Nuzzle Afar
Description of Masaki Fujihata's 3D virtual environment "Nuzzle Afar," published in "The Art of the Accident," 1998.
Nuzzle Afar is a shared 3D virtual environment art work, using
digital networking technology. It realizes a new type of communication
space where people can meet and talk to each other as avatars from
several telematic immersive computer terminals. Two terminals are set up at each distant location, in this case at the
Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie in Karlsruhe and at the Dutch
Electronic Art Festival, DEAF98, in Rotterdam. Each terminal has a
large video projection and a pedestal with a TrackBall as a navigation
interface, and a microphone for conversation. Video cameras are placed
near the screen, recording the people playing with the TrackBall. The
computers coordinating the communication between the different
terminals are connected through ISDN lines.
In the virtual environment that is projected onto the wall, each
terminal is represented by an avatar, a coloured object hovering in the
virtual space. Each of the video images from the terminals is pasted
onto the surface of an avatar, so that on the 'faces' of the other
avatars one can see the visitors at the respective terminals. When
navigating around the virtual space, the avatars leave a line trace.
This trace can be used to trace out the owner of the trace. When you
'catch' one of these traces, the computer automatically brings you to
the other avatar by tracing out his trace. The line traces remain in
the space for several minutes, describing the space through the
movements that have passed through it.
The view one gets of the virtual environment and of the other avatars
is controlled by rolling the TrackBall and thus navigating one's own
avatar. When two avatars get so close that they merge, an alternative
world is born. This world is closed, and the form of avatar changes
into a simpler form, becoming just a moveable rectangle video texure
mapped screen. This virtual screen is controlled from an outside,
objective perspective, so that one can now see oneself on that screen.
The two avatars are now locked together, and there is no description
about how they can return to the former public space. They have to
communicate and collaborate to find a key to split.
The space of the virtual environment is completely abstract. Several different worlds overlap in the same space, each being identified by different characteristics like density or forces which move the avatars automatically in some direction, like a current. The worlds are sharing the same space like parallel universes. Visitors can observe what goes on in the other world from their own world, yet, they cannot share the experience of what happens in the other world. To change from one world to the other, one has to use key objects which function like worm holes, connecting the parallel worlds.
The aim of this work is to abstract the communication space. The space
can be examined interactively by participants at the networked
connected terminals in each installation sites in real space. Nuzzle Afar is an extended version of an earlier shared virtual environment art piece, Global Interior Project
(1996), which dealt with the differences between real space and virtual
space. Global Interior Project made it possible to compare the
differences between a face-to-face conversation in real space and an
avatar-to-avatar conversation in virtual space. Yet, the reactions and
conversations of participants were mostly simple and minimal, such as
"Hello", "Where are you?", and "Can you hear me?". In this virtual
environment, the purpose of communication was unclear because the
function of avatar did not afford a certain role to the participant.
This made the space meaningless. In contrast, Nuzzle Afar tries
to afford the role of play to participants who have to explore the
space for discovering the key of communication. That is the role of
this space.
Software design and implementation by Takeshi Kawashima.
1998 V2_
