Re: [-empyre-] Aesthetics of single user works / versus multi user works

[Tamiko Thiel <tamiko@alum.mit.edu>]

Hi Adam -

In my experience of abstract and semi-abstract 3D worlds the act of 
navigation helps the user tremendously to understand the structure of 
the 3D space, an aid to which passive viewers - even if they're 
physically present - don't have access unless they are directly hovering 
over the user and kibbitzing ("try going left - further, further - now 
go forward" etc.) So for them the experience can be confusing because it 
seems no different from a film strip, since they have no experience of 
cause and effect and little sense of spatial relationships in the 3D space.

In my very first multi-user VR world, for an impatient and 3D-naive 
client, this unfortunately meant that we canned the abstract worlds we 
started with and gave them realism instead - not because the ultimate 
"users" - kids - needed it, but because the ones paying for it couldn't 
deal with it and weren't going to touch the mouse themselves.

I would guess that the localized 3D sound you use in your piece would 
contribute substantially as an orientation help, however - what is your 
experience here?

- tamiko



Adam Nash wrote:
> Tamiko said:
>
> > I think to make a successful multi-user work you really need to 
> > understand what "added value" is provided by other users in the space, 
> > and orient your piece towards this. In the best of circumstances the 
> > other users are an enrichment; all too often they are an annoying 
> > distraction, because they are there with some other agenda. ("Hey I'm 
> > new to VRML how did you build this" is a fine conversation to build 
> > the bonds of the VRML user crowd, but it doesn't add to your 
> > experience of the virtual artwork.
>
>
> Hi Tamiko, everyone,
>
> This is true of works that are conceived as single-user, and most art 
> whether virtual or not, is indeed single-user, even if it takes place in 
> front of a room full of people. As you note, a work like Beyond Manzanar 
> probably wouldn't benefit from being made multi-user. As for online 3D 
> works designed for multi-user, most of these until now have really been 
> chat rooms with 3D graphics added on. In this case, the multi-user 
> aspect is crucial but it is the 3D itself that is of questionable use.
>
> I'm interested in the multi-user space as a live performance medium - 
> whilst this is obviously not a new idea, not very much work has been 
> done in that area. Something I quickly found to be problematic was the 
> avatar-as-human idea. Trying to treat the space as if it were a regular 
> physical space in which bodies perform introduces massive problems of 
> two major types. First the time and effort required on the modeling and 
> animation (with its attendant problem of large filesize), and second the 
> audience expectation. It seemed natural to remove these problems 
> completely, and use the space for its strengths rather than weaknesses. 
> When trying to emulate physical space, the lack of gravity and economy 
> of geometry is a weakness, but when the piece is abstract these 
> qualities can be used as part of the performance.
>
> It also leads to the questioning of what an avatar is. Again, analogy 
> with physical space quickly falls apart. In the version of VNet that I 
> have been using, switching to OOBE mode ("Out Of Body Experience", ie, 
> one can see one's own avatar from an objective perspective) causes some 
> very interesting effects. Sure, you are looking at your representation 
> in space, but if you move around whilst in this mode, your avatar does 
> not, begging the question of which one is you - the avatar designated as 
> you or the position from which you are looking at the space? There are 
> many other capabilities that in physical space would be considered 
> anomalies, but to me they all point to the conclusion that the virtual 
> 3D space isn't really very similar to physical 3D space, and this is a 
> very freeing realisation from a performative point of view.
>
> In the multi-user version of Memory Plains Returning, that we performed 
> last week, the avatars *become* the space, or at least their visual and 
> sonic manifestation is so large that they seem to. The most common 
> comment offered by audience members logging in at the start was that 
> they couldn't see anything. This was the equivalent of an empty stage or 
> a silent concert hall. The action doesn't start till the performers do. 
> I conducted the performers, whose avatars were made up of different 
> sections of the piece, to change the visual appearance at my command. In 
> this way, they are not really avatars in the conventional sense at all, 
> even though it is true that they represent the performers in that if the 
> performer logged out, the avatar would not be there. It was a highly 
> structured performance with little room for the performers to improvise. 
> We are currently working on a piece where the interaction and 
> improvisation between the avatars is crucial to the performance, as I 
> think this will prove to be more interesting. Ultimately, the interest 
> in last week's performance lay only in the fact that it was a "live, 
> multi-user performance".
>
> The piece was also being projected onto a screen for the benefit of a 
> live, physically present audience in Folly Gallery, and Cornerhouse 
> Gallery. This situation has some good and bad points. For the good, at 
> Folly (from where I was logged in), I was 'presenting' in the way that 
> Steve suggested in a post a few days ago - the live mu performance 
> offered some difficult concepts for those new to the form and as a 
> result we were able to have a very interesting discussion about the 
> nature of the performance and the space itself. I was expecting a 
> similar level of questioning from the online audience, but they were 
> surprisingly quiet in the text chat window. In a way I was 'conducting' 
> them also, in that I would suggest to them viewpoints to hook into as 
> they became available according to a given avatar's manifestation. On 
> the negative side, things didn't go so well at Cornerhouse, where one of 
> the performers was having problems with crashing and being logged out. 
> Preoccupied with these problems, he didn't really have the time to 
> engage the audience and take them with him on his, albeit frustrating, 
> journey. This also was to do with notions of 'perfection' or 
> 'maintaining the illusion' that is typical of a lot of live performance. 
> Unfortunately, I hadn't discussed with him sufficiently the implications 
> of having to perform to two different audiences, online and offline, and 
> as a result the audience present in the Cornerhouse gallery were a 
> little mystified as to what was happening. I think this medium, 
> particularly in these early stages, can only benefit from its 'inner 
> workings' being exposed to the audience, as the philosophy behind the 
> performance has so much to do with those inner workings. As I have said 
> before on this list, I don't believe in the myth of 'suspension of 
> disbelief' and I think the audience need to be included in the 
> performance for it to be satisfying for them. In the case of my work, at 
> the very least this means teaching the audience to use the veiwpoint 
> menu for example. Ideally we'll reach a stage when the audience already 
> know what to do when they log in, but for the moment we will have to 
> contend with a bit of teaching. I suppose it is a bit analogous to 
> giving directions to an unusual or distant venue in a real world 
> performance.
>
> The online audience, small as it was, did seem quite content to sit back 
> and enjoy the composition, and there were many who put up with crashing 
> and logging back in again. This crashing seems to be a combination of 
> the flakiness of VNet and the largish amount of geometry. Some 
> interesting temporal effects were achieved by this re-logging in, where 
> some members of the audience (and indeed the performers themselves) were 
> seeing different things - again an 'anomaly' that can be used within the 
> performance. All in all, what was supposed to be a higly composed and 
> structured piece became quite chaotic in the online performance, and 
> whilst I personally enjoyed that very much it was confusing to some 
> audience members. I will need to seriously research this behaviour of 
> VNet over the coming months, although it is usually quite difficult to 
> get more than one or two people to log in for testing. I will be posting 
> notices to empyre and www-vrml and other lists, to try to enlist the 
> cooperation of those 'in the know'.
>
> I think the 3D multi-user space offers a huge potential for live 
> performance, and my current project "Scorched Happiness" is an attempt 
> to really thoroughly investigate the medium's properties and create a 
> performance, unique to it, that is as satisfying as a live performance 
> in any other medium.
>
> Apologies for the length of this post, but I hope it is a useful 
> contribution to the discussion of multi-user space.
>
> Adam



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 Tamiko Thiel       Media Artist

 tamiko@alum.mit.edu
 http://mission.base.com/tamiko/

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