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November 07, 2004

flock

flock.jpg

flock here

Game and Theater departments in Utrecht (School for the Arts) collaborate on the project Flock, a virtual choreographic work. The project is inspired by computer-games: it's a virtual dance performance completely made on the computer. Flock is an interactive performance for a maximum of 10 players: a multi-player system. All players are connected to one computer (the server).

Flock is inspired on MultiAgent (MA) systems: coordinating intelligent behaviour among a collection of autonomous intelligent "agents", how they can coordinate their knowledge, goals, skills and plans jointly to take actions or to solve problems. Agents in a multi-agent system must share knowledge about problems and solutions.

Graig Reysnolds was the first who made a simulation of a flock: a school of fish or a flock of birds. How can a collection of individual be combined to create a group with a single behavioral momentum? A flock is a group of objects that exhibit the general class of polarised, non-colliding, aggregate motion.

We use motion capture data to animate objects in the environment. These data were obtained in the motion capture studio at the Essex University in England

A special hardware interface will be built which consists of 5 plateaus. The player actively controls the movement of the Flock with her own movements. Together with the other players she travels through 3 different landscapes. The group has to avoid obstacles: by jumping, rolling, crawling etc.

Posted by michelle at November 7, 2004 02:06 PM

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