This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

“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

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]

Title: Expression Dispatcher (2009)
By: Gerard Rallo
Link: http://www.ideesabsurdes.net/wordpress/?cat=19
On my Flickr: on my Flickr

Concept:
Leave our facial expressivity responsibility (appearance of emotional reactions) in the hands of self-image experts (following us with a smiley remote).
Description:
Many decisions made in our everyday lives are influenced by expert advice, from hairstyles to insurance policies. Yet, millions of decisions are made on a daily basis and instantly expressed through our own facial expressions without any preconceived external reassurance. We continuously strive to project a desired physical self image of ourselves, sometimes requiring most of our cognitive resources, and paradoxically, this daily challenge has a big impact on our lives.

Expressions Dispatcher is designed to help people in their quest for expressiveness.
In using the device we can shift expressive responsibility and place it in the hands of an expert. This life coach will follow the wearer, analysing the context they are in, and digitally take control as to how the wearer should be perceived.

Opinion:
It’s not the main concept that interests me (the fact that an expert controls our facial expressions) but the use of the smiley as main facial expression tool. Using the smiley – a hack to the poor emotional expressivity of textual digital communication, the symbol of the flattened/compressed signal of that medium – as replacement of a human face in live communication simplifies it into only 20 different possibilities. At the opposite of my theme of work here the provocative aim is also to simplify live communication where my search is to make evolve the digital communication closer to some tangible/human feeling.