Module VI - Immersion

Pendulum's Immersion album

To browse other articles on a range of HSL topics, see the wiki index.

Learning objectives

After completing module VI "Immersion", you will be able to:

• Define immersion and describe its qualities i.e. intense focus, loss of self, distorted or warped time sense, a sense of flow or effortlessness
• Discuss how immersive and virtual worlds might facilitate collaboration across organizations
• Compare gaming (i.e. MMORPGs) and virtual worlds; are they related?
• Discuss immersion as play, education, research; all players immerse in the social situation; librarians, students, characters, and model protaganists; experience immersion as baptism (take the plunge!!)

Activities

Week I

• Watch Jeremy Kemp's Immersive spaces YouTube video (or look at Second Life Grid)
• Read Luo L. Reference service in Second Life: an overview. Reference Services Review 36 (2008) 3, p. 289 - 300
• Or: Hedreen RC. Exploring Virtual Librarianship: Second Life Library 2.0. Internet Reference Services Quarterly. 2008;13(2+3):167-19.
• With your study buddy, find examples of libraries, archives and museums using Second Life
• Examine the building blocks of 'immersivity'; what features constitute immersion in a virtual environment?
• Reflect on the significance of gaming and virtual worlds in information organizations
  • In the discussion forum, discuss why (or why not) information organizations will or will not use these immersive social tools (no minimum or maximum)

Week II

• Examine at least one immersive virtual environment such as Second Life and report on your experience on your blog
• As you explore immersive media, think about the connection between immersive worlds, the three-dimensional (3D) web and the future semantic web
• Contribute your thoughts to the discussion forum "Will the semantic web be three-dimensional?"
• Based on your selection of one of the final group project suggestions, prepare for your final group presentations in Second Life.

Background

Wikipedia defines immersion in a very mystical, quasi-religious fashion as "...the state of consciousness where an immersant's awareness of physical self is diminished or lost by being surrounded in an engrossing total environment. This state is frequently accompanied by spatial excess, intense focus, a distorted sense of time, and effortless action. The term is widely used to describe immersive virtual reality...".

An immersive environment can therefore be an interactive, computer-created or animated "hybrid world" where users immerse themselves in new forms of work and play. The quintessential immersive environment (or game) in the area of social media is probably Second Life. Avatars or other human-fictional hybrids can be used to populate immersive environments.

Immersive environments are often thought to be synonymous with virtual reality but without the sense that "reality" is being simulated in any way. Digitally, immersion may be a kind of simulated reality, completely fictional or an abstract version of reality. What is requried for immersive environments is that users be immersed somehow in what has been created.

A simple definition of immersion is one where users have a feeling of transporting to and immersion in a simulated "universe". What factors are necessary to feel immersed or transported? A good virtual environment depends on a number of factors such as interface design, three-dimensionality of the experience, sound, the interactivity afforded as well as potential for pleasure and escape.

Game designers see immersion as a chief virtue of games. But game studies and game theory are separate fields of enquiry. Hybrid immersive environments and forms of augmented reality are being used in several areas of business and education. In January 2009, Toyota used a form of augmented reality to provide an interactive demo of its new Toyota iQ. See http://www.toyota.co.uk/cgi-bin/toyota/bv/frame_start.jsp?id=iQ_reality (See the virtuality continuum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtuality_Continuum )

In the educational sphere, a variety of three-dimensional virtual learning environments (VLEs) are being used. For example, Quest Atlantis, Monja Kids, Active Worlds and Fifth Dimension. Some newer media in development claim to bridge reality with various elements of immersion; think of wearable-computer devices or video games such as the Wii.

Virtual worlds - World of Warcraft & Second Life

Virtual worlds have evolved from online gaming (see Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs)) where historically groups of young men locked themselves up for hours playing competitive video games. However, these immersive worlds and the challenges they present to users have captured the attention of millions of people around the world, not just young men. Dozens of hours each week are spent playing in massively multiplayer virtual reality environments like World of Warcraft and Second Life; gaming's influence is perceived to be so great that many universities have started gaming studies departments.

What is it about these virtual, gaming environments that users find so captivating? Are they a refuge of fantasy and fun where users experience life under new social, political, and economic realities built around idealism and competition? The interest in immersive worlds is changing the way some people live, both in the context of play as well as what they want from their real lives.

The quintessential and most-popular immersive world is probably Second Life (SL). SL is a completely web-based immersive environment where users assume digital identities or 'avatars' and live a second life. One of the coolest features on SL is teleporting which is a simulated kind of flying (or, levitating) from place to place.

