Shaping 3D multimedia environments

In this paper we describe The MediaSquare, a 3D Multimedia Environment we are currently developing, where users are impersonated as avatars enabling them to browse and experience multimedia content by literally walking through it. Users may engage in conversations with others, exchange experiences as well as collaboratively explore and enjoy the featured content. The combination of algorithms from the area of artificial intelligence with state-of-the-art 3D virtual environments creates an intuitive interface that provides access to automatically structured multimedia data taking advantage of spatial metaphors.