Virtual Worlds Forum

In 1997 the BBC took part in an interesting experiment in ‘inhabited television’ working with BT Laboratories, Illuminations Television, the BBC and Sony. ‘The Mirror’ as the service was called offered six virtual environments or ‘worlds’ for viewers who were able to log on to a URL, create an avatar and chat. The Mirror project accompanied a television programme called ‘The Net’ broadcast on BBC 2 television, late at night. The avatars moved irritatingly slowly and the chat was mundane and often functional but it was a bold and brave experiment and over 2,000 people took part. BT built the worlds for The Mirror in VRML 2.0 and during the time the servers remained switched on participants could debate, take part in a quiz show, attend an opening for a virtual art exhibit and a mock wedding, and finally around 80 people simultaneously enjoyed an ‘end of the world’ party. Instead of having presenters The Mirror offered hosts who “would greet new entrants, introduce people to each other, point out activities and generally help people around.” (John Wyver). These people became “the core of the community of the world, encouraging people to return and beginning to develop the particular language and culture of The Mirror”. Nottingham University produced ‘Out of This World’ in 1998. An event combining ‘elements of virtual reality, performance television and audience participation’. The ‘audience’ were analysed as being of three types; performers, inhabitants and viewers, depending on their involvement. In 2000, another experiment in inhabited television, ‘Avatar Farm’ offered both virtual worlds and entertainment. Four twenty minute episodes of a ‘semi-scripted, tightly plotted fable involving gods and tricksters, innocents abroad, lizards and purple tufts’ were created with professional actors and members of the public taking on the personae of avatars. In addition it was possible to trigger 3D playbacks of events which had taken place in the worlds within the four episodes; in this way mixing fictional narrative with ‘virtual everyday life’. At the turn of the millennium John Wyver of Illuminations Television believed inhabited television “has real potential for collaborative learning, for new kinds of museum experiences, and even for the reinvention of one variant of true public service broadcasting.” What happened to inhabited television and was anything learnt from it, or are we on a kind of never ending hamster wheel which forgets what it has learnt in the past? I offer these links; as the broadcaster and academic Brian Winston once said “you need to look back in order to analyse the future.”