Since its launch in 2003, Second Life has been visited by millions of people from around the world (see http://secondlife.com/statistics/economy-data.php). In 2009, a host of information organizations - including archives, libraries and museums - maintain property and hold regular events there. Virtual worlds have evolved from their early web 2.0 roots as sites for social networking or games. Many of these media point towards an emerging three-dimensionality on the web which some experts are calling the 3-D web.

Second Life provides libraries with an opportunity to collaborate and share as in a consortia. The Alliance Library System, which runs the Info Island Archipelago in SL, coordinates a staff of over 40 reference librarians to ensure that the main reference desk area is staffed 80 hours per week. As staff are distributed across the world (only a handful work for the Alliance Library System in real life), the goal of a 24/7 reference service may yet be possible (Bell, 2007).

In mid-2008, Google announced its own immersive world called Lively - but abandoned it in late December 2008.

• See this list of Musuems and archives in Second Life
• And this list of Health librarians & gaming

Virtual environments and learning

There are many examples of virtual environments that are interoperable with open source software. One example is SLOODLE (Simulation Linked Object Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment). Sloodle is an Open Source project which integrates the multi-user virtual environment of Second Life® with the Moodle® learning-management system (see video). It provides a range of tools for the support of learning and teaching activities and does so for immersive virtual worlds. This project is hosted by the library school at San Jose State University.

What does SLOODLE do?

Like other learning technologies, teachers and students decide how tools will be used but here are some possibilities:

• Web-intercom: chat-room that brings Moodle and Second Life chat together. Students participate in chats in Second Life using Moodle chatroom. Discussions archived securely in Moodle database.
• Registration booth: identity management for Second Life and Moodle. Link students’ avatars to Moodle user accounts.
• Quiz tool and 3D dropbox: assess in Second Life – grade in Moodle. Set quizzes or 3D modelling tasks in engaging 3D environment. Review grades quickly in Moodle gradebook.
• Choice tool: allow students to vote (and see results) in Second Life as well as in Moodle.
• Multi-function toolbars: enhances the Second Life user interface. Use range of classroom gestures, get a list of Moodle user names of avatars or write notes directly into to your Moodle blog from Second Life.
• Presenter: author Second Life presentations of slides and/or web-pages on Moodle. Present in Second Life without lengthy process to convert or upload images.

Gaming & video

According to Pew, game playing is almost universal among teenages with almost all teens playing games and at least half playing them on any given day. Game playing experiences are diverse, with the most popular games falling into the racing, puzzle, sports, action and adventure categories. Game playing is also extremely social and interactive and most teens play games with others to incorporate aspects of their personal, civic and political lives.

Associated memes

• video games (MMORPGs)
• augmented, mixed and virtual reality
• holograms; haptic devices; altered states
• religious experiences; transfiguration
• meditational; trance-inducing; hyper-reality; ritual
• Achilles in the Styx
• Baptism
• The Matrix (movie)
• Language immersion
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
• Wagner's Bayreuth Theatre "foreshadows the idea of an immersive experience by asking the audience to sit in darkened theatre, sometimes for many hours, surrounded by myth, imagery and sound - Gesamtkunstwerk (total art work)."

Quotations

• Narratives and games inspire contrasting kinds of immersion; different brain-states. Caught up in a story, you are cooperative, yielding, in a state akin to hypnosis. In a game you are ceaselessly active, in a state of flow. Proposed in the 1990 book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Hungarian-born psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced "chicks send me high"), flow is the zone, the groove - an enjoyable feeling of oneness with the activity.

• In Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience Csíkszentmihályi outlines his theory that people are most happy when they are in a state of flow — a state of concentration or complete absorption with the activity at hand. The idea of flow is identical to the feeling of being in the zone or in the groove. The flow state is an optimal state of intrinsic motivation, where the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing. This is a feeling everyone has at times, characterized by a feeling of great absorption, engagement, fulfillment, and skill—and during which temporal concerns (time, food, ego-self, etc.) are ignored.

• Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation is known for its discussion of images, signs and how these relate to the present day. Baudrillard claims that modern society has replaced reality and meaning with symbols and that human experience is a simulation of reality rather than reality itself. How are these claims interpreted within the information professions? The simulacra refers to signs of culture and media that create perceived reality; Baudrillard believed that society is so reliant on simulacra (i.e. surrogate) that it has lost contact with the real world on which the simulacra are based.

Final class

Go to Final class