Today was a success, I did not make a hash of it, the presentation went well and the supporting documentation, It did make me consider that I had not gone into the full detail of research I went into... so lets rectify this heres the gen...
Prototype and a proof of concept for constructing a Virtual
Chair Museum as a VLE within Second Life
Supporting document for Powerpoint presentation:
Building a VLE within Second Life presentation
Very little has been written about the chairs, thus complete catalogues of both the chairs and the carvings and an inventory of the company archive are required in the first instance. This is a catalogue of the chair collection, which includes all currently known data about each chair, an image and a description. John Cross Sir John Cass Department of Art, Media Design RAE 2008
Initial Concept
As part of increasing the awareness of London Metropolitan Universities role as the current recipient
of the Frederick Parker collection there was a tentative idea to do something with the collection in the
virtual world, Met works had already scanned two of the chairs and build a facsimile of one of the older
chairs and VADs the free graphic resource had photographed each of the chairs and there was a catalogue
and exhibition space, but to quote Dr John Cross the curator “very little has been written about the chairs”
as they had primarily been distributed throughout the estate of the Parker family
The repository of The Frederick Parker Chair collection
http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/jcamd/research/rae-2008/john-cross/portfolio_outcome04.cfm ,
its representation on VADS http://www.vads.ac.uk/ and a synopsis of its establishment at http://www.vads.ahds.ac.uk/collections/FPC.html
Refining the idea
I wanted to build a more formal learning outcome for the Virtual Museum by tying existing primary sources
to other online content and existing Vocational Study within fine furniture qualifications. In discussion it was
felt that recreating historical creative environments as workshop and its practice, coupled with accurate
component build, isometric representation and linking video of heritage skills and restoration techniques
associated with individual key chairs could be linked to contemporary curriculum and assignment work,
giving significant added value and pedagogical merit to the Proof of concept.
Design brief or thumbnail..
The idea is to prototype a virtual chair graphical and historical repository, linking it to current vocational
training curriculum in real world fine furniture.. with examples of 3D virtual chairs, virtual workshop <s>,
a movie screen on wall with links to curriculum and videos on You Tube showing real live people
demonstrating real live techniques. This could hopefully link primary source to formative curriculum
study and test pieces, improve candidates knowledge of detailed isometric projection and scalar
accuracies where the original sample is a distance away and maybe difficult to get "up close and
personal with.. which is essential where construction and spatial awareness is a must...
The repository is the Lond Met Sir John Cass The Frederick Parker Chair collection http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/jcamd/research/rae-2008/john-cross/portfolio_outcome04.cfm ,
its representation on VADS http://www.vads.ac.uk/ and a synopsis of its establishment at http://www.vads.ahds.ac.uk/collections/FPC.html
Content Research Approach and interviews
Interviews were held with key stakeholders: The fine furniture curriculum is based around
components within City & Guilds existing courseware the link to live curriculum was
stablished with Andrew Hewison Portfolio Manager - Engineering and Manufacturing.
Portfolio Management and Development City & Guilds. I discussed the concepts of the
design approach with the Frederick Parker Collection Curator Dr John Cross and the
Senior fine furniture Tutor Colin Eden-Eadon at the
Building Crafts College http://www.thebcc.ac.uk/.
All parties showed an enthusiasm for broadening the resources under the umbrella
of a Virtual Chair Museum. To gain more knowledge of the environment I also visited a
live Bodging and Chair making day at the Chiltern open air museum http://www.coam.org.uk/BBuildings/Buildings4.html#Furniture ,
visited the Salomon Tool Collection at St Albans Museum
http://www.stalbansmuseums.org.uk/2/Search-Our-Collections,
The Benjamin Seaton furniture tool collection at the Guildhall museum in Rochester http://www.medway.gov.uk/leisureandculture/museums/guildhallmuseum.aspx and
general help from the National Association of Decorative & Fine Arts Societies website
http://www.nadfas.org.uk/.
The Virtual Concept
Within Second Life the Virtual Chair Museum has live teleporting when sitting on the
virtual exhibits... The Avatar approaches the chair they are interested in, sits on it and
is teleported to a virtual period work shop or furniture factory that exhibits the processes
and component build, that also has a screen with curriculum and video of pertinent resources
and build demonstration with additional research resources and a tips for assignment and
potential tutor interaction via IM or email etc..,
The Avatar can then be teleported back to the museum by sitting on an anachronistic
modern chair to try other chairs and links... I would expect all sites to use the same
resource documents but with specific tutorial and curriculum pertinent to that specific
chair and workshop experience.
Build and Tools used, arrival at current solution
All build and scripting used is currently native to the Second Life environment. The Primative
object builder tool works better on a large specification machine with a powerful graphics
card and large screen real estate, working on laptops is not advisable. Scripting can be
embedded in created objects to add functionality to dumb 3D media, thus teleporting
capability can be scripted, dynamic screens can become web browsers and Multimedia
can be embedded.
This is a slow business I initially investigated a variety for 3D builders to hopefully speed
up the process: Google Sketch-up, Wings, Max 3D, and AC3D they were all complex
with a long ramp up learning process, Sketch being the easiest for my limited time though
the ruby rails plug to import into SL actually added greater complexity than the native build
tool. I have some 3D versions of Frederick Parker chairs in Sketch-up but they are embedded
2D via a web browser within Second Life.
Current Project Position
My site seems to have ground to a halt on all my development machines, I haven’t yet
managed to rectify the problem, I pared down all of my buildings and chair builds in terms
of primitive content. but I may have run out of either build space or memory on my machines at
home, I hope to rectify this in consultation with Alan Hudson. Also You Tube video does not
want to embed currently.
Futures
If I can get my SL editor to work as it should then my Proof of concept should complete by
deadline. I have gathered significant interest from the project to establish more interest
in Second Life at City & Guilds
Modification or Enhancements?
A dedicated development area may help, and a good offline object builder with enough
time to learn it.
I can see problems trying to monetize the product and building a business case with an
unknown population is a challenge, but it is engaging…
Also I think that a resource repository database is essential to scale up tied resources
to each chair examples…
Investigation into XML compliance and data re-use as otherwise there may be no
opportunity to scale up…
Templated skinable workshops
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