Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 15:48:03 -0500 (EST)
From: Michael Dean Benton <benton-AT-BGNet.bgsu.edu>
To: mbenton723-AT-aol.com
Subject: Alt-X and Berkeley Interactive Design Release     "Holo-X" (fwd)




---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 13:00:10 -0700
From: Alt-X <golam-AT-grammatron.com>
To: Alt-X <golam-AT-grammatron.com>
Subject: Alt-X and Berkeley Interactive Design Release     "Holo-X"


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

THE ALT-X ONLINE NETWORK AND BERKELEY INTERACTIVE DESIGN RELEASE "HOLO-X"
-- THE FIRST MADE-FOR-THE-WEB 3-D NARRATIVE FEATURING S.L.U.T.


BOULDER/SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 17, 1998 --

					"Holo-X offers a fascinating glimpse at
          the future of hypertext. At its best,
          fiction creates a world of its own. Here,
          it is embodied by one, as well."
                        New York Times


Announcing the release of Berkeley Interactive Design's highly interactive
multimedia Web application Holo-X, featuring S.L.U.T. (Sorceress of
Language in Uncharted Technologies), a fully articulated 3-D polygonal
human figure whose promiscuous language and unpredictable behavior comes
with a healthy dose of street-wise attitude.

Holo-X, located at http://www.holo-x.com, is the Internet's first
fully-rendered 3-D storyworld environment created especially for the Web,
one that generates state-of-the-art VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling
Language) design with innovative storytelling, original audio tracks and a
unique interactive navigational system.  The Holo-X program is being
developed by the Virtual Reality Laboratory of new media production firm
Berkeley Interactive Design in conjunction with the Alt-X Online Publishing
Network [http://www.altx.com] highlighting the collaborative efforts of
many experimental writers, musicians and web designers from the Bay Area
whose unique combination of skills makes for a 3-D storyworld guaranteed to
stir up controversy in the net culture.

"Holo-X weaves a variety of multimedia elements into a truly unprecedented
interrogation of contemporary mores, gender assumptions, identity politics,
radical sexuality and conventional hypertext," says the program's
co-creator, Jay Dillemuth.  "It's a collaborative experiment in
avant-capitalism where fully funded narrative artists are able to use the
latest web technology to create intellectually-stimulating, adult
entertainment."

Created to be an adaptable virtual environment, the Holo-X project is
enriched with over 2.5 hours of real time text dialogues, writings from
S.L.U.T.'s journal and notebook, peeks inside her PC laptop, copies of her
D-I-Y zine and a travelogue.  You can also hear the latest tracks from
S.L.U.T.'s band, The Lotus Eaters, as well as turn on her edgy "monologues"
where she'll surprise you with the depth of her artificially-intelligent
promisicuity.

The twenty "monologues," which the user activates by clicking on her
figure, range from between 1.5 and 3 minutes, each of which addresses some
of Holo-X's themes such as cybersex, smart drugs, virtual reality, and
masturbation.  What makes Holo-X unique is the fact that at any given
moment, what S.L.U.T. says is being randomly selected from numerous
possibilities (an accomplishment which requires custom JavaScripting to
extend VRML's capabilities), all of which have been carefully scripted by a
team of professional writers whose experimental novels and poems in the
print world have already provoked audiences worldwide.

The only requirement for interacting with this state-of-the-art storyworld
environment is the Cosmo Player 2.1 plug-in and the current versions of
Netscape or Microsoft Explorer.

For additional information or to contact Berkeley Interactive Design's VR
Laboratory, send inquiries to:

synapse-AT-berkeleyidesign.com












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