Catal Hoyuk
In the fall of 2007, I participated in a project with the UC Berkeley archaeology department under the guidance of Professor Ruth Tringham. Our team created a virtual reconstruction of Catal Hoyuk--a neolithic settlement in what is now Turkey--in Second Life.
The team purchased an island in "Linden dollars" (the currency of Second Life) and terraformed it according to actual topographical data. Some team members 3D-modeled a museum, housing, an excavation site...even a campfire. My roll in the project was to go through archives of video clips and select footage to place in site-specific locations. For example, footage of excavating a child skeleton was placed in the virtual location that corresponded with the actual location where a child skeleton was unearthed. I also created a 5-minute video for our in-world virtual film festival. The piece, called In Search of the Leopard's Spots, was a mash-up of found footage from the archaeology department archives and animations that I created on top of it.
To learn more about Catal Hoyuk, see the "Remixing Catal Hoyuk" link to the right, created by UC Berkeley's BACH team.