Re: [-empyre-] narrative and theatre in vr?

["Melinda Rackham" <melinda@unsw.edu.au>]

Tamiko,
hey thanx for your insight into your  work..
internment is universal theme and particularly relevant in australia at the
moment with the refuge and detention crisis, however apart from the
political aspect i'm interrested particularly in the theatricality of using
VRML.. and i notice that your collaborator Zara is a theatre director?

did you find the process of writing for 3d vrml like writing a theatre piece
..?
do you construct scenes and imagine users viewpoints from the audience point
of view?
and did you see the work always in the  installation space.. ? ie large
rather than on a
small moniter? i know you said that there were various reasons you dont have
it all online.. but im interrested if you think it would be as physically
immersive on a small scale seeing you say
> the image fills your field of view and that fact
> that it is life-sized causes your body to have somatosensory reactions
> similar to those that you have when encountering an object in "real life"
i know scale and sound helps with immersion, but i dont  necessarily think
its dependent on images being physically larger than the human body?

i like the joy stick interaction as well- vaguely military yet
simultaneously really familiar and accessable..

melinda

PS re other pluggin tech feedback- in cosmo player pluggin in Netscape in
win2Kpro
the backgrounds and sounds worked well.. but some immediate foregrounds
didn't appear, however it was very spooky experience..in keeping with the
work.. - feeling like i had a blind spot as i was moving thru sounds without
all the accompanying visions -especiily the walking sounds on cruncing
gravel in the camp scene, so  i knew there was something else there and
things that were supposed to happen but didnt know what it was.

> User immersion and agency to create emotional involvement:
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> When the piece is shown as a room installation, the virtual space is
> projected life-sized (about 4mx3m or 9'x12') on a large wall. Even
> though the image is not "immersive" in the technical sense (of a cave or
> head-mount display), the image fills your field of view and that fact
> that it is life-sized causes your body to have somatosensory reactions
> similar to those that you have when encountering an object in "real
> life."
>
> >From far away you do not see the fence - but as you come near, it
> appears to block your path. Your kinesthetic sense reacts to the scale
> of the barracks and fence (made slightly larger than life-sized to
> convey the experience of the internees, who were rarely over 5' tall.)
> The fact that you can walk up to the fence and try (unsuccessfully) to
> go through it reinforces your psychological feeling of being trapped
> inside the camp. The constant dry wind and the sound of ghostly
> footsteps crunching on the gravel create a feeling of actually being in
> the desert - former Manzanar internees told me they felt as if they were
> actually back INSIDE Manzanar.
>
> Once you enter a barrack (not possible in the vrml excerpt) the door
> slams shut, you are trapped inside with ghosts and cannot get back out.
> You can only go forward, into the mysterious Japanese room that seems to
> lead into a garden ...
>
> This device of closing doors behind the user is used to "drive" the user
> through the piece, but is also a very powerful psychological device.
> Sometimes you can see the previous space; sometimes the previous space
> disappears completely. In any case, you cannot go back - just as the
> internees could not regain their previous life, no matter how much they
> wanted to go back. Users becomes complicit in their own fate: the choice
> is to become inactive and remain forever in the space they are in, or to
> move forward and lose everything around them.
>
> Summary:
> --------
> These were some of the devices used in one single scene to create
> emotional involvement of the user in the role of internee. I avoided
> complicated role-playing and interaction - you just move the joystick to
> move your viewpoint through the space, and the space reacts to your
> presence - making it psychologically easy for even techno-shy people to
> get involved in the piece.
>
> 'Nuff said for one day - Tamiko Thiel
>
> --
> -------------------------------------------
> Tamiko Thiel