Virtual Spaces in Woolf World

I've been thinking some about what kinds of spaces we need in Woolf World. I started off with practical things:

• A fairly small meeting space for classes etc. (I immediately think of Gordon Sq.--which was used as a front/back yard by many of its inhabitants. I've got lots of pictures of it in its present configuration... Nice research project to try to reconstruct it pre-WWII.)



• This is a woodcut Roger Fry did of people walking and sitting and dozing in Gorgon Sq.

• If we want a private meeting space--Fitzroy Sq is currently still restricted in RL...Big iron fence; residents only...
  
• Some kind of larger meeting space for conferences or other presentations--more oriented towards some kind of procenium/ screen
  
• A large library space--full of links to on-line libraries as well as web sites and on-line texts, etc. A special scriptorium section of this could include virtual editions of altered books from classes.
  
• A salesroom/ display space for products generated. I have already dubbed that Omega Workshop, since that is the name of the collaborative workshop that Roger Fry set up (in Fitzroy SQ) in 1913 to create and sell all kinds of art/craft objects: clothing, fabric, rugs, furniture, ceramics (including tiles), whole interior decorating schemes, including wall murals. For more on Omega see Denise Randle's web site at: http://bloomsbury.denise-randle.co.uk/omega.htm Here's a web site with a facsimilie of the original Omega Workshop catalogue: http://www.fulltable.com/vts/o/om/o.htm
  
• A map room or travel agency or tour center where we could collect links etc. to the Mrs. Dalloway walk, Google Earth, virtual London etc..

Beyond these practical spaces, I also am very excited about trying to re-create a certain number of virtual rooms and houses.

• Chris Reed's wonderful book, Bloomsbury Rooms, provides a lot of black and white pictures of Omega-designed rooms--wouldn't it be lovely to be able to recreate some of these to walk around in?


• It is also tempting to try to recreate important Bloomsbury residences, such as Monk's House and Charleston... However, we have to be careful about these, as there are security and copyright problems. The Trusts at both places don't allow interior photography for security reasons--don't want too much detail out there-- and also generally want some control over images.

Getting Started

I am setting up this blog as a place to think about and record my explorations of Second Life.

I am working with several collegues at Clemson, especially Jan Holmevik, to research how 2L can be put to academic use: both as a pedagogical medium and as a portal for professional research and exchange. We are contemplating buying an island, part of which will be devoted to "WoolfWorld," a Virtual Bloombury project.

Here's my first e-mail about it, followed by a more formal proposal write-up:

Dear all--

I am teaching my Modernist London Grad seminar in the Spring in MATRF. I've re-titled and re-described it to include my recent work in Space/Place, but today's Second Life demo made me wonder if there is some way I could create a space on the graduate island for housing visual archives for the course.

There is a fairly strong interest in Woolf studies in the compilation of some kind of "Virtual Bloomsbury": the cooperation between Clemson Digital Press http://www.clemson.edu/caah/cedp/SCRThemed_Iss_VWoolf.htm and the Center for Virginia Woolf Studies (Housed at California State University, Bakersfield)
is an example of how far this process has developed in terms of archiving and producing publications.

I don't really know what I am thinking, but I have quite extensive visual archives on Woolf (and T.S. Eliot) http://virtual.clemson.edu/groups/dial/t&vseminar/tvlinks.htm
including PowerPoints illustrating many aspects of their lives and works, and my grad students have been creating a series of visual seminar reports and altered books for the course, many examples of which I have archived. It seems like housing these in Second Life might be a good way to create an on-line community and the next step in virtual Bloomsbury.

There is already a virtual London group on-line http://www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/projects/projectDetail.asp?ID=55

I bet if I sent out a call for participants on the Woolf list serv, we might get some takers… But I have no idea really what is possible or how much work it would be. I am interested in feedback on these as yet quite vague possibilities..