From: Bob and Kelly Crispen (crispen_at_hiwaay.net)
Date: 13 December 1998
Apologies if this doesn't get there the way I'm hoping it will
but fear it won't.
If you aren't already registered with the New York Times online and don't care to register, let me know and I'll try to copy the page and images down to my site and deconstruct the links.
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/12/cyber/artsatlarge/10artsatlarge.html
The big news for me is that Waxweb, a pre-VRML site they showed off at VRML 95, is back in VRML and back on the air.
So whatever happened to Tom Meyer? Does anybody besides me feel
old at the mention of Tom and Waxweb?
--
Bob & Kelly Crispen
crispen_at_hiwaay.net
"And I observe, when any Yahoo comes from London out of Curiosity [to]
visit me at mine own House, we neither of us are able to deliver our
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<TITLE>arts_at_large: Hypertext Fiction Adds a Third Dimension</TITLE></head>
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<BLOCKQUOTE><BLOCKQUOTE>
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<H5>December 10, 1998</H5><br>
</NYT_DATE>
<img src="/library/tech/images/artslarge.gif" border=0 alt=arts_at_large width=145 height=39>
<!--BYLINE-->
<NYT_BYLINE version="1.0" type="main">
<H5>By MATTHEW MIRAPAUL 
</H5>
</NYT_BYLINE>
<!--HEADLINE-->
<NYT_HEADLINE version="1.0" type="main">
<H2>Hypertext Fiction Adds a Third Dimension</H2>
</NYT_HEADLINE>
<!--TEXT-->
<IMG SRC="http://graphics.nytimes.com/images/h.gif" alt=H border=0 align=left height=34>ypertext fiction was born in the mid-1980's when writers tried to expand the boundaries of literature by using computer technology.
<p>
But technology's boundaries have expanded since then, so hypertext-fiction authors are now experimenting with techniques that literally introduce a new dimension into their work.
<p>
<p>
<NYT_INLINEIMAGE version="1.0" type="main">
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Stuart Moulthrop's "The Tomb Robbers" features navigable panoramas with text beneath.
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<a href=#1>Holo-X</a> and <a href=#1>Waxweb</a>, a pair of Web-based projects that were launched independently on Thursday, employ Virtual Reality Markup Language (VRML) software to create three-dimensional environments for their words and images. <a href=#1>The Tomb Robbers</a>, a work-in-progress that was put online last week, incorporates 360-degree QuickTime VR panoramas that serve both as illustrations and story-navigation devices.
<p>
<a href=#1>Stuart Moulthrop</a>, author of "The Tomb Robbers" and a hypertext-fiction pioneer, said, "I feel pretty strongly that virtual space has profound aesthetic possibilities. These may not be narrative so much as something else, but stories are a way to start."
<p>
Most examples of hypertext fiction, whether disk- or Web-based, expect readers to immerse themselves in a story by clicking on highlighted words, which are in turn linked to other written passages.
<p>
From the outset, though, high-tech wordsmiths have routinely employed drawings, photographs and other two-dimensional graphics to lend meaning to their on-screen tales, so 3-D software was an inevitable addition to the genre's ever-expanding palette of multimedia tools.
<p>
Those who intend to visit Holo-X must be forewarned that its language is as rude as its graphics are crude. The writing on the site is hyperlinked erotica, and while much of it strays down conceptual pathways, there are still plenty of explicit descriptions and more than a few naughty words. At the same time, the graphics sport the cartoonish look that currently characterizes VRML.
<p>
But if you are able to enjoy or overlook the content, Holo-X offers a fascinating glimpse at the future of hypertext. At its best, fiction creates a world of its own. Here, it is embodied by one, as well.
<p>
Albeit a simple one. Once the Holo-X site loads on a browser that has been configured with the correct VRML plug-in, a 3-D rendering of a single room appears on the screen. Visitors can twirl around the space and zoom in on objects like a diary or a wall socket that are connected to pop-up windows filled with hyperlinked text. The site also contains a number of multimedia elements, like a boom box that leads to music files.
<p>
Another innovative aspect of the site is a "dialogue engine" that generates the comments of the site's shapely protagonist, the Sorceress of Language in Uncharted Territories (you can work out the acronym yourself). Her comments, which appear as text, are generated randomly, but the choices have been carefully programmed so as not to lose the thread of meaning.
<p>
"There was a substantial amount of writing," said Jay Dillemuth, one of Holo-X's authors, in an interview from his Berkeley, Calif., office. "If it was all played linearly, there would be over two-and-a-half hours of her talking." Instead, each of the 20 possible scenes lasts 1 to 3 minutes.
<p>
<p>
<NYT_LINKS_ONSITE version="1.0" type="main"><table align=right border=0 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0><td width=10><br></td><td valign=top width=140><img src="/library/tech/images/linkartslarge.gif" border=0 alt=arts_at_large width=100 height=27><font size=-1><p> <b>Links</b><br>Web links of interest to arts@large readers.<p>
<b>Forum</b><br>Join a discussion on digital art.<br>
<hr size=1></font></table>
<!-- @ -->
</NYT_LINKS_ONSITE> The prose was penned by a half-dozen contributors, including Dillemuth, Alex Cory and Caroline E. White, the site's principal partners, and Mark Amerika, author of the hypertext fiction <a href=#1>Grammatron</a>. When not romping in the gutter, the writing often aspires to the poetic, as in this example: "The joyful night in inky spasms descends upon the street."
