Tamiko Thiel

abstract:

Virtual Reality Art Environments as Learning Resources

I have been creating interactive virtual reality (VR) environments since 1994, when I was Creative Director and Producer for Starbright World , a multi-user online virtual playspace for seriously ill children designed in cooperation with film director and Starbright Foundation chairman Steven Spielberg.

In 2000 I finished Beyond Manzanar (with Zara Houshmand,) a VR art installation exploring parallels between the internment of Japanese Americans in the USA during WW2 and similar threats to intern Iranian Americans during the 1979-'80 Hostage Crisis. Though conceived as an artistic experience for adults, the piece has proved very popular in the USA with families with children and with teachers at the high school level and above. I have received multiple requests from history teachers to provide the piece on a DVD for classroom use, and have held many special lectures on my techniques, including for Pulitzer Prize winning history professor John Dower of MIT.

Although I currently have no funding to create a pedagogically appropriate version of Beyond Manzanar , in future VR projects (such as Virtuelle Mauer / Re-Constructing the Wall on the Berlin Wall) I am requesting resources for a pedagogical version as part of the fundraising.

For interfiction XII/2005I would demo Beyond Manzanar (submitted to the Dokfest as a special entry for „Monitoring") and report on discussions with teachers as well as former internees on which characteristics of interactive VR create a compelling pedagogical experience. These include the use of Surrealist techniques to embed archival media (historic images, newspaper articles, music etc.) in a 3D environment in a way that creates a personal sense of time, place and Zeitgeist, and the use of the user's own decisions and actions to engage them emotionally in the historic events.

bio:

Tamiko Thiel - online portfolio:
Website: http://mission.base.com/tamiko/
CV: http://mission.base.com/tamiko/cv.html

linx:

Beyond Manzanar
Website: http://mission.base.com/manzanar/
Conference paper:
http://www.cosignconference.org/cosign2001/ papers/Thiel.pdf
Reviews and articles:
http://mission.base.com/manzanar/articles.html