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Thursday, 15 August 2013

The Sonic Lab is the latest partnership for UWA in Second Life.
The partnership between Southern Illinois University at Carbondale (SIUC) and UWA is an educational themed experiment for the creation of sound and animation.

Its long-term goal is the development of animated film and online media that serves at-risk learning communities.

The immediate goals for Dr Phylis Johnson, Professor of Sound and New Media at SIUC and Jay Jay Jegathesan, founder of UWA's virtual world presence, were to create an immersive environment, the Sonic Lab, for teaching sound online.

For that purpose, a multi-layer sound lab was constructed to help students develop critical listening skills, by virtually tuning into the modern origins of music and learning to appreciate the sonic environment that contributes to our daily soundscapes.

The virtual classroom experience leads students through time, place and, or course, sound.

The Sonic Lab connects students to the sounds of the past, present and future. They enter the virtual world via a medieval realm soaked with layered sounds.

Visitors engage in a soundscape rich with nature's lush greens and harbour sounds, and perhaps stop into the local tavern for a chat and music. Their travels take them to modern times, from Ragtime's Scott Joplin, to experimental masters Edgard Varèse and John Cage, to those they have influenced: Reich, Zappa, The Beatles, Hendrix and the Ramones.

The longer term plan calls for the development of virtual media studies and production.

This collaboration is expected to be a three year experiment in the design of an open-ended, accessible and collaborative animation platform that focuses on outcome-based learning for at-risk communities," said Jay Jay. "Part of the process involves assisting educators with some production basics (character and story/curriculum development, original sound composition, set construction, motion capture animation) that can be imported and exported between virtual platforms.

"The idea is to help educators participate and lead in the virtual media making process and develop creative and relevant animation (and mixed reality) content targeting youth from communities that lack resources and skills," he said.

Ultimately, educators (and students) would be encouraged to contribute animated film and other virtual media forms to an archival web site of shared content, techniques, and program reviews.  A pilot series will be created to demonstrate the process.   Themes addressed include social justice, collaboration, diversity representation in all its forms, and science/technology.

"The goal is to open up the diversity of voices, from all locales, from South Chicago to South India to Western Australia. Representation of characters/voices pertaining to gender, ethnicity, disability, and socio-economic level will be critical to the project," Jay Jay said.

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