Potential Funding/Research work
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In preparing the workshop we found potential funding possibilities, as well as realising there are very few academic publications on the topic of game environments for artistic use. These funding possibilities include:
- Beyond Text - Broad AHRC programme fitting with participatory games and culture as well as many other topics around the use of virtual worlds, and for which many opportunities will be released this year
Beyond Europe - various possibilities, but most likely to do with South Korea, as this country has a huge amount of online games players, particularly in virtual worlds such as world of warcraft and Lineage II. http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/about/international/BeyondEurope/krf.asp
- further methods network workshops exploring the artistic use of alternative interfaces such as the Wii remote.
Future Work
Wiimote
Although most movement sensor work on the Wiimote is done via it's accelerometer and gyrometer, it can also use it's internal infrared sensor. It requires a candle as a heat source in order to work as an infrared mouse pointer, but this is much more accurate than the tilt sensors on the wii. So: calibrate the wiimote with a heat source of your choice (a candle or a light), and tracking will happen based on that source. However - you can also choose to leave the wiimote still, and move the heat source - so in this way any moving heat source such as a fire juggler would be able to directly trigger a visual display or other devices via the wiimote(s). A potential project could involve preparing a performance that used this technology.
Mat Dalgliesh had a further idea of hooking up infrared transmitters to headphones. This would allow them to do pointing via head tracking - which has a huge amount of uses, not least file management and game operation. Perhaps commercial funding exists to create this piece of technology as a prototype.
Wiimote and Gestures/Animation
Second life allows avatar poses to be uploaded via the simple tool Avimater or Qavimator - it's successor. Both programs are open source. The gesture system of secondlife attaches gestures to keypresses, which in turn can be linked to glovepie scripts that control the wii. We discovered during the workshop that simple movements of the wiimote and nunchuck or of various wiis operated by different people could then move and animate one or more avatars in great detail. This allows for a direct correspondence between a performer's movements and those of their avatar, but one that would require a lot of rehearsal and preparation. A project that used all these aspects would require a scripter, a wiimote operator, a computer operator and a dancer/performer/puppeteer.
Staging Area
Open Simulator is the BSD licensed open source version of second life's server software. http://opensimulator.org/
This in effects allows a cheap equivalent of a second life island to be run from any moderately powered server. The developer community around this software is very active and healthy, and new functionality emerges each day, although it's not currently on a par with second life. Different opensim servers can also be networked forming a grid of land similar to that which is managed by second life's Linden Labs, and many alternate grids are springing up and growing all the time.
Many uses exist for this server outside of it's use as a staging area for artistic productions: Geographical data can be quickly imported from Google Earth or other mapping web applications to give the exact appearance and land characteristics of a real physical area. In-game editing and ease of sound/media uploads (they no longer cost linden dollars for each upload) allow for very quick creation of what we discovered is a very time consuming process - map building. 3d wiki-like applications are also springing up - [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8zYPLDrVAY Here is a link for a "wiki tree"] - a 3d tree of 3d designs added to and modified by users of the tree. Applications like this, whose interface is in a 3d world, have a direct link to real world applications, may appeal to HCI researchers or designers and there are known benefits in architecture and 3d modelling. There would be some case for running an opensim server in an academic environment, as much more than a "virtual campus", although this would probably depend on part funding and collaboration between many different projects.
But as an artist's tool, this would also have it's merits, with potential uses including machinima, backdrops, augmented reality gaming/simulation environments, participative explorations, walkthoughs and communication means.
Methods in 3d engine work
If a performance is staged using a 3d engine, or performed using one, what is the method used? What are the assumptions we make and the jargon(s) used? How is academic arts language a potential obstacle in working with games designers and machinima makers? All these are questions that need more research - so that we can perfect and inform the way we work when using these tools and working with different types of people. Sita Popat has done a lot of research in this area. Any performance done in this area would allow for such a meta-study of the processes followed.