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![[Inter Space / Global Interior Project #1]](image/inter-space-e.gif)
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Global Interior Project #1 FUJIHATA Masaki In both the real world as well as the world inside the network, people want to meet other people. No matter how far machines advance, the people who create machines and the people one encounters through machines are more interesting than the machines in the middle. |
In starting this project, I wanted to express in some form the possibilities inherent in the electronic network, to turn its latent potential into a work. The broader theme was to create a model of a plus-virtual space within the comparative relationship of real and virtual space. Moreover, by enabling feedback from the user in virtual space, the model resisted the one way flow of consciousness from the real to the virtual. I wanted to create an apparatus in which the confusion born in this relation would force us to rethink and grasp anew our own reality. In actuality, the user would enter this world through terminals placed in four separate locations throughout the city. For me, it was a great joy to witness their play in this world of images without violence, which was expressed in the real world as doors opening and closing softly. Ordinarily, the ability to see who is there and what they are doing is a special privilege and penalty granted only to the network system administrator, but this work was opened up, like a public square. Some users were merely passing through this space on their way to somewhere else. By creating an interface of chance encounter between the virtual world and reality, the work changes the structure of the virtual world. I would be happy if the humor of these changes has been communicated to those who encountered the work. |
| It seems that even in the area of Internet-related software, the focus of discussion has shifted from competition among technologies to the human relations that unfold there, what may be called the style of communication. If one sees communication as simply the distribution of content, the result is the argument that "content is more important than technology." If, however, one considers communication to be technology that directly links person to person, it gives rise to the question of "the nature of media space." | |
| What is this "media space"? In the case of the telephone, for example, why do people who meet every day, who know that they will meet the very next day, still call each other on the telephone? It means there is a kind of conversation that can only be transmitted over the telephone, and that the telephone has created a space for this type of conversation to occur smoothly. There are increasing numbers of people who have learned to use the television, radio, telephone, fax, pocket beepers, cellular phones, and e-mail in different ways according to their purpose. However, I still think these devices are not enough. I want a receptacle suited to the content I wish to express to the other person. There must be some content that cannot be effectively expressed through existing media. I think that artists have always been creating these new receptacles, and in fact artists have historically been the ones to destroy old frameworks. The forms of media should ultimately be kaleidoscopic, and the user should be able to freely remake them. In other words, media itself should become the object of expression. At the very least, I feel this is possible in the new world of the network being created by the Internet. A multitude of new applications and tools are released daily, but it is interesting that the old ones are still used. This is because the environments of the old applications and tools have given rise to their own media spaces, and people have learned to use them according to different purposes. A culture has already formed here in which, when a new tool appears, people are able to immediately try it out and voice their opinions of it. It may be that everyone is bent on discovering new ideas and creating new media spaces. |
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| This work was produced by FUJIHATA Masaki using the "InterSpace" platform developed by the NTT Human Interface Laboratories. It is a design for a new relationship between virtual and real space made by interposing between them a model of virtual space rendered as a real object. | It consisted of an access terminal called the "InterSpace Cube" and a "Matrix Cube" made up of many small boxes with opening and closing doors containing an assortment of objects. InterSpace cubes were set up in NTT/ICC Gallery, Spiral, and P3 and the Matrix Cube was installed in Spiral. Using a trackball positioned inside the peep hole of the InterSpace cubes users were able to move through the virtual space and manipulate the objects within it. The virtual space consisted of 48 cubic rooms and it was possible to move freely from one cube to any neighboring cube. In each room was suspended a computer-generated image of an everyday item such as a book, an apple, a hat, a shoe, a doorknob, or a coffee cup. The Matrix Cube was made up of 48 boxes each containing a real book, apple, hat or other object identical to those in the virtual space. The doors to each of the boxes would open and close according to the movements of the users. Thus whenever a user was in the room with the apple, the door of that box would open and if three users were all in different rooms, three doors would be open at once. When all three users were in one room, only the door to that room would be open. As a result, the access patterns of the users could be witnessed by a third person watching the openings and closings of the doors. There were also several gimmicks in the virtual rooms. For example, touching the image of a telephone would trigger an actual telephone to ring, pressing a virtual button would cause the room to warp randomly, and a realtime image of the entire Matrix Cube could be projected onto the wall of any room from which it was possible to jump to another room by selecting it with the cursor. There were also rooms in which the image of the user him or herself or of that of another user was shown from behind. It was also possible to talk in groups with people one had met in the virtual space while seeing each other's faces as in a tele-conferencing session, to speak to other users from the so-called "meeting room," and to meet and move through the space together while chatting. All of these diverse forms of communication, thoroughly divorced from reality, were tried out over the course of the exhibition. |
