Critique of OZ Virtual

Team: Arie Stavchansky, Jesse McCrum, Scotty-boy, David Breed

Edited by: David Breed

No carding or cover, no line and no flak from the door guy. Here in OZ, the minor irritants of most uneventful nights are gone, which, strangely enough, makes us pine for confrontation. Our eyes follow a silhouette of ‘Spacegirl’, our avatar, gliding through patches of VRML light and shadow in search of dialogue. She can fly or walk, do a jig on occassion, and even pass through walls. Still, the deadpan silence of a Muskovite-looking avatar we just encountered probably means that the rest of our tour will be self guided. And despite her faculty to express herself, Spacegirl will remain mute tonight. Thus will we. Wandering through a virtual space to seek virtual company and finding none preys heavily on our minds as we scan the destination headings.

Perhaps the mere glamour of OZ just heightens our discomfiture. This place is quite obviously the den where swank avatars are supposed to be, but aren’t. Either they’ve stayed home for the evening, been escorted out through a fatal system-error, or instead prefer the usual way of doing things. Rumor has it that OZ is a ghosttown where a series of not-quite virtual raves just didn’t happen. By now we’re not at a loss to understand why. So far, we’ve been thrown out of the environment three times. Warrantability takes on a new definition in OZ, namely that the only provocation the designers require for throwing you out is that you arrive. Sure, there’s no malicious intent on their part. Intermittent crashes that make you reboot or re-log aren’t calculated parts of the interface. But tourists suffer these glitches nevertheless and are dissuaded from the virtual environment. It’s little different than if an electric door at Quickie Mart slammed shut in your face as you eyed the slurpee machine from outside: "I mean, I didn’t need that **ckin’ slurpee anyway, but that is what I came here for."

What the designers do intend for us, however, is some small chat in a sh’moove atmosphere. On a good night, say, a very good night, curious types from all over could propagate themselves with the help of about nine different avatars (Spacegirl would be content to find just one tonight). They appear styled after particular socio-economic types, ranging from lumberjack to punk, satisfying also the ‘alien and other’ quotas found in previous environments. Though we can only speculate, it appears that discreet conversation is fashionable around here. By shutting off the collision detection and gravity option, we’ve not only flown through walls, but sampled some of the OZ ‘underground’. Craning Spacegirl’s neck just a bit, we check out the vacant interior of the buildings as we cruise beneath them. This odd exposure suddenly renders OZ into a simple origami arrangement where two dimensions are more salient than three. Concealed from the would-be public, we make a break to find other spaces for the would-be private.

The walls offer pretty good refuge. But wall-swimming feels different than our typically rapid, precision movements. Our passage is sluggish and dull. Motion slows just as Spacegirl passes through the wall. From behind, we watch her horizontal figure meld into a black expanse. With a 180 turn she checks out what we’ve left behind, and then approaches the Music Room from beneath the surface. Drum and bass chimes in from the wall we’re near, growing stronger as she gets closer. The white-wash color scheme of the walls confuses us some, stealing our sense of perspective as the three dimensions blur into one plane when we close-in on the corner of the room. We retreat from the glare and back up through the wall set up behind us. As we get further, the whole structure goes miniature and resembles a few of John Hejduk’s concept homes. OZ is the best eye candy we’ve come across so far.

Though they are less interesting above ground, the plazas and chambers share a common aesthetic. Interiors here smack of Urban Outfitters’ design-plans, both as they exist now and as they might in twenty-years. Rust, brown, matte blue-gray, and some yellow construction zone bars on a wall remind us that this place is hip and urban. "Diva" is the name of a foyer that masquerades as a full-fledged night-club. We can’t figure if the music we’re hearing is muffled by the closed doors at Diva or not. It doesn’t much matter, that’s not what we came for. So Spacegirl glides out into the OZ docking bay. And again as when we started, an homage to Barron Harkkonnen exits our peripheral vision but echoes first in the right speaker, then the left. This small, cackling sphere runs on a fixed orbit in the plaza, announcing it’s proximity with the intensity of sound. Our search for dialogue ends there, however, as tonight the destination headings at OZ remain inoperable.