<1> To identify the boundaries between physical, virtual and performance spaces, it is important to consider the extent to which comparisons of behavior between physical reality and virtual reality hold meaning. Is comparing behavior in these different spheres like comparing apples and oranges? I've considered interaction in MUD environments as dramatic interaction. It would be helpful to compare behavior in another type of dramatic space--performance space that is non-virtual--with behavior in physical space, to shed light on an analogous sphere of dramatic interaction. I illustrate this comparison in the following:

Figure 2: Apples and Oranges?

<2> In this framework, I would imagine comparing the behavior of actors and audience in The Glass Menagerie, a play typically produced in a realistic manner with elements of expressionism, to behavior of actors and audience in Brecht's Mother Courage, which directors have aimed to produce in a "Brechtian" mode with alienation techniques to distance the audience from the illusion of the stage and from sympathizing with characters in a sentimental manner. Or, I would consider comparing people's behavior in St. Louis with people's behavior in New Orleans. I wouldn't imagine offhand wanting to compare the performance of actors in The Glass Menagerie, which is set in St. Louis, with people's actual behavior in St. Louis. In a similar vein, it would seem more appropriate to compare the interaction in Point MOOt with that in AcademICK--two TinyMUDs existing in virtual space. In fact though, Allucquere Rosanne Stone notes that through combining MOO and the "real world" by "using such factors as Point MOOt's economy, we will be able to discern what the society of this MOO is doing, and compare it to both RL and existing MOO" (my emphases, helpfile: Research). So research interests related not only to comparisons to Real Life but also to comparisons to existing MOOs. Yet I focus on the comparison to Real Life because I find it the more provocative one.

<3> Indeed, from the perspective of the player, are these performance, virtual, and physical spaces as neatly separated as "Apples and Oranges" suggests? Perhaps there is a more substantial point to be grasped in the conception of Point MOOt. Since humans interact in both virtual and physical space, it would help to develop paradigms that account for this interaction and that move beyond the easy assumption that "Real Life" contrasts distinctly with "Virtual Reality" (where is someone at any one time in RL; where is someone at any one time in VR?). Unlike an audience that watches actors in a performance space in the physical world, the person sitting at the keyboard is electronically within the performance space in the VR world.

<4> To understand the perspective of the people who sit at the keyboard, their conception of reality and the kind of dramatic interaction they have within and outside the virtual space of a MUD, it is critical to understand how people relate themselves to different imaginative spaces.

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