Background
The Marinetta Ombro project began in spring 2002. The Media Department at Arcada in Helsinki, Finland, began to develop a long-term project to consolidate the multimedia course. This project was intended to act as a laboratory within which students could test their ideas; improve their planning, design and programming skills; and then watch as their experiments had real and lasting effects. It was agreed that this project should be innovative, and capable of attracting international users. It was also decided that it should also exhibit commercial potential.
After lengthy discussion between staff and students it was determined that the project should take the form of a detailed and realistic synthetic world. This world would live on the world wide web, be designed to grow and develop in unpredictable ways, and be developed from the outset as an international partnership.
Following an approach from La Kolegio Ilana, it was agreed that the synthetic world would based upon Marinetta, the capital city of the Mediterranean island of Rosario. It would have the joint aims of providing an educational resource and a pedagogical platform for Arcada, and a philosophical laboratory and an “ontological petri dish” for La Kolegio Ilana.
Developments so far:
The Marinetta Ombro project has progressed through three distinct phases, and each succeeding phase has resulted in the creation of an online world of increasing complexity. During the first two years of the project, details of the geography, history and culture of Rosario were researched by staff and students of Arcada. From these a diagrammatic model of Marinetta was constructed using the French software SCOL, and then placed online, where it was used by students as a Habbo Hotel-style chat room..
Marinetta Version 1.0
The second phase concentrated on the issues of functionality that had arisen when students began to use the first version of the world. In worlds in which people do no eat or drink, but do fly and teleport, is a motorcycle any more realistic than a flying pig? Should our city embrace or ignore the “realities” of synthetic worlds? These proved fruitful research topics for students and staff alike.
During this period the use of the world, and of the data that we had collected related to it, spread throughout Arcada, as other departments began to find ways of using it for educational simulations. As a result of these factors, staff and students began to create a second, more complex city using the German software 3D GameStudio.
The third phase began in October 2005, at a meeting between members of Arcada and La Kolegio Ilana. After considerable debate it was decided to put the current city to one side, and to start again within the online world Second Life. It was forcefully argued, by Courtney Mojo and others, that Second Life would offer an unprecedented opportunity to address the cultural and philosophical issues that La Kolegio Ilana regarded as central to the project.
At this point the scope of the project was dramatically enlarged to include a diagramatic realisation of the entire island of Rosario, including all of its nine villages. Since December 2005, then, we have worked on creating this island. Initially progress was slow, but the speed of development has been increasing, as we have gained more experience in Second Life, and our aim currently is to have the island completed and ready for occupation by midsummer 2007.
Educational outcomes to date:
From the outset, the Marinetta Ombro project has formed a cornerstone of the digital interactive media course at Arcada. It has provided content for many courses from concept design and mastering digital imagery to modelling in 3D and object oriented programming. It has enabled students to work on client-oriented projects even while they are learning basic skills. While learning Photoshop, for example, students can be given a brief to design textures or clothing to be used in Second Life, rather than performing exercises on images of no inherent value.
Many courses and departments within Arcada have made use of the data assembled by the Marinetta Ombro project. Tourism students, for example, have travelled Second Life, researching what users do and how they spend their time and money. They then drew up a tourism strategy for the island, suggesting the kinds of faciltiies the digital media students should create in order to attract users. Other departments have produced business plans for Rosarian companies; community health plans; and inworld security features.
Future plans:
Rosario has proved to be an extremely cost-effective educational resource, as well as an effective method of generating topics for research and exploration that have direct bearing on the future production and reception of digital media. It has also allowed us to begin to develop projects with other schools and universities, and to research the pedagogical implications of a multi-purpose synthetic world for teaching and learning.
Walking into Marinetta now
Our intention is to develop each of these strands in ways that will continue our goal of inspired creative interference. We believe that it is here that the less obvious, but infinitely more rewarding, possibilities will begin to manifest themselves.
To this end we intend to make Rosario self-sufficient, and to invite others to join us in taking it forward. We shall hold a conference in late spring 2007 on Rosario where we will lay out our plans to make the island a true representation of what Rosarians know as La Juntarita Insulo, the networked island. We shall invite between 36 and 48 people to join us, renting land to conduct research experiments in distance learning and pedagogy; experiments that will see the rebirth of Rosario as the secret science capital of the world, an honour it last held in the 1920s, when Llewellyn, and other followers of Tesla, gave it a brief notoriety.
References:
Education Opportunities in a Fictitious Country Owen Kelly, Camilla Lindeberg and John Gronvall (June 2003)
Unifying the curriculum in a digital playground Owen Kelly and Camilla Lindeberg (March 2004)
Ghost Towns & Virtual Worlds Owen Kelly (May 2004)
Concept Development in a Virtual World Owen Kelly and Camilla Lindeberg (June 2004)
The Meeting of Two Classrooms Camilla Lindeberg (November 2005)
Abstraction Haunted by Reality Owen Kelly (June 2006)