Human Trials
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Josephine Anstey | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Video Documentation Performances at Hallwalls (aug 06) & WVU (sept06) hi res (160MB) or low res (25MB) Rehearsals and Performances at Hallwalls (jan 06) & UB (april 06) long/hi-res(8 mins ~800MB) medium (6mins 180MB) short (3mins 80MB) |
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Human Trials is simultaneously a public/private and embodied/disembodied performance. One user enters an immersive VR and is led on an absurd quest. The challenges appears to be about control and the choices one makes with power; but the games are rigged, the characters are duplicitous, the quest is a decoy, and the underlying test is how to cope with disempowerment. Meanwhile the experience is screened for a voyeuristic audience primed by reality TV. The audience members simultaneously watch multiple viewpoints of the virtual world, while live performers, networked into the VE, attempt to entangle the protagonist in their improvisational machinations. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The performers play two
characters, Patofil and Filopat, who engage the participant in a set of
overt challenges involving computer-controlled characters and dynamic
virtual sets. Beyond these obvious tasks, the participant must also
interpret and negotiate a subtext about world views, relationships and
alliances. The
participant's reactions are logged, interpreted psychologically, and
affect the characters' behavior, the presentation of further
challenges, and the ending. Although we
expect the story to follow a basic arc based on a storyboard, our script/improvisation notes
for the actors are evolving during performances. |
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"Human Trials" was conceived as a pseudo-psychological assessment that determines whether the participant is stuck in a sadistic & narcissistic position (believing that they are the only thing that exists), or a submissive & passive position (not wanting to exist).The participant's responses to different scenarios is used to judge: is she aggressive, bullying, kowtowing, laid back, idealistic, cynical, eager, reluctant to engage? The narrative and visual surface of "Human Trials" connotes video games and fairy tales and is designed to give the participant a sense of security and familiarity, even a sense that this world is simplistic. At the beginning of the experience this is benign - we want the participant to acclimatize rapidly, to feel at home, and perhaps slightly superior to the immersive, networked, virtual space. Then the absurdity of the tasks undercuts the familiar. Increasingly the characters harry and bully the participant - how does the participant cope with socially pressured situations? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Human Trials is designed for CAVE or CAVE-like, tracked, immersive VR systems. 3-D stereo displays with one large screen or multiple screens and/or HMDs. Ideally the participant and two human actors each enter the virtual environment from their own VR system. In effect the actors are manipulating life-size puppets since their tracking systems animate the avatars of Filopat and Patofil that the participant sees. A fall-back position is to have the actors operate their puppets from monitors without tracking systems, in this case they can still navigate their puppet wherever they need in the virtual environment. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Human
Trials builds on Josephine
Anstey and Dave Pape's
previous experience building dramatic VR, The Thing
Growing, and Networked
VR projects, and
Sarah Bay-Cheng's experience with drama and
puppetry. Human Trials is a
sister
project to The Trail The Trial,
experimental research focused on building intelligent
agents to take the place of the human actors. More Info: Documentation of Resolutions 2006 Performance |
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updated May 06 |
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