Das ECI wurde 1984 von Kit Galloway und Sherry Rabinowitz (mobile image) gegründet
Electronic Cafe International (TM)
"Founded in 1984"
Kit Galloway & Sherrie Rabinowitz, Co-Founders, Directors
______________________________________________________________________________
Friday February 3rd and Saturday February 4th at 6:00 PM
*Two Cities*
*Two SGI ONYX-2 Reality Engines*
*Live video input of performers at both sites*
Equals a fully shared, totally immersive, tele-VR art environment
with real-world/real-person video input.
A historic networked interactive Virtual Reality art performance will take
place on the evenings of Friday February 3rd and Saturday February 4th at
6:00 PM (Pacific Standard Time) each night. This immersive participatory
televirtual experience will link The Electronic Cafe's in Santa Monica,
California and Austin, Texas.
The theme of the evening will focus on Virtual Reality as a medium for
artists, and at the same time examine issues involved with televirtuality
and networked virtual experiences. The worlds which will be experienced
were created by Professor Marcos Novak, the Director of the Advanced Design
Research Program within the School of Architecture, at The University of
Texas in Austin. His multiworld art piece is titled "Dancing with the
Virtual Dervish - Worlds in Progress", and it was authored while Dr. Novak
was a resident in the Art and Virtual Environment Project at Western
Canada's Banff Center for the Arts.
Selected participants from the audiences in Santa Monica and Austin will be
able to individually don Eyegen-3 Head Mounted Displays from Virtual
Research, coupled to Polhemus Fastrack position and orientation sensors.
The displays and sensored will be connected to Silicon Graphics ONYX-2
Supercomputers with Reality Engine Graphics Subsystems, and SIRIUS Video
Boards. Each of the two ONYX Reality Engines will be linked over the
internet, allowing the participants to simultaneously meet and interact
within the art world in Cyberspace, although their physical bodies are
separated by over 2,000 miles. In addition, the SIRIUS video boards will
allow real time video from each location to be textured onto the surface of
selected objects in the Virtual Reality worlds.
In addition, a live videoteleconference via ISDN and PictureTel will lead
off each evening, featuring Dr. Novak. He will be joined by Nate Pagel, the
Director of the Electronic Cafe in Austin, and who additionally is the
founder of the Austin Virtual Reality Alliance. They will also be available
to answer questions after the hour-long televirtual performance. Clay
Graham of Silicon Graphics will also be in Santa Monica demonstrating some
Virtual Worlds that he created using SGI's Performer authoring tools.
Admission is $10.00 and for more information, call (310) 828-8732. The
program is a co-production of the Electronic Cafe International in Santa
Monica, The Electronic Cafe in Austin, The Virtual Reality Special Interest
Group of Southern California (Dave Blackburn), and The Austin VR Alliance
(512-370-4624).
Special thanks to:
Silicon Graphics, Polhemus, and Virtual Research, for their kind donations
of equipment.
Electronic Cafe International (TM)
1649 18th Street (at Olympic Blvd.)
Santa Monica, CA 90405 310/828-8732
>From the 10 Freeway heading west, exit at Cloverfield/26th Street, turn
right to Olympic, go left to 18th Street, go right to the end of the block
and turn right in the parking lot. The Electronic Cafe is located on the
south-east corner of the parking lot, within the 18th Street Arts Complex.