not discriminated as rich or poor, clever or dumb, mother or children. Nobody has a mother or a father as well as nobody is someone’s children because all the citizens of the moon are one big friendly family.
Every year, the citizens of Venitha are voting for their Queen, which is chosen by the various different demands such as braveness, physical strength or mental intelligence. So, according to that Athena has been chosen as the Queen of Venitha. However, Athena is the queen for already one hundred years because of her fantastic magic powers and mental abilities to govern the moon and none of the citizens can substitute her. Athena is a very beautiful and feminine woman, but still having unbelievable strength, which is equal to strength of male gender. Her body is muscular and fascinating. The super powers Athena has are also very rare and extraordinary. At the time when she was three-years-old, the monster Octopus was a lord of the moon and nobody could fight him, so all the citizens were under his suppression. However, Athena charmed him by her beauty and femininity and so he became dependent on her. Time by time she has transformed him into a good and nice person with any bad intentions. Since that time she is powerful to transform badness into goodness.

Goddess Nyx, Venus

One of the goddesses

Goddess Nyx
In Greek mythology, Nyx (or Nox) is a feminine personification of night. She is an ancient goddess of darkness and the daughter of Chaos.
According to Greek Mythology, Nyx children include the Moerae (the three Fates), Nemesis (justice and divine retribution), winged Hypnos (Sleep) and His brother Thanatos (Death), Moros (Doom), the Keres, goddesses of violent death, Oizys (Misery), the Hesperides who guarded the golden apples, Deceit, Friendship, Old Age and Eris (Strife, sometimes said to be a daughter of Hera).
Nyx is a super heroine, which has supernatural powers and can save the world from male aliens-reptilians that are planning to intrude into Earth in 2050.
History and deeds
Together with her three sisters super heroines (Isis, Ishtar, Athena) live in the four moons (which is the symbol of femininity, fertility and motherhood) surrounding the planet Venus, which is a symbol of feminine power and eternal beauty. Each of them live in different moons where only females live and each of them rules those kingdoms of the moons. They are named by the names of the goddesses in the honor of their beauty and power. Nyx lives in The Nyx moon where only females live.
Once Nyx was an ordinary girl living in the poor family leading a misfortunate and painful life. Her parents died when she was very little because of the war between the moons. When she was very little, she had a magical dream where she met her dead parents. She was so eager to stay with them in a dream forever without coming back to reality and the angel of darkness and dreams came to her and made an offer. If she wanted to meet her dead parents while dreaming, she had to give something back. She had to take all the responsibility for the 3rd moon of Venus and fight against evil. Furthermore, she was given supernatural powers to achieve this. The unfavorable condition of the offer was that she could only live in a darkness never ever seeing the daylight. Therefore, she never goes out and talks to women living in the 3rd moon, it is only in the night when she flies around the moon scattering the stars around and make people dream. It is only in the dreams that she can contact with people and see them. While she herself goes to sleep and dream (only to meet her parents), women in the moon do not dream. Nyx was the one to make a peace between the moons when the big war took place.

Magic powers
As far as she cannot be in daylight she has a magic night veil, which she drops on the moon or on the Earth and then the darkness surrounds it. When she has to fight against evil, she drops the veil so that no one could see a thing in darkness. She also has three magic stars, which helps her sisters, super heroines, to fight in darkness and shine their way through. Nyx has also a moon above her head, which guides her and strengthens her feminine intuition as far as full moon is associated with intuition and mystic.
Appearance
As far as she is a super heroine and a goddess of the night and darkness, she has dark features. Her hair is very long and black with millions of little sparkling stars all around. Her eyes are dark and her skin is snow white as far as she hasn’t seen the sun since the time she was little. She is mystical, extremely beautiful, graceful and enchanting. She has blue-black wings, as far as she flies in the dark dropping stars. She reminds of a night butterfly, as her wings are the wings of a butterfly. She is very tall and slim with long legs and elegant long neck. Her dress is is all in fades of the blue and sparkling as stars. In one hand she holds the stars and there is a moon over her head like an aureole. She is barefoot and flies easily like a feather but is extremely powerful.

Goddess Isis, Venus

One of the goddesses

Goddess Isis comes from Ancient Egypt, where she was known as the Goddess of motherhood and fertility, because of her most exceptional power to create and to bring life for those, who are lifeless. However, long time before Isis has moved from Ancient Egypt to the one of four moons, because of the horrible accident that happened in the moon. Dreadful cold in the moon has frozen all the women living there and so Isis was the one who could make them alive again. From that time she gained respect from women and was nominated the queen of the moon, which was named in respect of Isis- Isismoon.
The name Isis has a particular meaning, which is also related to the other splendid power of hers. Sounding of her name reminds the sounding of the word ‘ice’. She got this name because of her ice-cold eyes and blood, which is of the color blue. The magical power Isis has in relation to it is that she can stop the circulation of blood and to change it into an ice. Isis’s bloody-red hair symbolizes blood itself, which she changes into an ice. That is why she sometimes is called the goddesses of blood. By giving a so-called “second birth” to women of the moon she also made their blood become blue. Since that time all the citizens of the Isismoon have the common feature- blue blood.
However, Isis was sent to the earth, by the decision of the citizens of the moon, to join her three sisters and to fight against the male aliens reptilians, who suppressed women.

