The Yorb was a television show broadcast by the New York University’s (NYU) Open Telecommunications Program (ITP). It transmitted computer graphics of a cartoon-like 3D world, which could be interacted with and ‘navigated’ by viewers using their home telephone numerical keypads.

YORB co-ordinator Nick West, who showed me the YORB system while I videotaped his commentary in 1994, explained its simplicity. He told me that the system was essentially two power Macintosh 7500s triggering laserdisc rendered animated sequences of city ‘drive-throughs’ by means of telephone keypad tones. The 3D cartoon ‘city’ imagery on the laserdiscs had been created on Amigas and Macintoshes and showed a world of wild signs and buildings.

Sudden motions down streets were interrupted by pauses as the computers interpreted telephone keypad dial tones and then turned them into laserdisc chapter playbacks. The YORB was staged every Friday night in New York, and attracted a vast audience ('VAST" ?? DO YOU HAVE TYPICAL PARTICPANT NUMBER STATS?) and participants list. YORB users could interact with the world in one of the following ways:

a) via telephone keypad entry by YORB users from home. These could trigger events within the city. A given caller could ‘drive’, while others could operate other events (e.g ‘play’ a musical instrument, or open a door etc)

b) via bulletin board. Viewers could dial up to a YORB bulletin board via modem, and once connected type commentary to a scroll bar which would appear as part of the broadcast at the bottom of the screen.

c) via telephone voice

The YORB experience was also similar to a radio talkback show, as viewers could telephone, not only to control the TV environment, but also to add their voice to a mélange of voices added to the live ‘mix’.

This hybridization of media forms: telephone, television, radio talkback, nightclub DJ, bulletin board etc was very much at the core of the idea – a multifarious, deliberately busy, noisy community event. Like New York itself, the YORB was a lively, ongoing, bustling phenomenon.

YORB broadcasts were held on Friday nights at about 11pm and were generally short (about 20 minutes) and featured frenetic activity. Computer users could upload text commentary to a bulletin board based at the ITP, with the messages appearing in a scroll bar at the bottom of the screen. (ANY EXAMPLES OF BULLETIN BOARD CONTENT TO INCLUDE OR APPEND?)

I wrote an article about the YORB for my then regular column in the "Age" computer supplement "Frontier Media"

When I made a return visit to NYU ITP in 1998, the shift of the program was no longer toward television and telephone communities, but toward personal digital assistants assisting people’s navigation of the streets of New York.

The original YORB project was no longer being broadcast. NYU ITP research seemed to have become more focused on the individual, helping him to guide his way through the actual streets of Manhattan (with the help of a palm top computer and a wireless Ethernet connection and GPS co-ordinates).

The emphasis away from a deliberately contrived and fun neighborhood community interactive television service might have reflected changes in funding for the project. The YORB had been backed by the East Coast telecommunications company NYNEX as a trial for commercially based interactive services. It is most likely that this funding was withdrawn, or expended by the 1998.

Whatever the reason, I felt that the more corporate, privatized notion of the city mediated by global positioning sensors to benefit the businessman WAS A far cry from the celebratory, rave-like aesthetic and community ‘down-home’ appeal of the YORB.

The YORB in contrast to the personal navigation approaches which evident at ITP around 1998 can be read as also reflecting an ever-increasing privatization of the city of New York itself.

The brightly coloured cartoon-like imagery that characterized the YORB was typical of the ‘techno’ aesthetic in the early to mid 1990s, typified by the type of graphics created by Melbourne artist Troy Innocent.

Cartoons and online communities share something of a common history, as do highly iconic designs of the surf, skate and garage punk aesthetic of California’s ‘grunge’ culture. Online communities often share the utopian aspirations of open minded, creative people, so it is fitting that the graphical sensibility of the YORB should reflect the utopianism and inclusiveness of the ‘techno’ music underground.

The real gift to New York City of the YORB was its appeal to the notion of ‘neighborhood’ – a traditional and strongly valued concept in New York City. New York City has a very high population (about ten million people) who live very close to each other and where space is at a very high premium. To replicate New York’s notion of localized and intensely lived communities in electronic form made the YORB very much the product of that particular city.

The users of YORB would, at home, while watching the show via cable TV, wait in a phone queue to join in on the onscreen action. This might enable the numbered keypad of the home telephone to determine the direction of the 1^st person view of the cartoon like 3D world (actually a number of pre-rendered 3D computer graphics playing live off a laser disk player of a virtual city designed by artist Twin). Another type of interaction might be a section of YORB called "Ritual Ground Zero". In this area, users could choose between one of four on-screen musical instruments, and ‘play’ these via the touch buttons on the home telephone.

I considered the community mindedness of YORB extremely progressive, and wished to replicate the idea upon return to Melbourne. I was particularly impressed by the deliberate use of simple domestic home devices in the project – particularly the idea that the telephone keypad, so often used to simply navigate through phone queues while waiting for corporate or retail services. Lacking the backing of a NYNEX however made implementing the idea difficult.