From: MEO To: Subject: Massmedia VS VR Date: Wednesday, November 30, 1994 11:28AM _Mass-media VS VR_ When I read about VR, I hear two schools of thoughts. On one hand people see it as a barrier builder where a user finds himself alone in a virtual womb, on the other, as a link builder where users from far away will converge on a virtual island. Those schools agree on one point though: the users will be separated from their immediate material reality therefore their material neighbours. Open brackets please. Quebec is a province of 7 million habitants of wich about 5,5 million speak french. Unlike many industrial nations outside US, we listen to local TV like crazy. The top 5 shows last weak had over 1 million viewership. One had 2,7 million. In the US, this would be an equivalent of 130 million people listening to the same show every week. When I get to work, I know what I can talk about: TV. That feeling of shared experience helps me get rid of the guilt of being isolated watching the box alone. Close brackets please. What bothers me with VR is the sharing the experience part. I have a feeling that I will be able to do so only with other users *online* while experiencing VR. Not unlike the Net where it's easier for me to write about it than to talk about. IMHO, thats how VR will isolate us from our material neighbours. Maybe I'm being pre-nostalgic. Maybe I won't need to share it elsewhere. If it is so, VR will change the social realities. Deeply. Mart!n Ouellette meo@ego.psych.mcgill.ca ********************************************************** As U anglo say *Excuse my french* Usual disclaimers apply. From: Paula Davidson To: Subject: Interesting Discussions Date: Wednesday, November 30, 1994 8:15AM ANNOUNCING CYBERMIND AN ELECTRONIC FORUM FOR THE DISCUSSION OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS OF SUBJECTIVITY IN CYBERSPACE We are all dwelling in cyberspace, coursing through the wires, becoming cyborg and becoming human. We are subjects of a realm which is totally charted, and completely unknown. CYBER-MIND is devoted to an examination of the new subjectivities that have emerged and might yet emerge in this arena. We are interested in particular in the philosophical, psychological/psychoanalytic and social issues engendered, particularly as they concern the user and the social. Some issues that might be relevant: the psychology of intimacy, the role of gender, the phenomenology of the terminal screen, neurosis and paranoia on the Net, the relationship of lag to community and communi- cation, sex/gender/sexual orientation theory and electronic subjectivity, the role of the symbolic or imaginary in computer communication, the implications of symbolic extensions of the human ("external memory", and so forth), fantasy and the hallucinatory aspects of email/USENET groups/MUDs, and the psychoanalysis of lurking. This will be an "open list" - posts on all aspects of the above issues and more will be welcomed. It will be open to general discussion, group readings of published works, and the sharing and critique of participants' works -in-progress. We would stress, however, that our intent is to explore these issues in the broadest sense. Discussions focused on IRC, MUD's/MOO's, Virtual Reality, etc. are already readily available on the Internet. While it is perfectly acceptable to discuss these issues when relevant, we do wish to discourage threads that are too narrowly limited to any particular medium or "sub-realm" of cyberspace. Similarly, while critical examination of cyberpunk literature can yield important insights, and we will welcome discussion of work in that genre, "fan"-type discussion of cyberpunk, of the type available on alt.cyberpunk, etc., is not appropriate on this list. One concern we hope to address is the way in which much theoretical work on cyberspace to date reflects an exclusive, hegemonic bias, thus foreclosing some of the most interesting and radical of possibilities for the development of Net culture. We plan to challenge ourselves and the list members to integrate issues of race, sex, class and multiculturalism in our efforts to think cyberspace together. We believe this list will be an important forum for opening up new perspectives on cyberspace and cyberculture, and are anxious and excited to begin a dialogue with all interested parties on the types of issues we have described here. Our list is open to all interested parties, be they academics, Net "technicians," or ordinary citizens of cyberspace who wish to join us in thinking and discussing the present and future of this fascinating, exciting, and sometimes frustrating realm - and, ultimately, of ourselves. To subscribe, send the message: subscribe cybermind
