Somayeh, W8 Photo Blog

24, Sep 2017

W8 Project Yunong

Virtual world
Assignment 2 outline
I think I will talk about the features of Chinese style buildings in Second Life and connect the features with semiotics and multimodal design to explain them in details.
1. I will find some academic journals and articles about semiotics and second life, semiotics and Chinese style buildings and multimodal design in second life.
2. I will explore 3-5 places in Second Life to analyze the Chinese style buildings there and make some comparisons between them.
3. Write down the findings of step 1 and 2 and make a general speech draft
4. Start doing the video record in Second Life by using the draft. Then edit the video.

Amanda-Project

For the assignment 2, I will explore some language learning/teaching  space, if possible take some free classes.
My purpose for those experience is to contrast both con and pro  side of the design and give the suggestion to whom may plan to create their own space of language study.
Generally  all suggestion is based on my own experience.

W8 Yunong-Photo blog

Since I plan to do some research on Chinese sims in Second Life, I found one Chinese Garden to explore this week. Before I go  to the garden, I changed my outfit to Chinese Qipao.

I think this Chinese Garden in SL is a kind of typical Chinese garden. I have visited many Chinese garden in China and some buildings and decorations in this SL garden remind me something in the real Chinese Garden.
The roof and the wall of each building are very Chinese style. Many traditional Chinese architectures are build up with wood. Also, the furniture inside is also made by wood. The decorations include calligraphy of Chinese poems and paintings, porcelains, maybe some other things related to Buddhism and Taoism. 

In this place, the most frequently appeared sign is dragon. In our Chinese culture, dragon is the sign of power, rich, luck and so on. There is a dragon that we can ride on in this garden, but I don't think it is a Chinese dragon, the appearance is more like a Western dragon.

Also, I think many plants can represent Chinese feature as well, such as bamboo, plum blossom, orchid, pine tree, lotus and so on. In this SL garden, I saw some of them.

 The biggest building has some paintings on the wall inside and when I entered the gate, I saw "silk road" floating there. However, there is no connection with those paintings.

 There are many stone sculptures of lions. Stone lion is also a typical decoration in Chinese architecture.

Anyway, this SL Chinese garden is really like the real Chinese garden, because the natural environment and the buildings are connect with each other very well.

And I really like the free gift-a Chinese traditional fan that I got from the Chinese store.^ ^

W8 Amanda-photoblog

Because I wanna look closer to language study in SL, so I found a Spanish learning center. This space had plenty building and activities.

Here is the class side of this place, The escape is a Spanish class in virtual reality, click on the board which shows on the left, the description of "Escape" will show up on the screen and its related link. The pictures on the wall are the snapshot of "Escape".

 As an academic purpose place here is kind of exhibition called Slmoog 2017, where displays the presentation about virtual communication/ community. In my point of view, It's really good to students who may visit this place and not really familiar with SL or other Virtual world platforms.

On the other hand, visitors with quiet experience also could see how others think about the Virtual World community, it may help some developers. Moreover, students who will take Spanish lessons could read to kill time while waiting for lesson starts.

Here is the cafe ad below is the inner place called Chilbo, many shops are located here, teacher sources, clothes, and beauty, etc. Some of the items are free, like the skirt which I'm wearing in those pictures, I bought it from one of the shops in Chilbo.

This is another building where could take Spanish class in this place called "Spanish with Eugenia", it also could see the noteboard of Escape. And very clearly, the information about free Spanish communication can be seen.

I think it's really good, especially for some Spanish learner, they may have learned this language but struggle on nowhere to practice speaking.   

Up to the stairs, on both sides of the wall are additional information about Spanish level.

 Before taking lessons, the basic knowledge of each level is showed on the wall, visitors can check their level or review their knowledge.

 As explore this place, I like here a lot, it's like a real campus, not only we can take lessons, but also we could go shopping, go dancing, watching shows and drinking coffee, etc. To build a place in SL which target on language teaching and learning should just like this, more facilities and activities, make people feel like in a real campus. But  one thing I make me feel inconvenience is there has no guide or maps to tell where I could go for a specific need.

W8-Pary- Photoblog

 I am going to focus more on the Queer community since I want to do an autoethnographic observation for the last assignment. So this week I found a monument which is built and dedicated to killed transgenders. They could be victims of murder or suicide. Beside the well-detailed building technique, there was real thought behind the posters and notes on the walls.

 The written language was in a grieving but also supportive style. There were a large number of names of victims on top of  each candle. It is interesting how a small room in SL can raise awareness  towards a whole category of identity.

I searched for LGBT communities to focus on communication. (observing a place is beneficial, but interactions are required for deeper understanding of any landmark in SL)
As you see below, I finally managed to find a group with different sexual identities.
The interesting points about this group of avatars were:
1- They have established a place which is not searchable and therefore not easy to find which makes the place more personal for avatars.
2- Avatars were quite friendly in the first contact. Two of them were more talkative and the rest were more listeners and would mention some sentences just as the sign of agreement with main speakers.
3- They made comments about my avatar's appearance and certainly a classic avatar did not seem to be preferable from their point of view. ( One of them mentioned that I could be the Police!I don't know why would police officers check people in SL and even if it is a real thing or not)
4- They did not use microphones and all the chats were in written format. Although I tried my best to keep up with the chatting style, it was overwhelming not to look as a rookie in Second Life.
 5- They asked a lot of questions to make sure how I could find them and I tried to be honest (I did not say why I was there). They also tried to figure out my real life (or as they say in the chat RL) age, gender and sexual identity.

I will go to that landmark more often, it was the first time I was interacting with these many avatars in SL. This could be the reason I was a little nervous and could not communicate in a more chilled way!