Andrew McGrath Amanda Oldroyd
BT Labs - Martlesham
Virtual Research

Virtual Conversations The rise and rise of telecommunications

Development of site with 3500 people, work with human interfaces and interactive TV

Advanced visual reserach

Inhabited TV and BT?

We believ that networked shared spaces can ehance communication for people who cannot be together.

Looking for mechanisms for new mehtods of communication

Growing communities across broadcast medial People are the Conatent - telephony is self genrenating entertainment. Spaces are lonely without people - interested in puttin gpeople inot virtusla sapces.

Virtual spaces support communication. Cannot bump inot people on the telephone.

Andy Warhol
Andy McGath - 15 megabytes of fame

4 Projects
The Portal - website of technology in lab using VRML. Act of visiting spaces would alter it. bodies left which would fade out after time 2 years agl

The Mirror - BBC2 net and Illuminations
ONline communities. BT, Sony, Ill, BBC. VRML2 INcorporated projects from the Net.
Experiment with NEt's own virtual online world. 2000 people can register. Communal chat box or one to ones wiht your avatar and another. Digital hall of fame
Play as a nursery.
One for theme of identity.
bbc.co.uk/mirror
memory space with clock counting down to the end of the world.
2300 300 outside UK. Debates, gameshows, art exhibition and wedding ceremony. Select your avatar
Aworld each week
Peter Cchrane and Douglas Adams - The book is dead
Spceial evening
Art exhibition
Average session lasted 15 minutes.
Snowcrash character - Can I help anybody?
Plenty to do plenty to see..
Like a child
Inhabited TV - a pilot project. An enduring mission.

problem with chat spaces
filled with people who are interected in VRML rather than people who just wanted to share a spce
Net choice for TV
Education participatory audeience
Up to date, controversal content
Access to broadcast publicity
Finite trial period

REpeated publicity

Before and after debates interesting . Lots of heckling - awards for the best hecklers.
Art show - people contributing their own audio and visual work. Difficulty with getting things to work with software. Ended up with 2 pieces. Hunt the artwork.

An hour long conversation about whether the fish existed, where it was.
Bricks which said Ôbricks, bricks, bricks' when you went up to it.

Elvis would appear at different times to different people and sing. This encouraged debate and exchange. More difficult technically to make it appear for everyone
Carey - can be done by tagging nationally

Try to get people to leave memories, stories.
Collaboration important - The Rocket.
Fuel the rocket. Avatars would cling to rocket to try to go up. Expression through movement.

The Bouncy Castle also popular because of movement.
Lots of interaction happening but it is very difficult to see what people are doing because of restriction of movement of avatars.

Storytelling evening
Avatar stacking

Interaction - could fade out or be in two places at once.

Bartering, setting up systems monetarily, sacrificing themselves to fame - become famous but die.

Renegade TV - new king of games show

August late night slot on Channel 4. 11pm on for one hour.
Internet in the homes. shared space as live tv.
Heaven and Hell - famous people saving souls
Initial game is a treasure hunt.
Mixed video on top of virtual worlds on internet.
Videoed from studio guests with 10 pcs.
Meant to be subversive - want sex. Pods, gambling. Everyone collects souls goal orientated game.
Avatars can be structured creatively.

Key issues
Content generation - get people to contribute to this
EVeryday is like sunday - don't change vr worlds
Self Expression - how to show what people are doing is a real problem.
Interactivity and back again - some people may just want to watch and other times take control. How is that managed?
Interaction fatigue
A sense of presence - how are people gripped by the work. Not to do with peripheral vision but how to make something grip you throguh stories and content.

Chaos world
Angry cloud and nice cloud
Sense of tiem passing day and night. day with more people. night when noone around.
Planimals - combination of animal and plants which behave in different ways. Like a window on the world.
Rather like unusual objects being points of discussion. Like there may ba a storm one day, programmed to show a lobster.
Ecological aspect. Add too much and worlds get slower. Introduce animals which eat objects that are not doing anything. Ecosystems rather than unchanging spaces.

Vision Dome - teleporting presence. Small space - social interaction while being somewhere else. Share the presence. Dome allows people to have their own handheld device to trace their way thorough, Not like one person to control scene