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Home > Press > Press Releases > Cambridge Based Entertainment Company Moves Museum Experience To The Web
Cambridge Based Entertainment Company Moves Museum Experience To The Web
Cambridge, MA – August 10, 2000 – Now anyone with access to the Internet can build their own fish online and launch them into the Virtual FishTankTM exhibit at the Museum of Science, Boston.
VirtualFishtank.com, a first-of-its-kind online extension of a museum exhibit, is a collaboration by Nearlife, Inc. and the Museum of Science, Boston. Cambridge-based Nearlife (www.nearlife.com) is pioneering a new model for rich, interactive, personalized entertainment using the Internet as an integral part of the creative process. www.VirtualFishtank.com uses the latest Internet technologies to bring the Museum experience into homes and schools anywhere in the world.
"Kids can now sit at their computers and create fish. They can make their fish more or less hungry and the mouth gets larger or smaller. More or less timid, and the eyes get larger or smaller," said Tinsley Galyean, co-founder and CEO of Nearlife. "When you release your fish into the tank, you can watch it react to the fish already there, eat virtual fish food, or perhaps get eaten by the shark."
"A little girl in Japan can create a fish and play with it in her own personal tank. When she decides to tag and release the fish, it is piped into the cyberstream and seconds later it can be swimming in the Museum of Science Virtual FishTankTM. When she visits Boston she can go see her fish, and know its hers because it's tagged."
"The Web-based Virtual FishTankTM enables the Museum of Science to bring an engaging computer simulation to much wider audiences," said David Ellis, president, Museum of Science, Boston. "Taking advantage of exciting new technologies to expand our educational impact fits perfectly with our mission and larger technology initiative.
VirtualFishtank.com is a type of experience that Nearlife calls Living EntertainmentTM. What, exactly, is Living EntertainmentTM? It happens when the line between the real and the virtual blurs. At the Museum, audience members are immersed in a virtual world of vivid action where the entire environment responds in unpredictable ways. The online version extends that experience beyond the walls of the Museum. To create Living EntertainmentTM Nearlife incorporates the latest Internet technologies seamlessly into the online experience.
"It's not like a regular exhibit," says Galyean. "This isn't just something you look at. It's something you're part of, right from the start."
VirtualFishtank.com allows visitors to create custom fish on the Internet. Museum visitors can also build their own fish at terminals placed near the virtual tank. The bold, highly stylized fish have a wide range of behavioral and physical characteristics. Fish can be streamlined, flat, angular, smooth, frightened, bold, hungry, or have almost no appetite at all. Each physical characteristic represents a type of behavior, and it's these behavioral characteristics that determine how a fish will interact with the schools of fish in the tanks. VirtualFishtank.com lets you build and save four fish, which can then be retrieved at the Museum of Science and released into the big tank. Or the fish can be released directly into the museum tank from a home computer. In the future, people will be able to release fish into other Virtual FishTanksTM around the world.
"Nearlife has created an engaging, immersive site using Macromedia Shockwave content to provide an interactive, fun, educational Web experience," said Miriam Geller, Sr. Product Manager for Macromedia. "Macromedia Director 8 Shockwave Studio provides companies like Nearlife an easy way to author and deliver rich, multimedia Shockwave content for the Web."
"The Museum of Science, Boston is an ideal setting for the type of entertaining and educational technology that Nearlife develops," said Galyean. "The Museum of Science and Nearlife share a common vision to use the latest interactive and communications technologies to create entertaining educational experiences.
About Nearlife
Nearlife combines traditional storytelling techniques with cutting-edge technologies to create interactive, personalized entertainment featuring characters and environments that change, adapt, grow, and react in ways that mimic real life. Widely recognized for its award-winning Living EntertainmentTM installations at noted museums, science centers, and other locations around the world, Nearlife is using Web-based elements to expand location-based exhibits into homes, schools, and beyond.
Additional information about Nearlife, Inc. is available at www.nearlife.com. Living Entertainment and the Nearlife logo are trademarks of Nearlife, Inc.
About the Museum of Science, Boston
One of the world's largest science and technology centers, the Museum of Science takes a hands-on approach to science, attracting over 1.7 million visitors a year. A leader in informal science education, the Museum demonstrates the excitement and relevance of science through its vibrant programs and over 550 interactive exhibits. Other features include the Thomson Theater of Electricity, home of the world's largest air-insulated Van de Graaff generator; the Charles Hayden Planetarium; the Gilliland Observatory; and the Mugar Omni Theater, where a five-story domed screen surrounds audiences with larger-than-life images.
Additional information about the Museum of Science is available at www.mos.org. The Virtual FishTankTM is a trademark of the Museum of Science, Boston.
For Information Contact:
Jim Brady
Nearlife Inc.
info@nearlife.com
(617) 491-3184 x124
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