From Imagination to Reality: Using Immersion Technology in a Literary Setting

Rationale

In the past, English 104 at the University of Missouri-Columbia has been a standard survey of African-American Literature beginning with a number of slave narratives in the Eighteenth Century. Moving quickly through centuries and periods (the black Abolitionists, Reconstruction Literature, the Black Arts Movement), this course has often had the effect of both overwhelming and distancing students from the literature they are reading. Learning to understand African-American history as a kind of teleology centered around the Civil War, students often feel compelled to slot, sum-up, and dismiss whole generations of African-American authors. Another problem that students often encounter is the inability to conceptualize particular places or people, or to understand the context for a work of fiction. Particular texts become lost within the rather extensive “survey.” With so many important works being discussed, students often have a difficult time connecting with a text due to a lack in background knowledge of the time period, the issue, or the author. An instructor may find that handouts, films, slides or video may help fill the knowledge gap but this methodological approach needs updating. There is a different type of student in today’s classroom; a digitally-minded student, one who is technologically adept and often able to process images at a much faster rate than the student of yesterday.

Keeping these issues in mind, a new English 104 course was designed to accomplish three main goals: 1. Narrow the scope of the survey to literature of the early twentieth century. The course centers around the Harlem Renaissance, 1900-1945, including the period just prior to and immediately after what has been hailed the most productive time of African-American artistic expression. Selecting a more limited time period allows a more comprehensive discussion of the authors and their works. Also, authors or ideas that have traditionally been marginalized due to lack of time or because the work or concept was considered “trivial” are given more class discussion time. 2. Incorporate as much of the historical context for these texts as possible. 3. Combine the use of the latest technological advances within the humanities to incorporate these contextual aspects into a virtual reality environment that we call Virtual Harlem. This virtual world allows students not only to visualize the setting and context of several fictional texts in a computer-generated environment but also enables them to interact with it by navigating through streets, interacting with historical characters, and participating in its design. As students feel they are “building” a spatial context for their reading of the text, their enthusiasm for research sky-rockets. Watching the results of their vision of New York City emerge on screen in three dimensions (3-D), a sense of credibility and practical accomplishment is achieved.

Because of the positive feedback from students and faculty, a second course has been proposed entitled Uptown/Downtown. This course will explore both the boundaries, man-made and cultural, and relationships between various racial groups in the Manhattan area during the early part of the twentieth century. Connecting the environments of Wall Street, Greenwich Village and the downtown clubs of “Jazz Age” Manhattan, we will be able to follow the movements of authors such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Eugene O’Neill, John Reed, Edith Wharton and Edna St. Vincent Millay. From the repressive environment of Manhattan high society to the frenetic activity of jazz clubs to the leftist politics and bohemian lifestyles of Greenwich Village, students will be able to experience New York City in all its rich cultural diversity. Through the enhancement of the existing prototype, Virtual Harlem, and the construction of more areas of Manhattan, students will be given the opportunity to visualize events, personalities, characteristics and the culture of modernism.

Experience the Prototype

The Virtual Environment Instructional Lab (VEIL) seats 50 students who wear 3-D glasses and sit facing a wrap-around screen. As the lights dim, a Harlem street intersection appears on the screen. Students “enter” Harlem at Lenox and 7th Avenue and 131st Street, driving a Model-T. The teacher acts as either tour driver or chauffeur, leading students on a tour of Harlem or driving where they wish to be taken. Alternatively, students may take turns “driving” themselves with a joy-stick at the podium in the front of the classroom.

As the journey begins, a passing trolley car full of people must be avoided, as well as other Model-Ts parked in the street. Straight ahead, the Lafayette Theatre is an obvious attraction, with an all-black cast playing in the version of “Macbeth” produced by H.G. Wells. From the open car, you can hear the sounds of dogs barking in the street and people laughing and walking by. Getting out of the car, you can stop and hear Macbeth’s infamous monologue, as he holds his bloody dagger. Driving is the fasted way to get your bearings in Harlem, but walking will take you into the clubs to watch live performances of jazz, blues, ragtime, and classical music. The storefronts are created from real photographs and you can see the Bamboo Inn, home of jazz improv or the Corner Bar, which is an interracial club.

