Opportrunities

A. Ursyn Orchestra: Opportrunities_ Hubert, Titus, Laura, Christiano and Darius

1. The writer Hubert. The only way to talk to him was through his avatar. No one knew how he looked like. He was a fantasy line writer after all. He studied works of Robert Pinsky, a creator of an interactive novel, but he wanted to write his lines not influenced or inspired by anybody. For this reason any contact with a human being could end up being destructive.
2. The musician Titus. There was no way to arrange for an interview with him, as he only communicated through his wife. They tried it all, including sending him a free week access to a gym, but it wasn’t his type of activity because it would make him take his sweater off.
3. An avatar creator Laura. The winner appeared to be an eight years old girl. Her mother was overprotective and would not approve of any sort of public appearance or contact. 4. The cell phone programmer Nadia. After loosing her husband to the Shakers community, she got a habit to send her friend do all the talking. She was too busy to get out of her room much anyway.
5. VR programmer Cristiano already had his own company, and thus his secretary was supposed to do all the networking and all the talking for him.
6. An animator Dariush was a well-established artist. He felt a professional should deal with all business-like matters for him, thus his agent handled all the details.

The local newspaper had announced the competition winners, but no one knew for sure if the photographs were those of the winners or of those who handled their matters. The names in the program were all spelled out correctly though.

There was a great opportunity for the orchestra members to participate in an innovative project: the interactive, participants-operated virtual puppet show at the performance center on the plaza, with a backdrop consisting of visual footage (moving animations) on a set of large moving screens. Tickets were to be sold in two different price ranges: for the performers, who’s cell phones were set to reach the avatar of their choosing, and for the observers, those with no power to control the action. There was a big discussion on how to arrange for the details. Some worried that some non-professional “puppeteers” might order their avatar to do or say something that was not in the script. Everyone agreed that this might still go well, because some modifications would not do much harm. Besides, every player might be equipped with the story for the performance. The players were to communicate with the avatars via their cell phones and to use the avatars in a fashion the puppets were used before. The whole idea of this public performance was to put old genres into the space defined by mass media. Thus Gerlost opened a worldwide Internet-based competition to address the needs of this interactive performance. There were six categories:
1. A storyline,
2. Music,
3. Avatars,
4. Communication and interactivity design for cell phones,
5. Virtual space VR,
6. Animations for the moving screens, matching the story and music. In result of the contest, six individuals were selected to create their parts for this endeavor. However, they all weren’t eager for public appearance and publicity.