‘Playful Identities’ research blog

Scientists in Singapore at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) have developped a kind of vibrating jacket that children could wear to receive ‘hugs’ from their parents that are away via the Internet. The jacket is already being tested on chicken. The wireless jacket is controlled with a computer and gives the feeling of being touched. The jacket could be used to transmit feeling over the internet.

This development touches upon issues like:

• the role of the body in an online environment
• the importance of physical contact in developing identity
• the ‘multimedialisation’ of the internet and its experiences

From the Reuters article:

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Singapore scientists looking for ways to transmit the sense of touch over the Internet have devised a vibration jacket for chickens and are thinking about electronic children’s pyjamas for cyberspace hugs.

A wireless jacket for chickens or other pets can be controlled with a computer and gives the animal the feeling of being touched by its owner, researchers at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) told Monday’s edition of The Straits Times.

The next step would be to use the same concept to transmit hugs over the Internet, it said.

“These days, parents go on a lot of business trips, but with children, hugging and touching are very important,” the paper quoted NTU Associate Professor Adrian David Cheok as saying.

NTU is thinking of a pyjama suit for children, which would use the Internet to adjust changes in pressure and temperature to simulate the feeling of being hugged. Parents wearing a similar suit could be “hugged” back by their children, the paper said.

Article link on Reuters.com.
Link on Tweakers.net.

Saturday, November 19, the 27th Dutch/Flemish Philosophy-day took place. The motto was “Thinking without Borders: challenges for philosophy in the 21st century” (Grenzeloos denken: uitdagingen voor de Filosofie in de 21ste eeuw). It was the first time I attended. The programme started at 10:00 in the morning, which I of course didn’t make quite on time… I’m not that much of a morning person, especially not on a weekend day :).

After seeing the last part of the plenary session I attended the breakout session “Man & culture” chaired by Jos de Mul. The papers presented by both Flemish & Dutch PhD researchers were pretty technical in my opinion. As I lack serious background in philosophical thought - and probably even more troublesome: acquaintance with the discourse by which philosophers tend to express themselves - I had a hard time understanding what was said from time to time. Nevertheless, some speakers provoked thoughts in me, so I made a few scribbly notes which I have transcribed below. Here we go:

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What: opening exhibition “Alter Ego” - photo’s of gamers and their online avatars
Who: British artist Robbie Cooper
Where: Home Gallery, Prinsengracht 548, Amsterdam
When: 9 - 24 november 2005 (Thursday - Sunday), 13:00 - 19:00
URL: www.alterego.net & www.seeingtakesasecond.com.

Wednesday evening, November 9, I was at the opening of the exhibition “Alter Ego” at Home Gallery. I was kinda late, supposed to meet my GF there at 21:30, but got stopped along the way by a police woman for cycling without light. She gave me a ticket, what a bummer… }:-(.
Anyway, the gallery is located in a nice old canal house between Leidsestraat & Spiegelstraat. About 25 large images are dangling from fish cords on the wall, each displaying a photograph of a ‘real’ person on the left hand side and a screenshot of his/her virtual personality on the right side. The split-images are accompanied by a text that tells the individual’s story: who he/she is in real life, who she/he is online in what game, and what motives he/she has for choosing this particular character.

The people portrayed are pretty diverse, considering that game culture appears to be mostly restricted to Asian and Western - American - cultures: there are pictures of physically disabled people, two black men, quite a lot of females (Asian & Western) and of course the (stereo)typical geek.

A lot of people make their online character into a ‘better self’: the men often create a sort of super-hero character and the women a strong, beautiful female warrior. Not everybody though: there is a portrait of this US redneck kinda guy who plays a beautiful heroine, and two good-looking Asian girls tell that they switched to playing ugly creatures after being harassed all the time by men in the game.

The stories can be roughly devided in stories that are about “becoming” in the sense of developing oneself: from being a bit shy at first to becoming more and more friendly and sociable, from being averagely handsome to being beautiful. Another theme is “escape”: escape from boredom (the trucker fantasising about playing a spaceship), escape from physical constraints (the handicapped people), escape from social/cultural pressure (the Chinese gay boy playing “guys he wanted to meet” & the US macho-guy playing a woman). The theme of “sameness” in the sense of “living one’s identity”, or simply “being” is apparent too: someone says he behaves the same way online as offline, and the Texan business woman tells she likes bossing around online just like in real life. Finally, attention is given to the economics of gaming culture: a few people explain that they make quite a bit of money from gaming, whether it’s by developing characters for other people, or by writing software that can upgrade players levels by playing for them at night, or a girl that has become popular through gaming and has become a professional model.