Navigating through the streets at daylight, you notice the life of the city streets. You can pass a street vendor selling meat pies, and as you approach, he will start to call his jingle, “the meat pie man is a mighty fine man.” These street chants were a popular form of entertainment, and are the historical foundation for the later commercial jingle. Getting out of the car also allows you to explore Harlem’s alleyways, where you can find men playing checkers or telling “hoodoo” stories, which are the U.S. version of “voodoo,” and involve the sharing of herbal recipes, love potions, trixter tales, or other kinds of spiritualisms. As students hear these stories, the instructor can tell them of the history of American “hoodoo,” a kind of folklore that was developed by slaves to accommodate their new surroundings.

You can also pass the Peace Mission of Father Divine, a cult figure who was enormously popular up and down the Eastern seaboard and the West Coast for over five years. As you pass, you can hear Father Divine describing himself as the “Lord God” in bodily form as the followers cry out, “peace be to Father Divine.” Nearby is the largest African-American church of the time, Abyssinnia African Methodist Episcopal Church, where you can hear the Reverend Adam Clayton Powell deliver a portion of the “Creation” sermon as recorded by poet, James Weldon Johnson.

But the most exciting time to be in Harlem is at night, and students (or the teacher) may choose when night will fall in Harlem, after they have had enough of the daytime sights. At night, the city comes alive with the flashing lights of marquis and the faint glow of the lamp posts. You may choose where to go by reading the bills posted on billboards outside the bars, which are created from photographs of actual bills of the time period. Or you may simply stroll the street, peering in windows to decide what interests you most. At the Nest Club, waiters are setting up for a fancy dinner, while across the street, people are eating in the more casual Doughnuts shop. Passing one club, you can hear Bill “Bojangles” Robinson tapping inside and reminisce about the time that he tapped five miles down Lenox Avenue on his sixtieth birthday followed by over 500 well wishers. You can visit the Hot Cha Club where Billie Holiday got her start or the famous Savoy Ballroom where dances like the Charleston and the Lindy Hop were popularized. Tonight, the Chick Webb Orchestra and the Jimmy Lundsford Band are playing in the “Battle of the Bands,” an all night concert that goes on until one band quits or the sun comes up, whichever happens first. You can stay and listen or just watch dancers perform the Lindy Hop through the window. Small’s Paradise is a club that Langston Hughes frequently visited and Myra Johnson is singing at the Apollo Theater as part of Amateur Night. What is fascinating about the clubs in Harlem is the diversity of the clientele, from the all-white Cotton Club to the interracial men’s club calls Barron’s Cabaret or the predominantly gay and lesbian audience of Edmund’s Cellar.

But what most people want to see is the Cotton Club, where African-Americans are distinctly not allowed as patrons. The famous gold and wood-crafted doors of this Mafia-controlled club are unmistakable, and as they open, you have a sense of entering into an island of wealth and illusion. Designed to be reminiscent of old plantation life, the interior strikes you as a combination of the Old South and an exotic island jungle. There are palm trees everywhere, and the room is filled with laughing guest in evening gowns and tuxedos. If you stay long enough, the curtains will rise, and actual footage of a filmed performance of the Duke Ellington Band will play on stage as dancers tap in the foreground as an introduction to singer Freddie Washington.

If you grow tired of this all-white setting, you can sneak out through the door that days “colored entrance” on the outside, which functions as an entrance for black waiters and entertainers. In the back alley, Duke Ellington band members may have gone to hear Bessie Smith sing at the After Hours Club, a blues bar behind the Cotton Club. Finally, there are always the salons held in the brownstones inhabited by the intellectual class, where you can mill around with Jessie Fauset, Nella Larsen or W.E.B. DuBois. Or there is the notorious “Dark Tower” build by A’Lelia Walker, daughter of Madam C.J. Walker, beauty culturists who made millions developing skin and hair care products for African-Americans. The walls of the “Dark Tower” are covers with poetry by Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen and the clientele will give you a sense of weekends filled with poetry and music that occurred in this place.

The ten square blocks of Harlem in virtual reality give students an unprecedented of the cultural wealth and history of this area. It took over six months to gather enough material, maps, photos, and films, before the programmers and graphic artists could begin “building” Virtual Harlem. The environment was build to specifications detailing the exact lengths and widths of streets and placement of buildings. Now student research materials can help to refine and expand upon this base, as students have the pleasure of not only navigating but also doing interdisciplinary research on the time period to fill in some extra dimensions to the project.

