Syndicate: DEAF98: Online Realities in 3D

[Andreas Broeckmann <abroeck@v2.nl>]

Dutch Electronic Art Festival - DEAF98

Thursday 19 November 1998, 14.00-18.00
Bonheur, Eendrachtsstraat 79, Rotterdam
NLG 7,50


Online Realities in 3D

The programme 'Online Realities in 3D' is held in the framework of the
DEAF98 Digital Dive. It presents artists' projects which use
three-dimensionality as a metaphor for designing and articulating the
social and technical processes that take place in the 'data scape'. They
use '3D' not as a simple mirror of reality, but explore its potential
meaning in online world.
This afternoon of presentations offers an overview over recent developments
of 3D-online design. It will not provide definitive answers, but is meant
as a starting point for prolific discussions about the usefulness of 3D as
a metaphor in online environments.

14.15-14.30
Introduction by Katja Martin (D) (moderator)

14.30-15.45
Presentations of:

- Staging Strategies by Programm5 (Nicole Martin and Lilian Juechtern (D))

The project 'Staging Strategies' focusses on designing a genuine formal
language for the media of virtual reality. The basic element of a virtual
world is dynamic information. Events, data. Everything is floating and
moving. How do you visualize this in three-dimensional space? Which sensual
experiences are elementary to a Virtual Reality? Dataworlds lack gravity:
there is no Up and Down, no ground, no horizon. One move and everything is
changing. How can I find my way in a Virtual Reality? Staging Strategies
researches the basic parameters constituting the 'gestalt' of a virtual
reality.


- The Negative River by Karoly Toth (H/NL)

A co-operation of artists, writers and scientists who create a navigable
organic environment, using the river as metaphor. The participants
contribute documents and digital traces from their living environment which
are used to build up an information database. From this database, a
reconstruction of a new spatio-temporal structure, a Terra A-Topia, is made
in virtuual space. The project is less concerned with the latest technical
developments in hard- and software, than with the technologies of thought,
imagination, intuition and perception. If information is accepted as one of
the physical conditions of matter, then cognition has to be viewed as a
fundamental basis and the memetic engine of our understanding and 'mapping'
of the world. The virtual model of 'The Negative River' incorporates a
series of mutually influential data events that create a morphing,
continuously transforming and interactive structure of thoughts and
cognitive relations.


- Demedusator by Zoltan Szegedy-Maszak and Marton Fernezelyi (H)

Demedusator is a shared virtual world developed by its visitors. Any
creative participant can "publish" his/her creatures - let it be a complete
virtual world or sound, movie, picture - by placing them in a 3D world
explorable by any (Web)surfer. People can reflect to the existing content
by uploading something near to them, or they can create "a village of their
own" by uploading the parts of it as contents placed in the same 3D area.
The infinite container-space of DEMEDUSATOR is ready to be inhabited: any
pioneer can find an unsettled space-segment for his/her new virtual home.


- Happy Doomsday! by Calin Dan (RO/NL)

Happy Doomsday! is about the instability and virtual manipulability of
territories. The project combines elements of computer games with the
history of Europe. It is an idiosyncratic physical human-machine interface.
The user starts the program by sitting down on a fitness machine. He/she
then chooses an avatar country and war target. To reach the target the user
has to perform a workout on the fitness machine. This machine is linked to
other participants who can intervene in the progress of the user's war
efforts. Wars have constantly changed the political and
territorial situation. The participant has to adjust to the war scenario
from the period in which he/she has chosen to play the program. These
historical facts influence the war simulation of this project.
(HD! is presented in the DEAF98 exhibition.)


- VRMLsite by Kas Oosterhuis (NL) and Ilona Lenard (NL)

The VRMLsite is an open online discussion environment in VRML featuring a
live-debate between architects, designers and theorists.The discussion is
open to the public who can log on as an audience-avatar into the VRML
environment. 'vrmlSITE' contains free-floating, characteristic elements of
projects by the participants. Each participant is represented by an avatar
which is not a person but a small 3D world in itself, so that participants
and audience experience parallel 3D worlds talking to each other. The
participants can trigger events - by clicking on words in the vrmlSITE -
during the discussion.


16.15-17.00
Discussion

17.00-18.00
Online discussion VRMLsite


Bookmarks

Staging Strategies - http://www.digitalworks.org/rd/p5
The Negative River - http://users.bart.nl/~terra/fresh.htm
Demedusator - http://demedusator.c3.hu
Happy Doomsday! - http://www.v2.nl/~aadjan/hd/
VRMLsite - http://www.oosterhuis.nl, http://www.lenard.nl



DEAF98, Dutch Electronic Art Festival
17 - 29 november 1998
Eendrachtsstraat 10
3012 XL Rotterdam
Netherlands
tel: ++31.10.2067272
fax: ++31.10.2067271
email: deaf@v2.nl
www.v2.nl/DEAF