Masters of Digital Media Move House

One of the first academic sites I visited in Second Life, back in the days before I started this blog, was Great Northern Way Campus . GNWC is a collaboration between 4 Canadian colleges: The University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, British Columbia Institute of Technology, and Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design. The Finning Tractor Corporation donated a chunk oif their site just east of downtown Vancouver, on Great Northern Way, and this is where the Real Life campus has taken shape.

GNWC came to Second Life in the second half of 2006. Using the services of Canadian master-builder Scope Cleaver, they erected a large, ultra-modern facility on one of the mainland sims (Erie , if memory serves). The build was tied in with their Masters of Digital Media programme.

Today, while pottering around my local neighbourhood in SL, I happened upon the island "University Project." I put 2 and 2 together, and made a calculated judgement that this was something to do with "projects" and "universities" (though perhaps, in the singular) and therefore could be interesting. An added bonus was the fact that I could actually get in.

It turns out that GNWC have de-camped from the mainland and now have a whole sim to play with. Scope's building has come over intact, but now new buildings are emerging. This is still early days, as you can see from the bottom-most photo, where the objects are still textured in "plywood", but it will be interesting to see how this develops. It must be a relief to get off the mainland!


If you've never seen around a Scope Cleaver building then can I recommend you pop along to see this one? I think it's just brilliant.


Finally, you might find this PDF interesting and entertaining.