Windlight Magazine-March 2016 Issue Volume 2, Issue 3 | Page 121

interaction teach us? The researchers will explore this question by studying how people with disabilities create and interact socially in virtual worlds, and how they use different kinds of devices in their homes to experience these on-line environments. The result is a series of studies, widely varied in nature and content, some of which - such as Jadyn's own Reconstructing Identity After Disability. This is a beautifully presented and moving story of how she has come to deal with her bipolar disorder after the condition Twenty 32x32 meter studio parcels left her unable to continue in her career as an assistant professor at have been made available to the University of Texas, Austin, and applicants with disabilities, who how the use of virtual spaces in have been invited to share their experiences, insights, and thoughts Second Life and the friends she has made here have empowered her on their disability: what impacts has it had on them in terms of their creativity in both the digital and physical realms. experiences, social interactions, dreams, and how have they used it? How have they used it to change "When I sent in my application to their experiences living with that participate in the project, I did not know yet what I wanted to build," disability? Jadyn says of the installation. "All I How applicants use their space has knew was, I wanted to create an deliberately been left open, altinstallation that somehow hough some pointers were given as represents the many-faceted, (re) to how they might think about enabled life that SL has made using it: for expression through 2D possible for me, but I had no idea or 3D art, thought media exactly what I was going to build. presentations / displays, as a space "I started looking back in my in which they can develop art or expression through external media inventory to things that dated back to my earliest days in SL, and such as blogs, or the creation of interactive spaces designed to give realized it essentially documents others insight into their experience my entire time in SL. From that I got or as a game - or any combination the idea of perhaps doing my build as a sort of museum exhibit, telling of these ideas. 121