Reality Thrice Removed: Woolworths Sit-In in Second Life

Reality Thrice RemovedReimagining the Woolworth’s Sit-Ins in Second Life

Dr. Michelle Ferrier, Elon University

Creating Lieuxde Memoire

French historian Pierre Nora describes lieux de memoire…

“Where memory crystallizes and secretes itself at a particular historical moment, a turning point where consciousness of a break with the past is bound up with the sense that the memory has been torn.”

February 1, 1960: Site of the Woolworth’s sit-in, downtown Greensboro. Now the site of the International Civil Rights Center & Museum (ICRC&M).

Reality Thrice Removed

① Original sit-in with the Greensboro Four on Feb. 1

② Memory of the event by surviving members of the Greensboro Four, eyewitnesses, lunch counter workers and others

③ Recreation of the Woolworth’s lunch counter in the ICRM&C, Feb. 1, 2010.

Feb. 1, 2010: Opening of the International Civil Rights Center & Museum with busts of the Greensboro Four.

Reality Thrice Removed④ The re-imagined ICRC&M in Second Life (SL) :

“ The American Civil Rights Museum”

Virtual Environments Course Goals

Second Life is a 3-D virtual world. Students will recreate the corner of Elm Street and February One Place where the museum now stands using ethnographic methods within SL.

Our goal is to explore the culture, conversations, and experience of the 1960 sit-in at the Woolworth lunch counter and other civil rights events for virtual patrons. We seek to educate a larger audience about the events and spark conversations that confront and heal a divisive past.

Creating Lieux de Memoire

Visually: Studied texts such as newspapers, videos, photographs of the event and people; studied the new museum; sought images and icons of civil rights movement.

Kinetically: Designs for the space required understanding the shift in dimensions in SL and avatar movement. Learned scripting to create special effects.

Verbally: Listened to videos, interviews and stories told by Greensboro Four and others.

Benefits of Second Life Constructs

Question: What does the virtual help us do that we cannot do in Real Life (RL)?

“Virtual worlds make possible, practical and without real life repercussions the visual personifications of our multiple identities.” (Pamela G. Taylor, Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, Vol. 2, No. 1)

Challenges of SL Environment: Identity

The avatar-creation process involves selecting gender, age, ethnicity, outfit, accessories and facial expression.

“Newbies” to SL are characterized by their unsophisticated clothing, preset hair and awkward movements online.

“On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog,” -- (Steiner 1993) from New Yorker cartoon.

“In Second Life, you can be a dog.” – (Michelle Ferrier)

Virtual World: Fashion Mall

Ethnographic Research in Second Life

Ethnographic Research in Second Life

Offline: ICRC&M

Research for the build included taking extensive measurements of the footprint of the museum and photos of the exterior and interior.

Socially Constructed Realities

Shakespeare, Baudrillardand others have argued about the elasticity of the concept of reality. The cultural world is a construct.

We wanted to examine the constructs of museum and sit-in.

① Re-imagine a museum experience …not just recreate, but re-conceive.

② Reconstruct an experience of racial discrimination…not just recreate the lunch counter display.

Forming Collective Memory

Paul Ricoeur says that through storytelling and testimonies of the experiences of past events, a community can form a collective memory. (2004)

Communities also use artifacts to represent their collective memories. These artifacts are objectified in the community’s culture and collective identity and include symbols, signs, memorials, rituals and others. (Papargyris, 2009)

The Modern Museum

Re-conceptualizing “Museum”The American Civil Rights Museum in Second Life is conceived of as

four distinct spaces: A portrait gallery, a jazz lounge, an exterior garden and a “museum within a museum” – the Woolworths.

Virtual Tour: Entrance

Virtual Tour: Lobby

Virtual Tour:Great Hall

Virtual Tour:Great Hall

Virtual Tour:Great Hall

Reconceptualizing the MuseumThe Jazz Lounge serves as a point of departure from the typical museum experience. In this immersive environment, visitors are

treated to music and are encouraged to sit or dance. They become part of the “exhibit.”

Virtual Tour:Jazz Lounge

Virtual Tour: Building the Gardens

Virtual Tour: The Exterior Gardens

Virtual Tour: Gardens from the Sea

The flags, which waive in the virtual wind, “provoke our active participation in that history” says Melvin Dixon.

Virtual Tour: Museum Within Museum

Reimagining the ICRC&M Exhibits

The Lunch Counter The Hall of Shame

Virtual Tour: The Lunch Counter

Just as in the real museum, we’ve embedded a video of the events for visitors in the middle window.

Virtual Tour:The Lunch Counter

When avatars sit at the lunch counter, the waitress speaks one of three racially charged scripts saying the avatar is not welcome.

Virtual Tour:Hall of Shame

The Hall of Shame recreates the original and includes flashing images and a floor bathed with red light.

Virtual Tour:Hall of Shame

The ceiling height is lowered and sharp turns and angles create a river of blood. The design makes it difficult for avatars to move freely, creating confinement and stress.

Constructing Emotion

The constricting environment of the Hall of Shame contradicts the soaring, bright hope that is present in the portrait gallery. The object, says David Blight, is “to invoke the emotional chords of memory through aesthetic sensibilities.”

Reality Thrice Removed

Dr. Michelle FerrierAssociate ProfessorSchool of CommunicationsElon UniversityElon, NC

[email protected]

SL: Firenza Mavinelli

Twitter: @mediaghosts