to majordomo@world.std.com. You should recieve a message confirming your subscription. If you have any difficulties, or more general questions, contact the list-owners: mcurrent@picard.infonet.net - or - sondheim@panix.com Michael Current and Alan Sondheim ================================================================ Paula Davidson T h e A l t e r n a t i v e R e a d i n g R o o m an unconventional library <> free & open to the public Wednesday - Saturday 11 - 9 40 Wall St. Asheville, NC 28801 USA (704) 252-2501 tarr@mercury.interpath.net ================================================================ ---------- From: MEO To: Subject: Realism thru history Date: Wednesday, November 30, 1994 3:49AM _Realism through history_ For Plato, the real world was the one of Ideas: objects are only reflections of a Reality that goes beyond the existential world. In the sacred mentalities, reality is just an illusion, a temporary state. All traditions before the industrial revolution agree to always shift reality, give it a relative opacity or to give it a sublimation status. Those traditions were managing Nature, not Reality. In the Idealist circles, power was expressed through goods, land and people. At the 19th century, we will tackle reality: at least, that was what was said. Reality becomes something that we must exploit, multiply, manipulate. Sublimation becomes appropriateness. Realism, as an ideology, is an invention of modern power in it's seek to cut and paste reality. For the free trade, we needed an ideology that valorised merchandise. Capitalist and Marxist philosophies agree: what is to be tackled is the technological and industrial reality. Reality is immediat. Reality is manifuctured. Reality is the being-there of the objects. Realism, in that point of view, is the idea that reality, objective by nature, is transmissible. Before the industrial revolution, we experienced and challenged the world based and a linear moral going from good to bad with alot of gray areas. Since we shifted to true or false. Bolean (sp?) logic harnessed or century. From digital computing to lawyers in courts, we evolved from a linear gray scale to a binary mode. True or false became more distinctive than good and/or bad. And now what? VR comes and challenges realism by exploding the pure notion of object. And the gray scale going from pleasant to unpleasant is taking the place of true or false. Comments anyone? Mart!n Ouellette meo@ego.psych.mcgill.ca ********************************************************** As U anglo say *Excuse my french* Usual disclaimers apply. ---------- From: MEO To: Subject: V-discussion about VRStory (LONG) Date: Wednesday, November 23, 1994 2:29PM Are we starting to have dialog here, or is it just an illusion? Let me comment on the three last postings on the list in regards of story telling and VR. I'll be misquoting Eileen, Jon and Kevin partly for the fun of it, partly to try to give some continuity in all of this. (Please excuse my english, me is a francophone...) EILEEN GUNN : Isn't there room for lots of approaches to virtual worlds? MARTIN OUELLETTE: Sure there is. But lets just consider the specific cases were we want to tell a story. I'm not ignoring the fact that VR could compete with other forms of communications (as looking at a sunset bloom), but let's just talk about story telling. KEVIN GOLDSMITH: I am a computer-controlled character in a murder mystery. MARTIN: If you want to take that position Kev, it's alright with me but for the time being, I'll consider you as being as a structuralist. JON HOLDSWORTH: I believe strongly in chaos and emergent behaviour. MARTIN: Wow. You two will have alot to chat about. Having you three here, I would like to make a few clarifications. Firstly, I want to thank you Kev for giving us a common vocabulary. Please remind me though of your 5 kinds of VR story telling. KEV: (MISQUOTED, APPENDED AND ALL SNIPPED) There's 1- Traditionnal theatre (the user is a spectator), 2- Improvised theatre (user as actor), 3- Improv w/NUC [NUC: non-user characters] (users don't assume all characters), 4- Dinner theater (user interact without changing the plot) and 5- On-site theatre (user is a moving theatre). MARTIN: Thanks. On the point of vue of story telling, let's agree that Traditionnal theatre, Dinner theatre and On-site theatre don't give us any challenge. The plot is all controled by the computer. It leaves us with Improvised theatre with or without NUCs. JON: I believe strongly in chaos and emergent behaviour. KEV: Problems that still occur. Can I drop out of a story in the middle and come back later? What does that mean to the other user-characters in the story? What if I want to join a story in the middle? Is it possible? If so, how can a develop a "plot" to account for the sudden appearance of this new character. MARTIN: True this is a nice problem. I just had a flash [actually it took me quite a while to find a reasonnable solution...]