Bill Seaman
University of Maryland
Baltimore County
seaman@umbc.edu

The World Generator / The Engine of Desire" is an interactive computer-mediated environment which enables viewers to construct and navigate poetic worlds in real time based on an interactive template of potential choices. The system is facilitated through a new interface metaphor. At the bottom of the screen is a rotating set of container-wheels. These container-wheels house a variety of selections. One mode allows the viewer to observe a full screen blow-up of this menu. The menu system contains the following set of wheels: 3d models; poetic text fragments; texture maps - both still and video; location sensitive audio objects (musical loops); behaviours; and function menus which enable the viewer to center themselves in the world; to scale objects and texture maps; to make objects and texture maps transparent; to construct random worlds; to make a series of different "random" choices including random text, random sound, random object, random texture map, random movie, random world, random behaviours; as well as to clear the world. The still and moving texture maps can either be applied to objects with an "aura" or be placed in the space as pictures and/or movies on flat screens.

The work functions in a two stage process: The viewer first constructs a "poetic" environment based on selections from the template of variables. When the viewer chooses the "objects wheel" from the main menu, a set of container-wheels housing pre-rendered 3D objects, rotates. The actual storage is in the form of long "virtual" rotating belts which can have great length (based on available memory) although the viewer only sees the curved front edge of the belt. The following manipulations can be made: Layout - placement of the object on the site; Scale - scale of object on the site; Texture Map - attach still or video texture map to an object with an aura, as well as place "screens" of stills and video into the space, when the aura is toggled off; Behaviours - attach behaviours to selected objects, texture map screens, and/or sounds. Once this process has been completed (or anytime during the construction process) the viewer can enter the space and navigate. An elaborate object-based text is included in The World Generator. A viewer can choose any single line from the text and place it in the space as a visual object with a "location sensitive" audio text triggering mechanism.

Recombinant Music -The sounds included in the system are made up of hundreds of techno ambient loops, composed by the author, consisting of synthetic rhythms, drones and tonal loops. Specific tonal sax loops have been played by Tony Wheeler. These sound object loops are placed by the viewer on the site. As the viewer navigates, a location sensitive audio mix is generated.

The work can be interacted with from multiple locations. Two or more users can be involved with poetic construction and/or navigation in the space at the same time, currently via modem, and in the near future via the WWW. I have coined the term "RE-I" (pronounced RAY or Re--I) short for Re-embodied Intelligence, as the term to describe the visual representation of these alternate, multiple users. A "RE-I" is potentially visible in the space, showing the location of the alternate user.

Helen MacLean
Odense University
helen@mip.ou.dk

When Douglas Adams claimed that mice created the world, he was possibly anticipating The World Generator...

Sitting at the Generator in primordial darkness, you face a black screen 2 metres 40 by 1 metre 80. By the light of a small lamp, touching a white sphere and a selection of buttons and mice, out of the dark void you begin to create your own poetic world - a world lit by a blue sky ... You can fill this empty space with the shapes, textures and sounds of your choice.... Choose to spawn an infinity of forms - and then with one finger set them aflame in a surreal conflagration... call forth a thousand twangling instruments - electronic music which you can either hear or see visually as six white angels - or fragments of text, in English... and you can hear the sentences spoken, in a man's solemn voice, or with a flick transform them into solid or transparent shapes. Send a galaxy of planets spinning out into the expanse of your universe, and listen to the music of your spheres. And then, float out into your own world... You have a human companion in this Eden - for this is a double world. Though far apart in space, you can see and talk to each other directly on the picture-phone beside you, or enter the landscape and, meeting your partner as an electronic presence, wander together, creating and contemplating each other's brave new worlds, constructing, changing, annihilating at will.....

Some day, World Generators will allow you not only to see and hear, but also to touch, taste and smell your own created worlds.

The transnational world of the Engine of Desire is powered by two Silicon Graphics Octane computers, with an Analogue modem. One of them will be operated from Karlsruhe, and the other will be with the Generator in the EITC´97 Exhibition Hall in Brussels. A videophone - so advanced that it is not yet commercially available - links Belgium with Germany. The Generator has been set up only twice before. Once, some time ago, as a single world, and this year, for the first time, as a double world linking the twin cities of Nottingham in England and Karlsruhe in Germany - connecting the NOW 97 Multimedia Festival with ZKM for three weeks from 18 October to 9 November 1997 .

You can come and generate worlds of your own at EITC´97, with Chris Brown and Sally Norman to help you. And, along with a representative from his gallery - 235 Media - in Cologne, Bill Seaman, the creator of the Engine of Desire, will be present - not in virtual form, but in person .

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