Voice Garden is an interactive multimedia vignette exploring the famous dictum: "Biology is destiny."

Voice Garden opens in a sand garden where archaic spirits beckon and labyrinths murmur and a man must decide the form of his desire. Voices chant and whisper, and "rock spirits " lead the viewer to a choice between two stone labyrinths. Each labyrinth is populated with a drama having distinct enticements, character, and consequently, a distinct denouement . The labyrinths portray societal structures for acting out an instinct-driven drama which has its origins in Human biochemistry. These dramas are ancient and recurrant and have emerged in the art and mythology of many cultures. Voice Garden is set in a mythological past and is told in the style of a fable.

VOICE GARDEN is the first in a series of stories on the destinies of mankind, in which the user chooses which of mankind's many possible evolutional destinies he wishes to seek for himself. Destinies developed in future pieces will include: being uploaded into virtual paradise, having A.I.s as progeny and being obsolesced by them, living in an ecologically stable and renewable ecology where the trees grow old and the hippies play, and genetically engineering the next generation of mankind and being left behind as they depart for the stars.

Voice Garden has a full musical score that branches as the viewer's path branches composed by Bill Fleming. There are also interactive voices that speak to the viewer when crevices are probed or stones are touched.

Voice Garden was authored on Macromedia Director and can be played from a hard drive . It uses 16 bit sound and pictures and will be available early in 1995 on a CD ROM.

Contact:
Beverly Reiser, 6979 Exeter Dr., Oakland, CA, 94611, USA
(510) 482-2483 or e-mail: beverly@idiom.com

[WITHDRAW]