. I think that we always need NUCs to help the plot. What if a user can possess a character (possess like in the Exocist) just for a certain time. And when that characters is freed by it's ghost (the user), it becomes a NUC. This *law* would give the folowing possibilities: while the character is a NUC, the plot necessairly goes forward, a user can quit any time with out disturbing the other users (and NUCs :) ), a user can jump in any time. KEV: I'll get back to you on this one... JON: (INSISTING) I believe strongly in chaos and emergent behaviour. MARTIN: Fine, let's talk about it. So your are disturbed with all this jumbo about structure. You think that VR must be free and wild. JON: This is VR, its a new universe with some old habits. We are going to learn lots of new tricks and traps. MARTIN: I agree. I'm just trying to understand what we can keep from what we have learned in tha last 2000 years from Aristotle to Speilberg. JON: The only reason I forgave this man [Speilberg] his mortal sins against directorship was 'Schindlers List'. Not even the memory of 'Duel' had been able to erase the bad taste of 'Close Encounters' and 'Jurassic Park' priorly. MARTIN: Wait a minute now Jon! Speilberg's values are often bizarre (sp?). But he worked with the same narrative structure in Jurassic than he did in Schindlers List.This guy can tell a story, can move a croud. Not because of what he says, but how he does it. JON: I agree that one should never, ever throw away what has been demonstrated before. MARTIN: I'm glad you agree with the Object of my post. KEVIN: Are objects persistent? ALL: LAUGHTER MARTIN: Let's come back to the that reality aura in VR story telling. EILEEN: In terms of a "realism aura", I think people have that in their heads already. What the author of a book or a play, the director of a movie, the creator of a VR space, has to do is =not disturb= the realism aura. Don't interfere with the dreamspace: create a work that brings the reader/viewer/participants in, and doesn't jar them out out their dream. MARTIN. Touche (as we say in french). Listening to Kev, I'm becoming way to way formal. Am I considering this all to much of a task. Will users force that aura in or out? EILEEN: People =want= to believe. JON: A disconcerting thing I've found, when playing fast- network graphical games, is that after a while you forget that the other things running around in there are robots. You start to treat them really as wildlife. MARTIN: So that reality aura thing is a false problem in the way that users want to beleive. Want to come in that new world. But what about plots? EILEEN: Create a situation that encourages role-playing. MARTIN: We come back to Kev Impro theatre. The plot must just be sustained by a few NUCs. But I don't know. Me head is melting. JON: I think it revolves around the arrogance of being Human. EILEEN: Let a thousand v-flowers bloom MARTIN: I'll take a break now. I'm all confused. JON: That's what we're here for isn't it? Martin meo@ego.psych.mcgill.ca USUAL DISCLAIMERS APPLY ---------- From: MEO To: Cc: Subject: Re: storie telling vessels... Date: Friday, November 11, 1994 10:25AM On Fri, 11 Nov 1994 vidarb@unik.no wrote: > One of the major advantages of VR is the posibility to design > interaction according to a plot and a story-line. One can think > of it as theatre where you participate with the 'agents' of the > world to shape a story together. > Lots of good ideas to be found in Brenda Laurels book: > "Computers as Theater". You'll find more references on virtual drama at ftp://ftp.u.washington.edu/public/virtual-worlds/faq/other/virtuaa "Timothy J. Anderson" gives out a good list of Brenda Laurel's writtings and those of others. I didn't read any of it (yet) but at the risk of sounding naive, let me share some thoughts about story-telling and VR. As a film director, I consider story-telling as taking the viewer by the hand and getting him where I wan't him to be. I see VR as a setting, as a world -- it's static and waits to be discovered. In order to create a story, I would imagine you'd have to force the user through certain steps not unlike other interactice games (ie AD&D computer games for ex.). The user must have illusion of control (like in material reality) but the programmer maintains ultimate control. The balance between that illusion and the real control will insure a plot (a dramatic unbalance of forces, than a mandate, than the quest, etc.) but still give the user an 'Effet de realite' (could be translated as 'realism aura'?). But is that enough? I encountered a problem as a user of interactive games: the lack of