OZ Interactive, an Icelandic company specializing in 3-D Web entertainment, announced Thursday night that it is teaming with Atlantic Records to build a virtual reality version of the label's Digital Arena. The 3-D Web site, slated for a summer launch, will feature virtual reality music concerts driven by bands sporting motion-sensing body suits.
The site will form part of OZ's VRML-based entertainment community, Ozone, which was launched Thursday at the Hollywood Palace, at a party that featured Icelandic techno-music performer Moa performing live while signals from her skin-tight motion suit controlled her online avatar like an information-age marionette.
"This is just the start," said OZ spokesman Andrew de Vries, who predicts more partnerships with other record companies building their own 3-D performance spaces. "Ozone is just our community, but it's also a proof-of-concept thing to show people what can be done now with avatars and multi-user 3-D over the Internet."
VRML luminary Mark Pesce believes that OZ's work could tie in with coming Web changes involving push media. "The coolest thing I saw at WebWorld was Explorer 4.0. Anything in 4.0 can just become a desktop. That means we may have entered the era of streaming MTV. Your background might actually be something like this with performers coming on all day long and entertaining you while you're working.... What OZ is doing is proving that the bits and pieces of this technology are coming into place."
Pesce, however, wishes that OZ's technology would go further. "I think the thing that will push this kind of thing is if you have people doing things similarly to video mixers now, actually in there affecting the scene in real-time, choosing the background scenes, and making something like a throbbing, pulsing live music video."
But what about the band that wants a motion suit? De Vries says that the suit OZ uses is made by Ascension and costs about US$5,000. Its skin-tight vinyl, he notes, can bring out the inner qualities of performers like Moa, whom de Vries describes as "just like Uma Thurman." Less-gifted performers would presumably go for a more layered look.
