http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3qeJKax2CU

TeleSound is a cute speaker containing over 1,000 sounds that you and your friends can trigger from a smartphone or tablet over the Internet. Coming on Kickstarter on Thursday 28 Feb., don’t go further than your fridge!
telesound.me

“Those separated from family and friends by long distances often use video conferencing services such as Skype in order to see each other when talking. But who hasn’t experienced the frustration of your counterpart not making direct eye contact during the conversation? A software prototype from the Computer Graphics Laboratory ETH Zurich may be able to help.”

Text by Angelika Jacobs from ETH Life Blog

I don’t know why but this “computer vision” software makes me think of the AutoSmile project by Theo Watson from F.A.T.

More on the project (+source code):
• Skype eye contact finally possible
• http://graphics.ethz.ch/publications/papers/paperKus12.php
• Paper: Kuster C, Popa T, Bazin JC, Gotsman C, Gross M: Gaze Correction for Home Video Conferencing. Proceedings of ACM SIGGRAPH Asia (Singapore, November 28 – December 1, 2012), ACM Transactions on Graphics, 31 (6), 174:1-174:6

Before diving into these lists, I started with Wikipedia to a have a general overview. Being aware of this overall structure helps me choosing what to “not read” in the following lists.
For instance, for the history of Interpersonal communication studies I began with:
• History of Communication Studies
• Communication Studies
• Communication Theory and Communication
• Interpersonal Communication
• Computer-mediated communication
• Further readings on telepresence to be determined

Here a first preview of my reference lists (in my reference manager they are ordered by importance):
01-Catch-up history – Communication studies
02-Catch-up history – Speculation, critique, fiction & design
03-Catch-up history – Design Research
04-Catch-up history – Miscellaneous, HCI, research methods, design theory

Dog acceptation of the collar can take some time and training.

First phone call with Yukiko: EPIC FAIL 
The sound was really to loud and Daniel felt onto his son’s answering-machine.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QazxRV-S9m4]

2nd phone call to Daniel’s wife. Talking about meeting each other later and traying to talk to the dog.
Daniel’s wife: “Yukiko doesn’t reply to me!”
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6F5B5dOjK7U]

3rd phone call with Yukiko, watch it until the end!
The starting of the conversation is a bit tensed, they talk about the device and the experiment, after having given a biscuit to Yukiko the conversation really starts (about work), as the dog move the owner follows her, down on his knees on the carpet.
Daniel: “It’s the first time I use a hairy phone!”
Daniel: “That is a really ‘mobile’ phone…”
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB3Hq40aYro]

http://interrogative.mit.edu/projects/1993/porte-parole

Krzystoff Wodiczko (Canadian, born Poland, 1943)
Videotape, monitor (mouthpiece, 3 1/4 x 6 1/4 x 7 inches), battery pack and documentation
MSU purchase, funded by the Friends of Kresge Art Museum Endowment, 97.9.A-F

Via: http://artmuseum.msu.edu/exhibitions/online/GiftsofArt_AcquisitionExhibition/1980-AD.html#panel-3
Krysztoff Wodiczko belongs to a genre of public artist who meld art with science and technology. He is a member of MIT’s Interrogative Design Group and is internationally renowned for his large-scale slide and video projections on architectural facades and monuments. Since the late 1980s, he has developed a series of nomadic instruments for both homeless and immigrant operators that function as implements for survival, communication, empowerment, and healing.
In 1992, Wodiczko began Xenology: Immigrant Instruments, tools for “the immigrantÕs art of survival.” In the forms of a staff (Alien Staff), wings (Aegis) or a mouthpiece (Mouthpiece), these instruments include small LCD monitors that project an edited videotape of the wearer’s personal history. The series grew from Wodiczko’s own experience as an emigre. Born and trained in Poland under a socialist regime, Wodiczko settled in Canada in 1977, before moving to the U.S. in the 1980s. Created to be performed in urban centers, Xenology: Immigrant Instruments such as Mouthpiece opened dialogues between their operators and passersby, stimulating communication between the immigrant (the speechless stranger) and the native community.

Via: http://rhizome.org/editorial/2010/jan/26/porte-parole-mouthpiece-1996-krzysztof-wodiczko-an/
The Porte-Parole Mouthpiece is an instrument for strangers, its function is to empower those who are deprived of power.

This object encircles the jaw with a small video monitor and loud speakers placed directly over the wearer’s mouth, showing the lips moving in sync to the prerecorded narrative. It is designed to replace the hesitations and fearful silent of an immigrant’s personal voice with a fully formed version of the immmigrant’s story. It function both as a conduit of ones’ voice and image as well as a gag that blocks the mouth and prevents from speaking.

Porte-Parole transforms its user into a virtual subject, literally, a cyborg communicating through a high-tech device rather than your own bodily apparatus for speech. The small size screen drives viewers to come closer to the user face in order to see the image of the moving lips and hear the voice.

