KU News Release

Department of Art enters the virtual world

A scene from Art Island

LAWRENCE — The Department of Art at the University of Kansas has joined Second Life, a three-dimensional online world entirely built and owned by its residents.

KU’s Art Island is a 16-acre virtual extension of the Department of Art in which students from around the world can attend courses and interact with professional artists. Art Island features a performing arts center/lecture hall, several open air studios, a film production area, an interactive gallery of student works and an extension of the KU student-run Red Door Gallery in Kansas City, Mo.

Several faculty members in KU’s art department will incorporate Second Life into their courses through sculpture, animation, game creation, performance art and digital media. Art students will begin interacting in the environment in spring 2009, collaborating with students from Coventry College in England.

Art Island is part of the Department of Art’s convergent media initiative led by Stacey Fox, visiting assistant professor. Fox is an international interdisciplinary artist who combines performing and visual arts in real life and cyberspace. Fox is working with students on utilizing social networking sites — such as Wordpress, MySpace and Facebook — along with Web TV streaming and Second Life to bring their creative works to the international stage.

Some of the students working with Fox are Daniel Held, a freshman in design working on animation and scripting of objects to become interactive within Second Life; Sandra Ristovska, a junior in ethnographic filmmaking, who is learning about machinima and interactive design; and Jody Wood, graduate student in art, who is working on producing media art for the department’s new streaming Web channel.

This spring, Fox will open a new course of study for KU students in digital animation and game creation. The game industry, which has taken over the film industry in gross revenues, provides many levels of employment opportunities to art students including character creation, storyboard design, environmental sculpting and creative curriculum design for education. She also will teach a course in 3-D interaction that will take place entirely within the virtual world of Second Life.

In April, the Department of Art will host its first online International Convergent Media festival featuring works by KU art students and others around the globe, with live interactive lectures and performance art experiences. These events will all take place on Art Island in Second Life and streamed across the department’s Web channel.

With the new Art Island, KU’s art department joins more than 250 U.S. universities and colleges in Second Life, including the University of Missouri and Harvard University.

“We’re so grateful to Interim Dean John Gronbeck-Tedesco for funding this project,” said Dawn Marie Guernsey, chair of the Department of Art. “The Second Life campus will allow us to bring artists, critics and historians from around the globe to the KU community, and the site will give KU artists tremendous international visibility. Second Life opens doors for cross-discipline experiences. As well as providing venues for the more traditional visual arts, the site is perfect for time-based presentations — visual arts performance, theater, dance — all of that can be presented and discussed within the new virtual campus. We’re fortunate to have Stacey Fox on our faculty, leading us through this important experience.”

Since opening to the public in 2003, Second Life has grown to inhabit nearly 10 million residents from around the globe. It provides a safe and unique environment for cooperative work and simulation, allowing students to practice skills and create new works and interact on the global stage.

For more information, contact Guernsey at (785) 864-4401.

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The University of Kansas is a major comprehensive research and teaching university. University Relations is the central public relations office for KU's Lawrence campus.