ENTREVISTA A UN DOCENTE

For the final part of the session, the students reconvened for a discussion about the four questions set through the worksheet. Although fully able to discuss the potential and shortcomings that the environment presents for performance and for communicating design the students did not discuss answers to the question “What do you think the challenges for actors and designers would be in the real theatre this model represents?” and were also unable to discuss the nature of the communities inworld that had built the solely virtual theatre. Although the four central questions were asked about the theatrical spaces, the students’ focus was on the nature of the environment and their experience and they repeatedly returned to discussing the value of virtual worlds in general, rather than the degree to which they’d experienced and learnt about the theatrical spaces.

The transcripts of the focus groups were coded, firstly for whether they were statements in favour of, or in opposition to, the use of virtual worlds (no students expressed a neutral view), since this theme dominated the discussion. These codes were then broken down into expressions of approval or disapproval regarding different aspects of virtual worlds, of positive and negative experiences of the technology and whether or not the students expressed an experience of presence. Finally, opposing positions were set alongside each other together with some illustrative quotes, and listed in table 4.2. The darker lines indicate the themes that were expressed as part of the same dialogue between students. The themes coded were:

1. Values with respect to virtual worlds. 1a Values with respect to virtual relationships. 1b Values with respect to virtual activities. 1c Values with respect to virtual experience. 1d Values with respect to virtual identities. 1d Values with respect to virtual performance.

134 3 Experience of presence.

3a Experience of virtual presence. 3b Valuing copresence.

Theme Against IVWs For IVWs

1a. Opinion regarding relationships in virtual and physical worlds

Inauthenticity of virtual relationships

“it’s the new era of virtual relationships and stuff is quite scary”

1b. Opinion

regarding activities in virtual and physical worlds

Inauthenticity of virtual activities “I can’t think that people would actually want to be inworld.”

Valuing virtual activities “I’ve played Football Manager every year it comes out and I can spend weeks on it.”

1c. Opinion about living in virtual and physical worlds

Expressing normative values about the good of living in the physical and the bad of living in the virtual “I think I’d rather live.”

“I don’t think you should have a second life on your laptop.”

Opposing these normative values

“if you’re having entertainment then what’s the difference? It doesn’t really matter.”

1d. Opinion about virtual and physical identities

Inauthenticity of virtual identities “It seems kind of pointless because in one aspect people can represent themselves however they want to not being who they are in the real world”

Inauthenticity of physical identities

“I’m constantly deceived (by the wearing of make- up by others in RL).”

135 1e. Opinion about

virtual and physical performance

Normative values about the nature of performance

“it doesn’t feel like actual theatre because theatre should be happening then”

Potential of virtual performance

“there’s a huge amount of scope for doing things. With the placing of the audience you could do some really interesting things, like they could fly over the performance.” 2. Design

considerations

Focus on the current limitations of design

“Second Life isn’t very well conceived at the moment to see the theatre in great depth. The whole design of it is quite poor.” “But the actual visual isn’t developed enough”

Focus on the potential uses “I can see it as a cheap and practical way to visit these places.”

“and perhaps do more with the space than you could do in real life.” 3a. Experience of

presence

Absence of presence

“You don’t have the feeling of it.” “if someone like me has a disconnect from that kind of environment and have to imagine a performance it feels like it’s lacking in something”

“you just feel like you’re just watching a game.”

“At the end of the day you’re still sat in your bedroom, you’re not actually in a theatre, it’s just like a second self”

Presence of presence “Even though you’re not actually there you can walk around it virtually and go to different places”

3b. Value of copresence

Copresence inworld has no added value

“There are 3D environments anyway which you can move through. You could both go through and talk about over the phone. I can’t see that it enhances it any more.”

Copresence inworld has value

“you could physically, well not physically, walk them up to the bit you were talking about.”

Table 4.2 Focus group comments from the Red case study

This table shows the disparity between the students’ experiences of, and attitudes to, virtual worlds as a learning and performing medium. The experience appeared to have polarised the class,

136 with most of those expressing opposition to the idea of virtual worlds, as well as their negative experience of using them. Other students, although having the same technological and environmental barriers to the experience, responded far more positively.

Looking at the percentage of responses to the questionnaire in the Red case study that were positive about the experience of using virtual worlds against those what were negative, and an approximation of the proportion of time that was spent in the focus group supporting those two positions gives the figures in table 4.3, suggesting that although the focus group was dominated by those students who were opposed to virtual worlds, these were not representative of the group as a whole.

Positive response Negative response

questionnaire 64% 36%

Focus group 38% 62%

Table 4.3: a comparison of the positive and negative responses given in two different forms of data gathering