Contingent upon external funding, we will be able not only to expand and enhance the Virtual Harlem project but also develop the “Downtown” section for the proposed Uptown/Downtown course. While Virtual Harlem attracts an audience interested in African-American literature and culture, the interracial emphasis of the new course should draw any student interested in modern American literature as the “Jazz Age” and the “Harlem Renaissance” will be combined. This course will highlight the interactions between Euro-American and African-American authors, artists, musicians and political activists in New York, giving students a sense of early twentieth century literature as a multicultural phenomenon.

Definition of Virtual Reality (VR)

As of late, the words “virtual reality” have become almost a catch phrase for a wide variety of technologies, but the best is defined as a technology which allows the user to navigate and view a three-dimensional world in real time with six degrees of freedom. The six degrees of freedom represent the software’s ability to define and the hardware’s ability to recognize six types of movement: forward/back, up/down, left/right, pitch up/down, angle left/right, and rotate left/right. Virtual reality replicates physical reality and is defined by Interactivity and is enhanced by some type of interfacing between human and computer. The two most common interfaces are “Head Mounted Displays (HMDs) and a facility called “The CAVE” or CAVE Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE). The CAVE enables scientists to study a variety of things students experience by having them enter an environment of three dimensional images projected by special cameras on either a very large, usually curved screen, in front of the students or on a series of screens which surround the inhabitants. Instead of wearing the helmet for immersion, users wear lightweight, high-tech eyeglasses which allows many people to participate at the same time and for a longer time. VR was originally intended for use in the military for training, battle or disaster simulations, as well as for the biological and earth sciences and engineering.

Theoretical Basis for VR in Education

According to Thomas Nagel (1974) research in cognitive science has demonstrated that, because of the experiential element offered by various environments, the acquisition of knowledge is more successful. Expanding on the notion of environmental effect on learning, William Winn (1993) proposed that a different type of learning occurs in a virtual environment, called “constructivism,” (which was actually an expansion of earlier constructivist theory proposed in the early 1980s by R.M. Gagne et. al.), in which students actively engage in the learning process. Rather than passively receiving knowledge, students must navigate and make decisions based upon various options presented to them (e.g. whether to drive or walk, whether to go inside a club or look through the window, whether to read poems on the wall of a popular establishment or listen to jazz). This active decision-making gives students the feeling of not only participating in a “real” world environment, but also turns learning into exploration¾ because of the sense of agency that the student feels, he or she is more likely to engage in learning. The cognitive research of Bartlett, Neisser, and others, has shown that, because of the experiential effect of VR and the interaction that users have with other users and objects within the environment, meaning within a virtual environment is very closely tied to that gained from the “real world.”

When students read novels, they are experiencing, second hand, the experiences of the author. Although this second-hand account of an author’s knowledge of a place or event may lead to a good understanding of what the author may have been trying to express, VR affords the student an opportunity to experience “first hand” the same environment, event, or setting that the author is describing. Entirely new or additional meanings may be discovered by students because they would have “seen” the scene themselves. In this way, VR becomes a kind of “intertextual” engagement, in which students engage with a simulated environment, filled with music, photos, and dialogue. This intertextuality allows students to have a sense of engaging with the characters or author of a text rather than simply receiving information second hand. The student can then compare his or her experiences to that of the author’s, shaping his or her own “reading” of the environment or text, as well as better understanding the basis for the author’s interpretations. VR promises not only to open up the text to new possibilities, but also to revolutionize the notion of what it means to “read” or experience a text. Because of recent currents in literary criticism focusing on intertextuality, pastiche, and reader response, this aspect of VR should be vital to the future of literary criticism.

Instructional Context

One of the primary reasons for using virtual reality in this course is to engage students on both a technological and critical level, so that a work of fiction can be better understood and critically evaluated by having them enter into a realistic rendition of the environment that inspired an author to depict a particular event or character fictionally. Opening a novel up spatially in this fashion helps students to re-negotiate their understanding of how fiction should be read. Students are immersed in a virtual world of sights and sounds reminiscent of Manhattan, New York in the 1920s, and by participating in the creation of this literary environment, students become more engaged in the class as a whole. Support for this claim is documented in both quantitative and qualitative assessments given throughout the semester.

