Three Men Three Legs


'Nobuya Suzuki Nobuya Suzuki

The aim of my work is to create a three-dimensional space in which people can use computer networks to help one another achieve their goals.

The World Wide Web browser "Mosaic" came into wide use on the Internet at the end of 1993. A result of this was a shift from text-based communication to graphical communication. However, one thing that was lacking from this style of communication was the concept of collaboration. The system for this work, Three men three legs, was tested before "Mosaic" was made available to the public.

Masaki Fujihata had an idea of how people could share time and space within a limited scope of information. This idea was initially developed in the summer of 1993 and work continued until the spring of 1994. At that time, an experiment was conducted with the Twister Game on Network, which connected a conference in Montecarlo [IMAGINA] and Keio University in Japan.

The initial idea presented in "TwisterGame on Network" is further developed in the work "Three men three legs", in which three participants use the computer network to collaborate and play together.

Three players use three networked computers [Silicongraphics, Indigo2]. Each individual player can see only one figure, which has a spherical body and three legs in a virtual space. Players are allowed to manipulate only one leg each, but the figure keeps itself balanced automatically. In order for the figure to move in one direction, all the players must work together in this virtual space to co-ordinate the movement of the legs.