Welcome to VSAT COIL May 2024
The Virtual Storytelling Application Toolkit Collaborative Online International Learning project is described on the Programme notes below. You will also find descriptions and links to the VSAT experiences presented at the May 2024 University of São Paulo/Oxford Brookes University VSAT COIL Symposium.
The VSAT experiences are designed to be viewed on a Virtual Reality headset, but not everyone has one of those lying around, so, fortunately you can also view these experiences on your flatscreen – the bigger the better!
The blue titles on the descriptive list below will take you to a wide range of 360° Virtual Reality experiences. Black titles are coming soon!
Once a few software tweaks have been completed, it will be possible to view these on a cheap (£10ish) pair of cardboard VR glasses. These instructions will be updated once that is possible.
To view a VSAT experience
● Open an ‘experience’ using one of the blue title links below.
● Some of the experiences have sound, indicated by a speaker icon. To hear the sound, be sure to turn your speakers on and up a bit. (At the moment you have to experiment to find out which ones have sound!)
● Click on the blue link for the experience you want to have.
● You will be immersed in the first space of the experience. Drag the hand grabber icon (your mouse pointer) to look all around you, including up and down.
● The ‘billboards’ (see picture left) are there to guide, inform and challenge you.
● The ‘billboards’ also give you the opportunity to move through the experience by ‘exiting’ your current space to go to a new one. In order to do that, use the grabber to move the picture so that the small black circle (circled in red on the picture) overlaps with an ‘exit’. The ‘exit’ is represented by a label in a white-outlined grey horizontal box below the main text.
Sometimes there is one ‘exit’, sometimes you have a choice of moves. In the illustration here, notice how the black circle is on the 2nd choice box. Left click in that box to go to the named destination.
● Keep going until you get to the end of the experience or are ready to stop. Use the ‘x’ on your browser tab to close the experience.
● Be aware that VSAT does use quite a bit of connectivity, and experiences can freeze or crash. Just use the ‘x’ to get out, and start again.
USP/OBU
VSAT COIL
Symposium Programme
8 May 2024
Professor Almir Almas in OBU’s Virtual Reality Cave
What is VSAT?
The Virtual Storytelling Application and Toolkit is open source software developed by Oxford Brookes University and Oxfordshire County Council as a community engagement tool. It allows users to easily programme 3D virtual reality (VR) software to construct a narrative. Students used VSAT independently to create their own virtual reality experiences for academic and artistic ends.
What is COIL?
Collaborative Online International Learning is a pedagogical tool that facilitates virtual mobility to develop global and employability collaboration, skills, understanding and friendship. At USP, this was done within a Higher Audiovisual Course of the Department of Film, Radio and Television and enabled students to create VR documentaries and stories. At OBU, this was achieved through Independent Study Modules that allowed students of Anthropology, Criminology, English Literature, Geography and History of Art to create subject- specific VR narratives.
OBU and USP together explored the potential of VSAT to construct narratives of different sorts over 3 months in 2023. The technology was taught collectively and students supported each other to develop their ideas, discuss narrative structures and
problem-solve the process and technology.
Partners
Founded in 1934, The University of São Paulo (USP) is one of the oldest, largest and most important public universities in Brazil. Almir Almas, Head of the Department of Film, Radio and Television, leads Lab-ArteMedia and the development of XR/VR content at CTR and PPGMPA/ECA/USP.
Oxford Brookes University (OBU) in the UK began life in 1865 as the Oxford School of Art. Eric White, one of the founders of VSAT, is Principal Investigator of OBU’s Avant-Gardes and Speculative Technology Project. Athene Reiss leads the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences’ COIL development.
Oxford Brookes Digital Services team and University Library provide facilities, technical support and equipment for our students.
OBU’s symposium event has been supported by an HSS Student Experience Development Grant, development and training from the UK Reproducibility Network’s Open Research Programme, PrINT USP/CAPES and FAPESP funding from the São Paulo and Brazilian governments.
Research/Knowledge Exchange
OBU and USP have jointly submitted bids to develop VSAT to advance the technology and its potential for social change, including telling migrants’ and refugees’ stories in Oxford and São Paulo.
Teaching & Learning
Students interested in VSAT COIL 2025 should contact Athene Reiss preiss@brookes.ac.uk.
OUR VSATs EXPERIENCES
Ana Cândida Becker (USP)
Ibirapuera Park was born in 1954 in the context of celebrations of the 4th centenary of São Paulo on the anniversary of the Constitutionalist Revolution. Trace a path bordering architecture in the context of the avant-garde that flourished at that moment.
Alex Fox (OBU)
Explore the basics of David Hume’s theory on causation to envelop yourself into ‘The Humean Mosaic’.
Liv Gilbert (OBU)
Experience Oxford by moving through the city to view murals officially commissioned by the city council to showcase their vision of the city and to discover graffiti painted by citizens to give voice to their discontents based on their own realities of the city.
Jennifer Lee (OBU)
Cultures and subcultures in Oxford
This exploration contrasts the transient nature of people and their experience of Oxford’s perpetual culture, featuring a few who have been here through it all and those who only experience a brief window.
Anna Julia Grandchamp Leme (USP)
This experience is a simplified type of role play, where the player witnesses all the
nuances and information about a serial killer case from the 90s, in a narrative that
references famous true crime podcasts.
Oscar McEntee (OBU)
The disturbing nature of consciousness and reality
This story depicts an insight into the all too familiar human experience, and the unnerving sensation that comes with feelings of mortality, philosophy, and the visceral feeling of life itself.
Audrey Cohim Hereda de Freitas Marinho (USP)
You are in a hallway of a house, surrounded by closed doors. Pay attention, there are clues about the history of this place. Choices will need to be made and every piece of information can help you. What lies behind the doors and whose memories are those?
Kit (Christina) Menezes (USP)
The river and the persona living around memory
Rua do Porto is the founding landmark of the city of Piracicaba, whose entire population relies on the river as the only possibility for sustenance. The territory inhabited by indigenous peoples until the 18th century welcomed, in the early 20th century, recently freed black women.
Freya Sharman (OBU)
Showcase of challenges faced by autistic students in a university setting
Based on secondary and primary research, this ‘day in the life’ conveys challenges relating to travel, social interaction and communication, navigating around campuses and more via two different paths.
Daniela Souto (USP)
Wreckage: behind, beneath and beyond
What does a ruined scenario, a wounded person, an abandoned place reveal? Which stories can they tell us? What do we feel when we watch a tiny plant tearing the powerful concrete in the middle of nowhere? After a long harsh winter, spring always comes. But, until when?