This research will establish and test the linking of simple phenomena and actions within virtual space with reciprocated actions in actual space and visa versa. It will explore non verbal communication e.g. breath or wind causing the grass to move or a cloud to shift across our virtual real estate in Second Life, or a stone thrown into the pool within our Secondlife causing ripples to spread out within a real pool. It will begin by establishing a protocol to allow trandsducers and sensors to send and receive information between the real and virtual environments. It will also exploit video links to send real time images of analog events such as the spreading out of ripples from the stone thrown into the virtual pond back as a digital real time echo into the water within Second life creating the perception within the virtual world of a complex analog mirror of that action. When effective tools have been established they will be used to explore poetic and gestural resonances which could contribute to the experience of emotion, presence and community which define the larger intention of this collaboration.

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Video documentation of a stone thrown into a Second Life pool causing ripples to spread out within a real pool.

Peter Appleton - Reader in Creative Technology
International Centre for Digital Content
Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool Digital
Faraday House, Edge Lane, Liverpool, L7 9NW
p.appleton@ljmu.ac.uk