Multimodal Semiotics and Collaborative Design

Figure 7.13. SL ‘World Map’ screenshot (Metrotopia and surroundings)
The figure above shows Metrotopia on the grid. The northern side of Metrotopia faces two other
sims, which were created for Aspen for different reasons. When Aspen describes organization of
Metrotopia’s design features, he mentions how “Metrotopia is not alone in the universe” and “they
have neighbors.” The visual goal was to “draw a line between Metrotopia and the neighbors”
which made the design team to find solutions in order to keep Caitlyn’s research participants inside
the city.
Shaggy (PAL) also mentions a similar issue of ‘not having neighbors’ as an opportunity to design
freely in an open space, without visual or social obstruction. In fact, both Shaggy and Xavier from
the PAL design team reflect on the issue of environment’s role in shaping the overall idea and
structure of design, though the two co- designers emphasize two different (but interrelated) aspects
of affordances. For Shaggy, the surrounding environmental elements such as water or ground are
also possible resources that could be used to add metaphorical realism and aesthetic quality. He
says he did not use SL’s terra-formed ground as a design element but “water is something that
really looks good in SL”, thus PAL’s design includes some open locations in the sim to see the
water, a beach, and a stage which is separated from the audience by water. On the other hand,
Xavier compares his experiences with designing buildings in real-life (RL 25 ) and mentions a
canonical concept on phenomenology of architecture: “Genius Loci” (by quoting Norberg-Schulz
1980) to describe how building architectural places in SL has a different set of environmental
contexts than the location-sensitive logic of RL architecture. Xavier mentions how he began to”
think like a traditional architect” at first, and then how ideas changed when he realized that “all
kinds of normal stuff you use as an architect” such as gravity and scale do not apply VWs.
25
I use the abbreviation RL to refer to the so-called real-life, in contrast to SL, which is the Second Life. Although it is a
very vague distinction, I choose to include this term as it is a common notion among the designers and other residents of
SL.
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