Penn State in Second Life

I had known Penn State University had a presence in Second Life for a while, but this article (courtesy of Ms. Cathy Anderson) hinted at a deeper immersion than I had previously seen, as well as something of a replica of the campus. I dragged sister Kathy with me and set out for campus.



The buildings are really more of a flavor of the style of architecture on the RL campus, rather than an attempt at a brick-by-brick replication. (Readers may recall a recent-ish campus visit.) Nonetheless, it does evoke the real thing. And there's the Nittany Lion shrine:


Just outside the campus, on College Avenue, stands Ye Olde College Diner, with its amazing grilled stickies. Sure enough, wander inside the Diner in SL and find...

...grilled stickies, packaged and waiting to go! (Clicking on the sign to the right of the stickies takes one to the Diner's web site, where an order form awaits. Go ahead, visit and click.)


The Creamery is another campus institution, recently relocated to a larger building. The structure below does a fair job of evoking the Creamery and its fattening but delicious concoctions.


I still don't know how one would hold a class in this kind of environment, where 30 people generally bring a sim to its knees, and no one - student or teacher - attends under her real name, but I admire the university's willingness to try something new.

Virtual MacBeth

Having heard about the Virtual MacBeth experience from Mrs. Dio Kuhr, it sounded like a fun evening. Well, "fun" if you find the idea of getting into the head of fiction's most famous whipped husband.

The journey starts at the arrival grove with a notecard and an attachment. I'm not entirely sure what the attachment is supposed to do, but the notecard recommends wearing it the entire time. Your mileage may vary. From the starting point, one can choose different aspects of the character to explore.

The main space on the island is Macbeth's head, which contains a number of locations. The Throne Room is supposed to represent Macbeth's ego (in the Freudian sense, not the "Whoa, that guy has some inflated sense of self-importance" sense).

Symbolic or not, the room had an actual throne, so I sat in it. So there.

The Path of Temptation, with its reaching hands, symbolizes Macbeth's internal conflicts as Lady Macbeth pushes him toward claiming the throne.

The Chamber of Blood (isn't that a Harry Potter movie?) reflects Macbeth lost to his inner demons and lust for power. As he attempts to remove the obstacles in his way, his moral compass has disappeared. Within the chamber, the visitor whirls and strikes and stabs all the shadowy creatures, who disappear on contact.

Past the Path of Temptation is a huge raven, sitting atop a pile of bones and debris. As the visitor climbs aboard the raven...

...the bird takes flight to the next destination.

The Maze symbolizes Macbeth's confusion (and I'll confess I stole that from the writeup, as I never would have gotten that on my own), and ends with the visitor literally headless.

The wiki for the project has a great deal of useful information about the Second Life MacBeth experience, and I wish I had visited it before I went to the island. (But really guys, "Macbeth is the story of a serial killer"? Richard Speck is a serial killer. Macbeth is a Scottish noble with an overly ambitious wife. Killing more than one person doesn't make you a serial killer. Just sayin'.) For example, I didn't realize that the main area was supposed to look like Macbeth's head (so the visitor enters a representation of the character's head while figuratively getting inside his head). I never encountered the "Crossroads of Conflict" or the "Corridor of Enlightenment" that the wiki refers to.

There is a learning center/performance area above the sim with a stage that could allow for SL performances of the play, and a "What If?" Copse that is intended to have visitors think about the choices Macbeth made throughout the play and how the outcome might have been different had he chosen a different path.

The entire experience is interesting, and well worth the visit. It makes use of SL in an innovative way, and that's a good thing. Ultimately, I'm not sure it is a successful experiment: despite the helpful notecards and the wiki, too much is obscure for the casual visitor. Literary criticism is all well and good, but without having recent memory of the play (I've seen several performances, but all some years ago), and someone knowledgeable to help with the process, it's difficult for a visitor. Perhaps it's a better teaching tool when visited with an instructor, but is SL the right platform for that kind of instruction?

Lest I sound too negative, let me reiterate that it's a fascinating experience, and I wish more people would use SL in these kind of creative ways. Some experiments will be more successful than others, but hey, that's the nature of experimentation.