When the iPad was released last year, there were several titles that had strong echos of earlier days of interactive CD-ROMs. Relaxing on a sofa and exploring a new world was much more enjoyable than sitting at the computer where the sense of wonder and adventure quickly transformed into frustration and an eagerness to relax elsewhere. So it’s great to see a title from “back in the day” get reissued and brought, sensitively, up-to-date for the iPad.

Gadget, originally released on CD-ROM in 1993, was designed by the epic Harukiko Shono. It was fascinating, mysterious, and beautiful. Its pre-rendered scenes, while static, were great eye-candy in an era when 3D rendered worlds were still a novelty. And its video elements, often in just a tiny portion of the screen, and in black-and-white, were still so new that you couldn’t help but feel drawn in, straining to capture what they had to say. Were you missing a crucial clue?

Harukiko designed several other games, including Alice and L-Zone. There’s a great interview with him on Core Gamers and more about him on Eastern Mind. Check them out… it’s interesting to learn, for example, that his games have been quoted in films from Guillermo Del Toro, Alex Proyas, The Wachowsky Brothers and David Lynch.

It is great to see an interactive auteur’s work brought forward to be appreciated by a new audience.

Gadget (B&W movie)

Gadget (updated render)

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In the late 90′s, Underworld was super-popular among my graphic design and new media friends. It wasn’t just Underworld’s music, it was the way they used visual design and motion graphics as part of their brand, and as a central element in their live performances. They weren’t just music – they were media! And it made a lot of sense — Underworld had deep connections with the art/design group Tomato and there was even some sort of connection to the innovative interactive group Antirom.

Rummaging through storage boxes, I recently stumbled upon an old Underworld DVD, the 2000 “Underworld Live; EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING.” What’s funny is that that it looked like I never actually played it, as the disc was unopened. So it was interesting to look at it with modern eyes, without the memory of what it was like at the time.

The disc had a DVD-ROM bonus feature, a PC-based interactive component that was comprised of two experiences:

The first, “Wongizer,” takes keyboard input and, based on the character pressed, displays a different video clip of abstract graphics. In an era when video and rich graphics were still pretty rare, this would’ve been a fun toy. But since you can’t remember which graphics are associated with which keys, there isn’t much sense of control. It’s a keyboard without the ability to really “play” it.

The second, “Headset,” lets the user select between four different soundscapes, change the audio mix between music and ambient speech, and vary the mix via a dynamic 3×3 matrix. Mixing audio was, at the time, a common CD-ROM experience, but the dynamic interactive graphics were a nice touch in a world where so much interactive content was made from static images.

Still, given Underworld’s design and interactive pedigree, I can’t help feeling that the piece was a missed opportunity. The Urban Feedback CD-ROMs, for example, had a similar moody, graphic designed, atmospheres and abstract interactions, but they felt much richer — spaces you’d want to explore further. I just wish Underworld had pushed this a bit more.

Wongizer - interface

Headset - interface

DVD - main menu

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In the mid 90′s there was a mini-boom for pop-music CD-ROMs. Unlike early titles from Voyager, which tended towards intellectual examinations of classical symphonies, these were moody, artistic, experiences. Strongly influenced by Myst, they let users move through virtual worlds, try to solve puzzles, and unlock special content. Their narratives may have been frustrating and unclear, but it was great to see artists experimenting with the medium.

It’s easy to forget how slow computers were in these days. And because CD-ROMs had a lot of lag, there was a wait when switching from scene to scene. As a result, designers usually emphasized visual richness over dynamics and interactivity. Scenes were often elaborately rendered 3D environments — something that was still pretty exciting at the time. And into these scenes small elements of dynamic content, such as videos or interactive elements, would be placed. The results were interfaces in which users could pan/scroll around and have moments of focused interaction. Remixing songs became a regular feature.

Xplora1 (1994)

There were some beautiful titles. Peter Gabriel’s Real World Multimedia group did a couple beautiful CD-ROMs — Xplora1 (1994) and Eve (1996) — with surprisingly rich photography and artwork. And The Residents’ Freak Show (1995) was an eerie, vaguely disturbing, experience. With a little modernization, these would feel at home on the iPad.

Other titles included Laurie Anderson’s Puppet Model (1994), Sting’s two disc All This Time (1995), Prince’s Interactive (1994), and David Bowie’s Jump (1994).

Unfortunately the boom turned to bust. Titles were expensive to develop, and there was a sameness to many of them that resulted in audience fatigue with the format. Plus technology was changing rapidly — labels were experimenting with Enhanced CD formats and the web was emerging as a viable alternative. But it was fun while it lasted.

Prince: Interactive (1994)

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I remember a CD-ROM project from the 90s that was unlike almost else appearing at the time. An ambient fluid flow of images and film, mixed with a unusual collection of audio, it created the feeling of moving through an urban environment. You had only the vaguest feeling of control of it all — almost as if you were being pulled through the city. It was a dream-like kind of experience.

The project was “Urban Feedback,” and it was created by Giles Rollestone with Sophie Greenfield in 1995-1996 while at RCA. When I first saw it, on the I.D. Magazine 1997 interactive annual CD-ROM, I was sucked it. Collaged images, vivid colors, radio sounds, video, all moving together in a dark and mysterious space. You could control it — but, in a way like many other random/ambient titles of that period, you were never quite sure what control you actually had.