rythm. Pace seems always to be in the hands of the user, not unlike reading. I don't know if we can control pace and still keep that Effet de realite? The strenght of VR is that the user goes where he wants, when he wants. I don't know how to resolve this dilemma. Over and above the newness of VR, we must be certain to maintain enternainment value. I don't beleive we could acheive this with out respecting 'golden rules' of story telling as developped from Aristotle to Speilberg. Mart!n Ouellette (My writings are my own and in no way implicate my computer or otherwise) ---------- From: Lisa Dusseault To: Subject: RE: info needed Date: Wednesday, November 30, 1994 12:32PM Have you read Elizabeth Reid's thesis on MUDs and on IRC? This thesis is available for anonymous FTP from ftp.ee.mu.oz.au in /papers/emr (the README explains what all the files are), or on the Web at http://www.ee.mu.oz.au/papers/emr/index.html. I found that most of the points Reid's thesis agree with my personal experiences in MUDding. Also, I have a bunch of articles collated on the psychology of VR that I could send you via email if you like. In return, do you have any pointers to good material? Lisa Dusseault (displaced Canadian) ---------- | From: MEO | To: | Subject: info needed | Date: Wednesday, November 30, 1994 3:53AM | | Received: from mail2.netcom.com by netmail.microsoft.com with SMTP (5.65/25-eef) | id AA26560; Wed, 30 Nov 94 01:42:54 -0800 | Received: by mail2.netcom.com (8.6.9/Netcom) | id AAA13834; Wed, 30 Nov 1994 00:49:29 -0800 | Received: from ego.psych.mcgill.ca by mail2.netcom.com (8.6.9/Netcom) | id AAA13739; Wed, 30 Nov 1994 00:49:11 -0800 | Received: (meo@localhost) by ego.psych.mcgill.ca (8.6.9/8.6.4) | id DAA03553; Wed, 30 Nov 1994 03:54:23 -0500 | Message-Id: | Mime-Version: 1.0 | Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII | Sender: owner-vworlds-list@netcom.com | Precedence: list | | _Info needed_ | | I would like to get info on the following topics. I would | appreciate personnal experiences, www sites (for lynx) or ftp | files. | | * personna on the Net VS real personnality | * side effects of prolonged VR experience | * ultimate VR goals (technological (word?) and social) | | Thanx! | | Mart!n Ouellette | | meo@ego.psych.mcgill.ca | | ********************************************************** | As U anglo say *Excuse my french* | Usual disclaimers apply. | | | | ---------- From: To: Subject: Wondering & wandering Date: Friday, November 25, 1994 11:44AM Martin, no wonder your head is melting. I'm adrift in terminology, some of which I've introduced myself. This is taking on the nature of a thought-experiment: rules and definitions are seizing control, and an assumption has appeared (as if out of nowhere) that if we just think it all through properly, we'll have understood something useful. I'm not sure that's true. In fact, I'm sure that's not true. There is no general agreement on what a plot is or what makes a sequence of events work as a plot. No just here, but anywhere. Aristotle was not so much setting down rules as analyzing what works. Creating an interesting plot has more to do with breaking rules than following them. Martin, your table describes a certain kind of plot, but not all plots. There is something in hack science-fiction circles known as the seven-point plot outline. This involves 1. a hero or protagonist 2. a desired thing 3. an obstacle 4. an effort to overcome the obstacle 5. a failure of that effort 6. a second effort 7. success/failure/resolution/whatever This, too, is a certain type of plot. But there are lots of other kinds of plots, and many, many writers start somewhere else than with the creation of a plot. When I write, I sometimes start with a character in a situation, sometimes with just a character's voice saying something, sometimes with a visual image, sometimes with just a couple of great random words. Then I write until I run out of steam, then I go away and do something else for a while. Then I go back to what I've written and try to figure out what's going on. What am I trying to say? Sometimes I tell myself to forget thinking about what I'm trying to say, and just say -something- dammit. I have found that if I write more than a thousand words of anything, I get at least 800 words of -something-. Once, just once, a story -- plot, character, tone, background, ending, everything -- appeared full-blown in my head, and all I had to do was write it down. (I wish that would happen more often.) Many writers do use outlines, and they may be more prolific writers than I am. (Though I think my stories may be stranger than theirs.) But most writers incorporate happy accidents that appear from subconscious sources. Structure comes from within the brain of the writer and