Assessment of Virtual Harlem (Prototype)

At the beginning of the semester, students are administered a pretest to determine initial perceptions and attitudes toward the Harlem Renaissance and the artists from this period as well as the Harlem environment out of which these emanated (i.e. people, culture, physical environment.) Students are then divided randomly into a test and control group. In addition to the regular in-class experiences, the test group is also subjected to advanced visualization. At the end of the semester a post-test is administered to determine whether there has been a statistically significant difference in the attitudes and perceptions between these two groups.

To complement the quantitative component, a battery of qualitative assessments are also administered. These qualitative assessments are in the form of informal interviews and writing assessments. The first writing assessment is administered to the entire class prior to the test group’s exposure to the virtual environment. After the test group is subjected to the virtual environment, a subsequent writing assessment is given.

The data collected from this study will be incorporated into a longitudinal study designed to determine the impact of advanced visualization over an extended period of time. Moreover, we will also be able examine its impact on retention of subject matter as all of the students who were enrolled in the class have agreed to be re-tested at 6-month intervals.

Preliminary Results

The results of the pre-assessment data showed a significant discrepancy in the attitudes and perceptions of white and African-American students. While most African-American students entered the course with a range of positive to indifferent perceptions and attitudes toward Harlem, the majority of white student’s attitudes ranged from negative to indifferent. While it is too early to draw any definitive conclusions, the initial results of qualitative measures indicate a shift in attitudes of all students in the test group. We have noted a significant qualitative difference in student writing and in-class discussion after viewing Virtual Harlem. All of the test group student writings became not only more descriptive, but also began to demonstrate a positive perception of the life in Harlem during the 1920s. Even after reading and discussing several novels which chronicled life in Harlem, however, the control group, made up of students who were not exposed to advanced visualization, displayed no significant difference in subsequent writing samples which tended to mirror their initial writing assessment in terms of perceptions and attitudes. We are still in the process of evaluating the data for other demographic categories.

Course Design and Facilities

During the Fall and Spring Semesters, 1996-97, the prototype Virtual Harlem was in the developmental and pilot implementation stage. In the Fall, 1997, the prototype was further developed to include additional sound and animation. With future funding we will be able to make changes and improvements on the Virtual Harlem project based on student and faculty feedback as well as develop an additional course entitled Uptown/Downtown. This new offering, which will be a senior and graduate level course, will focus more on the theoretical aspects of the relation between text and territory, as well as the implications of using computer technology to “read” a text. A VR environment is useful for increasing the cultural studies interest of graduate students, who are free to study fashion, music, urban development or other aspects of New York City in the 1920s that can be incorporated into the environment. For instance, The Great Gatsby is often studied by literary critics for its emphasis on fashion and fashionability. Students in Uptown/Downtown, exploring the fashion industry of the 1920s, will see the photos and ideas that they have gathered materialize on the screen in a 3-D fashion. Because of the unlimited potential that the implementation of virtual reality in the humanities offers, the creation of these environments will enable instructors from other disciplines such as History, Art, Theater, Music, Political Science, and Sociology to utilize the technology within their classes as well.

The University of Missouri has a facility called the Virtual Environment Instructional Lab where a unique approach was chosen for the method of delivery. The Virtual Environment Instructional Lab, (VEIL) is where students experience virtual environments by means that no other institution has adopted. VEIL encompasses three separate yet related components: a motion platform with head mounted displays, (HMDs), which students find particularly exciting, a virtual environment classroom and a virtual set.

The motion platform occupies one room and is the only one like it on a college campus in the United States. It incorporates real-time interactivity while users are each immersed within a shared virtual environment with the aid of HMDs and motion trackers. In one application developed at ATC, a helicopter flight simulator, users each wear a HMD while riding the motion platform. The “pilot” sits in the forward seat and guides the helicopter through the virtual terrain with a joystick. The two passengers, also in HMDs and sharing the pilot’s environment, each have a separate perspective of the terrain determined by their position in the helicopter (on the motion platform) and where the pilot flies. What makes the motion platform unique is its recognition of real-time input from the joystick control which enables users to navigate in any direction they wish within the environment. Other platforms are based on a pre-programmed flight path and users usually don’t wear HMDs. The motion platform will eventually be merged with educational products so that students can “fly-through” various environments, such Virtual Harlem, Central Park, or lower Manhattan, as part of their immersive experience.

