PRESS RELEASE

Performance Modeling: "VIRTUAL VAUDEVILLE"

October 4, 2001

CONTACTS: Muriel Pritchett, 546-0692 or e-mail: muriel@pritchett.org
David Saltz, 542-2083 or e-mail: saltz@uga.edu
Stanley Longman, 542-2890 or e-mail: longman@uga.edu

UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA RECEIVES $900,000 GRANT FROM NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION

ATHENS, Ga. -- The National Science Foundation has awarded a $900,000 grant to the University of Georgia to create a "virtual vaudeville."

Scholars from around the country will work on the project, titled "A Live Performance Simulation System: Virtual Vaudeville." Participants include computer scientists, 3-D modelers and animators, theater practitioners, and theater and music historians. During the three-year project, the group will use virtual reality and computer gaming technologies to recreate the experience of attending live theatre in the nineteenth century.

"We want people to experience the way the performance looked and sounded from different parts of the theater," said David Saltz of the UGA Department of Drama and Theatre, who will head up the project. "We will simulate the sensation of being surrounded by human activity on stage, in the audience and backstage." Saltz explained, "We will allow people to interact spontaneously with the virtual audience members, as if they really were in the theatre. Since vaudeville audiences reflected a cross-section of American society, different spectators would have radically different attitudes toward what they were seeing on stage."

"With respect to the performers themselves, a critical concern is to find a way to bring the nuances of great stage performances into the virtual environment," said Saltz. "To this end, the project will use motion capture technology to capture real-world performances by professional, highly skilled actors, singers, dancers, acrobats and musicians."

Director of the Interactive Performance Lab at the university, Saltz is both a scholar and stage director whose research over the past 10 years has focused on the relationship between digital media and live performance. "He recently directed a production of Shakespeare's The Tempest as the first full-length dramatic production to feature animated characters controlled in real-time using motion capture technology , which will be a key element of this new vaudeville project," said Stanley Longman, head of the Department of Drama and Theatre.

Michael Hussey, who heads the university's program in 3-D computer animation, will be responsible for the computer modeling and animation. Allen Partridge will help to develop strategies for interactive 3-D animation. Other UGA participants include Charles B. Davis, a performance scholar specializing in ventriloquism and dance in early American variety theatre, and Scott Shamp, director of the UGA New Media Institute, who will collaborate in the creation of a new state-of-the-art motion capture studio for the project.

Researchers at six other universities are contributing to the project. Two primary participants are Bruce McConachie of the University of Pittsburgh, a nationally recognized expert in 19th century American popular theater, and Susan Kattwinkel of the College of Charleston, whose research focuses specifically on early vaudeville stage performances. Other scholars involved in the project include Larry Worster of Metropolitan State College of Denver, a musicologist specializing in American Folk music traditions; Daniel Zellner, artistic director of Studio Z in Chicago, who will write the dialogue for the interactive characters backstage and in the audience; Frank Mohler of Appalachian State University, who will design the virtual stage scenery; Michael Zyda, professor of computer science at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, who will provide interactive system design and programming; and Edward Price and Maribeth Gandy of the Interactive Media Technology Center at the Georgia Institute of Technology, who will assume responsibility for the project's final software implementation.

This proposal grew out of the "Building Blocks Workshop" sponsored by the National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage in September, 2000. The project has also received a Lottery equipment matching grant from the UGA Vice President of Research for $132,300. The award number for the NSA grant is 0121764.-