IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages, Proceedings, pg. 380 - 386.
1997.

Digital media and networked, two-way communication channels are rapidly transforming our access to knowledge, our inventions, and our artistic messages. In the past, artistic practice focused on the construction of fixed, static "expressive objects" which stood as intermediaries between the artist and her audience. Today, technology allows us to make computer-assisted artworks "with a sense of themselves." These works incorporate behaviors and real-time responses patterned after those of living things: creatures, communities, and ecosystems.

In this paper, we present the theory, process, and progress of a new collaborative work -- "the Dream Machine" -- currently under development by the Interactive Cinema Group at the MIT Media Lab. The Dream Machine is a highly-distributed interactive narrative designed to engage a large, widely-dispersed society of audience. It uses the techniques of cinema, theater, and architectural space design to improvisationally craft a playful, lyrical, emergent story experience in close collaboration with its audience of "co-actors." The Dream Machine's presence simultaneously spans several venues in both the real and the story world. It is accessible through the correlated, distributed environments of the World Wide Web, live-performance Public Spaces, and pager networks.

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