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Welcome to YORB!
An Electronic Neighborhood
'Nick West
Nick West
Yorb is a 3-0 computer world that is specialty designed to house an experimental "virtual community". By using their phone or computer, viewers can enter Yorb to talk, explore and play with other viewers. These interactions can be seen live on a regular television broadcast.
TV: Every cable viewer in Manhattan can see Yorb live each week. During each hour-long broadcast, between 3,000 and 6,000 callers try to call the Neighborhood. Over 25,000 students on the NYU campus will see future 24-hour versions of the Neighborhood.
A view down the main street of Yorb's downtown, showing the different storefronts where different interactive activities take place. The bank is unused – because there's no money in Yorb!
This portal leads to the Community Fair, where local organizations can leave announcements. The cartoon faces represent live phone callers, while the text is live chat from Echo, a New York-based electronic salon.
PHONE: Viewers can simply watch the Neighborhood as it is displayed on cable, or they can participate more directly by calling into Yorb from their phone. Up to four callers can talk to each other live at the same time. One of these callers is chosen to be the pilot and the pilot controls everyone's journey through Yorb by pushing the touch-tone buttons on their phone.
COMPUTER: Subscribers to Echo, a New York-based computer conferencing service, can also participate in Yorb. When they enter the chat area of Echo, everything that they type on their computer also appears live on the TV screen. Sometimes, they even get into spirited discussions with the phone callers.
Once they enter Yorb, phone and computer callers can play various games, and even compose music together. In the "Ritual Ground Zero" area, for instance, each user plays a different set of musical samples using the buttons on their phone. In "Bat wood", users can cooperate in unusual game activities. In the "YorBar", users can make cartoon characters "dance" to tunes that they have selected.
Viewers can help build the "virtual community" by uploading graphics, sounds or digital movies to Yorb – either through a computer bulletin board system or a World Wide Web site, For example, the Drive-In Theatre hilights; short video clips sent by local video and film makers: and the Lago del Mar Estates provide virtual "houses" that display the graphic work of resident computer artists.
Yorb is also working to link the virtual community with the real community outside the computer. In the 'Community Fair" area, viewers can check on the latest announcements from local community groups.
More interactive spaces are always being built in Yorb: both by students at New York University's Interactiive Telecommunications Program, and by artists from the surrounding community through the unique "Homesteading" program.
HOW YORB IS MADE Yorb uses off-the-shelf software and Macintosh hardware to display a 3-D world that is flexible, expandable and easy to understand for an average TV viewer.
In addition, viewers require no special hardware or skills in order to view Yorb: the Neighborhood is broadcast over normal cable TV lines; and a standard touchtone phone serves as the "set-top box". A main research goal of Yorb is to make it easy for viewers to join a virtual community in cyberspace. By using a combination of system design and interface design skills, that experience is delivered using low-cost hardware and software.
"Yorb: An Electronic Neighborhood" is an ongoing research project housed at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, and is sponsored jointly by Nynex and Viacom.
NOW TO CONTACT YORB We are always eager to hear from you, whether it is as a viewer, a volunteer, a live participant or a homesteader in the Yorb neighborhood. Please contact us with your ideas to improve our interactive community. Call us during our live broadcasts on Channel 34, every Thursday night from 11 PM to midnite (Eastern time)!
By phone: (212) 443-YORB
By computer: telnet to echonyc.com and use the password "yorb", 24-hour information and voice response line: (212) 995-4066
24-hour computer bulletin board (for uploading graphics, sounds and movies): (212) 995-4330, or telnet to yorb.itp.nyu.edu
e-mail: admin@yorb.itp.nyu.edu
World Wide Web: http://www.itp.tsoa.nyu.edu:80/-yorb/Yorb.rtf
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