GIGASPACE: AUGMENTED VIRTUAL PLAYGROUND

Digital Media Arts, Cornell University, 1998

Production: Jennifer Di Leonardi, Rama Hoetzlein, James Raybury and Carol Terrizzi

Instructors: John Zissovici, Marcia Lyons and Marlyn Rivchin

Gigaspace was an early project in digital media arts, created as a team collaboration by students Jennifer Di Leonardi, Rama Hoetzlein, James Raybury and Carol Terrizzi for an experimental Digital Media Arts course taught by Cornell University professors John Zissovici, Marcia Lyons, and Marlyn Rivchin in the College of Architecture, Art and Planning.

Gigaspace is a virtual playground in which real world participants construct barriers and fences using cardboard cubes to interact with a virtual, projected puppy. The puppy was programmed as an autonomous, game-like character using pixel graphics.

Since computer vision that would be needed to keep the real cubes registered with the virtual world was not yet widely available in 1998, instead a live video of the audience was shown on a hidden monitor in a back room to a controller (person). As participants moved the blocks, the controller in this room would move virtual blocks on the screen to keep the virtual world matched to the real world.