Mixed Reality Installation 'Gulliver's World': Interactive Content Creation in Nonlinear Exhibition Design

摘要

'Gulliver's World' is a Multi User Mixed Reality Environment that is part of the Ars Electronica Center Exhibition in Linz/Austria. In a public laboratory situation, the installation functions simultaneously as interactive edutainment platform as well as flexible infrastructure for the expansion of mixed reality environments via innovations in information and communication technology and media art. The installation is characterized by a nonlinear exhibition concept at the nexus of theater, digital film production and game development. At seven workstations, people of all age groups range along the reality-virtuality continuum while collaboratively creating 3D-worlds. As research project, 'Gulliver's World' features multilevel infrastructure with exemplary content: The latest insights and models to emerge from HCI research, concepts of mixed reality and virtual environments and their supporting technology are brought together and developed further. They are assembled on a multimedial platform that enables scientific development to dovetail with an educational application that is demonstrated in this paper.