Impossible physics, a life-sized Saturn 5 rocket and an entire Tudor town. These can all be found in the online world of Second Life. Second Life caused a stir at the international Museums and the Web 2007 conference in April.
The event took place in San Francisco and speakers from the city's Exploratorium, a museum of science, art and human perception, showed how they use it to complement their museum. And researchers from the University of Illinois highlighted the increasing number of virtual museums that are springing up.
San Francisco technology company Linden Lab launched Second Life in 2003. Visitors can download a piece of software and register with Linden Lab online.
They can then explore the virtual world using an avatar - an online representation of themselves. What makes Second Life unique is that everything - the shops and clubs, castles, art and exhibits - is created by residents.
There's even a Second Life currency, with an exchange rate for real money. And the number of people signing up is growing exponentially, from two million in December 2006 to more than seven million in June 2007.
Unlike traditional websites, visitors share the same 'physical' space on screen. You can see who else is there and communicate with them. It's a space for ideas, engagement and collaboration - which makes it relevant for museums and galleries trying to engage their visitors, and reach out to new audiences.
Charlotte Sexton, the deputy head of new media at London's National Gallery, agrees: 'As a concept it's very powerful. You are in this other space with people from around the world. As an organisation we're constantly thinking about how to attract and engage audience groups that are difficult to tap into. There is the potential with Second Life to access people who wouldn't normally come in through your door.'
So far the Exploratorium is the only real-life museum to have a significant presence in Second Life. But museums in the UK, including Tate and the Science Museum, are starting to look at the possibilities. Mike Ellis, the website manager at the Science Museum, explains: 'We want to dip our toe into Second Life to see how we might use it, how expensive it might be and what the boundaries are.'
There are plenty of virtual museums indigenous to Second Life they could look at. One of the best known is the International Spaceflight Museum (ISM), which was set up by a group of enthusiasts in 2005 and has rockets from 12 countries.
Kat Lemieux, a founder and director of the ISM, says: 'We wanted to show what it's possible to do in Second Life. From the very beginning we had the idea that we would do things full-scale. Our first rocket was a Saturn 5, all 111 metres of it.'
The ISM features the extraordinary Rocket Ring, a circle of life-sized rockets that tower over the heart of the museum. They give you a visceral feel for their sheer size in a way scale models can't. Among other exhibits, you can ride a Titan rocket, operate a robotic space shuttle arm and take a field trip to Mars.
'It's extremely important to have things that visitors can interact with,' Lemieux explains. 'The idea of being able to control something makes it more fun.'
This concept of interaction is demonstrated across Second Life. Renaissance Island was created by the Alliance Library System (ALS), a library services provider based in Illinois. It's a facsimile of a Tudor town and has residents, including William Cecil and Henry VIII, who interact with visitors.
'We wanted to create an immersive historical role-play for participation and observation,' says Lorelei Junot, the director of innovation at ALS. 'This period of time is a rich multidisciplinary opportunity with drama, history, literature, science and exploration.'
Librarian JJ Drinkwater, who built the island with museum consultant Geoff Grigliano, explains: 'The parish common gives us an opportunity to teach visitors about how feudal land use and rights evolved under the Tudors. St Minutia's church, the remnant of an abbey, gives us an excuse to talk about the dissolution of the church holdings under Henry VIII.'
With a virtual environment like this, the possibilities are endless. 'You could look at a Vermeer painting and actually enter that space,' enthuses Sexton from the National Gallery. 'How better to find out how real it looks, how the perspective works, how light moves in that space?'
The Exploratorium uses Second Life in a different way. Its involvement started in 2006 with live coverage of a solar eclipse. Rob Rothfarb, the director of web development at the Exploratorium, decided to show it in Second Life.
'We recreated the Roman amphitheatre where our programme was originating from,' he explains. 'There were exhibits along with the video and people could ask questions and talk about what they were seeing. The average viewing time for most online video is about four minutes. Our event was an hour and people stayed; the key was that it was social.'
This social interaction is essential for successful Second Life institutions. John Stack, Tate's online editor, says that people don't want to interact with content, they want to interact with each other. 'In the gallery the rules are that you don't go up to a stranger and ask, "What do you think about that?" In the online community they do, and debates emerge.'
To engage people online you can't simply copy real life, emphasises the Science Museum's Mike Ellis: 'We don't want to replicate real experiences because you end up with a sad reflection of the original. It would be interesting for us to turn gravity off and see what happens.'
The Exploratorium does exactly this, allowing you to float to the ceiling and change your perspective. It also has an exhibit that shows Brownian motion (the random movement of atoms) inside a large transparent cube. After a suggestion made by a visitor, it has enabled people to enjoy a wild ride by sitting their avatar on an atom as it careers about.
'That's a fantastic aspect of Second Life,' says Rothfarb. 'You can attract creative thinkers to build an exhibit in ways that we wouldn't have thought of.'
But there are challenges. There may be seven million registered users, but only 30,000 users are online at any given time and you can only have about 70 people in the same place at the same time. Visitors must learn the technology, and museums must find the skills and resources needed to operate in a virtual environment.
'Fostering a community does require a lot of energy,' agrees Stack. 'Having to keep up to date with the technology would be an ongoing investment. And as it's running on someone's servers, they could go bust and it could disappear overnight.'
But it's still early days for Second Life and the technology is continually evolving. Recognising the potential, some institutions are banding together to overcome problems of resources and skill, share the risks, and learn how to best use this new environment.
'There is definitely something there, which is why there is a buzz around Second Life,' says Stack. 'And we need to make sure we pin it down.'
