Van Gogh TeleVision Inc. / Worlds Within (1995-1999)

Karel Dudesek left Ponton European Media Lab in 1995 due to disagreements with the other directors; the company in Hanover was continued by Salvatore Vanasco, Frank Mattäi and Benjamin Heidersberger, while Van Gogh TV was continued by Dudesek. In Meckelfeld near Hamburg, he founded a research lab for 3D technologies on the web, where some Piazza virtuale staffers such as Tim Becker, Axel Roselius, Martin Schmitz and Manuel Tessloff also worked and developed the online 3D world Worlds Within based on the Virtual Reality Mark-Up Language (VRML).

Worlds Within was a multi-user system based on client-server technology. From today’s perspective, the project is reminiscent of Massively Multiplayer Online Games or games like “Minecraft” or “Fortnight”, where the player installs a programme on their own computer, which they can then use to move around in a virtual, three-dimensional space. World Within was not a game, however, but was intended to allow participants to form interest groups and communicate in virtual space, a further development of the concepts of Piazza virtuale and Service Area a. i. for the Internet. A modular system allowed participants to design their own avatar and to build their own spaces.

In 1996, the group took part in the “Art Olympics” during the Olympic Games in Atlanta with an interactive media project; the company was registered as a corporation in the city’s commercial register. Van Gogh TeleVision Inc, as the company was now called, negotiated a cooperation with NBC, AT&T and Bell Laboratories in 1996 for an American-wide distributed server system with a three-dimensional world, avatars and multimedia communication. Due to the Telecommunication Act passed in 1996, AT&T’s priorities changed and the project was discontinued. AT&T was forcibly split into several companies by the US government. Van Gogh TeleVision Inc. ceased all activities and was dissolved in the USA and Germany in 1999.

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