"CityCluster is an innovative technological artistic project in which Tele-Immersion, collaborative virtual reality, high speed networking, culture, history, communication and art are integrated into one unique piece.

"CityCluster - From the Renaissance to the Megabyte Networking Age" is the first virtual-reality networked application.

The virtual application offers its visitors a thrilling interactive journey departing from the Renaissance until arriving and shifting to the Super Broadband Networking and Electronic Age, breaking the barrier of time and space in real time. Florence metaphorically represents the "Renaissance Age", Chicago the "Gigabits Networking Age". Each virtual city is inhabited by a group of avatars: David, Venus and Machiavelli in Florence and Mega, Giga and Picasso in Chicago.

Legendary buildings can become cyber gateways teleporting the visitors from one city to the other. Renaissance or Megabyte digital interactive fragments are found strewn across the VR cities or floating randomly through the atmosphere... when the visitor interacts with them the environment undergoes transformations. Masterpieces' details that turn into three-dimensional creatures … or the city itself becoming a painting, transparent and penetrable, hosting a myriad of ethereal elements.

Depending on the level and the visitor interaction the shoreline of Lake Michigan can become a dense accumulation of optic fibers of diverse colors, intensity, and luminosity, and will generate musical sounds and other audio effects.

One of the most intense interactive experiences that the visitor can have is to exchange objects and buildings from one city to the other in real time over the Net. The Dome of Florence, for example, can be transported to Chicago or the Sears Tower to Florence and so forth ... Buildings may be moved to recreate a new city comprising elements and vital parts of Chicago and Florence both.

Each animated environment of City Cluster is linked to all the others so that together they form a united yet open interactive narrative structure. This creative approach allows for multiple viewpoints and repeatedly generates an original multi-linear participatory interactive experience for the visitor.

CityCluster is a virtual-reality networking matrix with original technological features, navigation and interactivity, graphic and content style. A creative virtual networking terrain with ingenious tools, where visitors, with their own creativity and communicative skills, can becomes protagonist and/or free citizen: navigate, interact, intervene exchange buildings, objects, ideas and or create their own ideal city.

The framework of City Cluster is developed according to a creative method of tracing diverse concepts and systems of collection in cities both real and imagined, with ambiences and habitats interconnected by a high-speed network which enables participants in remote locations to interact and collaborate in shared environments.

The system has been designed to produce an integrated computing facility and to implement a creative high-tech container in which multiple environments may coexist and be interconnected within a common, virtual territory.The virtual habitats of City Cluster may be expanded, modified, enriched, developed, and produced ad hoc, in accordance with the nature and typology of the environment to be incorporated.

For this project two Virtual Reality environments were created: Florence, the "Renaissance Age", the other related to Chicago representing the "Gigabits Age". Chicago and Florence: two cities, each with an intense artistic, cultural, and technological commitment in a time of innovation and revolutionary changes.

The City Cluster virtual environments of Florence and Chicago are characterized by multiple narrative spaces that comprise animated sculptures, interactive phenomena, high-tech performances, and characters of distinct and peculiar behavior.

Each virtual city is inhabited and guided by a group of avatars: Mega,Giga, and Picasso a re the avatars representing the Gigabits Networking Age, while David, Venus, and Machiavelli are Renaissance-age avatars. The visitors contact each other from a remote or local site through the avatars. Each avatar represents a real person in a cyberspace system, acting as a "virtual representative" able to communicate with others in a virtual-reality environment. However this project the avatars are not only the graphic representation of the Net visitor in the virtual environment, but also interactive "characters" that imposes a certain behavior and way of action, leading the visitors through "virtual paths" normally not accessible in either Florence or Chicago.

The navigation and interaction of City Cluster are often surprising. The interactive visitor can find himself within a sort of limbo state where reality, the oniric and the imaginary exist simultaneously. The surprise factor in relation to body space and to the absence of temporal schemes is considered a pivotal experience between the remote visitors of the virtual-reality.

This VR-networked piece offers an actively creative experience in the new language of interactive design through the use of new forms of interactive narrative. Emphasis was given to aesthetics and content quality, to the use of visual design in the virtual environment, to the dual concept of the perspective and to the intensity of the interaction thus bringing out the content to its fullest expression.

Virtual reality, networking technology, and digital media have been used as creative tools for the production and implementation of this project and as a tool of communication for its exhibits and presentations. Lead technical advisor: Alex Hill, EVL, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA.

More info:

English (pdf, 168 Kb)

Italian (pdf, 96 Kb)

Website of the Project

Interview to Franz Fischnaller

The VR application is primarily designed to run in the CAVETM ("Cave Automatic Virtual Environment") developed at EVL, (Electronic Visualization Lab) at the University of Illinois at Chicago and on the AGAVETM display system (Access Grid Augmented Virtual Environment). And can run in both in on SGI's Linux platform.

The VR application can run either locally or through remote networking. The networked exhibit takes place in real time between two diverse remote sites using virtual-reality networking platforms such us the CAVE™ and the AGAVE™ Display System.

Both platforms interconnect and run over high-speed networks, enabling local and remote the visitors to navigate, interact, and communicate with each other through the avatars as well as with three-dimensional models over distance in real time, in a common virtual space. Passive and active stereoscopic glasses allow them to see in 3 dimensions. A simple tracked input device, "the wand," containing a joystick and 3 buttons, allows the visitor to navigate through the VR space, manipulate virtual objects and to interact with one another.