Laying the Groundwork: The Metaverse Emerges
(You can access the full Bibliography for all six chapters of this project using the button at the bottom of each page, or by accessing it from the Homepage of this website.)
What is the Metaverse? Where is the Metaverse?
“Metaverse” is a buzz word that has been in news articles, memes, social media, and in comedy sketches. The metaverse is conceptualized as a world within our world, accessed through immersive technology. Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snow Crash was the first mention of the metaverse. Stephenson imagines the Metaverse “not as a gaming environment with specific parameters and goals, but as an open-ended digital culture that operates in parallel with the physical domain” (Dionisio et al., 2013, p.34:7). Since then, scholars and popular media alike have tried to pinpoint an exact definition of what would constitute the metaverse.
In their 2013 article, “3D Virtual worlds and the metaverse: Current status and future possibilities,” John Dionisio et al. discuss the most current theories at that time regarding the metaverse, explaining that a true, viable metaverse must successfully achieve four things:
1) Realism- Is the virtual space sufficiently realistic to enable users to feel psychologically and emotionally immersed?
2) Ubiquity- Are the virtual spaces that comprise the Metaverse accessible through all existing digital devices and do the user’s virtual identities remain intact throughout transitions?
3) Interoperability- users can move seamlessly between locations without interruption in their immersive experience?
4) Scalability- Does the server architecture deliver sufficient power to enable massive numbers of users? (adapted from Dionisio et al., 2013, p.34:2).
More recently, Oli Welsh of Polygon explains,
“The metaverse is understood as a graphically rich virtual space, with some degree of verisimilitude, where people can work, play, shop, socialize — in short, do the things humans like to do together in real life. . . Metaverse proponents often focus on the concept of “presence” as a defining factor: feeling like you’re really there, and feeling like other people are really there with you, too.” (Welsh, 2022).
If you’ve read Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One or seen the eponymous film, you may be already familiar with the concept. People put on their virtual reality (VR) headsets, their tactile response suits, and boot up the multiverse. They use avatars to represent themselves in this virtual world, but the avatars do not have to look, act, or sound like their real-world counterparts. “The metaverse is . . . game technology being applied to non-play activities such as work, concerts, religious events, and more” (Joseph & Stimler, 2022). The metaverse contains multitudes. Anything that is possible or impossible in the real world can be done in the metaverse. Want to ride a dragon? Want to swim with mermaids? Want to have a dance party with all your favorite celebrities in real time? In the metaverse, you can! There’s just one problem. The metaverse doesn’t actually exist (yet).
An important aspect of the metaverse is that you do not just experience the virtual world for yourself, but that you join others and create unique social interactions. The concept of creating an avatar and exploring a fantastical virtual world is not a new one. One of the earliest examples is in the form of MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games). World of Warcraft, published by Blizzard Entertainment (recently acquired by Microsoft), launched in 2004 and allows players to join their friends online to achieve quests, meet new people, and explore a world populated by elves and orcs.
Users of Decentraland.org (DCL) can create custom avatars, and pay cryptocurrency in the DCL marketplace to buy special accessories and "skins" for their avatars. Skins are often elaborate or fantastical costumes/outfits.
Another early example is an online site called Second Life, which launched in 2003. “It fulfills many of the roles imagined for the metaverse of the future. . . Users are embodied in avatars and hang out with each other in virtual spaces. They enjoy virtual versions of real-world experiences, from business meetings to clubbing. Users can create their own content and services and trade with one another” (Welsh, 2022). Second Life includes “islands” that often offer unique experiences and locales. The Spencer Museum of Art (SMA) at the University of Kansas briefly used SecondLife to host an island that was a Dalí-esque virtual art installation by Thomas Kirk and Ira Strübel called the a Petrovsky Flux. Although SMA took down their island in 2016 due to the restrictive costs (to host an island, you must pay for the server space), the island was a unique experience as it used randomized algorithms to constantly change (Goddard, n.d.) No visit to the island was the same as the other, as the structure created by the algorithms was programmed to delete itself and rebuild after a certain amount of time (Kirk & Strübel, 2015).