Some critical remarks: the split screen portayal of people & their online identity suggests that people have only one online identity instead of multiple. By choosing a form of presentation that juxtaposes offline and online identities, the artist stresses the devide between them in a visual way, although the artist probably intented otherwise. On the other hand, the split-screen portayal suggests that offline and online characters are equal in some way: the online character being the ‘mirrored image’ of the real life character. And finally, the artist seems to have deliberately wanted to portray a diverse group of people, while underplaying the homogeneity of game worlds, as apparent from one of the group photo of an ‘old’ game guild (I forgot the name) that is almost totally white and predominantly between 20-40.

The exposition is sponsored by EA (Electronic Arts - the largest (?) and best-known game developer in the world); Playstation2 by Sony. The gallery itself is a space owned by Dutch party/event-organiser Duncan Stutterheim from ID&T. Certainly no marginal players in the leisure economy …;-)

The BBC has an article about the project: news.bbc.co.uk.

The pictures (and even some more than exibited) + stories can be dowloaded as a PDF file from
www.seeingtakesasecond.com/images/examples_preview.pdf (9 MB).

The Inquirer published an interesting article today about a new step made by Philips in ambient awareness in computer games. It is the development of amBX:

From the Inquirer article:
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Philips pushes ambient gaming

Including heat, light and air currents… an indoor outdoors

By Marc McEntegart: Monday 07 November 2005, 11:37

PHILIPS has introduced what it claims to be a “light year leap” in ambient experience by controlling the environment in which games are played.

Due for release in May 2006, Philips new environmental gaming device will be amBX. The aim of amBX is to allow games to control the environment in which they are played to an unprecedented degree, including general lighting, heat and airflow around players.

Game developers will be able to script events in games to trigger effects and changes in any environmental aspect of a player’s surroundings. The new technology will work through the availability of current home networking devices in an attempt to bring players closer to experiences games are trying to evoke. The examples Philips gave were those of splash green lighting and increased heat in jungle or fans activating while players attempt a H.A.L.O. jump.

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amBX should push the experience of multimedia gaming beyond the mere audio/visual immersion. From the project website:
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A light year leap in ambient experience – to the world of computer gaming, spotlighting a technology that will revolutionize the game play experience and extend the gaming world out of the screen and into the real world.

Due for release in May 2006, amBX is a vision towards a full ‘sensory surround experience’. amBX has now become a reality; amBX-enabled games will provide gamers with the ability to use light, colour, sound, heat and even airflow in the real world during game play.

Imagine the room of the future, where all electronic devices are amBX-enabled. The treacherous road to Saigon will turn your room jungle green, swimming with dolphins will splash it deep blue, ‘Halo’ jumps will turn your fans on full, lightning storms will strobe your white lighting, and attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion will blast on your heaters.

amBX extends the gaming world out of the playing screen and into the real world through the use of light, colour, sound, vibration, heat and airflow. To download a copy of the press release please click here.

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A passage from www.philips.com, mentions the amBX development and explains a little about Philips’ ambient technologies strategy:
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New-content business

Handshake Solutions was unusual in that it was already a separate department when it entered the Incubator. The amBX unit, currently developing technology to create ‘ambient experiences’, is also working under the umbrella of the Incubator, this time to develop an innovation in its embryonic stage. For Joost Horsten, who has headed up the unit for the last six months, this is another example of ‘ambient intelligence,’ following up on his work on Mirror TV. “Ambient intelligence is Philips’ vision of the future of electronics,” he explains. “The amBX unit was born in Philips Research at Redhill after a series of Friday afternoon brainstorm sessions. It aims to stimulate the senses beyond just audio and video - think smells or vibrations when watching TV, or dynamic and intelligent lighting.”
Ambitious maybe, but ambient technologies offer huge growth potential for Philips. Home theater and video-gaming will be only two of the beneficiaries. “One of our dreams,” continues Horsten, “is to create an entirely new type of content business, either within Philips or together with a music or video-gaming business.” “As you can imagine with new technology like this, the early stages are always interesting but getting commitment to take it further is not easy. Technology that falls outside normal patterns may have strategic value within Philips, but without an immediate demand for it, it may be too soon to be picked up.”

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And finally, another interesting article mentioning the amBX can be found at www.mcvuk.com.

Last thursday Willem - a friend of mine - and I attended a lecture by Lev Manovich at the V2 “Institute for the Unstable Media” in Rotterdam. Quite a number of people showed up, so finding a good place to sit turned out to be problematic. There were two nice seats in front still free, some cocktails on a table next to it, so Willem suggested we sit there ;), but we ended up behind a pillar. Following Lev wasn ‘t always easy, as he spoke a bit incoherently from time to time. Nevertheless, I found his main point interesting: that we should look at new technologies as quantitative change leading to qualitative changes, as well as his remark that all art is in fact a compression of the world.

Below the notes I made

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