Virtual Tales: Developing a VR art project

For Fall 2001, the Department of Media Study & the Center for Computational Research at UB are initiating an exciting Virtual Reality art project. Virtual Tales is designed to bring together students, media artists from the region, and UB faculty to develop an immersive,  geographically-distributed virtual reality art experience. The art work will be developed and displayed on projection-based VR devices; the ImmersaDesk^(tm) at CCR; and a prototype, low-cost VR system we have been developing at Media Study. These systems are offshoots of the CAVE^(r).
 

Idesk	Low-cost, passive stereo, system

The project will have three aspects; an introduction to existing VR art experiences, artists and issues; discussion of the creative content of Virtual Tales; and implementation. We envision that the artists will bring their unique vision and experience to the project and varying degrees of technical expertise. The students will already have experienced in graphics programming and/or modelling with Maya software. The finished Virtual Tales will comprise a variety of VR worlds each created by a team of artists and students.

The Virtual Tales project will be based around a Media Studies course which will introduce the students and artists to Ygdrasil, a VR authoring toolkit . This system has been specifically designed for large scale art projects. Successful projects have been built with this framework and are currently on exhibit at the Ars Electronica Center in Austria and the Foundation for the Hellenic World in Greece.  Ygdrasil handles a number of activities common to VR environments, such as assembling objects into a world, collision detection, navigation, and detecting events and passing messages in response to them. Those without programming experience can use a textfile to build VR worlds using their own models and a variety of modules designed to provide interactivity and assign behaviors to objects. Programmers can extend the system, building their own customized modules as this production demands.  Ygdrasil is a networked system, so at both the development and exhibition stages,  participants can enter the virtual environment from remote locations. The software will be available on VR systems and workstations both in CCR and the Department of Media Study.

The Virtual Tales Project is being led by Josephine Anstey. Her interest in in creating interactive, virtual fiction. Her VR work includes PAAPAB, The Thing Growing and The Multi-Mega Book in the CAVE. If you are regional media artist or UB student interested in this project please contact her. (jranstey@buffalo.edu)