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Multimodal Semiotics and Collaborative Design

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“reminds the sounding of the word ‘ice’” <strong>and</strong> signifies her superpower to “stop the circulation of<br />

blood <strong>and</strong> to change it into an ice 22 . The Water Avengers group, locate their narratives within a<br />

similar story, focusing on another signifier. Instead of ice <strong>and</strong> cold, the color blue signifies water for<br />

these characters, through which they appropriated semiotic resources to emphasize water pollution<br />

within their overall design: According to their story: “[a]round 2030, the drinkable water was<br />

becoming very rare. Being able to drink polluted water, Wasting Man started to pollute water to<br />

keep it for himself 23 .<br />

During the workshop, Metrotopia’s s<strong>and</strong>box was used as a common place for building together, in<br />

which students can walk <strong>and</strong> fly around the virtual objects they create in a confined space shared<br />

with other avatars. Confinement in a limited amount of space, especially at times when there is an<br />

abundance of avatars using the same s<strong>and</strong>box was mentioned as a constraint by the students.<br />

However, this constraint was resulted by the workshop’s inherent limitations of virtual place, as it<br />

is possible (<strong>and</strong> necessary) to provide enough space for building in multi-user places.<br />

Co-designing connected virtual places on the Second Life Grid<br />

In small design teams, collaborative design activities often take place in shared places. However,<br />

navigation in SL does not only take place by moving the avatar from one location to another by<br />

walking <strong>and</strong>/or flying in virtual space 24 . Movement between sims is often done by teleportation,<br />

which is usually sequential to searching <strong>and</strong> locating on the world-map. This map is an interactive<br />

<strong>and</strong> a customizable graphical representation of SL’s Grid, the world in which all the other virtual<br />

places exist interconnected to each other via Linden Lab servers in California . The world map not<br />

only allows customization to an extent that shows places, people <strong>and</strong> events for users to browse<br />

through <strong>and</strong> teleport directly to, but also has an indexical function to represent world’s overall grid,<br />

respective locations <strong>and</strong> scales/sizes of independent sims on it, detailed coordinates of the sims<br />

<strong>and</strong> social factors such as current population. Unlike the websites that constitute the WWW<br />

through hyperlinks, places of Second Life have spatial relations among each other <strong>and</strong> within the<br />

grid, which enables an avatar to travel from one sim to another without using a teleport link. The<br />

map important in the sense that it shows these spatial relations <strong>and</strong> allows users to have an overall<br />

view of the world’s capacity to accommodate new places for social interaction.<br />

22 http://sisseruc09.wordpress.com/2009/09/25/goddess-isis-venus/<br />

23 http://sisseruc09.wordpress.com/2009/09/25/the-true-story-about-wateravengers/<br />

24 This particular form of movement will also be a topic of discussion in the following chapter.<br />

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