New Worlds - the Digital Dive
Short report (1998) about the conference Online Realities in 3D.
programm 5 (Nicole Martin and Lilian
Jüchtern) talked about "Staging Strategies"; an online environment
consisting of several parallel universes that can be accessed
through the Internet. In each universe other events take
place that you can see when you enter an object. These objects
are placed in a sphere so the users have spatial reverence
points. In earlier stages of the project there was no sphere
and the worlds looked like a giant Christmas tree without
the tree, Nicole explained. In "Staging Strategies" the
information is spread over the universes so one universe
contains only two events (sound, code, color, simulation
and animation). So in a world called "bubble bath" you see
pulsating red objects and hear bubble sounds and in the
"eerie fog"-world you are enshrouded in a blue fog hearing
scary sounds. programm 5 use these objects instead of transforming
them into a landscape that resembles reality to increase
the intuition of the user when he/she navigates through
the worlds. It appeals to the senses; you feel immersed
when entering "Staging Strategies".
Károly Tóth presented
"The Negative River": a co-operation of artists, writers
and scientists who create a navigable organic environment,
using the river as metaphor. It is a beautiful world, full
of colors, movements and shapes that contain information
or "knowledge" as Károly Tóth calls it. It was not easy
for him to explain what he meant by this knowledge. He talked
about thoughts, imagination and perception. TNR is continuously
being filled up with new shapes that influence this world,
creating an interactive structure of thoughts and cognitive
relations.
Demedusator is an online environment where
information is transformed into cryptograms. It is a container
in which you can put your own data (texts, pictures, objects,
etc.). It is an easily accessible database where you don't
have to wait hours to download everything. You just have
to click on a cryptogram to obtain the information. Anybody
can put anything in this container; there is absolutely
no control. Demedusator was created out of a need to organize
the huge databases on the Internet, to make it more accessible
and faster for users (especially for those people who don't
have the latest and most up-to-date computer systems).
All
the worlds that were presented during the program are still
being improved and changed because the artists are constantly
examining and exploring the uses of 3D in online environments.
It was obvious that the creators are more at home behind
a computer screen than a microphone and that the time they
spend in their own worlds makes it difficult for them to
explain their motivations and ways of thinking to a public
that are unaccustomed to these worlds. The best advice is
to explore the online worlds yourself and let your intuition
guide you!