<p>
Holo-X's function is somewhat akin to that of a mink stole on a prostitute: the high-toned site is designed to lure readers to XRave, an adult-oriented virtual community that the partners plan to open on New Year's Eve.
<p>
But Dillemuth maintained that Holo-X also represents an honest effort to find a wider audience for experimental poetry and hypertext fiction. "That's where the sex comes from," he said. "It's a way to bring users in and then undermine their expectations by having it be smarter than it normally would be."
<p>
In May 1995, David Blair's Waxweb became the first hypertext fiction with VRML elements to be published on the Web. A science-fiction story about an engineer who keeps bees that eventually keep him, Waxweb began life as a full-length feature film in 1992. The film was the first to be transmitted on the Internet.
<p>
On Thursday, Blair launched a final, considerably more elaborate version of the project. He also unveiled a preview site for his next film- and VRML-based project, the abbreviated title of which is <a href=#1>The Telepathic Motion Picture of the Lost Tribes</a>.
<p>
For the 1995 iteration of the Waxweb site, Blair took objects from the movie, rendered them in 3-D and transformed them into navigation devices. They continue to work in this fashion in the new incarnation, but the New York artist has created new animation for the objects and integrated them with the site's text and a streaming-video version of the film.
<p>
Initially, the site's complexity can be daunting, but once its icon-driven commands are mastered, Waxweb's world of evocative imagery comes alive, in part because it demands a high level of user involvement.
<p>
For Blair, the spatial attributes of VRML are essential to the aesthetic mix, plunging his viewers into "the short, constantly crossed distance from text to space to moving picture -- time into space, and back again, with story in both."
<p>
Moulthrop described his "Tomb Robbers" demo as a sketch, most of it less than a week old. "I can't swear there is a story in the current version, or if it is the right story," he cheerfully conceded.
<p>
The demo allows navigation through colorful panoramas or their accompanying text, but the circular illustrations are clearly the more attractive device for traveling through the imaginary realm. A few of Moulthrop's <a href=#1>students</a> at the University of Baltimore are also tinkering with QTVR panoramas as narrative tools.
<p>
Moulthrop said he has always enjoyed the crossbreeding of text and graphics found, for example, in comics and concrete poetry, and that QTVR technology might appeal to him as a hypertext-fiction author for the same reasons.
<p>
"Or you could come at the problem from hypertext theory, arguing that some illusion of geometry is necessary to compensate for the invisible complexity that underlies these machineries," he said. "But these are rationalizations for what is in fact a deeply irrational affinity. I'm playing with QTVR right now because it feels like a good thing to do. It seems to affect my brain in interesting ways."
<p><!--LINK TO INDEX--><p><br><b>arts_at_large is published on Thursdays. Click <b> here</b> for a list of links to other columns in the series.</b><p>
<p><NYT_LINKS_OFFSITE version="1.0" type="main"><a name=1></a><hr size=1><b>Related Sites</b><br>
<font size=-1>These sites are not part of The New York Times on the Web, and The Times has no control over their content or availability.</font><p><ul></NYT_LINKS_OFFSITE>
<p>
<p><li>Holo-X <b> Warning: This site contains images and words that may be inappropriate for children. </b>
<p><li>Waxweb
<p><li>The Tomb Robbers
<p><li>Stuart Moulthrop
<p><li>Grammatron
<p><li>The Telepathic Motion Picture of The Lost Tribes
<p><li>Moulthrop's updates page with links to his students' QTVR projects
<p>
</ul><p>
<hr size=1><address>Matthew Mirapaul at <a href="mailto:mirapaul_at_nytimes.com"> mirapaul_at_nytimes.com</a> welcomes your comments and suggestions.</address><hr size=1>
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</x-html>From ???@??? Fri Feb 12 22:58:33 1999
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From: Sandy Ressler <vrml.guide_at_miningco.com>
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Subject: Anybody seen Brilliant Digital Entertainment stuff
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Hi folks ...i love this quiet list :-)
I just came across something from a company called Brilliant Digital
Entertainment
www.bde3d.com
They have a proprietary 3D engine for something called Multipath Movies.
It's apparantly a large established company (thing they were/are into
games) but the kicker is they
have a LOT of content downloadable via the web with some streaming. The
content is VERY professional
looking and the frame rates are great I must be getting 20fps on my 233
PII laptop (160Mb ram).
There are avatar characters with syncronized speech with moving mouths.
Anyway check it out if ya can...beware of a large about 6.5 Mb download
for content.
The multipath stuff is almost non-existant in the one movie I saw...but
the movie does stop in a few places and
you can pick story lines.
Sandy
see some of you in Paderborn I hope!
--
Sandy / VRML Guide
The Mining Co. http://vrml.miningco.com
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