ABSTRACTINTRODUCTIONAPPROACH, BENEFITS AND COSTSWhy stage public performances?How to evaluate public performancesEXAMPLES OF PUBLIC PERFORMANCES IN CVESOut of This WorldAvatar FarmDesert RainCan You See Me Now?REFLECTIONS AND IMPROVEMENTSOrchestration and capturing activityImproving the method – new techniques for data caACKNOWLEDGEMENTSREFERENCESStaging and Evaluating Public Performances as an Approach to CVE Research Steve Benford, Mike Fraser, Gail Reynard, Boriana Koleva and Adam Drozd The Mixed Reality Laboratory The University of Nottingham Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK {sdb, mcf, gtr, bnk, asd}@cs.nott.ac.uk ABSTRACT Staging public performances can be a fruitful approach to CVE research. We describe four experiences: Out of This World, a gameshow; Avatar Farm, a participatory drama; Desert Rain, a mixed reality performance; and Can You See Me Now?, a game that mixed on-line players with players on the streets. For each, we describe how a combination of ethnography, audience feedback and analysis of system logs led to new design insights, especially in the areas of orchestration and making activity available to viewers. We propose enhancing this approach with new tools for manipulating, analysing and sharing 3D recordings of CVEs. Categories and Subject Descriptors I.3 [Computer Graphics] J.5 [Computer Applications] General Terms Human Factors. Keywords Performance, games, entertainment 1. INTRODUCTION We have been using collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) to stage public performances since 1996. This has involved working with artists, television companies, poets and theatre groups to create real-time participatory experiences that involve members of the public alongside actors. Examples include the NOW’96 poetry performance [2], the Out of This World [7] and Avatar Farm [5] inhabited television shows, Desert Rain [11] and most recently, a citywide mixed reality game called Can You See Me Now? [1]. These have been deployed in a wide variety of settings including theatres, galleries, warehouses, over the Internet, in our laboratory and on city streets. In this paper we reflect on the general approach of staging performances as a way of conducting CVE research. We begin by clarifying our motivations. We then summarise four key examples from previous work. Finally, we draw out some common CVE design issues that have emerged and propose ways in which this approach could be enhanced in the future. Our aim is to inspire others to adopt this style of research and, if they do, to be aware of some of the lessons that we have learned over the past six years. 2. APPROACH, BENEFITS AND COSTS There has been a long and rich history of collaboration between artists and technologists dating from the 1960s to create innovative and interactive public art works. On the arts side, one thinks of organisations such as Ars Electronic [12], the International Symposium of Electronic Arts [21] and institutions such as the ZKM (Germany) [24], The ICA (UK) [19], Banff (Canada) [14] and many others. On the technology side, one thinks of research laboratories such as the MIT Media Lab [22], Xerox PARC’s RED group [23] and European projects such as eRENA and eSCAPE under the i3 initiative [18]. Endeavours such as these have produced some notable examples of interactive VR art works (see for example, Osmose by Char Davies’ [20]). At the same time, the entertainment industry, operating in the commercial arena, has become increasingly focused on interactive 3D games, and recently on on-line (multi-player) games and now massively multi-player games. Against this broad backdrop of activity, the focus of our research (and hence of this paper) is defined by two particular concerns: • Using CVEs to create engaging collaborative experiences for the public, where the primary content is provided by dialogue, typically through real-time audio. This is in contrast to a focus on gameplay or single user interaction. • To evaluate these experiences in order to feedback into the technical design of CVE platforms and interfaces. In other words, public deployment or demonstration isn’t enough; it is necessary to learn from public experiences. 2.1 Why stage public performances? There are many valid ways of conducting research into new technologies: theory backed up with mathematical proof, implementation as proof of concept, controlled experiments in the laboratory, and “demo or die” to name a few. The approach of staging public performances involves taking emerging technology out of the laboratory and working with professionals to create an event that can be placed before the public. This often requires organisational and financial support from arts festivals and arts commissioning bodies in addition to more conventional R&D funding. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. CVE’02, SEPTEMBER 30–OCTOBER 2, 2002, BONN, GERMANY. COPYRIGHT 2002 ACM 1-58113-489-4/02/0009…$5.00.. Staging a public performance can be a time consuming and expensive process: the technology has to work and large volumes of equipment may have to be moved, rigged and de-rigged, requiring the support of a production ‘crew’. Why go to the lengths of staging a public performance? We see several distinct advantages to this approach. The discipline of detail – in order to produce a successful public performance it is necessary to focus on the details. Big ideas that seemed feasible (and even demonstrable) in the lab need to be trimmed down, and important new issues that weren’t originally envisaged emerge. It is only in full detail that a concept or technology is fully understood. Situatedness – one only witnesses the true behaviour of a technology (and its users) when it is used in a real situation. A public performance can provide a more realistic setting than a laboratory. A creative playground – art and entertainment provides a creative and relatively safe playground for developing new ideas. Anything goes. Engaging the public – public performances provide a good way of directly involving the public in the research process, a necessary step