Abstract

Cross examined by Rob Fisher & James Wallbank

Ever since the Lumiere brothers created Cinematography at the end of the 19th century, motion pictures have undergone various advances in both technology and content. Today, motion pictures, or movies, have established themselves as a composite art form in a wide domain that extends from fine arts to entertainment. Interaction technology provides movies with much greater inherent possibilities than the current forms of movies, because it allows each viewer to get involved in the movie world, metamorphose into the main character in a movie regardless of their age and even gender, and enjoy a first-hand experience. Based on this concept, we have developed an interactive movie system. This system has two basic characteristics. The first characteristic is the use of CG technology and the generation of three dimensional imagery to create a cyberspace in which all participants obtain a feeling of immer-sion. We can developed multi-person participation, emotions recognition, gesture recognition, the participants the feeling of actually contributing to the development of the story in the cyberspace, we use a system that shows avatars as the alter egos of the participants on a screen. Also, the system to we have produced an interactive story based on this system. We selected “Romeo and Juliet” by Shakespeare as the base story. The main plot of the story is as follows. After their tragic suicide their souls are sent to Hades, where they have no recollection of anything. Then, each of them starts on a journey to rediscover who he/she is and what relationship they shared.

• Naoka Tosa, Japan. Born in 1961. Current employment: Invited researcher at the ATR Media Integrations & Communication Research Laboratories; Visiting associate professor at Kobe University; lecturer at the Musashino Art University. Having an interest in using technology to represent virtual living organisms under the theme of visualizing unseeables like emotions, the conscience, and the unconscience, Ms. Tosa is actively engaged in experimental cinema, video art, computer animation, interactive art, and other fields. Her works have been displayed at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA in N.Y.), the Metropolitan Art Museum, SIGGRAPH, Ars ELECTRONICA, and the Long Beach Museum, and are part of permanent collections at the American Film Association, the Japan Film Culture Center, the Nagoya Prefectural Modern Art Museum, and other institutions. A recent work is Neuro-Baby, which senses and reacts to the emotions in a human voice. Received the IMS’96 Award for the Most Outstanding Research Paper.
• Ryohei Nakatsu (Japan) communications educator, researcher, computer company executive. Recipient Best Paper award, Annual Meeting Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers, 1978, International Conference Multimedia Computing and Systems, 1996, Institute Image Information and television Engineers, 1999, L’Oreal prize, Art and Science Foundation, 1997. [source: prabook.com/web/ryohei.nakatsu/314425]
• Rob Fisher, USA
• James Wallbank, UK