Giles went on, this time with Julian Baker, to create the even more ambitious “Urban Feedback: London Tokyo, Tokyo Nomad.” The title was commissioned by Digitalogue, the Tokyo based new media publishing label, and was created between 1997 and its release in 2001. The project, as described on the UrbanFeedback website, is made up of two parts:

‘Tokyo Nomad‘ is a reactive environment which, over time, reveals ambient views and impressions of Tokyo; the city you inhabit, or Tokyo the city you dream of visiting.
“London Tokyo” is inspired by the chaotic energy of London and Tokyo. Fragments of media ranging from street sounds to texts and films are fused together forming a dynamic reactive collage.

Sadly the there are fewer and fewer computers that can still run the old CD-ROMs, so the project is close to extinction. But take a look at the videos and images below for a glimpse at what the remarkable titles were like.

London Tokyo - Sample screens

Tokyo Nomad - Sample screens

CD-ROM Artwork - Urban Feedback: London Tokyo, Tokyo Nomad

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Watching this video demo of Wired magazine’s prototype tablet app, I was struck by how ordinary it felt. Yes, it was nice to see multiple pages from the magazine, to move fluidly among them, and for those pages to have some embedded interactivity. But overall it felt like a traditional solution.

Are publishers ready to innovate? I certainly wouldn’t be the first to argue that publishers need to seriously re-think how they communicate. Are there parallels to some earlier era? Say… 20 years ago?

I was never a huge fan of the Voyager CD-ROMs. Primarially done in the late 80′s and early 90′s (around the same time as some of this work) they felt flat and static.

This was because most of their titles were built in HyperCard. From this history… “The choice was logical; HyperCard, modeled around the idea of a stack of cards, closely emulated the behavior of a book.” And the HyperCard framework definitely flavored the interactivity the titles offered: Click. Go to the next card. Repeat.

Colin Holgate, a programmer who worked for Voyager, described the company’s CD-ROM version of the Beatles film A Hard Day’s Night as “a coffee table book with the movie attached.”

Despite all this, and the platform limitations of their day, Voyager titles did try to push content — and ways to restructure, and give a bit of interactivity, to it. They allowed users to create their own paths.

It’s interesting to watch these old demos. They give a glimpse into the early days of CD-ROM publishing. And are a reminder that, despite today’s snazzier platforms, we’re still struggling with many of the same design and communication issues.

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony
Robert Winter’s CD-Companion to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony was published in 1989. Arguably this was the first ever consumer CD-ROM. Keep in mind that this was designed for a black-and-white Macintosh screen at 640×400 pixels. (source. video)

Stravinsky: Rite of Spring CD-ROM
(video)

Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus — adapted for CD-ROM
(video)

For more on Voyager here’s a wired article from 1993 that gives some good, in the moment, commentary.

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One of my very favorite early interactive projects was Lovedisk. I first saw it on a CD-ROM of winners from (I think) the 1997 Communication Arts Interactive Design Annual. Every semester, for a couple years after that, I’d show it to my students who would shrug. I think they thought it wasn’t up to Art Center design standards. They wanted to work on projects that were more serious and portfolio-worthy. I think they were wrong.

Lovedisk was charming. Lovedisk was funny. Lovedisk was full of unexpected surprises. And – Lovedisk was a very individual creation.

From what I’ve been able to re-learn… Lovedisk began as a thesis project at the Rhode Island School of Design. Although initially intended as a means to learn multimedia authoring and study interface design, Lovedisk evolved into a “comical exploration of the concepts of love and glamour.” If you’ve still got a working Shockwave plugin, you can see and hear the classic glamour/glamoure.

I’m still kicking myself for tossing the CD-ROM that had this project on it. I’ve scoured the web and found just a handful of screenshots from the project and the still running (but seemingly abandoned) website. Enjoy…

Project credits:
Karl Ackermann/Paul Kim, graphic designers/programmers/sound designers/clients
Karl Ackermann/Paul Kim/Aaron Meshon, digital video producers
Attvengher/Delta Music GmbH/Paul Kim, music composers

Undress for surprises!

Backrub. Just don't go too far.

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When I first saw Peter Greenaway’s film “Prospero’s Books” I was drawn to the innovative use of layering and multiple images to visualize the 24 books that made up the film’s arc. I was inspired. I wanted to explore ways to create interactive books with the richness and complexity as the books in the film… Books that felt handmade — full of magical, detailed, mysterious content.

So what about some examples of interesting digital books?

In 1997 Corbus released the CD-ROM Leonardo da Vinci. It contained images of da Vinci’s Codex Leicester with an innovative viewer that allowed readers to view Leonardo’s manuscript in 1) the original mirror-script Italian, 2) a reversed “normal” view, 3) a transcription of the original Italian, and 4) a modern English translation.

Leonardo da Vinci, Corbus

An early digital books was that I was semi-obsessed with was a 1990′s CD-ROM pop-up book of the alphabet from a [I think] Japanese design firm. On screen was an image of a 3D book. You could turn the page and a new crazy popup scene would unfold. One for each letter of the alphabet. I even think that the pages did crazy stuff — like the “r” page had a rocket ship that flew up off the page. (Unfortunately I can’t find an image of this project. I’m searching – and will post it when I do. It was either a CA or ID magazine award winner – in case anyone knows it.)

Moving from pure digital experiences to augmented reality, this book, “Le Monde des Montagnes – Give Me More”, by Camille Scherrer, is a beautiful vision of the semi-physical.

And lastly, the actual physical book, “Electronic Popables,” built by Jie Qi — a graduate student at the MIT Media Lab’s High-Low Tech Group. Full of wires and material magic to make the book come to life.

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