Project Details

Summary

Spirited Ruins is a distributed, immersive environment which showcases visual and auditory works created by invited artists. It uses high-bandwidth, low-latency networking to interconnect ImmersaDesks, CAVEs, interactive kinetic sculptures, workstations, and web clients to create a shared virtual world. It features local animation, globally synchronized events and event multi-casting, 3D sound localization, telephony, and distributed audio streams.

The virtual tourist explores the ruins of a palace built by an ancient civilization which believed that its creations would spontaneously come to life by virtue of their particular form and proportions. Through a confluence of magic and technology, it is possible for participants in the virtual world to bring to life these long-dormant objects. For instance, gallery visitors who interact with kinetic sculptures may appear as gyrating palm trees, and web participants may appear as swarms of bees. This concept of "translated interaction modalities" is a key component of Spirited Ruins. It serves as a metaphor for the evolving electronic culture; it blurs the boundaries among human beings and electronic agents; it spurs the creation of new modes of computer-mediated human interaction.

Long ago, a mysterious culture devoted itself to creating art that would come to life. They believed that by producing objects and environments in just the right form and proportion, life would spontaneously enter their creations. The palace they set out to build used forms from nature such as sea shells and beehives, combined with what they considered the most perfect geometric forms. Walking through the palace one might pass from a majestic gorge to the inside of a huge anthill to a courtyard of pillars and fountains. Throughout this landscape are objects, statues, mobiles, paintings, tapestries, and furniture, all created to summon the force of life.

For unknown reasons, the culture disappeared. Their unfinished palace is a ruin, the sculpture within it in various stages of decay. There are sections virtually unchanged, others nothing more than dusty outlines. In a rare conjunction of time, magic, and technology, we are now able to inhabit the various elements of the palace through virtual reality.

What a visitor finds is a marvel of natural and geometric architectural shapes, grown over with luscious green and varicolored plant life, enlivened by butterflies and the calls of hidden birds. Entering various courtyards, amphitheaters, buildings, and galleries, the visitor finds objects and sculptures which respond to their proximity and gestures. Some seem to have a life of their own, as if the original hopes of their creators had been realized. Familiar and unfamiliar creatures flit about; some objects move, change size, chase each other, talk or sing.

Ideally, this environment will be run on several ImmersaDesks and, if at all possible, in a CAVE. Additionally, there will be other "satellite interaction stations" at various locations which connect to the virtual world. These make use of alternative input and output devices, which allow the visitor to manipulate (physical) sculptural pieces and have the manipulations translated into actions in the virtual world. Similarly, actions in the virtual world are translated by the satellite stations as graphical displays, moving sculpture, and/or audio output.

In a CAVE or at an ImmersaDesk, a 'pilot' navigates through virtual rooms using a tracked, hand-held input device. Pilots can interact with objects using a virtual light-sword connected to this input device. In the simplest case, pressing a button triggers an object's pre-programmed behavior. Some objects are connected to autonomous agents, giving them more complex behaviors. In response to the participants' actions, or based on the agents' own internal heuristics, objects may move, change form, produce sonic variations, etc. All pilots in the networked world are represented by avatars, so they may interact with each other by navigating in the space and by talking via the system's integrated telephony.

Interacting with the satellite stations is a different experience from being immersed in the virtual world. For instance, a person at such a station might blow into a tube and watch the effect that varying the breath has on a lighted panel display. In the immersive world, the effect of blowing might be the swinging of a pendulum. A visitor might pick up and play with a furry, flexible, abstract object. The movement generated by this tactile interaction might be translated into the sound of a thunderstorm or the motion of an amusement park ride in the virtual world.

A key component of Spirited Ruins is the concept of translated interaction modalities. The representations of participants may well be direct and faithful but, by the very nature of virtual reality, these representations could just as well be exaggerated, distorted, or misleading. A participant does not necessarily know whether the behaviors he or she observes come from immersed participants, participants at satellite stations, web surfers, or autonomous agents. Participants interacting with each other and the environment may each be presented with very different representations.

This idea of translated modalities has several implications. First, it is a metaphor for the current and future interactions presented by the evolving electronic culture. Second, it blurs the distinction between communicating with another human being and an electronic agent. Third, it provides an exciting testbed for new input and output methodologies.

We will welcome institutions who have facilities which can support the required graphics who would like to join in from remote sites. A major emphasis of this project is the integration of work by a diverse range of contributors and participation over a geographically wide area.

We expect many attendees to be drawn to this installation. Spirited Ruins is a collaboration among artists and software developers in a cutting-edge computer graphics environment. The immersive experience is rich in visual complexity, participant interaction, and ambient activity. The navigation, 3D localized sound, globally synchronized event streams and event multi-casting are each new, innovative methodologies. The concept of translated interaction modalities is novel and timely.

The hardware used for the primary interactive display consists of a Pyramid Systems CAVE or ImmersaDesk (1-4 video projectors and tracking hardware), SGI Onyx2 with at least one gigabyte of memory, and an audio subsystem (2 SGI Indys with at least 128 megabytes of memory, 4 powered speakers, 1 powered subwoofer and 1 audio mixer). The software used for the primary interactive display consists of SGI IRIX, CAVE library, SGI Performer, and audio, graphics, and networking code developed at Boston University.

The hardware used for the satellite installations includes SGI O2 workstations, MIDI I/O interfaces (e.g., Pavo MIDItools Computer), and interactive sculptures created by participating artists. The software used for the satellite installations consists of SGI IRIX and audio, graphics, and networking code developed at Boston University.

This application requires a high-bandwidth, low-latency network; a bandwidth of at least two megabits per second and network latencies of no more than 100 milliseconds are required for best performance.

These projects are built on top of the DAFFIE (Distributed Architectural Framework For Immersive Environments) software developed by members of SCV, including Glenn Bresnahan, Director; Erik Brisson, Manager of Graphics Programming; Robert Putnam, Audio Programmer; and Kathleen Curry, Graphics Programmer.