REPORT 2 (2.00)   FEBRUARY 2000 CLOSING THE LOOP 2000 A laboratory on sound & gameplay across networks http://www.timesup.org/closing http://www.radioqualia.va.com.au/ctl   research laboratory || CTL2000 || 7 - 11 February Iris Cinema, Media Resource Centre, 13 Morphett Street, Adelaide, Australia "Why is it that we can't have a race when we start on opposite sides of an athletics track and listen for the starter's gun at your end, while we can play badminton over a wall where I cannot even see what you are doing?" Tim Boykett, Time's Up Why indeed? A new international research project in Adelaide Australia, is seeking to address this long pondered question, as well as other oddities of spacetime. Sensing an opportunity to fold the globe (or at least traverse it without moving), a receptive and multinational collection of psuedoscientists, artists, geeks and objective observers, are constructing a laboratory for the exploration of collaboration across networks. Closing The Loop 2000 examines how sound, technology and gameplay can conspire to promote collaboration and inventiveness using remote internet technology. It is an analysis of the speed (or lack thereof) of networks, how audio and gameplay works across great distances, and how collaborative adjuncts can communicate and exchange meaningful data over data and telephone networks. A range of participants from South Australia and beyond will don their metaphorical white coats to carry out a week's intensive research on these matters. The local players are, Greg Peterkin, Martin Thompson, Carol Biddiss, Gareth Barnes, Jason Sweeney, Elendil, and Stephen Pickles. The away team includes, Jeremy Hicks (WA), Tina Auer (Austria), Tim Boykett (Austria), Honor Harger (New Zealand), David Moises (Austria), Nik Gaffney (Germany / SA), Bert Z. (Austria), plus a range of remote interchange players. Using the twin mediums of sound experimentation and game play, CTL2000 aims to provide a testing ground, research space and survey domain, to assess how we can work with the inherent frailties of the internet format (error messages, buffering, lag, crashing, busy signals). Are there games that we can play that are not disturbed and distorted by buffering and time delays? Component of the research laboratory will be conducted live on the internet each evening during a BROADCAST window, 8 - 11 February 00. Questions and problems which face the laboratory team: - Is it possible to separate time flow in the virtual world from time flow in the real world, to slow down time in the virtual world? - Can the omnipresent "Lag" of the virtual world, be temporarily switched off, bypassed or reconciled in online interactions? - Can the exchange of information about particular universes take place before it is distorted by network lag? The teams will be engaged in a week long introverted analysis of these and other issues, before throwing the inquiry open at CTL2000SL - the social laboratory - where the public will be invited to inspect audio networking experiments in progress, become test-subjects in interactive game situations, and participate in random aural and optical physiological exercises.

CTL2000 is produced with the assistance of the South Australian Government through Arts SA and the Media Resource Centre, with additional support from the Australian Network for Art and Technology, PATU, Ngapartji Multimedia Centre, and Virtual Artists Pty Ltd.   For more information, please contact: Time's Up: tim@timesup.org http://www.timesup.org r a d i o q u a l i a: honor@va.com.au http://www.radioqualia.va.com.au