Mel Slater, UCL, computer Sciences

Collaborative Virtual Environments
European funding
virtual travel rehearsal in Europe
Distributed VRs across Europe. Virtual rehearsal can go beyond travel - playing out dangerous places. USe of this within psychotherapy - heights, aeroplance phobias. Proving effective. Stuart - behaviourist orientated. Working with writers more about cognitive work and psychotherapies.
Reality is malleable comes from the work in virtual reality. VR teaching us about perception. Rory - can do the same thing with maps? Essays about VR experience - visualisation and response to sound.
Psychology and sensory dominance tests set up to plan experiments.
Interested in what happens collaboratively - in the cracks between the work. Computer Graphics and Programming

Worked Jaron Lanier
1990 VR
Move head - time's up, MOdel for CVE - Model of centre of London to Heathrow. Simple without texturing. Representation of time is a problem. Narrative issues interesting. Collective experience Depth of Presence - the body, transformation and trance Head mounted display worn - looked down and could not see oneself. Disociated from the program. Crude body sense of presence better than nothing at all. Two hands. Can put on headset which takes yu from an environment to an environment within an environment.

Nielson Erikkson - mediacal hypnotherapist. Would event story within a story and eventually hte subject would abstract out their own stories.

propriaception - brain sighnals the body unconsciously. Having a match between propriaception and what you see is important in presence.

In hands and king arthur's sword. People would respond in real world as well as in virtual space

Walking - propriaception and body centred interaction

Propriaception and walking contradiction. People can't walk in a virtual environment. You can walk on spot - bit like Char Davies, but intended as practical application.

New media requires forms of interaction that are appropriate to the new media. Press yourself down to scale down your body or shrink the world. Body centred interaction is part of this process.

Modelling -
Emergence of narrative

3 people coming together to work in a virtual environment from remote sites to perform task of making clothing - virtual clothing. Use of hand to fashion the style and provide texture. Software - Sweepsour Textures.

Emergence of narrative and storylines. Understanding factors that contribute to presence.

Simon - POP use of humanoid form. Relation to presence. Would cars - hovercrafts etc affect the notion of presence.

Link between propriaception and presence but does not need to take humanoid form. Not tested but believe it to be the case.

Dominance of paradigm of simulation. more realistic as better...
This depends on the application..

Richard Brown - working wihtin non-euclidian geometry. Artists doing this - industry pushing it ount of this route.
VRML - had the ability to warp spaces. We need to build worlds that help us understand how we engage with say a face.

VR gives one the opportunity to adapt the world. simulation of realism is not successful but

Breathing in char d good example of propriaception and presence. Allows us new ways of negotiating the world.

ARe we experiencing virtual reality or are we reading it. Calvino - words within worlds.