GENESIS STEAM Virtual Learning Initiative

Los Angeles, CA

The Virtual Pioneers program was an innovative distance learning initiative offered to high-school aged youth as an opportunity to design and build social webVR spaces in the summer of 2020. Developed during the global pandemic in partnership with The Wende Museum and Hirshhorn Museum, the program produced virtual learning environments (VLEs) and accompanying curriculum to foster creative problem-solving skills through collaborative online workshops. The curriculum demonstrated how digital tools could help sustain education-oriented communities of practice during periods of physical separation.

Year: 2020

Medium: Virtual learning environments (VLEs), webVR exhibitions

Partners:

  • ARTLAB+ at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

  • The Wende Museum

Collaborator: Watson Hartsoe

Technical:

  • 3D asset libraries

  • Mozilla Spoke and Hubs Cloud

Exhibition Outputs:

  • "Nexus Soyuz: Navigating the Cyber Curtain" (Wende Museum)

  • "Respect Her Crank!" (Hirshhorn Museum)

Support: Smithsonian American Women's History Initiative (Hirshhorn Museum)

In a moment when classrooms were suddenly rendered inaccessible, Virtual Pioneers was developed to transform a moment of constraint into an opportunity to STEAM education access through emerging VR technologies. Students were guided through VLE-based workshops to create interactive, culture-driven 3D social spaces with the open source Mozilla Hubs & Spoke platform. The program's two major exhibition outcomes — "Nexus Soyuz: Navigating the Cyber Curtain" and "Respect Her Crank!" — successfully embodied virtual reality as a tool for cultural exchange and collective imagination.

As a teaching artist and mentor, I helped GENESIS develop a laboratory-like online “innovation campus” where students could experiment with new forms of creative expression and social connection to achieve specified learning outcomes. Building this program from the ground up with my collaborator, Watson Hartsoe, the initiative yielded novel research and pedagogy to establish guiding principles around VLEs. This was a significant inflection point that expanded the scope and impact of my creative practice toward systemic thinking and institutional frameworks for interdisciplinary collaboration.