ALTERNE

Alternative Realities in Networked Environments

LILITH

Posted in by alterne on Sat, 2005-05-14 16:51

CIANT Team:
Pavel Smetana - artistic conception and realization
Ivor Diosi - contributing artist, interaction designer, leading programmer
Michal Másˇa - SW and network component designer
Jaroslav Adamec - SW and network component designer
Bohusˇ Získal - technical advisor
Pavel Sedlak - conceptual advisor



Artist's Comments

This prototype is intended as a Mixed Reality installation that explores the complex relation of the human brain with perceptual, emotional and cognitive mechanisms underlying an immersive experience of the body present in a constantly changing dynamic datascape of a virtual world.

The project is based on real-time analysis and interpretation of biophysical signals which are considered an essential means of navigation and interaction in a virtual environment. The emotional response of the participant becomes a key element for translation of these signal outputs, which are fed back into a computing machine in order to generate an ever-evolving multi-sensorial experience of various coherences and consistencies. Virtual Reality making use of biofeedback principles can now be conceived of as n-dimensional datascape appropriately compared to a spatiotemporal experience of (day) dreaming where all laws of physics and causality habitually learned from everyday world can temporally be valid in the virtual world, but can also be under certain conditions (while enhanced by sophisticated behavioural models of the whole virtual environment) interactively changed and altered.

The human body immersed in a hybrid space becomes a centre of interactive correlation between physiological processes and self-awareness in the framework of corporeal performance. Concerning human consciousness, the interior processes of reflexivity and imagination that create and sustain our self image and its relationship to a world provide a field of active exploration with the aim for the participant to investigate her unique emotional states as an audio-visually represented and otherwise perceptually inaccessible source of knowledge.

© CIANT

CIANT came to the project fresh with no preconceived ideas about the virtual spaces available. Their project was not based on previous experience with the tools, but rather an artistic approach bred from multiple work with other computer based technologies. The team represented a range of different technological experience and skills that were used to learn how to function in the new space provided by the SAS Cube and the Unreal gaming engine. It was an example of a first exploration of technological possibilities through the production of a specific artistic project.

Artistic Objectives:

LILITH has been conceived as an artistic exploration of alternative causality and qualitative physics, two leading principles supported by the ALTERNE platform. This prototype installation focuses on behavioural dependencies within intelligent responsive environments. It inhabits a virtual world with objects and avatars that are capable of responding in ways radically different from causal chains and the physical determinants governing our everyday experience. The atmosphere of the environment, that is simultaneously accessible in both fully immersive CAVE-like and lightweight desktop versions, was created with a strong artistic vision to implement subtle emotional shifts that have the potential to be visualized and experienced as real phenomena.

Within the intelligent responsive environment of Lilith participants navigate dynamic datascapes that stimulate an unexpectedly rich variety of action: surfaces slow or speed up the motion, shadows appear without proper orientation, manipulation of objects is never the same since the general environmental condition is ruled by the “emotions” embodied in a modification of physical laws and causal relations. The being-in-the-world becomes a transformative exploration of “emotional rules”, examination of behavioural dependencies between differently defined properties of objects and virtual characters.


The human body immersed in the hybrid space of Lilith becomes a centre of interactive correlation between physiological processes and self-awareness in a framework of corporeal performance. The interior processes of reflection and imagination that create and sustain our self-image and its relationship to a world provide a field of active exploration. The aim is for the participant to investigate her unique emotional states as audio-visually represented and as an otherwise perceptually inaccessible source of knowledge.

Technical Results:

CIANT felt that the SAS Cube provided an excellent example of immersive space for a fraction of the cost of a standard CAVE system. Using newly developed modules and drivers, the SAS Cube could be used also for visualisation of Unreal and VRML scenes, thus opening the realm of high-quality immersive visualisation to designers working with generally available tools. But the SAS Cube – although based on cheaper PC computers and using special mobile construction still it is rather expensive for the non-commercial work.


