Authors:

 Nakatsu, Ryohei; Tosa, Naoko.

Title:

 A-life based computer cinema

Keywords:

 Art, Culture, Games, Science, Theory

Abstract:

 Ever since the Limier brothers created Cinematography at
the end of the 19th century, motion pictures have undergone
various advances in both technology and content. Today, motion
pictures, or movies, have established themselves as a composite
art form in a wide domain that extends from fine arts to entertainment.
A-life based Interaction technology provides movies with much
greater inherent possibilities than the current forms of movies,
because it allows each viewer to get involved in the movie world,
metamorphose into the main character in a movie regardless of
their age and even gender, and enjoy a first-hand experience.
Based on this concept, we have developed an A-life based
interactive movie system. This system has two basic characteristics.
The first characteristic is the use of A-life based Computer Graphics
technology and the generation of three-dimensional imagery to create
a autonomous actor and cyberspace in which all participants obtain
a feeling of immersion.
We can developed Multi-person participation, Emotions recognition,
gesture recognition, the participants the feeling of actually contributing
to the development of the story in the cyberspace, we use a system that
shows avatars as the alter egos of the participants on a screen. Also,
the system to we have produced an interactive story based on this system.
We selected "Romeo and Juliet" by Shakespeare as the base story.
The main plot of the story is as follows. After their tragic suicide
their souls are sent to Hades, where they have no recollection of anything.
Then, each of them starts on a journey to rediscover who he/she is and
what relationship they shared with A-life based autonomous actors.
Nakatsu, Ryohei. nakatsu@mic.atr.co.jp ATR Media Integration & Communications Research LaboratoriesRyohei Nakatsu received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electronic engineering from Kyoto University in 1969, 1971 and 1982, respectively. After joining NTT (Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Cooperation) in 1971, he mainly worked on speech recognition technology. Since 1994, he has been with ATR and currently is the president of the ATR Media Integration & Communications Research Laboratories. Recently, he has become interested in the recognition of non-verbal information such as emotions in speech. He is a member of the IEEE, the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers Japan(IEICE-J) and the Acoustical Society of Japan. In 1996 he met Naoko Tosa, a media artist, and started collaboration. Since then they developed several computer characters which are able to communicate with people based n emotions. Their works were exhibited at the NationalMuseum of Art in Osaka, O Museum in Tokyo, and other museums and art exhibitions. Their recent work called "Interactive Poem" was awarded L'Oreal Prize in 1997.

Tosa, Naoko. tosa@mic.atr.co.jp ATR Media Integration & Communications Research LaboratoriesNaoko Tosa is a Media Artist & Researcher in the ATR Media Integration &Communications Research Laboratories. She is also invited Proffessor inthe graduate school of Science and Technology Kobe University and lecturer in the Dept. of Imaging Arts and Sciences, Musashino Art University. Her major research area is Art and Technology where she is working on the creation of Experimental Film, Video Art, computer graphics animation, and interactive arts. Her recent work includes the Neuro-Baby project, na autonomous computer agent with automatic facial expression and behavior synthesis that can respond to human voice by recognizing emotions and feelings. Her work was exhibited at Museum of Modern Art (New York), Metropolitan Art Museum, SIGGRAPH, Ars ELECTRONICA, Long Beach Museum, and other locations worldwide. Also, her works are collected at The Japan Foundation, American Film Association, Japan Film Culture Center, Nagoya Prefecture Modern Art Museum Japan, and other institutions in Japan.