Augmentology"...is a concise manual of reality for our digital age."

Mark Hancock,_Augmentology: Interfaccia Tra Due Mondi_

[Sponsored by The Ars Virtua Foundation/CADRE Laboratory for New Media]

Meet Milo The Virtual Boy: Cloud-Sculpting The Mind of a Synthetic Human

August 18, 2010

Augmented Gameplay, Mediated Reality, Reality Gaming, Social Gaming, Synthetic, geophysical

2 comments

This TED talk by Peter Molyneux:

…demos Milo, a hotly anticipated video game for Microsoft’s Kinect controller. Perceptive and impressionable like a real 11-year-old, the virtual boy watches, listens and learns — recognizing and responding to you.

The demonstration begins with an explanation of how Milo is constructed. A combination of the following three elements allow Milo to exist:

  1. A Kinect Camera
  2. Artificial Intelligence developed by Microsoft
  3. Emotional Artificial Intelligence built by Lionhead Studios.

Milo moves through a synthetic environment predicated on User-directed biofeedback/body gestures: no mechanical controllers are necessary. Unfortunately, Milo’s introductory learning curve [which is integral to the "game" leveling system] involves inherent gender bias: if you’re a girl, your initial game variable is a Butterfly whereas if your a boy, you’ll be presented with a Snail.

The demonstration goes on to illustrate how Milo’s face is comprehensively AI driven. His facial movements include blush response, nostril “flare” size [indicating stress], “body matching” [causing neuro-linguistically driven facial alterations] and responses to verbal cues. Peter then describes how Milo’s personality development is predicated on a Cause-and-Effect dynamic. This causality is showcased via 3 examples:

  1. The User can choose to direct Milo to squash a snail: if the User does it will effect “…how Milo develops”.  The specifics of the verbal stimulus employed including how the User vocalises [specific phrases and intonations] all contribute to a database that informs and effects future interactions.
  2. The User teaches Milo to skim stones over the surface of a river [skewed gender stereotyping is again evident here].
  3. The User choosing to clean Milo’s room: Milo’s recognition of the User’s beneficial intervention and verbal engagement promotes sustained developmental interaction based on [what Peter terms] “deep psychology”.

This “deep psychology” [or what is described in synthaptic terms as "augmentology"] encourages a User’s empathy loadings. This in turn allows such games to shift towards complex experientially-defined engagement. These games surpass the hollow reinforcement of contemporary Social Games such as Farmville: instead, the User “levels up” by knitting fictionalised engagement with personality/identity construction and personalised growth variables. The element of cloud-directed learning [coaching synthetic humans whose social and chronological development depends on "crowdsourced" input] creates enormous opportunities for instruction and feedback via these types of  “Reality Gaming” systems [highlighted here by Seth Priebatsch]:

SNIFF: Public Puppy Interactive Projection

August 17, 2010

Mediated Reality, Mixed Reality Performance, Synthetic

2 comments


A project by Karolina Sobecka with software development by Jim George

“Sniff is an interactive projection in a storefront window. As the viewer walks by the projection, her movements and gestures are tracked by a computer vision system. A CG dog dynamically responds to these gestures and changes his behavior based on the state of engagement with the viewer…

…Sniff is created with Unity3d Game Engine which renders the dog in real time and allows to dynamically change his behavior based on the video tracking data. The sidewalk is illuminated with infrared lights. An infrared-sensitive camera is used to monitor the sidewalk in front of the display windows. We track the position of each viewer and implement simple gesture recognition, so that fast, big actions are interpreted as threatening and slow actions directed at the dog (for example hand extended in his direction) are interpreted as friendly. The dog keeps track of the attitude of the viewer and forms a relationship with them over time based on the history of interaction.”

Interview with Layar Co-Founder Maarten Lens-FitzGerald: Part 1

July 23, 2010

Augmented Gameplay, Augmented Reality, Mobile Augmented Reality, Reality Spectrum, Synthetic

1 comment


In Part 1 of this interview conducted by the _Metaverse One_ project, Maarten discusses:

  • Initial Layar motivations including inspiration via specific science fiction/manga.
  • Current server side/platform developments including “Where Is”/POI [Point of Interest], client side 3D proximity-triggered transformational objects and “good data” [public awareness-based] AR.
  • The Rolling Stones Augmented Reality Application for their “reissued” album.
  • Hoopola as the AR equivalent of Dreamweaver Web Editing software.

