High tech toys allow participants to play games and explore nonverbal communication in Taisuke Murakami's Contact Water.

Contact Water (www.iamas.ac.jp/~taisum98, Taisuke Murakami, Japan) is an interactive art installation using mixed reality (MR) technology, which merges the real and virtual words in real-time. Real world scenes are augmented with virtual world images (water and aquatic animals) synthesized by computer graphics. With Contact Water, each player is wearing a head-mounted video camera and a glove. The video camera incorporates a magnetic sensor detecting the head position and a pair of cameras capturing real world information. The glove is equipped with a magnetic sensor, to follow the player's hand movements, and a speaker to output the whistles and squeaks of the aquatic animals. Each player can visualize a computer-generated water surface on his palm and get aquatic animals such as dolphins from a fountain in the center of the playfield. The animals display various gestures following the player's orders, given via hand movements. A player can also interact with other players by exchanging animals, i.e. throwing animals at another player while looking at him (the animals jump through a ring of particles to the other player's palm). This installation was very successful and visitors were queuing to play. The creator says he created this installation as a tool to enable people to see the importance of face to face communication, especially non-verbal communication through facial expressions and gestures. The awkwardness of the players in recreating and coordinating simple movements through virtual reality was in full agreement with the message... MR technology gets a lot of attention in Japan. The MR Lab, founded by the Japanese government and Canon, Inc., was launched in January 1997 as the core organization for promoting research projects on Mixed Reality systems. The goal is to apply MR technology to attractions at theme parks and exhibits at science museums, as well as home entertainment and wearable virtual city guides. Contact Water was awarded the grand prize at the first contest put together by the Mixed Reality Entertainment Conference (MREC) in 2000.

To me, the most intriguing aspect of Contact Water, as well as the other projects presented at SIGGRAPH this year, was the paradox between the technical sophistication of the work and the motivation of the artist, which was to go back to the essential, the most primary aspects of human relations and feelings.

After five years as AWN's General Manager Annick Teninge returned to France, where she is now in charge of production and distribution at La Poudrière in Valence, an animation school offering a 2-year program where students study the process of filmmaking and develop their own film projects. She is also heading AWN's marketing and public relations efforts in Europe. Annick began her animation career as assistant director at the Annecy International Animation Festival, a post she held for six years.