i3DMedia

A way to join and fly in places of beauty

The new medium of interactive virtual worlds is currently at that critical point of development when all the technical means now exist to enable the definition of the unique 'language' of the medium. It is at a similar point as cinema was about one hundred years ago when directors discovered the freedom of time and space made possible by film editing, and the ability to merge interior thought and exterior action into a seamless whole. The language of cinema became defined by a grammar of 'montage' instead of a flow of continuous experience within simple bounds of Aristotelean dramatic unities.

The language of this new medium will be based on a non-linear topology for narrative navigation and discovery, as well as active participation within the flow of action instead of a passive witnessing. The artistic nature of the medium allows for an interactive weaving of many sensory threads able to create a powerful 'suspension of disbelief' perhaps even more powerful than cinema since it is able to provide willful activity and discovery within a cluster of re-traceable yet changing paths, a condition which mimics the experience of 'life' itself. In addition the experience can be shared 'live' with other participants as well as fictional 'characters' sometimes indistinguishable from living participants...

The new language of virtual experience

It is useful in understanding the artistic nature of the medium of interactive virtual worlds to first understand the key technical means that it relies on and how these have reached a stage of development to support a new medium and the new expressive language of that medium.

The fundamental basis of the medium is a rendering infrastructure, where rendering is used to mean 'realizing' the declarative description of a 'score' consisting of a composition of objects and streams from various media types such as geometry, images, vector graphics and video, sound, music and speech, and possibly others as well. In addition there must be a means of navigating a camera viewpoint in the world, the 'world' being the sum of all possible experiences on the virtual stage specified by the script and consisting of light and animation and sound. The main technical requirement of the medium is that there be sufficient rendering capability present relative to the specified complexity of the world to permit a rate of state update able to give a convincing illusion of 3D, continuous motion and instantaneous response. The rapid development of better and better hardware, especially for polygon and pixel rendering, means that more and more complex worlds can be designed which maintain an adequate rendering rate.

The new language of virtual experience

The other fundamental technical component of the medium is a programmatic infrastructure in which to express intentions of will, reactions, occurrences and behaviors, and changes of view and context. Given the sophistication of computer languages and the increasing power of computer processors, this component provides the means to compose and utilize interactivity and behavior and intelligent control to any degree needed, for example, to create simulations of living things and 'believable' characters and narratives. This aspect of the medium differentiates it from either cinema or simple computer animation.

Thus the development of fast graphic renderers and computer processors, and the emergence of high-speed networks, have provided the technical means to support a new medium and to enable the creation of the first generation of pieces which use the new unique language of the medium...

The new language of virtual experience

The key artistic question regarding the medium of interactive virtual worlds is what is characteristic and unique about it's expressive language. Most important is the volitional and interactive use of the camera available to the viewer. This willful navigation of the world in space, and in time (by multiple visits), makes possible the use of a non-linear experiential topology for the mapping of the development of the piece.

The implications for free navigation are also that these movements and views may instigate events which advance the evolution of the state of the world's appearance, sound, behavior and narrative. Instead of a linear sequence of movement and montage, the world can now be seen as a set of constraints and fields of force which influence the free movement and perception of the identity-camera. In addition, these constraints and fields influence the behavior of environments objects entities and characters, and also the development and unfolding of narrative. Two key aspects of the presence of navigational Will in a non-deterministic world are the ability to trigger events by 'proximity' to the location in space-time of the camera, and by the 'visibility' of aspects of the world relative to the camera...

The new language of virtual experience

The concept of spatial navigational freedom is fairly easy to grasp, but it is important to remember that free navigation implies the re-visiting of scenes and experiences, even in different contexts and sessions. Thus navigational freedom is not simply spatial but temporal as well. In addition, two viewers moving through the same world, even at the same time, may view different things and events. The time-space-knowledge continuum is so complex that for the first time what is suggested is the everyday conditions under which we routinely live. However, it is important to note that there is no need to create a verisimilitude to this idea of the 'everyday'. In particular, physics need not be obeyed, nor causality, nor rationality. We have before us a blank canvas 'life', whatever that may mean. What is 'real' is precisely what is present in the volitional 'experience' of your instance of 'the world.'

One aspect of identity which seems to differ from our experience, but which is within the scope of variation of the medium, is the shift in viewpoint from omniscient to subjective, and all points in between. Most dramatically this is reflected in the camera view. If the view is omniscient the camera makes accessible to the viewer all experience and information relevant to the comprehension of the narrative or sensory development. As the point of view becomes subjective the camera might begin to take a 3rd person viewpoint in which the geometric 'body' of the viewer is in camera. Finally, when the point of view becomes entirely subjective the viewpoint moves within the geometric body which is then perhaps invisible to the personal view entirely, as if the identity of the viewer were a disembodied floating subjective 'singularity'...

The new language of virtual experience

This brings us to the notion of 'montage' in virtual worlds. It is too complex to fully discuss here, and still not fully understood in any case. However, it is useful to point out that rendering 'switches' provide traditional 'cuts', and camera navigation provides the traditional camera pan tilt track and zoom. Additional new techniques consist of 'scale change' which provides a means to perform a 'continuous cut' by context and size reference, and 'change of identity' which provides a means to smoothly adjust the personal context of perception within the same 'objective' scene. What is awaited is the 'Eisenstein' of interactive virtual worlds to create a fairly complete taxonomy of non-linear montage which defines the medium according to a 'grammar' of viewpoint change in order to suggest narrative development in space and time and identity.

The artistic aspect of interactive virtual worlds which is bound most closely to technical aspects of the medium is the seamless surface of various media types unified by a simulated 3D spatial and temporal experience. This 'sensory surface' consists of sound, music, speech, images, vector graphics, text, video, geometry, and lighting. In particular, since the lights and cameras are virtual and do not exist in time and space it is easy to create lighting and camera angles and positions which would be impossible on real sets.

Finally, an interesting aspect of the medium which may possibly be used is a multi-user 'shared' presence. This is the case that two or more navigating identities may move and communicate within the context of the same 'illusion' of a shared world, much like we do in what we charmingly call - 'reality'.