Earlier this year, an American academic reached the conclusion that a virtual kingdom had entered the world economy as the 77th richest country in the world. Norrath, the setting for the online game Everquest, sat between in Russia and Bulgaria in the GDP stakes.
The online world of MMRPGs – Massively Multiplayer Roleplaying Games – was just one of the topics at the recent ‘b.playful’ forum, the brainchild of Katz Kiely’s b.tv Forum of Creative Convergence.
As I crawl out from beneath the creative technology rock, Kiely, the festival’s Director, assures me some of the ideas discussed and showcased at this year’s event left a lot of the artists who attended flabbergasted, but inspired.
‘The whole idea of the project was to try to get media industry people together in the same arena as digital artists, academics, and social and cultural researchers,’ Kiely explains, adding she has received emails from artists since the conference who were inspired by the diverse range of technologies presented and the panel discussions – some admitting they were unaware such technology even existed.
‘It specifically looked at new creative models that are being developed using new technologies for creativity,’ she notes.
The event took place at the National Centre for Popular Music, in Sheffield’s Cultural Industries Quarter (CIQ), an impressive building that has had a number of different functions during its four-year history, but, for the most part has gone largely unused. Kiely said it was the perfect structure for the forum. Of its four ‘drums’, the event utilised three – offering a meeting place between the two drums hosting the digital art on the one hand and the media industry panels on the other.
‘People were making connections they wouldn’t necessarily make otherwise, because it was such a bizarre mix of people,’ Kiely observed. ‘Having that network space in the middle made the whole event much more alive and connected.’
This is the third b.tv Festival, and the event seems to grow in complexity each year. The first, Kiely explains, functioned as an introduction to convergence media, while the 2001 event featured ex-MD of Endemol International Licensing, Gary Carter, who Kiely remarks, ‘Gave possibly the best speech I have ever heard in my life.’
The second forum also marked the introduction of a digital art commissioning strand, Shooting Live Artists, which has proved hugely successful, resulting in a BAFTA Interactive Award nomination for performance artists Blast Theory, for their project Can You See Me Now? However, this year’s forum diverged further still, with panels such as ‘Performing Playfulness’, discussing and showcasing new virtual reality technologies; while ‘Changing Economic Models’ explored the notion of economic shifts as a result of virtual realities.
Scary stuff, considering millions of people around the world are engaged in virtual games to the extent that the economy of the worlds they have created are – according to Professor Edward Castronova from the California State University (Fullerton) – transferable into real terms.
The BBC reported Castronova’s findings in March this year, attributing the rise in popularity of the games to ‘improved graphics and more players to play with.’ Castronova found players were spending literally hundreds of hours developing their online characters, to the extent that the characters were fetching hundreds of US dollars on the open market, on auction sites like ebay.
‘There is a real shift there, economy-wise,’ Kiely says. ‘People are playing these games to a state where their character is very, very advanced, and then [they can] sell the character to some “fat cat” American who hasn’t got the time [to play]. So, for those people, their economy is actually being changed… in a virtual environment. It’s a new way of making money for them.’
On the more playful side of things, one of the panelists, Lizbeth Goodman, discussed a number of works in progress which explored patterns and interfaces to allow people to communicate through onscreen characters, while Chris Bregler from CATlab in New York looked at the future possibilities of creating characters which can express more humanity – to engage audiences more fully.
Kiely was fascinated by ‘Relax to Win’, a virtual reality game presented by Gary McDarby, the Principal Research Scientist for MindGames Group, at Media Lab Europe. The model was discussed, but also available for forum attendants to play. According to Kiely, the game is designed for children, to help them relax. Electrodes are attached to players fingertips and the virtual reality game responds to how relaxed the person is.
‘There’s a digital projection onto a screen of a beautifully rendered spacescape, and two dragons, and the more you relax, the faster the dragon goes – as you relax the dragon makes the “Weeee!” noise and starts flapping,’ Kiely recalls, obviously delighted. ‘It’s absolutely beautiful.’
But what do all these developments mean for artists?
‘I think we are at a very special moment in history, where artists can really disseminate their work,’ Kiely explains – adding that the notion artists will create work only to have it disappear into the black hole of history is disintegrating.
Kiely also says she hopes the conference will continue to keep people informed about developments in creative technologies that are unknown to individuals except for those immersed in the culture.
‘There are a couple of online magazines that try to keep people informed, but I think it’s a bit like trying to preach to the converted,’ she concedes. ‘People who are involved in the world get to know about it, whereas people outside don’t really have a way in. So I’m trying to popularise the idea, to draw people in who wouldn’t normally feel comfortable in the digital arena.’
For further information about b.tv and the b.playful forum, visit www.convergence-arts.co.uk