The true story about WaterAvengers

January 2nd 2050
Water pollution is the leading worldwide cause of deaths and diseases. Daily, 100 000 deaths are related to this problem. More than 75% of lakes, rivers and bays of the planet are contaminated. There is almost no drinkable water left.
The Earth and its inhabitants are endangered. WastingMan is wasting and polluting all the drinkable water on the planet. Someone needs to stop him and restore the precious water reserves.
WastingMan is a man that came from Neptune. His muscles are made of some kind of sponge and it constantly needs water. He arrived on Earth around 2010 and since then he has been drinking thousands of litre of water every day to stay hydrated and survive. Around 2030, the drinkable water was becoming very rare. Being able to drink polluted water, WastingMan started to pollute water to keep it for himself. That creepy man has been travelling the world alone searching for water for more than 20 years now.
Fortunately, the Water Avengers decided to unite and fight against the WastingMan and de-pollute our invaluable resource.
The Water Avengers are composed of Torrentia, Goccia and Vigor. The three of them are highly touched by human misery. They met five years ago in Metrotopia in a mutant symposium where they united around this common goal: the protection of water. They realised that WastingMan was the main threat to our water resources. They have been preparing their attack against him for a couple years now.
When Torrentia was 12, her house and family was carried away by a tornado. During this tornado, she was hit by a lightening and ended up being able to control weather. Once an adult, she decided to travel and see the world. She saw all the poverty and misery in countries where water is lacking. She has been extremely moved by those experiences and now, wants to help the cause of water conservation. For several years, she has been pouring rain on people who needed it.
Goccia is an ex-teacher and researcher Ecology at Oxford University. Nine years ago, doing an experiment, she entered in contact with a very special and rare liquid from Mercury, called RUBILONDULUM and her skin was affected. Her skin is now transparent and her skin can de-pollute substances like water very rapidly. After this incident, she couldn’t go back to her job because of her new disturbing appearance, so when she understood her new de-polluting power, she decided to help others like Torrentia.
Vigor has always been a mutant. As a child, he could throw a baseball four times stronger than the other kids at his school. At this time, he didn’t know why. His parents only told him about his powers when he was 15 because he was having a lot of trouble controlling his extraordinary force. Over the years, he learned to control his force and entered police school. Since then, he has been a policeman bringing back order and justice. Vigor was convinced by Torrentia and Goccia at the Metrotopia’s Symposium of the injustice of the water distribution on the planet and decided to join their team.
After two years of research, they found WastingMan’s weakness. They chased him around the globe. Goccia used her researcher skills to investigate WastingMan’s location. Once they will found him, they used their superpowers to destroy him. WastingMan was caught in the tornado provoked by Torrentia. Vigor used his extraordinary force to twist his sponge body and withdraw all the water which allows him to live. Finally, Vigor sent him back to Neptune.
Having to deal with the misery WastingMan left behind him, they decided to create a device that would clean the polluted water. The device would be easily moved from places to places and clean the contaminated lakes, rivers and etc. using the special chemicals that transformed Goccia in a mutant, the RUBILONDULUM. The device was called «Aguagliosa».
The population of the Earth haven’t seen any clean water in the 30 years of WastingMan’s reign, the Water Avengers had to remind them what clean water look like. To show everyone that it was now possible to have access to clean water, the super-heroes built a swimming pool with the new de-polluted water, «Agualizia». The population was so impressed by the marvellous clean water that it became the one of the wonders of the world. Over the next years, hundreds of millions of people came to see this monument. To remind humans of their responsibility to be careful not to waste one drop of this marvellous gift, they introduced a message in «Aguagliosa» that everyone could see looking at water. The message was very simple and was told all over the world : Water is life. Every drop is important.
2099
The Earth is no longer in danger of a lack of drinkable water. The population is aware of the importance of water and is careful about not wasting a drop. There has been a huge change in mentality but there is still some work to do. A quarter of the water still needs to be cleaned. Aguagliosa has been ameliorated and is working twice as fast as it was in 2050. The Water Avengers continued to travel around the world with their cleaning device, telling the population about the importance of water protection.

The Fight

Fighting WastingMan

WastingMan

WastingMan

From Neptune
- Needs water to survive
- Pollutes Water
- His body is like a sponge

Vigor, “WaterAvengers”

One of the WaterAvengers

A mutant with a very extraordinary force
- A policeman bringing back order and justice

Torrentia, “WaterAvengers”

One of WaterAvengers

Her family was carried away by a tornado
- She is able to control weather
- She wants to help the cause of water conservation

Goccia, “WaterAvengers”

One of the WaterAvengers

Ex-researcher in Ecology at Oxford University
- Entered in contact with RUBILONDULUM
- Her skin can de-pollute water very rapidly