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Project Description
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This is a large scale, mixed reality environment in which two players collaborate to move through two levels. Each player has a wireless, handheld interface which interacts in real time with the screen and sound. One of the interfaces is a wand which interacts locally with the objects on the screen and with sound and the other, the "squisher" interacts to produce more global screen and sound events.
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The French Girls group developed this environment partly as an experiment in collaborative method. The group includes artists, artist programmers, an electronic composer, interface designers and a small, emerging games company led by two very hybrid individuals. We spent about four months together in open ended brainstorming before determining that we were interested in:
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- A simple non narrative visual/sound environment. Direct and delightful.
- Large scale so that the experience felt "immersive" but where the participants could see each other (not HMD's) and overtly communicate with one another.
- Activation of the full body (not just the head and hand).
- A physical and play situation that encouraged collaboration between the participants.
- Interfaces that were different and complimentary with appealing basic actions (so far: pointing and squeezing).
- A relatively intuitive learning curve so that level one, along with the nature of the interfaces, suggests obvious actions to try and then, what works for level 1 suggests the way to approach level 2.
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Beyond this we would like to develop this environment so that it is as practical, robust and portable as possible and begin to experiment with using it in art, game-like, and other situations such as children's hospital waiting rooms. We are also beginning conversations with researchers about adapting it for use with, for example, autistic children.
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