Virtual Worlds Research Discussion Group

vw-research-discussion

Whilst Linden Lab list their education highlights for 2008, a standout from the past year in an Australian context has been the successful establishment of the Virtual Worlds Research Discussion Group.

Organised by organized by Greg Wadley (Uni of Melbourne), Deb McCormick (Monash Uni) and, Sabine Lawless-Reljic (San Diego State), there are weekly meetings held at alternate locations. The 2009 seminars kick off next Tuesday the 20th January with a presentation by Don Wen titled ‘A study of Avatar Personalization Systems in Three Virtual Worlds’.

Whether you’re actively involved in conducting research yourself or interested in hearing about research underway, these seminars are hard to go past. You can view to future schedule of seminars here. Second Life may be the venue of the discussions but they explore much wider horizons than that.

Mixed reality event: Seventeen Unsung Songs

If you’re located in Melbourne you might want to head over to Horse Bazaar, 397 Lonsdale st Melbourne on Wednesday night the 21st May:

Adam Nash (Second Life artist-in-residence) and Greg Wadley (Uni of Melbourne) will perform a thirty-minute music and movement piece in Second Life. They will pilot their avatars around Adam’s “Seventeen Unsung Songs” installation, an island filled with immersive audiovisual sculptures. Sound and vision will be broadcast into the real world via the Horse Bazaar audiovisual system.

Melbourne’s Horse Bazaar features a unique immersive audio-visual environment for presenting art and music. via a sound system and 20 metre video projection surface that wraps around the seating area.

More details here.

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