multiple devices and elements in remote locations in 3D space via infrared technology. The question posed at the beginning of this essay, "In what ways can telepresence be enhanced by motion tracking technology in performance?," now elicits this response: with increased control of data objects like images, video, sound, and light as well as hardware and equipment such as computers, robotic lights, and projectors, by multiple users across vast distances, almost simultaneously­­and potentially without mediating devices, like trackers or wearable technology, and with the human body, through movement and voice.

Such enhanced telepresence offers much for collaborations involving digital media projects where hardware, software, and peripherals must be controlled in real-time by teams working together at-a-distance or where physical computing research is undertaken. Thus, this paper concludes with a discussion of two collaborative projects undertaken with the GAMS system: the production of Gibson and Grigar's When Ghosts Will Die project and their preparation for the networked version of Virtual DJ.

3.1 The Production of When Ghosts Will Die

Inspired by the play, Copenhagen, by Michael Frayn, When Ghosts Will Die tells the story about the dangers of nuclear proliferation and is historically centered at the development of nuclear weapons at the height of Cold War paranoia (Gibson and Grigar). A narrative performance-installation that utilizes multi-sensory media elements such as sound, music, voice, video, light, and images, and text controlled by motion-tracking technology, it unfolds in three levels­­divisions comparable to those associated with games. (Fig. 6) As mentioned previously, the piece constituted the first iteration of the GAMS system that allowed for users to: 1) create behaviors for the control of media elements like video, animation, and images via software and the Control Centre; 2) send positional information from Flash Track to the Control Centre and, then, onto a third computer running Macromedia Director; and 3) allow the user to match locations in the room with videos and images in Director and to manipulate these images files with user movement.

Figure 6. Steve Gibson and Dene Grigar's When Ghosts Will Die

Thus, working at-a-distance from their spaces in Victoria and Denton, Gibson and Grigar conceptualized, researched, wrote, produced media elements, programmed, fine tuned, and rehearsed the piece starting December 2004 until its debut in Dallas, TX as a one-performer "work-in-progress" in April 2005. They continued to expand the work to its current, finished iteration as a two-performer piece that premiered in

Victoria, BC, September 2005. In less than a year and with only one brief face-to-face meeting in Dallas for a performance, Gibson and Grigar were able to stage a piece 25 minutes long­­comprised of three levels, with 50 different room maps divided into numerous zones, and six different media elements programmed in those zones­­that entailed multiple computers, sensors, projectors, robotic lights, and other peripherals.

An obvious discussion of collaboration, then, could focus on the methods used for any one of these steps in developing the piece; however, a more salient one relating to this paper's topic is one that emerged during the development of the third level­­the final part of the piece relating to the aftermath of nuclear destruction­­focusing on the theme of the work. As mentioned, When Ghosts Will Die was inspired by Copenhagen, and a refrain in that play is the statement that the destruction caused by nuclear bombs would be so complete that "even the ghosts will die" (Frayn 79). This ghost theme was able to be represented in the work via the GAMS technology. In brief, Grigar appears in Gibson's space as a ghostlike figure represented only as light and sound that he interacts with, and Gibson appears in hers in the same way. Utilized as such, embodied telepresence can result in such a collaboration and be incorporated thematically, becoming a narrative element as well as a methodology.

3.2 Preparation for Virtual DJ

Virtual DJ was originally a non-networked piece created by Gibson to explore motion-tracking technology as an expressive tool for interaction with sound and lights (Gibson). Later, after the development of the GAMS system that made it possible for multiple users to interact with one another at-a-distance, the piece was expanded for networked performances. Gibson and Grigar staged a networked performance of Virtual DJ in the summer 2005. Gibson, working from his studio in Victoria, BC, moved robotic lights and produced sound in Grigar's lab in Denton, Texas while she simultaneously did the same in his from her space. (Fig. 7)

Figure 7. Steve Gibson's Networked Virtual DJ