The second component of VEIL is the Virtual Environment Classroom. The classroom seats 50 students comfortably. Each student wears a set of lightweight 3-D glasses which enables them to view images stereoscopically projected on a high definition 20X15’ panoramic screen. The room is tiered to minimize viewing obstructions, has full stereo surround sound, Internet connection, and a high resolution projector mounted on the ceiling. Faculty members who have developed VR projects typically bring their classes to the VEIL 4-5 times during the semester to experience the project that has been created.

The third component of the VEIL is the Virtual Set, now under construction, which allows the seamless integration of live students and faculty with sophisticated computer generated 3-D virtual worlds which is updated in real-time. The Virtual Set is a “blue screen” environment which utilizes digital robotic cameras, special lighting, body trackers (data suit) and a graphics-based supercomputer. A pre-programmed expert system shell allows students to interact with characters in various scenarios. Students can take part in dialogs, move freely in the space, make decisions while interacting with the characters, ask or answer questions. The expert system shell responds intelligently to the students moves.

More information can be read and experienced about the Advanced Technology Center by visiting the Web Site. The Site contains both graphic and textual information not only about the Center but about each of the projects in which the ATC has been involved. There are QuickTime movies and QuickTime VR versions of Virtual Harlem phase I, as well as a number of still shots of the project. Browser requirements are: Netscape 3.0 or higher or Internet Explorer 4.0. The URL for the Site is: <http://www.atc.missouri.edu>; click in the middle of the graphic to enter the main Site.

At the University of Missouri, we are breaking new ground in four respects:

the technology will be used to supplement and enhance instruction in the humanities as well as the sciences.
the environments will be constructed using actual photographs from the time-period, some color enhanced, thus giving users even more of a feeling of immersion into a “real world.”
the “Virtual Reality Instructional Lab,” which has recently been completed, is the first of its kind in the world and can accommodate over 50 students comfortably.
once completed, both environments will be available for distribution as distance learning modules, and available, in similar format, over the Internet and on CD-ROM.
Students in both courses begin by reading novels, participating in class discussions on key topics, using their imagination to piece together the area of New York or other setting that the author has described textually. The class is then taken to the VEIL, where through immersion, they have an opportunity to expand their imaginary capabilities, adding their memory and personal experience to the artists’ description of a particular scene within a novel. Preliminary surveys indicate that students gain a more comprehensive understanding of the text, the time period, and the author’s language by engaging in the scenes in conjunction with their reading.

The incorporation of VR technology in both of these literature courses will recreate the actual setting which an author may have been inspired to depict fictionally, thus supplementing the humanities content with realistic images. For instance, one of the texts being used for the course is Home to Harlem by Claude McKay. In this work, McKay graphically describes various scenes in New York that he probably experienced while living there. Students begin by reading portions of the novel along with class discussion on key topics. Students are encouraged to use their imagination to piece together the portions of “Harlem” or other setting that the author has described textually. The class is then taken to the VR Lab where through immersion, they will be able to expand their imaginary capabilities because now, they will have memory and personal experience to add to the artists’ description of a particular scene within a novel. We believe that students will gain a more comprehensive understanding of the text, the time period, and the author’s language by “seeing” the scenes in conjunction with their reading.

The intended beneficiaries of this project will initially include the students who are enrolled in the Fall and Spring, 1998-99, English 104, Survey of African-American Literature at the University of Missouri-Columbia (UMC), approximately 120 students total, and students enrolled in English 2205, American Literature and 4680, African-American Literature, both taught at Central Missouri State University where Mr. Carter is an Assistant English Professor, approximately 140 students total. It is our intention to also extend the technological content of this project through the World Wide Web and CD-ROM development if funding is provided for the project. Central Missouri State University has requested their board of regents to revise their statewide mission to include: “to acquire, disseminate and utilize technology to enhance the university’s comprehensive educational mission and to enrich the lives of all Missourians;” thus, making CMSU a suitable candidate for extension of this project. Central Missouri State University is located approximately 90 miles from the University of Missouri-Columbia and although there has been discussion of collaborative projects between the two universities, none have materialized to date. This is the first serious effort to bring the two campuses together through an African-American and American literature project. The virtual environment will be available to instructors at both universities who teach History, Music, Theater, Political Science, English, Art and Sociology. A list of university faculty utilizing Virtual Harlem in their classes or participating in an advisory capacity is included in the “Project Staff” section. This list, however, is not inclusive and faculty continue to express interest in the project as it is further enhanced and information about is disseminated. Because of its interdepartmental use-value, we hope to soon reach an audience of over 1,000 students per year. This number is substantiated by multiplying the number of faculty who have, to date, expressed interest in incorporating Virtual Harlem as a part of their curriculum, (8 thus far), by the average number of students enrolled in their classes, (35), by two classes per semester, (16), by two semesters; totaling 1,120 students as soon as fall 1998.

