Telling a story in 3D community oriented worlds

Neora (http://www.neora.com/ – ucl talk – Dec. 10^th, 03

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· ME DEA EX_ - Description of the project

o Script – I’m just the DJ of the text

§ combination of text from several adaptations of Medea (Hebrew Translation of) Euripides, Heiner Muller, Seneca

§ meta story, in English, reflected on Middle East conflict

Medea – palestinian, Jason/Creon – Israelis, she is sending her kids to die in suicide murder

§ all the elements of the script are kept in the database, non-standard can be added via script fields inside database

§ html version is generated and resides online – also functions as simulator

o Space

§ Virtual – Outerworlds (based on Activeworlds platfom) 3D universe with 2 designed environments

o Amphi Theatre –

§ meta story happens there.

§ Decision making (votes).

§ Confrontation with previous productions of Medea.

o NYSE – trading floor

§ News exposition

§ acts – from LOVE, SACRIFICE, EXILE, EVICTION, COLLISION, SHAHIDS (MURDER)

§ Real

o 4 walls – 12*12*6 meters each (vs. classic cave)

o Open ceiling – the pros and cons of full mooon

o Construction within AmphiTheatre in Acco

o Actress sitting on “bionic” wheelchair

o Audience sitting on office spinning chairs

o Control desk at the corner

§ 4 PCs connected to wide-angle projectors

§ 1 PC conneced to projector – for textual window

§ 2 PCs for running the bot and controlling the sound

§ Flow and Interaction

The flow and design are based on several factors.

· Time in the show – starting always from before dawn to after sunset

· The choices of the home audience – may influence light/background music/skybox

· The choice of the onsite (voting with SMS)+online users – about scene order at some points

This is the list of scenes. Each has its charectristics in design and ambience

· Intro – Amphi and Medea productions repository, bot=Zara

· Love - wireframe and olive trees, clouds exposition

· Sacrifice – religious symbolism, flag conflict

· Exile – water and unsecurity

· Berayal - nets and networks, gossip exposition, bot=Jason

· Eviction – news exposition, bot=Creon

· Collision - storm/lightning, bot=Jason

· Shahids - explosion/news room

Between each scene, the meta-story takes place, following similar rules.

The votes take place always in the meta-story scenes, the Amphi.

All in all, there are 4 votes for the onsite (real) audience and 6 votes for the online (virtual) audience

State Machine - the database has a rule-based approach (with priorities)

Following is partial tree of choices – one of the several optionsal possibilities:

§ Characterization: Sound and appearance

	Medea	Jason, Creon, Nurse	Chorus
Appearance	Live, on wheel chair, holding a laptop (for home user - video embedded)	3D avatars	Male/female gray simple avatars, representing the online visitors. (Not much pre-defined, so easier to identify with.). Restricted from entering the virtual stage where Jason and Medea are.
Language	Hebrew and Arabic	Hebrew (with his parents German)	English, Hebrew, Arabic, other languages…
Sound	Live	Pre-recorded human sound	Text to speech (synthesized sound)
Background Music	Live DJ – quiet/mellow music	Short loops for background, longer ones for delays between cues

Creon – computerized actor, run by bot, pre-recorded sound (of acress with effect)

§ Bot Technology

The script is run by bot software MAGSBOT, with code developed by the MEDEAEX group.

This code is using ADO/Access database, where all the parameters and texts of the script are entered.

This is a list of all the database tables we’re using:

Following are some screenshots of specific tables.

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