| URBAN
INTERSECTIONS was an interactive public installation
incorporating Second Life users in a first life public space.
Located on the regenerated landscape of the Waterfront Plaza
directly outside the newly developed concert hall building,
this utilitarian environment was used as a stage set to represent
an augmented garden where we explored the concept of perimeters
and territories, as a metaphor of Belfast’s social history.
As the participants walked through this urban landscape, both
first and Second Life inhabitants came ‘face-to-face’
on screen, revealing a live digital mural on the façade
of the Waterfront building. A large format projection screen
on the building displayed the Waterfront counterpart in Second
Life; a virtual plaza encapsulated by the ironies, contradictions
and obscurities of a divided city. This projected digital
mural formed the central focus of the installation and immediately
spoke of the infamous painted murals on houses across West
Belfast that depict a deep political divide, but whose post-conflict
society now refer to as a stark reminder of recent troubles
and thereby holding the peace that now prevails. In a city
such as Belfast it would be impossible to evade such references
when projecting images onto a building, as though the project
itself were projected onto the gable end wall of a house on
the Falls Road or the Shankill Estate.
Reliant
on both user interaction and input the audience formed an
integral part of this installation that aimed to transcend
these boundaries through interactive storytelling and memory
building in a post-conflict society. This allowed ‘first
life’ visitors and ‘second life’ avatars
to coexist and share the same plaza in a live interactive
public online installation. The complete installation utilised
three interface techniques developed by the artists taking
part. Charlotte Gould’s motion tracking interface allowed
visitors in Belfast to wear a large puppet like copy of her
unique avatar head, covered in an array of LED lights that
were tracked, they could then control the movements of the
Second Life avatar as a means of alternative navigation through
a maze of garden chain-link fences. Paul Sermon’s interface
combined first life visitors and Second life avatars within
the same live video stream. By constructing a blue chroma-key
studio in Second Life it was possible to mix live video images
of online avatars with the audience in Belfast, enabling these
participants to play and converse on a collaborative video
stream simultaneously displayed in both first and second life
situations, allowing the participants to interact and direct
the narrative by their presence and movements immediately
in front of the projection screen on the Waterfront building
The third installation was developed by sound and media artist
Peter Appleton, who’s contribution included a barbecue
on the Waterfront plaza that simultaneously controlled the
conditions of an identical Second Life barbecue. Through a
series of light and heat sensors it was possible to relay
commands to the online situation, so when the first life barbecue
was lit so too was the Second Life barbecue and as food started
to cook and brown so did its online duplicate. All these interfaces
referred to the domestic garden and their infamous Belfast
perimeter fences. The aim was to break down these boundaries
through social interaction that prevailed, be it through a
video portal, a didactic maze or over a grilled sausage.
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