The University is also involved in the Internet II project which has great implications for the transmission of 3-D images or virtual worlds over the increased bandwidth fiber-optic lines. By creating virtual environments of interest to so many different disciplines and making the data available via Internet II, any institution that is part of the advanced Internet project and that purchases the minimal equipment will have access to the fully navigable, 3-D data set without having to purchase hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of “high-end” computer equipment to create the environments themselves. In addition to the CD-ROM/Web based distribution model planned for this project, additional participants may be attracted, reaching global proportions. When the high-speed networks are in place, there exists the possibility that students and or researchers will one day be able to don head mounted displays at their individual institutions and “meet” in Harlem or other constructed environment as a part of their curricular experience.

Evaluation

In order to evaluate the educational benefits of this project, an empirical survey study will be conducted. This study will be conducted at two separate universities in the mid-western United States. Participants will be students enrolled in the project co-director’s English courses, initially and when the second environment is completed both project directors will teach individual courses and a combined course for which the larger project is to be developed. The project co-director, Bryan Carter, will be the instructor for the classes at both the University of Missouri-Columbia and Central Missouri State University and Dr. Karen Piper will instruct courses at the University of Missouri-Columbia. The students participating in the class at the University of Missouri will be exposed to “Virtual Harlem” and eventually “Uptown/Downtown.” In the other class section, conducted at nearby Central Missouri State University, the students will not be initially exposed to either project nor will they be aware of the “Virtual Classes” being taught. The data collection will be conducted during the fall and winter semesters, 1998-99 and the fall and winter semesters, 1999-00. Approximately 320 students are expected to participate.

Approximately three times during the semester, the students will receive tests regarding the content of the course. In addition, the students will receive short questionnaires regarding their satisfaction with the course and the instructor. We plan to conduct statistical analysis to determine if there is a significant difference between the grades of the students who have been exposed to “Virtual Environments” and those who have not been exposed. The data will be analyzed by calculating ANOVAs for the different variables. These will be examined for the two classes as well as subgroups such as race and gender. This evaluation will be expanded to the students enrolled in the new course Uptown/Downtown and those who are enrolled in a “standard” Modernism Course at both universities. The statistical package to be used will be SAS on a UNIX platform.

Follow-up and Dissemination

There are several activities and plans that will facilitate the dissemination of this project to a very wide audience. Bryan Carter, has already presented and demonstrated a portion of the prototype at several national and international conferences including the Midwest Modern Language Association Annual Conference in November, 1996, the American Culture/American Popular Culture National Conference in March, 1997, the Computers in Writing National Conference in June, 1997, the Educational Media/Educational Telecommunications World Conference in June 1997, the Educational Communications (EDUCOM) National Conference in November 1997, the Advanced Linguistics and Computing/Advanced Computing and Humanities International Conference in July 1998, and the National Council of Teachers of English International Conference in August, 1998. There are also proposals to present the assessment model and the enhanced interactivity at various conferences during the 1998-99 school year. Mr. Carter has also been asked to present information at the New Faculty/Teaching Assistant workshop through the Program for Excellence in Teaching at the University of Missouri-Columbia as well as several Faculty Development Seminars at Central Missouri State University. There are also plans to disseminate the project over the World Wide Web after the Humanities Content Advisory Committee provides relevant course outlines, syllabi, notes, and study questions. Plans for dissemination on CD-ROM have also been discussed. These disks will be distributed with course materials for various disciplines and will include contextual, historical, biographical and literary information pertaining to the early part of the twentieth century.

NOTES

These characters are “QuickTime” animation made from actual photographs and filmed in front of a “blue screen;” they become animated when the navigator comes into proximity with them.