Abstract:
"Imaging Place," is a place-based, virtual reality art project. It takes the
form of a user navigated, interactive computer program that combines panoramic
photography, digital video, and three-dimensional technologies to investigate
and document situations where the forces of globalization are impacting the
lives of individuals in local communities. The goal of the project is to develop
the technologies, the methodology and the content for truly immersive and navigable
narrative, based in real places. The project has been under development since 1997
and includes work from around the world including Taipei Taiwan, Sco Paulo Brazil,
Kamloops BC Canada, Warsaw Poland, the U.S./Mexico Border, Fort Point MA, Lowell
MA, the Miami River, Haverhill MA, Niagara, New England, Appalachia, and Florida.

The work, in its installation form, is projected up to nine by twelve feet in a
darkened space with a pedestal and a mouse placed in the center of the installation
enabling the audience to interact with it. Activated by the click of a mouse button,
the interface leads the user from global satellite images to virtual reality scenes
on the ground. Users can then navigate an immersive virtual space. Recently, I have
been implementing the project in Second Life. When an avatar first arrives at an
Imaging Place SL Scene he, she or it sees on the ground a large black and white
satellite picture of the full disk of the Earth. The avatar can then walk over the
Earth to a thin red line which leads to an adjacent higher level platform made of a
high resolution aerial photograph of specific location from around the world. Mapped
to the aerial images are networks of nodes constructed of primitive spherical
geometry with panoramic photographs texture mapped to the interior. The avatar
can walk to the center at one of these nodes and use a first person perspective
to view the image, giving the user the sensation of being immersed in the location.
Streaming audio is localized to individual nodes providing narrative content for the
scene. This content includes stories told by people who appear in the images, theory
and ambient sound. When the avatar returns to the Earth platform, several rotating
enter signs provide teleports to other "Imaging Place" scenes located at other
places within the world of Second Life.