The workshop brings the techniques of theatre, cinema, and architectural space to bear on the problem of creating a distributed interactive narrative for a large society of audience. Emphasis is placed on "transformational being" as an underlying state of being , and on the processses of intervention and adjustment as a means of generating transformation. A single collaborative class project serves to focus on our awareness of information as intervention, and on our recognition and use of narrative as understanding.

This year's project begins with the idea of a global "dream machine." Students will work in groups of 3-4 to develop an interactive, character-based scenario for the Dream Machine. Their characters (be they pigeons or stars) will have a presence both within DreamWorld (on the World Wide Web) and at the edge of DreamWorld (interactive installations placed in real-world architectural venues, using large-scale video projection, ISIS compositing software, and audience-sensing devices such as radar and sonar). When developing their scenarios, students should articulate how their characters contribute to the immersive experience of the Dream Machine as well as how their scenarios invite agency on the part of the participant.

A number of tools and/or effects are available for use in prototyping a scenario. These include: program templates in ISIS, the ability of ISIS to present images from the WWW, Character Maker: a construction kit for writing procedurally delivered dialogs, Wiglet: a program for designing "expressive text," the concept of "happenstance:" the notion that information in an information world can be equated to the water cycle in the physical world.