It's good that, even with the passing of Mondo 2000, the interweb still gives us the opportunity to point and laugh at this kind of nonsense: Project Paradise is a telepresence installation which enables two isolated users to remotely interact with each other via a cyborg "Adam" or "Eve" within a remote "paradise". Each participant may control the body of a cyborg to engage in interaction with the other isolated user.
The installation consists of two aluminum isolation booths and a cylindrical chamber connected by video and telephone cabling. Each isolation booth contains the interface to "paradise": a television and a telephone.
Telephone button presses allow users to "be Adam or Eve in paradise." This "Paradise" can only be experienced through telepresence via the robotically augented human actors (cyborgs). Through these Cyborg Surrogate Selves, participants can touch the grass, the flowers, and the flesh.
The cylindrical aluminum chamber located elsewhere in the installation contains a lush, plant-filled "paradise" and two robotically-augmented but otherwise nude people: the Cyborg Adam and Eve.
How can Cyborg Adam and Cyborg Eve play without the help of Cyborg Snake? Or Cyborg Fruit? What about the Cyborg rapture, with the death, and the burning, and the killer bees?
Dude, you're harshing my mellow. It's all good!
Peter Coppin, the guy responsible for the above, works with my department at Carnegie Mellon every so often. He presented the Paradise stuff to us last year, and I wasn't entirely sure what I thought of it then. I have mixed feelings about it now.
great, so what happens why the guy controlling cyborg Adam decides to beat the snot out of cyborg eve?
It sounds like it's not a waldo, the interface is a phone keypad: "to grab a boobie, press 1." "To smack my bitch up, press 2."
Wait, wait. How does this differ from "phone me now, I'm waiting to do what you ask"?
Oh, I get it. It's ART.
ah yeah! lawnmower man, here i come!!!!