They also felt that Unreal is one of the best game engines on the market, with outstanding realism of rendering and powerful physics module implemented. It also provides easy-to-operate tools for scene modifications, allowing for the creative experiments without a necessity to buy expensive 3D modelling software. But only part of the functionality is open to modification without changing the core code; the users cannot download the engine for free: it is necessary to buy one game based on this engine.

CIANT also used VRML (or more recently X3D), widely used 3D file format to enable real-time communication of 3D data across all applications and network applications. As there is a large number of visualisation engines, export plug-ins and sample scenes freely available on the Internet, VRML is the most common platform of choice for independent artists and designers, but there are certain programming skills required to fully exploit its potential.

CIANT’s research and experience with these technologies advance their own professional objectives especially in complex problems related to physical behaviour within virtual environments. All people involved had to research and find “alternative” solutions even beyond their initial expectations. Another aspect that had to be faced seriously was the possibility of expanding the location-fixed installation – the SAS Cube - towards a distributed networked one. It was especially in this domain that the collaborating team came up with a sophisticated solution making it possible for external users to remotely interact and navigate within the installation.

CIANT developed a remote interface to the alternative reality installations in SAS Cube, by introducing lightweight clients that are used by visitors to remotely connect to an installation in order to see the actual situation at the presentation stage or in the virtual world itself. The main purpose was to control the state of the installation and connect different kinds of input devices to the installation.

The lightweight client is a standalone C++ application that is based on freely available BS Contact VRML browser [http://www.bitmanagement.de]. It benefits from the extensions to the VRML standard that the current BS Contact 6.2 provides: native H-Anim support, game-like navigation style, multi-texturing, NURBS, particles, etc. These features facilitate conversion of Unreal scenes to VRML while preserving their original look and feel. Another important aspect of the client is plug-in support for input devices. CIANT has implemented supports for three types of input devices – MIDI controller, motion capture and WaveRider. The client is also able to provide feedback to users through avatars.

CIANT’s work meant going beyond the technologies available and that was accomplished by finding other tools over the network and developing certain applications to respond to the project needs. The development done opened a new area of research and production for CIANT which they plan to pursue and are already doing so.


Future Research:

The work now includes the addition of live dance in the work, which is the current application now being pursued. The dancers influence the work through their movements using the lightweight client and actually effect the operation of the work. CIANT has started a project called Virtual Intelligent Robotic Unbreakable Space, VIRUS, to pursue this research dimension. This will involve the elements off motion capture and video streaming that they have added to the virtual spaces designed. CIANT has also developed a two-projector system to show a 3D presentation of some of the work done for the SAS Cube. Cypres and CIANT are reworking the work done by Cypres to adapt it to this simpler system.

Also an online theatre working group over the MARCEL network is being created by CIANT and the Theatre Design section of the Wimbledon School of Art to explore the possibilities of the network space for theatre. The tools developed by CIANT, particularly the motion capture tools will be used for that experiment. It will also include aspects of the Multiple Viewpoint Telepresence development and the virtual space of UT as elaborated by Mathias Fuchs.

Conclusions:

CIANT and the team working on Lilith went through all three phases mention in the introduction, play, mastering and inventing. The most significant aspect of the two-years of research for that team was the in-house acquisition of the tools of production in order to produce the final work. That work enabled them to develop for their own use the Unreal gaming engine and added the possibility of including video and motion capture within it to add to its performance capacity. Their development of lightweight clients also allows direct interaction with the installation by outside actors and adds to the interactivity potential of the virtual space. Their final word on the artistic applications of virtual reality is pertinent:

“Our work involves qualitative physics as an important aspect of interaction design in virtual environments. It allows for creating interactions and effects which have much in common with dreamlike experiences and/or alternative states of consciousness. We see this avenue as one of the most important strengths of virtual reality, which is best when used for creating realms out of the boundaries of ordinary experience, rather than mimicking reality.

For us, the most important conceptual choice in virtual reality development is to go beyond the frontiers defined by our everyday perception, our common experience. We thing that besides pure aesthetic utilisation, qualitative physics can be used to model worlds which could be used in perception research or psychological therapy.”