Digital Hollywood 1996 -- Beverly Hills, California

By Karen Pals

	Following are some of the remarks that panelist Eric Gardner made during 
the "Pop Culture in Digital Media -- Online, Internet and CD" panel at 
Digital Hollywood on February 21, 1996:

	"One of my management clients is Todd Rundgren who was an early adopter 
in the multimedia musical area.  In 1993, we put out the world's first 
interactive record album on three platforms of CD-ROM.  That was so 
well-received that Todd decided from that point forward he would be only 
an interactive music artist and would not release anything on what he 
considered to be the old-fashioned digital audio only format.  When the 
enhanced CD platform came along, about a year and a half ago, he decided 
he would be the first artist to release his next album only on enhanced 
CD.  It's basically not available on any audio only format but it 
contains all of the ten songs from the brand-new album. 

	For those who don't know what an enhanced CD is, it is a disk which, 
when placed in an audio CD player, can play just like a regular audio CD. 
People who don't have CD-ROM drives can listen to all of the songs just 
as an audio CD.  For those who have CD-ROM drives, they can access the 
enhanced content as well.  Most record companies consider enhanced 
content to be just biographical material, pictures, the contents of 
someone's pockets, and such, but we consider enhanced content to mean 
that the entertainment value is supposed to enhance the value of the 
musical experience.

(The Individualist enhanced CD is then demonstrated for the audience.)

	The first feature is the musical clef icon at the bottom of the screen. 
When you click on any song title displayed, the disk will play the audio 
portion of the song and also will display the lyrics.  The lyrics are 
interactive to the extent that wherever you click on the lyrics, you'll 
be immediately taken to that portion of the song.  Whatever is playing is 
highlighted.  To jump to a different part of the song, you click 
somewhere else and immediately the disk will take you to that part of the 
song.  If you click on another icon at the bottom of the screen, it will 
take you to the area where you can choose which song you want to hear and 
get a full-length visual accompaniment to each song.  Some are navigable.  
You can navigate in your visual environment much like on a CD-ROM.  On 
other enhanced CDs, you can't do this, but we figured out a way to do it.


	You can select the order of the songs you can listen to and watch.  You 
can go over to a wheel, like a Vanna White ripoff, and you can scroll 
through the song titles.  When you get to the one you want, you click on 
it and it will display that song.

	"Cast the First Stone" has a visual accompaniment that is quite timely 
given the results of the New Hampshire primary.  It is one of the 
navigable visual environments.  We created a proprietary virtual reality 
(VR) tool that's better than Apple QuickTime VR which we used to create 
the navigable environments.  We also created our own DOOM-like engine and 
embedded it in the VR tool.  When you see someone (Pat Robertson, 
Reverend Tilton or Rush Limbaugh) at whom you want to "cast a stone", you 
click and it catapults a stone and keeps score.  This is a four level 
game.  After you get a certain number of points, you advance through the 
levels.

	The content on The Individualist enhanced CD is Todd's idea of what 
"enhanced" means with respect to the music."

	In response to a question from the audience, Eric Gardner stated, "One 
of the things we're doing with the Full Service Network in Orlando, 
Florida, which is a test market for interactive television, is to create 
a 24 hour music on demand channel.  Part of that is a pilot interactive 
television music special of a concert we've already shot which allows the 
viewer not only to select from 6 different camera angles in real time but 
also to toggle between that choice and 24 channels of audio which they 
can use to mix their own live concert sound.  That's possible because 
it's a fiber-optically delivered system and you've got the bandwidth for 
it."

 	In response to another question, he said, "People are not going to want 
to take time to download 16 bit stereo audio quality sound.  It takes 
about 14 hours to download an entire album with a 14,400 baud modem right 
now.  Similarly, I don't think most people will want to download 30 
frames per second full-frame video.  However, record companies, home 
video and film companies and music publishers need to start modifying 
their way of doing business now in anticipation of the day when the 
entire nation is fiber-optically wired.  We've been carrying the banner 
for years on the crusade warning people that the day will soon arrive 
when CD-ROMs will be obsolete and everything will be ordered directly 
into the home.  Record companies, video stores and film studios, rather 
than being afraid of impending doom, should begin the transition now to 
become the cyberdistributors of the next couple of decades."