the reader. After the fact, a critic comes along and identifies a plot. Collaboration is like symbiosis. I am starting a collaboration on a story right now. My friend just emailed me the beginning of a story that has setting, characters, conflict, and tone. What am I going to do? I am going to try to pick up on all the clues she has dropped. To use Kevin's term, I am going to assume that all the objects are persistent; I'll assume that my collaborator -meant- everything she said, whether she knew she was saying it or not. Then I will juggle those objects myself, and add a bunch of new objects. Very quickly there will be too many objects flying around for either of us to keep them all in the air. Some of them will fall by the wayside. At some point, we will decide which objects to keep, and which to toss behind the curtain where the audience can't see them. Can't this be a model for virtual plot development? Maybe not, since my friend and I are experts, of course, and know all the pitfalls of collaboration and never make mistakes and produce publishable work on the first draft. (Kids, don't try this at home!) To tell the truth, plot development is a lot like making sausage. The consumer doesn't want to know how it's done, and shouldn't look at the bits and pieces too carefully. So there's one potential problem for interactive storytelling. You'll have to hide the plotmaking machinery from the consumer, even if the consumer is helping to tell the story. Let's not be too concerned about controlling what the story is -- that will take care of itself to some extent. Let's figure out how to hide the pulleys and ropes. Or maybe how to make them so visible that the user ignores them. Apropos of which, have any of you ever seen the Japanese film "Double Suicide," directed by Teshigahara? It includes scenes from a Bunraku puppet play, in which large puppet-dolls are moved by black-clothed puppeteers. The puppeteers at first look sinister, then the puppets grab your attention and you forget about the puppeteers. Then, because it's a movie and the puppeteers are there for a reason, you become aware of the puppeteers again, and they seem even more sinister, because they have come to stand for Fate, or the rules of Edo-period Japan, or some dark force that propels the characters toward their deaths, or whatever Teshigahara had in mind. In conventional Bunraku, I believe the watcher continues to forget the puppeteers, but either way, the viewer incorporates them into the universe of the play. I'm sorry this wanders so, but I suppose wandering is inevitable.... Some other time, I'd like to discuss the possible uses of language generation programs like Eliza to animate some of the on-line entities. Eileen Gunn ---------- From: Knut Mork To: Subject: RE: info needed Date: Thursday, December 01, 1994 9:14AM Reply to your message of Wednesday November 30, 1994 14:01 +0100 ----------------------------------------------------------------- MEO: Where can I learn more about personna on the Net VS real personnality? Kevin: MUDs are probably the best things to look at for this kind of stuff. Check out Pavel Curtis' Papers at ftp://parcftp.xerox.com also Amy Bruckman of the Media Lab at MIT. Knut: These papers offer a very hands-on, practical take on it; for a more in-depth philosophical view (and an enjoyable reading experience, this woman writes *extremely* well) I'd recommend some papers by Roseanne Allequere ('Sandy') Stone, who works at the University of Texas in Austin. You can find them by ftp at ftp://actlab.rtf.utexas.edu/art_and_tech/stone_papers/ and on the Web at http://www.uio.no/~mwatz/cybermind/articles/index.html --Knut From: listserv@netcom.com Subject: Welcome to vworlds-list Reply-To: listserv@netcom.com -- Welcome to the vworlds-list mailing list! If you ever want to remove yourself from this mailing list, send the following command in email to "listserv@NETCOM.COM": unsubscribe vworlds-list unitcirc@etext.org Here's the general information for the list you've subscribed to, in case you don't already have it: The Virtual Worlds list exists for the discussion of the creative and Intellectual possibilities of "Virtual Worlds." We will not be restrictive in our definition of a what a virtual world is. In fact, that could be one of the main areas of discussion! The only thing I would like to avoid, for the moment, are some of the technical aspects. Mainly because technical discussion tend to stiffle the artistic ones because of their insistence on "reality." Lets forget reality for a little while and dream! The list is unmoderated and completely open. Feel free to forward this to anyone who is interested. Administrative address: vworlds-list-request@netcom.com List Owner: Kevin Goldsmith (kevin@unitcircle.org)