“The Old Spice Guy”: Presencing & Synthapticism In Action

July 14, 2010

Augmented Psychology, Design Practice, Mediated Reality, Presencing, Social Tesseracting, Synthetic, Twitter, User-Generated Content

5 comments

In 2008, several articles here at Augmentology examined the concepts of Synthetic Presencing and Synthapticism. Both concepts are part of a theoretical framework that attempts to explain developing cultural > augmentological patterns. Presencing embodies a rethink of conventional entertainment modes:

Fiction and non-fiction classifications are designed to map to boundaries of known forms [think: cinema, literature, television and music]. They are so designed to provoke audience responses introspectively and externally. Current synthetic practices are refashioning this entertainment base via the perpetuation of types of unintentional and deliberately augmented recreation. These recreation types are reliant on immediacy of response, play, and Pranksterism. They employ Sandboxing, Gonzoism and spontaneous engagement. This type of entertainment is termed _Presencing_. Presencing involves loose clusters of pursuits that evolve in, or are associated with, synthetic environments. Examples include the Streisand Effect, Supercutting, Flashmobbing, the Slashdot Effect…Geohashing, Image macro generation and Internet meme threading…Presencing showcases accidental or reflexive entertainment elements where the fictional/non-fictional divide is erased; associated validity qualifiers are also removed and reconceptualised. Amateur production is equated with valued expression. Presencing also offers adaptive potential for augmented attempts at mediating geophysical constraints.

The complementary concept of Synthapticism involves:

…Crowdsourcers [who] produce clusters of user-mediated data through surges of concentrated attention… Synthetics display attentional surges appropriate to synthaptic shiftings. Synthetic environments operate in accordance with this surge potentiality, with users adopting platforms that offer a contemporary catering for the relevant surge…Synthapticism produces unprecedented connections between synthetic participants. Adjunctive relationships are constructed via Identity interfacing and cushioned by support networks with a comparable emotional weighting to those found in traditional sociocentric structures [acquaintance>friendship>family>community]. Synthaptic communication may appear as fractured or trivial to those not connected synthaptically…”

One contemporary example of a Presencing/Synthaptic Campaign centres on a PR-created character called “The Old Spice Guy” or @OldSpice. This campaign, which makes extended use of social media > network dynamics, initialized with a Synthaptic threading system directly developed from conventional advertising:

Anything is possible when you smell like an Old Spice man and our hero, Isaiah Mustafa, is back to illustrate just a few of the amazing things that an Old Spice man can do. The latest effort is a fully integrated campaign with TV, print and digital executions, targeted at both men and women.

On July 13th 2010 [USA Portland time] the Old Spice brand extended this “personalised” social presence/character via synthetically dependent platforms including Youtube, Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook. “The Old Spice Guy” character urged cross-platform users to AMA [a popular internet thread on several boards which means "Ask Me Anything"]. The humorous > quirky responses included almost instantaneous @OldSpice micro-video answers to selected users, including meta-referencing by Isaiah Mustafa:

One response that encapsulates the Synthaptic aspects of this campaign began with the user @Jsbeals asking @OldSpice to make a marriage proposal on his behalf:

@Jsbeals later tweeted that his girlfriend had accepted the proposal:

@Jsbeals: @OldSpice SHE SAID YES!!!! #OldSpice @Jsbeals

….and who then changed his Twitter Biography to:

The Old Spice proposal was real. Thank you Old Spice for helping me with this.

A second response set resulted in the sending of roses [referenced in a micro-video response] to Alyssa Milano. A third instance that highlights the episodic > cross-platform > Synthetic Presencing aspect is summed up by Twitter user @rob_sheridan:

Presencing In Action: @OldSpice + Reddit Contributors

Each episodic response illustrates the flattening of traditional entertainment factors [think: @OldSpice responding to "everyday" users as well as more established Hollywood/Internet celebrities]. The campaign realigns passive entertainment construction and distanced absorption via real-time Immediation and Regenerative Comprehension. The Old Spice Guy Synthaptic threading is currently ongoing with replies continually being posted via Youtube.

AR Tabletop Interface

June 18, 2010

Augmented Gameplay, Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality Performance, Reality Spectrum, Synthetic

(No comments)


AR Tabletop Interface: Artificial Shadows Produce Interactive Tangible Objects.

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