BlurCity began as a short film and evolved into a feature length science fiction project.

The story existed simultaneously in two identical realms: BlurCity Offline, the physical world, and BlurCity Online, its virtual counterpart. Every person who existed in BlurCity Offline also existed in BlurCity Online at the same time. The story of its protagonist, Rolly, moves seamlessly between the two as the boundaries separating physical and virtual existence gradually begin to disappear.

Within the fiction, BlurCity Offline was constructed using a technology called Pixelation: a form of vibrational holographic streaming capable of generating the facades and physical structures of the city. The same technology allowed every physical structure to exist simultaneously as an online duplicate. In BlurCity terminology, this merging of the virtual and the real was called ViReal. The inhabitants of the city were known as pixeletants.

At the heart of the screenplay was a question: we were learning how to bring reality into virtual reality, but how could we bring the virtual back into reality and integrate the two seamlessly? Almost thirty years later, that question remains remarkably relevant.

BlurCity Online was not only fictional. In 1996, a large virtual version of the city was constructed in Active Worlds, one of the earliest online 3D virtual world platforms, through a sponsorship arrangement. Visitors could enter BlurCity, explore its highly imaginative 8th Street, use teleport booths, encounter taxi drivers who told stories about the city, meet virtual guides and, of course, cross paths with Shotgun Nancy.

The planned film required an unusually large amount of CGI for its time, making production expensive. A 1GB hard drive alone cost roughly CHF 1,500. One unconventional financing experiment therefore became part of BlurCity itself: houses on 8th Street were offered for sale.

Friends, family and supporters became virtual property owners. After purchasing a house, the BlurCity server generated an individual house certificate on the fly. The properties were also to be cast in the feature film, giving their owners the opportunity to have their branded buildings appear in the movie. It was an early example of the project allowing its fictional world, online world and real world production to overlap.

8th Street also had a rather important place in the screenplay. Nancy, a delivery girl, arrives at the wrong address. In a sudden burst of anger, she pulls out a shotgun and shoots Rolly three times in the chest.

That was BlurCity: film, virtual city, website and an experiment in where one reality ended and another began.

this website is a restored archive of the original blurcity web project created in 1996.

SO, GET ON THE ROAD.
ENTER BLURCITY AND TRAVEL BACK TO 1996.