Abstract
Inhabited television combines collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) with broadcast television so that on-line audiences can participate in television shows within shared virtual worlds. We describe a series of experiments with inhabited television, beginning with the NOWninety6 poetry performance, The Mirror, and Heaven & Hell—Live. These early experiments raised fundamental questions for inhabited television concerning the extent to which it is possible to establish fast-paced social interaction within a CVE, and to which it is possible to produce a coherent and engaging broadcast of this action. We then present a fourth more recent experiment, Out of This World, that directly addressed these questions. We describe how the formulation of inhabited television design principles, combined with the use of dedicated production software for scripting and directing a show and for controlling virtual cameras, enabled us to create a fast-moving and more coherent experience.
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Index Terms
- Inhabited television: broadcasting interaction from within collaborative virtual environments
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Reviews
Licia Calvi
The design, implementation, and evaluation of what the authors call “inhabited television” is described. Inhabited television arises from the combining of broadcast television with collaborative virtual environments (CVEs). It aims at providing both a new entertainment environment and a social communication medium. In inhabited television, the public has the opportunity to interact online with a show that takes place in a shared virtual environment. Whereas the general structure of this show is pre-defined, the actual form it will take directly depends on audience interaction. Another (offline) public will be watching, mostly asynchronously, the results of this interactivity. Inhabited television is therefore comprised of three types of inhabitants: the “performers,” who play on stage; the real “inhabitants,” the on-line audience interacting with the performers through different devices; and the “viewers”, the offline public that passively experiences the interaction staged in the virtual world. To evaluate this interaction spectrum, several scenarios based on this “layered participation,” as the authors name it, have been designed and tested. At one end, there is the (mainly technical) problem of conceiving an entertaining online interaction, including, for example, problems related to real-time collaboration. At the other extreme, there is the need to engage a merely passive audience. The results of these experiments are discussed in detail in the paper. Strikingly, the features that emerge seem common to all settings, regardless of the specific form taken by inhabited television: the performers-inhabitants interactions are mostly game-like, viewers’ engagement is low, the show narrative is poor, and the use of such an advanced technology to produce a traditional show is considered disappointing. Still, this is certainly a promising research area, stretching and experimenting with technological creativity. Online Computing Reviews Service
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