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The Metaverse U conference held
on February 16-17 at Stanford University explored the cultural, technological, legal, and economic issues surrounding virtual
worlds. A full video transcript of the conference will be made permanently available on the web, archived to become part of a global conversation on
virtual worlds. Sites for viewing and download will be announced both here and on the Metaverse U site as soon as they are available.
We cordially invite you to extend the conversation begun at the conference, and solicit your participation in the post-conference exchange of ideas on
the Metaverse U wiki. To all our speakers, to our esteemed colleagues and friends in attendance both at Stanford and in Second
Life, and to the many individuals who worked to ensure the success of this event, we offer our heartfelt thanks. |
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The Stanford Humanities Lab is a Center for
Transdiciplinary/Post-Disciplinary Study. We discover
fascinating futures to be explored in ignoring and crossing disciplinary borders.
SHL believes
that some crucial questions — about what it is to be human, about experience in a connected world, about the boundaries of
culture and nature — transcend old divisions between the arts, sciences and humanities; between the academy, industry and
the cultural sphere.
We engage in experimental projects with a "laboratory" ethos — collaborative, co-creative, team-based — involving a
triangulation of arts practice, commentary/critique, and outreach, merging research, pedagogy, publication and practice. Beyond commentary and discussion, we build: new media, interactive archives,
predictive models of social change, collaborative research workshops, art exhibitions.
The SHL agenda encompasses
• animating archives - regenerating, bringing to life,
and fostering new modes of interaction with the storehouses of human, cultural, artistic, scientific achievement - our focus is on the question of the relationship of the human past to efforts at conservation and preservation
• building bigger pictures - putting specialized in-depth research into the context of big human questions; questions, for example, of rapid social change and innovation, the ethical implications of information technology, the character of distributed digital communities, the politics of digital citizenship, the past, present, and future of intellectual property
• enabling co-creative collaboration - developing successful models of teamwork, learner-centered models of training (thinking through doing), and collaborative authoring tools and processes
• building bridges - establishing innovative partnerships between industry, museums, foundations, and high-level university-based research
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Lynn Hershman Leeson: Autonomous Agents, A Real + Second Life Symposium
 In performance, installation, video and film, new media and technology, Lynn Hershman Leeson has explored identity, politics, surveillance and artificial intelligence, operating at the vanguard of artistic innovation. Autonomous Agents, A Real + Second Life Symposium considers Hershman Leeson's practice within live space, cinematic space, the buildings of museums and galleries and most recently, the virtual space of Second Life. In real life at The Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, England: Saturday 24 November 2007, 5.00am-11.00am PST. On the same day, in Second Life: 7.30am-8.30am SLT. Contact susan.fletcher@manchester.ac.uk for Second Life location. This symposium is in collaboration with The Performing Presence Project. [Excerpted from a post to Rhizome by Gabriella Giannachi.]
Seminar: Making Money in Virtual Worlds
Joel Greenberg, Electric Sheep Company at Stanford, following the Virtual Worlds Conference4-5 PM Thursday, October 11, 2007 at 235 Wallenberg Hall, Stanford University
What is unique about the virtual media?
How can users' attention be monetized?
What measurements capture commercial value?Joel Greenberg talks about answers to these questions and the need to develop standards that cross virtual platforms. As new developments let avatars to travel between worlds, can messaging systems keep up with them? Joel Greenberg is the Vice President of Marketing Innovation at the Electric Sheep Company. He is building an ad network for Virtual Worlds, beginning with Second Life. By understanding the "spacial" metaphor of Virtual Worlds versus the "page" metaphor of the Web from a cultural point of view, he and his colleagues are defining new ad forms, metrics, and proposed standards. Formerly of GSD&M and Human Code, he has over 20 years experience in non-traditional media, from simulations to games, from development to research to marketing. He's a frequent speaker on Marketing and Virtual Worlds. He serves on the advisory board of conferences such as SXSW Interactive and Chaos: New Agendas in Advertising. Joel comments on Virtual Worlds and marketing on his Tuple vs. Kipple blog. This seminar is co-sponsored by Media X and the Stanford Humanities Lab.
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