Throughout the mobile we whisper to our loved one, the chick against a piece of plastic, we argue yelling against a piece of plastic, etc. On one side we have got a sensory frustration (tactile and proprioceptive) and a physical isolation towards the receiver.
On the other let’s take the human/dog relationship: affective, sincere, tactile.
Let’s mix the two provoque unexpected situations, new experiences of communication, new usages and try to change users habits on a longer period of time.

FR :
Je travail sur une critique de nos moyens de communication interpersonnelle et en particulier le téléphone mobile d’un point de vue affectif et émotionnel.
Je part du constat selon lequel le téléphone est insensible à nos émotions et à été inventé à des fins utilitaires. Il nous force à concentrer nos intentions de communications dans l’intonation de la voix – comme Roseanne Allequere Stone en parle dans son Doctorat – et il ignore tout indice de communication autre que la voix – pour exemple cet article sur le langage non-verbal délaissé en téléphonie mobile. 

Au travers du mobile on susurre à sa bien aimée la joue contre un bout de plastique, on se dispute en criant contre un bout de plastique, etc.
D’un côté nous avons une frustration sensorielle (tactile et proprioceptive) et un isolement physique envers notre interlocuteur.
De l’autre prenons la relation homme/chien : affective, sincère, tactile.
Mixons les deux pour provoquer de nouvelles situations, de nouvelles expériences de communication, de nouveaux usages et tenter de changer les habitudes utilisateurs sur une longue periode.

CONCEPT:
How can we explore human/dog relationship to emotionally enhance our telecommunications?

TECHNOLOGY:
STRONG AND BEAUTIFUL MATERIAL (LEATHER, RESIN)

BI-DIRECTIONAL CALIBRATED MICROPHONE, HI-DEFINITION SPEAKERS

SIMPLE BLUETOOTH™ PHONE PAIRING
ULTRA LOW RADIO WAVES, NO HEALTH DANGER FOR THE ANIMAL
EASY PICK-UP BUTTON

USE CASES
Lovers, your most faithful friend is with you when loved ones are far away
BRING BACK THE AFFECTION YOU WOULD LIKE TO GIVE ON A PHONE
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuEy014n4vk]

Argument, he understands you and reacts to the conversation (Barking forces you to calm down)
BRING ALIVE FEEDBACK AS A MIRROR OF THE CONVERSATION MOOD
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9LBx99CK2k]

Playful, don’t forget it’s your dog!
BRING BACK LIFE, FUN AND SURPRISE TO YOUR COMMUNICATIONS!

BRINGs BACK EMOTION TO YOUR CONVERSATIONS
BE CLOSER TO YOUR DOG THAN EVER
NO MORE TACTILE FRUSTRATIONS WHEN TALKING ON THE PHONE

CONCEPT: REAL VS DIGITAL WORLD
CONNECTED VIRTUAL WORLD GENERATED A LACK OF PHYSICAL IMPLICATION
TECHNOLOGY GAVE US THE FRUSTRATING EMPOWERMENT OF UBIQUITY
ANIMALS CAN BE A TANGIBLE AND ALIVE LINK WITH THE NON-PHYSICAL WORLD

REJOIN COMMUNICATION AND EMOTIONS IN AN AFFECTIVE INTERFACE
ALIVE, CAPRICIOUS, MOVING, EMOTIONAL, RESPONDING…
BRING BACK LIFE IN OUR COMMUNICATIONS

NEXT :

First tester! Eliot.

Title: Relative communication aid (2010)
By: Gerard Rallo
Link: http://www.ideesabsurdes.net/wordpress/?p=367
Keywords: device, socialInteraction, research, speculativeDesign, criticalDesign, communication
On my Flickr: xxx

Concept:
Replace your “routine” conversation by an automatic digitally displayed one to save your time : mindless communication
Description:
Most of the conversations we have through our life are redundant. This fact clashes with modern praise of time efficiency and real time data consumption.
This device tracks conversations you have throughout your entire life, analysing your patterns of communication. Eventually, when a repeated pattern is detected, the device is able to replace you in that conversation, allowing you a freedom to explore anything and everything else.

Be sure to check his other projects here: http://www.ideesabsurdes.net/

Opinion:
That project of critical design is nearly a dystopia for communication as it kills our richer channel of social interaction: live communication (even if it’s only for “routine” dialogues). I find it interesting as it emphases a real problem of nowaday: the omnipresent use of computers for our work gives ourselves habits, in our work being more efficient means spending less time to do things as well as fore communication which is often part of our work (e-mail, phone, chat’, etc), having the habits to save time on communications is something that brings terchnology because it facilitate social interaction, but therefore it turns the communication into a task where an economy of time can be made.

image
http://player.vimeo.com/video/12796931?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0&color=CA1134