KEYNOTE: Mark Childs

Keynote Speaker: Gann McGann / Mark Childs

Keynote Title: Looking at virtual worlds through a philosophy lens

Keynote Description:
Running focus groups about learners’ activities within virtual reality and virtual worlds, I soon hit that barrier of having a shared language to articulate with students the virtual experience? It’s real but not real, we’re there but not there, the technologies we use are sort of our bodies and sort of aren’t.

In attempting to identify what virtual worlds mean to us as inhabitants of these spaces I’ve gone back to the phenomenology of philosophers such as Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, who explored notions of being present within a space, as opposed to just being in it, and how our bodies act as a locus for our experience. They discuss notions such as “thrownness” and “handliness” for example. Postphenomenology, is also key here, which is that the perceived world described by phenomenology is modified when technology is added to the mix. Previous writers such as Saulius Geniusas and Amir Haj-Bolouri have touched on these aspects; I am mashing these ideas against the lived experience of inhabitants of these spaces.

This is where you come in. In my presentation I will be exploring some of these ideas, and asking participants to challenge and question them, explore whether these concepts help to make sense of our experience of being in Second Life* and whether there are further aspects of virtual space and being that still remain to confound description.
*Other virtual worlds are available.

About Mark Childs:
Mark Childs is a Senior Learning Designer at the University of Durham (Durham UK). He has researched and taught remote teaching since 1997. His PhD in 2010 was on the subject of the role of presence and embodiment in learning in Second Life. He was also the project manager of the Theatron3 project at King’s College London., which created ancient theatres for performances and teaching theatre studies. His books on virtual worlds are Understanding Learning in Virtual Worlds, Experiential Learning in Virtual Worlds, Making Sense of Space, and Reinventing Ourselves – Contemporary Concepts of Identity in Virtual Worlds, half of which were co-edited with Anna Peachey, now Anna Childs. So he has a lot to thank Second Life for.

Gann McGann was rezzed in 2005 when the only choices for surnames were the actors who played the first eight Doctors on Dr Who. He taught extensively in Second Life during the 2000s and early 2010s and has regularly attended events at VWBPE and VWMOOC ever since. He has presented at the Virtual Worlds Education Roundtable and has a more skins than he knows what to do with. His regular look was one he established very early and has been so closely related to his identity within Second Life that he feels it’s too late to change, so he apologises in advance for the light reflecting off his head spikes.

Venue: VWBPE Auditorium (3 choices):
Auditorium – Canopy Waterfall
Auditorium – Floating Gallery
Auditorium – Rainbow Mezzanine