The Digital Museum
“For museums in the 21st century, becoming more aware and responsive. . . requires a shift in thinking at all levels – a shift that embraces a wider ‘digital mindset,’ writes Mike Murawski. “This approach envisions a deeper fluency and understanding of web behaviors, mobile behaviors, and social media behaviors across all areas of museum practice, rather than relegated to the IT, online collections, or website functions of a museum” (Murawski, 2016).
The beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 helped to push museums into a virtual space, as museums struggled to engage visitors and share their collections while their physical locations were shuttered. The National Museum of Korea created a virtual version of their physical space; visitors could create avatars and wander the museum’s online halls with friends and family. “’The users are not current museumgoers. They are [Millennials and Gen-Z people] who might think that museums are boring. We started the metaverse project because we see that the platform can provide those young people with a new way to look at the museum,’ NMK Digital Museum Division curator Chang Eun-jeong said. . . ‘We see that once the audiences become familiar with the content and space, they are more likely to visit our museums offline, . . . Just because they hung out in our museum on the metaverse today we know that they will not immediately think about buying a ticket and visiting the museum tomorrow.’” (qtd. in Seung-hyun, 2021).
The Nintendo Switch game, Animal Crossing: New Horizons (ACNH) launched with massive success in 2020. While people stayed home at the beginning of the pandemic, they started building their own island paradises, complete with a museum to showcase the “critters” they collect during their time playing. The Monterey Bay Aquarium found a unique way to connect with its would-be visitors by streaming ACNH on their Twitch.tv and YouTube channels. Museum staff and experts in the marine biology teach viewers about the real-life counterparts for the fish and sea creatures in the game. At the time of this writing (April 2022), the Aquarium’s Twitch.tv channel has over 16,600 followers. Although Animal Crossing: New Horizons is not normally considered part of the metaverse, the fact that players can visit each other’s islands adds an important social element to the game.
What does the metaverse mean for museums?
Where do museums fit into all of this? Should museums even concern themselves with the metaverse? What approaches can museums take? In these mini chapters, we will be exploring the metaverse concept through the lens of museums. Since the metaverse in its imagined form defined by Dionisio et. al in 2013 doesn’t exist yet (more on that later), we will also be discussing virtual museum experiences in general, on several different platforms that are trying to break into the metaverse space. “If the lights go out in the museum and all the Wi-Fi hotspots and screens go dark, we might lose the physical technology infrastructure, but we do not lose the powerful participatory, networked, open-source culture that has taken root in our audiences and communities in the 21st century” (Murawski, 2014).
In the American Alliance of Museum’s 2021 TrendsWatch report by Elizabeth Merritt, the author makes the case for the future of digital in the museum field. “Digital can do more than replicate the built museum—it is a realm in and of itself. Any content—a newsletter, catalog, or a whole exhibition—can be born digital. It can mirror or supplement its real-world counterpart, or exist [on its own]. This being so, museums need to consider what content will be digital-first (released directly into new media channels) or even digital-only” (Merritt, 2021, pg17).
“Technology should not govern the museums’ work. But in order to learn and understand how we can use new technologies and benefit from the opportunities they open up to us we must explore and incorporate not just the technologies themselves, but also the changes in behaviour and expectations they prompt in users. We must think like users” (Sanderhoff, 2013).
A Note on NFTs
While it should be noted that a parallel conversation on NFTs (non-fungible tokens) is often in the same breath as the metaverse, these chapters will not cover NFTs. Searching for “metaverse + museum” on the internet will also sometimes lead to NFT marketplace sites that are being touted as museums when they are just digital commercial galleries for people to buy NFT artwork. These NFT “museums” usually don’t have any real ties to the museum field. You can read more about NFTs in these articles:
Conti, R. (2021, April 29). What Is An NFT? Non-Fungible Tokens Explained. Forbes Advisor. https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/cryptocurrency/nft-non-fungible-token/
Mattei, S. E.-D. (2021, December 28). 2021 Has Been the Year of the NFT. But What Exactly Is an NFT? ARTnews.com. https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/nft-guide-1234614447/