Aaron Davies is a freelance writer
http://secondlife.com
http://slispaceflightmuseum.org
www.exploratorium.edu/worlds/secondlife/
The event took place in San Francisco and speakers from the city's Exploratorium, a museum of science, art and human perception, showed how they use it to complement their museum. And researchers from the University of Illinois highlighted the increasing number of virtual museums that are springing up.
San Francisco technology company Linden Lab launched Second Life in 2003. Visitors can download a piece of software and register with Linden Lab online.
They can then explore the virtual world using an avatar - an online representation of themselves. What makes Second Life unique is that everything - the shops and clubs, castles, art and exhibits - is created by residents.
There's even a Second Life currency, with an exchange rate for real money. And the number of people signing up is growing exponentially, from two million in December 2006 to more than seven million in June 2007.
Unlike traditional websites, visitors share the same 'physical' space on screen. You can see who else is there and communicate with them. It's a space for ideas, engagement and collaboration - which makes it relevant for museums and galleries trying to engage their visitors, and reach out to new audiences.
Charlotte Sexton, the deputy head of new media at London's National Gallery, agrees: 'As a concept it's very powerful. You are in this other space with people from around the world. As an organisation we're constantly thinking about how to attract and engage audience groups that are difficult to tap into. There is the potential with Second Life to access people who wouldn't normally come in through your door.'
So far the Exploratorium is the only real-life museum to have a significant presence in Second Life. But museums in the UK, including Tate and the Science Museum, are starting to look at the possibilities. Mike Ellis, the website manager at the Science Museum, explains: 'We want to dip our toe into Second Life to see how we might use it, how expensive it might be and what the boundaries are.'
There are plenty of virtual museums indigenous to Second Life they could look at. One of the best known is the International Spaceflight Museum (ISM), which was set up by a group of enthusiasts in 2005 and has rockets from 12 countries.
Kat Lemieux, a founder and director of the ISM, says: 'We wanted to show what it's possible to do in Second Life. From the very beginning we had the idea that we would do things full-scale. Our first rocket was a Saturn 5, all 111 metres of it.'
The ISM features the extraordinary Rocket Ring, a circle of life-sized rockets that tower over the heart of the museum. They give you a visceral feel for their sheer size in a way scale models can't. Among other exhibits, you can ride a Titan rocket, operate a robotic space shuttle arm and take a field trip to Mars.
'It's extremely important to have things that visitors can interact with,' Lemieux explains. 'The idea of being able to control something makes it more fun.'
This concept of interaction is demonstrated across Second Life. Renaissance Island was created by the Alliance Library System (ALS), a library services provider based in Illinois. It's a facsimile of a Tudor town and has residents, including William Cecil and Henry VIII, who interact with visitors.
'We wanted to create an immersive historical role-play for participation and observation,' says Lorelei Junot, the director of innovation at ALS. 'This period of time is a rich multidisciplinary opportunity with drama, history, literature, science and exploration.'
Librarian JJ Drinkwater, who built the island with museum consultant Geoff Grigliano, explains: 'The parish common gives us an opportunity to teach visitors about how feudal land use and rights evolved under the Tudors. St Minutia's church, the remnant of an abbey, gives us an excuse to talk about the dissolution of the church holdings under Henry VIII.'
With a virtual environment like this, the possibilities are endless. 'You could look at a Vermeer painting and actually enter that space,' enthuses Sexton from the National Gallery. 'How better to find out how real it looks, how the perspective works, how light moves in that space?'
The Exploratorium uses Second Life in a different way. Its involvement started in 2006 with live coverage of a solar eclipse. Rob Rothfarb, the director of web development at the Exploratorium, decided to show it in Second Life.
'We recreated the Roman amphitheatre where our programme was originating from,' he explains. 'There were exhibits along with the video and people could ask questions and talk about what they were seeing. The average viewing time for most online video is about four minutes. Our event was an hour and people stayed; the key was that it was social.'
This social interaction is essential for successful Second Life institutions. John Stack, Tate's online editor, says that people don't want to interact with content, they want to interact with each other. 'In the gallery the rules are that you don't go up to a stranger and ask, "What do you think about that?" In the online community they do, and debates emerge.'
To engage people online you can't simply copy real life, emphasises the Science Museum's Mike Ellis: 'We don't want to replicate real experiences because you end up with a sad reflection of the original. It would be interesting for us to turn gravity off and see what happens.'
The Exploratorium does exactly this, allowing you to float to the ceiling and change your perspective. It also has an exhibit that shows Brownian motion (the random movement of atoms) inside a large transparent cube. After a suggestion made by a visitor, it has enabled people to enjoy a wild ride by sitting their avatar on an atom as it careers about.
'That's a fantastic aspect of Second Life,' says Rothfarb. 'You can attract creative thinkers to build an exhibit in ways that we wouldn't have thought of.'
But there are challenges. There may be seven million registered users, but only 30,000 users are online at any given time and you can only have about 70 people in the same place at the same time. Visitors must learn the technology, and museums must find the skills and resources needed to operate in a virtual environment.
'Fostering a community does require a lot of energy,' agrees Stack. 'Having to keep up to date with the technology would be an ongoing investment. And as it's running on someone's servers, they could go bust and it could disappear overnight.'
But it's still early days for Second Life and the technology is continually evolving. Recognising the potential, some institutions are banding together to overcome problems of resources and skill, share the risks, and learn how to best use this new environment.
'There is definitely something there, which is why there is a buzz around Second Life,' says Stack. 'And we need to make sure we pin it down.'
Aaron Davies is a freelance writer
http://secondlife.com
http://slispaceflightmuseum.org
www.exploratorium.edu/worlds/secondlife/
