This chapter discusses the art learning experience in Metaverse, the virtual art lab, conducted entirely online. The authors aim to understand the potentialities of mediated art teaching. It analyses two art projects carried out by higher education students, The Virtual Garden of Time and [D]Utopia, where virtual environments and avatars were designed in a 3D simulator. The process of learning and designing artworks is considered, and a student survey was analyzed, in order to determine advantages and limitations of using creative collaborative environments in art teaching. The authors found that the Metaverse can be an excellent opportunity for students to develop creative, technical, conceptual, and collaborative skills.
TopBackground
The word Metaverse was created by Neil Stephenson in his novel Snow Crash (1992), meaning a virtual reality environment users could access through head-mounted visualization displays. Users could, in this fictional environment, interact between themselves and with the world, using avatars. As the millennium turned, the concept of Metaverse began to surface in technical and scientific literature, meaning immersive multiplayer environments (Jaynes, et al., 2003). Quickly, this word began to reference platforms like Second Life (SL) and Open Simulator (OS) (Dionisio, et al., 2013), which mainly use the desktop screen as a visualization method.
The idea of Metaverse has been brought back to the general public by media this last year (2022). However, previous projects involving other manifestations of this concept (such a Second Life or, in a slight stretch, 3D massive multiplayer online games) have existed for decades and have been appropriated and altered by their users for their very own purposes – either learning in a very different context, communicating with like-minded players, or, simply, exploring new concepts and worlds, formally or informally.
According to De Back et al. (2021), two kinds of Virtual Reality exist – immersive and non-immersive. One can access immersive virtual reality by using head-mounted displays, or video projections on the walls of a predetermined space, referred as CAVE (Cave Automatic Virtual Environment). Non-immersive virtual reality access can be made by using the traditional screen, keyboard and mouse setup, commonly referred as desktop environments.
However, the terminology associated with these manifestations is not yet completely stable. To many other authors these desktop platforms are also immersive environments (Boellstorff, 2010; Castranova, 2007; Winkelmann, et al., 2020). The most recognized use of the term is Collaborative Virtual Environments: three dimensional, navigable digital spaces, that can be explored through an avatar, allowing first or third person vision, allowing general and peer-to-peer interaction, usually supported by online technologies (Churchill, et al., 2001). Second Life (SL) and OpenSimulator (OS) are also creative environments, as they allow default contents to be personalized and even the integration of users’ constructed contents. They are, thus, named Creative Collaborative Virtual Environments (CCVE) (Eustáquio & Sousa, 2018).
Learning in immersive environments is usually associated with the use of digital simulation of real situations. This is what happens with high-fidelity simulations, such as those that take place in health education, for example, which can use sophisticated 3D environments to simulate environments with patients. Also, some low-fidelity simulations can simulate real practices and procedures, through simplified models (Angelini, 2021). However, with regard to the learning strategies implemented in art teaching, virtual environments present a more compelling potential than the simulation of reality. This type of platform is ideal for the construction of art projects based in the virtual environment itself, taking aesthetic advantage of the specific possibilities offered by Metaverse.
An experience like the Virtual Art Lab (VAL) could only be the result of active learning. Active pedagogies are pedagogical practices in which students build their own knowledge and develop their own understanding, reflecting on their own learning. These practices are very often developed in the context of collaborative learning among peers (Brame, 2016). The degree of experimentation, creativity and peer collaboration that was required by this experience could only be successful with students fully empowered in their learning.