The Egyptian Oracle

Image Source from: The Egyptian Oracle website, Image of The Virtual Egyptian Temple Tours at Carnegie Museum of Natural History

Is an interdisciplinary multi-media performance which reenacts through a virtual and live performance an ancient Egyptian public ceremony. The performance utilizes state of the art open sim software, utilizing the virtual world as a live performance space including the use of programmable avatars. The three dimensional space of the virtual Egyptian Temple navigates like a real world environment, and engages the audience and live actors in the performance space between virtual and live experiences.

The piece serves as part installation, part inter-media performance, and live reenactment. There are two main supporting actors, one serves as cyber-puppeteer controlling the avatar of the high priest. The second actor or actress stands and interfaces directly with the audience and the projected virtual temple, moderating the audience and virtual world interactions. The project was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Additionally the project uses the open-source software Unity (www.unity3d.com) for developing virtual and interactive games, which allows spherical projection effects for fulldome and immersive theater display with multi-projection theaters and environments. Not only does this interdisciplinary performance piece utilize virtual worlds with live performers, it also catalyzes the use of virtual world technology utilizing cave, multi-projection and fulldome immersive environments expanding innovative uses for immersive education and entertainment.

http://www.publicvr.org/html/pro_oracle.html