Rezzing Books: Codex Technology in the Metaverse
Speakers
Since its official launch in 2003, Second Life, the popular 3D interactive world created by Linden Lab, has become an unlikely destination for librarians, bibliophiles, authors, readers, publishers, booksellers, and book artists. At the center of this nexus of users is the book itself, a virtual artifact that differs from its physical counterpart by being comprised of bits, not atoms; of textures, animated scripts, and geometric primitives rather than paper, ink, cloth, and thread. In this talk I will examine the infrastructure that supports this in-world bibliographic culture: specifically, the technologies used to create and read SL books; the social networks designed to promote and popularize them; the information services to collect, access, curate, and catalogue them; and the legal and economic systems developed to commodify them. I will look at how the Second Life platform conditions our ideas of "bookness" by presenting us with interfaces for reading that borrow incongruously from print and manuscript traditions, first-person shooter games, and even military aviation. And I will suggest that the mixed economy of Real Life and Second Life makes it necessary to understand these immersive books as compound objects that exist within a system of relationships that include both in-world and out-world content, thereby complicating efforts to study, link, document, and preserve them. The talk will also include a demonstration of books I have made in SL and discuss future projects.
Speaker Bios
Kari Kraus is an Assistant Professor in the iSchool and the Department of English at the University of Maryland. Her research and teaching interests focus on new media and the digital humanities, textual scholarship and print culture, digital preservation, transmedia storytelling, and game studies. Kraus is a local Co-PI on an Institute of Museum and Library Services grant for preserving virtual worlds; the PI on an IMLS Digital Humanities Internship grant; and, with Derek Hansen (iSchool), the Co-Principal Investigator of the NSF grant underwriting the design of AGOG. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in The Cambridge Companion to Textual Scholarship; Digital Humanities Quarterly; Digital Media: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on History, Preservation, and Ontology; The Journal of Visual Culture; and_ Studies in Romanticism_. She first became interested in ARGs when Marc Ruppel, a PhD student in the Department of English, introduced her to Cathy’s Book, billed as the first alternate reality game developed specifically for the publishing industry. In 2008, in conjunction with the University of Maryland’s Mobility Initiative, she and her graduate students designed a mobile scavenger hunt that they playtested with a group of undergraduate students who had received free iPhones and iPod Touches as part of the Provost’s pilot project. Inspired by ARGs, the on-campus hunt made use of the technological affordances of the iPhone and iTouch – e.g., camera, phone, texting, and GPS functionality – to enhance interactivity and integrate the offline and online worlds in creative ways. The narrative framework was designed to teach students about University of Maryland history, particularly the Great Fire of 1912.
Media
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All talks free and open to the public. Attendees are welcome to bring their own lunches.
Contact: MITH (mith.umd.edu, mith@umd.edu, 301.405.8927).