realization

as an example for other possible sources ofreal time data, the behaviour of german internet users during surfing is projected in a three-dimensional-world.
different topics ( computers, politics, sex, sports, environment, economy ) are described by external appearance, behaviour, and the sounds of an avatar. all queries that are found are categorized by topics and are shown in the world by the corresponding avatar.
the stream of data creates and changes thus the population of this world, which shows thereby a mirror image of the net society.

economy		sports		computers
politics		sex		environment

the game consists of three scenarios with different levels of interactivity and abstraction. the first level shows an abstract landscape of islands, each island representing a subject area, coded by colours and textures connected to the topic. the avatars feel attracted by the topic islands to which they belong and stay close to them, whereby it is possible to recognize mass proportions.
the player has a mere observing function here.





the second level demands an active participation of the player, which visual appearance and gameplay are based on nintendo games. the colourful landscape with islands, meadows and trees invites to explore it. this world is also populated by the representatives of the search words. here the player has more possibilities for interaction and to influence what is happening in the game.
tasks are to solve riddles and to pass tests to prove your skills, to get through to secret places, where are new, exciting points of view for the player.





different from both abstract levels, the third level represents a realistic environment. a scene in the street with a supermarket, cars and lawns. this representation projects the statistics in a real world. in a later further development the game could be experienced in an augmented reality environment, meaning that the avatar would be projected in a real scenery.





in all three levels there are more options for representation and comparison. a mere real time representation gets new data from the search machines every 30 seconds and represents these. the avatars stand for the search words, for which are looked for on the net during this moment. besides the possibility exists to compare the search words of different points of time. search words which date back further in the past are represented by so called ghost-avatars.
in contrast to conventional ones these are transparent in order to symbolize the past. one can recognize here very fast how different weekdays and daytimes influence the search words and hereby the significance of the categories. on a sunday morning you will find another population as during the nightly hours of a working day.


screenshots
video (quicktime mpeg4 - 11 mb - 320x240 - 6.00 min)
video (divx - 16 mb - 6.00 min)