With the professional
expertise and virtual artistry of Active Arts Design - Zg, Aurac, Paul and
Henrik, combined with the visionary leanings of our student/professional
team in Santa Cruz - Anita, Chad, Kyla, Sun, Al, Bruce, Joel, Jim and Bonnie,
the V-UCSC world has come to life in cyberspace. More than 800 custom architectural
and landscape objects have been fashioned to create the numerous interactive
and immersive environments of the virtual University of California, Santa
Cruz Campus. Yet there is no question that such a multi-faceted creation
could have only been possible through teamwork and the combination -- the
synergy -- of many talents. Together in two short months this small team
has created a model of creative collaboration for others to follow. A model
whose eloquence and exactitude know no parallel in any other virtual environment.
In the early 1980s,
UCSC prided itself for the ideals on which it was built. With five liberal
arts colleges nestled into the beautiful ocean hills of Santa Cruz, "UCSC
- An Ideal Becoming Real" was the catch phrase for the students it
hoped to invite and serve. Now the real becomes "ideal" in a virtual
version of UCSC in cyberspace. While many universities now provide online
virtual tours of their campuses, UCSC has chosen to move into a newer more
discernable but uncharted type of virtual tour, the immersive environment
of virtual worlds. Let's take a different kind of "virtual tour"
through UCSC. One in which illusion, allusion, and mimetics take on new
meaning and new practicality. This tour will take you into a virtual version
of a real place, a place on the Web that will allow you to meet other people,
to see things in a different way. This tour of the virtual campus could
have only been created by a group of students who loved their experience
and professionals who knew how to stretch the limits of a new medium.
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Four
beautiful colleges of the UCSC campus, and a fully functional interactive
orientation library and guidance center are now ready to be publically unveiled
in the V-UCSC World. More than 50 links to UCSC online home pages are featured
in the orientation library. |
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The new UCSC Campus
map and teleport center will take visitors to each of the eight virtual
residential colleges. At present, Cowell, Porter, Stevenson and College
Eight quads are all built. Each of these colleges contain least eight
fully functional and enterable rooms which can be used as galleries, classrooms
or meeting places for special events. The map in the center draws its
styling straight from the Virtual Tour
map from UCSC's online pages.
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Visitors
can also teleport to "The Interactive Guidance Center" which is
styled along the lines of the Cook House itself. This special addition to
ground zero will allow visitors to meet with students and/or guidance counselors
to discuss their personal needs and questions about life on the Santa Cruz
Campus. Links to NetMeeting, IPhone and IRC (Internet Relay Chat) will be
part of the guidance center offererings for real-time, text, audio and video
chat sessions. |
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"Architects
and planners saw the Santa Cruz campus site as an unparalleled opportunity
to tie the built environment integrally to a program of education as well
as to an overall physical plan" - The First 20 Years - Two Decades
of Building at UCSC.
How fitting it is
that our virtual architects and our student builders have noticed that,
because of its mountain location, UCSC architectures were not supposed
to be replicated in the simplistic terms of heretofore recognized virtual
environments such as VRML and Viscape. Here is the teleport landing spot
of the V-Cowell College, the founding college of UCSC.
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Cowell College -
Date: 1966, Architect:Wurster, Bernardi & Emmons, Floor Area: 163,013
sq.ft., Cost: $3,790,000. How long did it take to build? How many students
has it served?
Virtual Cowell -
Date: 1998, Virtual Architects: Active Arts Design - Penny & Craig
Twining, Virtual lead builder: Chad Rooney, UCSC Student. Cost: $2500.00.
+ over $2,500 in volunteer hours. How long did it take to build? Less
than a month. How many students will it serve?
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Stevenson
College - Date: 1966, Architect:Joseph Esherick & Associates. Floor
Area: 141,874 sq.ft., Cost: $2,590,345. How long did it take to build? How
many students has it served?
Virtual Stevenson
- Date: 1998, Virtual Architects: Active Arts Design - Henrik G., Virtual
lead builder: Anita Roy Dobbs, UCSC Student. Cost: $2,500.00. + over $2,500
in volunteer hours. How long did it take to build? Less than a month.
How many students will it serve?
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Virtual Stevenson College, surrounded by a pan of the real Santa Cruz community,
imports each visitor into the virtual experience of being inside of Stevenson.
This college is scaled for navigability and scaled to the user - its virtual
square feet match the size you will experience in the real. This gives the
virtual Stevenson - and the other four colleges in the V-UCSC world - the
opportunity to serve as real classrooms, galleries and event locations for
students statewide, nationwide and worldwide. |
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Porter
College - Date: 1969, Architect:Hugh Stubbins & Associates, Cambridge,
MA. Floor Area: 151,183 sq.ft., Cost: $4,163,800. How long did it take to
build? How many students has it served?
Virtual Porter -
Date: 1998, Virtual Architects: Active Arts Design - Paul Klee, Virtual
lead builder: Chad Rooney, UCSC Student. Cost: less than $2500.00 and
$2,500 volunteer hours. How long did it take to build? Less than a month.
How many students will it serve?
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Porter's
dining hall, cafe, dorms and office buildings await the myriad uses to which
it can be put. Porter, the art college could use this virtual college to
feature performing events, art shows, and opportunities. Events can take
place in the quad areas. Video streams, audio kiosks and midi files can
be added to bring music into the hallways of the virtual Porter -- music
like Sundanese and Balinese Gamelan, Classical, African and other music
and performance which is such an important feature of the real Porter. |
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Every
college is located on its own "hill" in much the same way that
the real colleges are located in the mountain setting. All the hills were
constructed out of many custom pieces of grass to cover all the shads you
see around the Campus. Students can teleport from the Porter center quad
to the famous "wave" sculpture which has its own grassy area just
like the real Porter sculpture in Santa Cruz. |
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College
Eight with its famous "tower" and styling is
the newest and most featured college of UCSC. Overlooking the large expanse
of the ocean, College Eight captures the beauty of the Santa Cruz Mountain
location. |
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College
Eight's dining hall, cafe, dorms and office buildings also await the myriad
uses to which it can be put. The Virtual College Eight could invite opportunities
to feature faculty research, student opportunities and University conferences
in its many enterable and useful rooms. |
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More
than character has been captured in the V-UCSC -- it has become another
place to learn - a setting for a globally-based set of students. This project
allowed a team of master designers and students to collaborate virtually
and to prove the pedagogical potential of Active Worlds technology. |
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