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About InterSpace SUZUKI Gen, NTT Software In the field of communications technology today, advances are being made in research on the computer communications environment called "cyberspace," a development of telephone and personal computer communications which uses multimedia including computer graphics, video and sound. The idea of cyberspace is to create a virtual space on the network using multimedia, wherein people can gather for social activities, communications and information exchange just as though they were in a virtual city. It offers what might be called a new electronic social spaceムa virtual space in which people can come into contact with other people and information. |
In an effort to bring about the realization of just such a highly functional cyberspace, NTT is now conducting research into and development of InterSpace, a virtual space platform for multiple user participation based on the realtime transmission of images taken by video camera. By operating simple devices such as joysticks and trackballs, each user can freely navigate through virtual buildings, rooms, and plazas (depicted in three-dimensional computer graphics) just as though driving a car, closely observe informational objects, approach and speak to the figures of other users, and get together with groups of users for discussions and various other interactions. On the InterSpace system, each user's multimedia PC is connected to the virtual space server via network, and the virtual space shared by all of the users is expressed as a visual world seen from the virtual perspective of each user. Furthermore, the magnitude of sounds and images is processed according to the relevant virtual distances, thus allowing the user to sense his or her own movement within the space. Also, since the video portraits of each user are transmitted to the other party, InterSpace effectively realizes communication in the form of a realistic social relationship equivalent to actually meeting someone in person. |
| By realizing and offering such basic functions of the new electronic society, InterSpace aims to serve as a pioneering leader in the future world of cyberspace. |
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The map of all 48 InterSpace Cube Rooms.
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After Global Interior Project FUJIHATA Masaki Creating a work of art means constantly envisioning its completion and bringing it in a direction appropriate to the reception one anticipates. This is especially true when the work of art exists, like a novel or a play, on a linear time line, but of course it is also an issue in painting. Nonetheless, readers read deeply. Unexpected interpretations and emotions inevitably arise. What happens, then, when the form, rather than the content, when the medium itselfムsay the choice of font or layout design in the case of a novelムtakes on an expressive function? The reader's reaction will naturally be affected by the form of the medium. This project dealt precisely with the re-designing of media and those of us who made it found it yielded a variety of results we had never anticipated. |
First of all, this work was designed to highlight the uncanny possibilities latent within what we call the "network," but for the user it could easily appear as a kind of Disneyland attraction. Initially a decision is made that simply categorizes the work as interesting or boring. If the user who finds it interesting goes on to think about what made it interesting, I feel that I have been successful. In fact I was happy to hear that there were many people who enjoyed aspects of the work that I never thought would be so interesting. For example, one person, after meeting a talkative group in a certain room, went to the site where they were supposed to be (in fact you could see them from behind) to find that they were female high-school students. It seems that the feeling of leaving the virtual space where they had been chatting and then actually meeting these girls was unforgettably vivid. Thus, although existence in virtual space and bodies in physical ones are not entirely separate phenomena, when the two meet there is always a certain shock. I thought I had constructed a complex conceptual system, but this renewed enjoyment of the substantive reality of live human beings and real space was quite an inspiration. |
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Reflecting on "InterSpace" SUZUKI Gen, NTT Software In conjunction with IC '95, Mr. FUJIHATA Masaki and technicians from the NTT Group collaborated to undertake a new challenge in the design of cyberspace using InterSpace. From planning through to production, the participating members were faced with an extremely tight schedule (frightening just to recall), but they pushed forward in this collaboration between people of differing backgrounds with great excitement, stimulated by highly inspirational inquiries into virtual network space -- questions such as how to conceive of design for an information/communications environment where people and information interact, what can be concluded from a thorough consideration of the pleasures of interaction, what kind of beauty in computer graphics might be comparable to beauty in the real world, and where the boundary between reality and virtuality lies. |
The conversion of the extremely simple space of a cube into a hyper network elicited new possibilities for an artificial space unhindered by physical conditions, possibilities not suggested by the usual models of actual high-rise buildings. I also believe that the interface of placing one's body halfway into a box full of artificial images and sounds -- as though crawling out of a hole into black radiation -- as even more successful than originally anticipated in realizing new spatial sensations. Furthermore, the reactions of actual users during the exhibition period led to a number of surprises and discoveries about the appeal of networking, the depth of interest people have in strangers, the balance between people and information, and so forth. |
| I am confident that the experiences and design concepts derived from this project will form an important first step towards turning the fundamental ICC concept of a "Virtual Museum" into a reality. |