Nonverbal communication interface for collaborative virtual environments

Nonverbal communication is an important aspect of real-life face-to-face interaction and one of the most efficient ways to convey emotions, therefore users should be provided the means to replicate it in the virtual world. Because articulated embodiments are well suited to provide body communication in virtual environments, this paper first reviews some of the advantages and disadvantages of complex embodiments. After a brief introduction to nonverbal communication theories, we present our solution, taking into account the practical limitations of input devices and social science aspects. We introduce our sample of actions and implementation using our VLNET (Virtual Life Network) networked virtual environment and discuss the results of an informal evaluation experimen

Nonverbal communication interface for collaborative virtual environments

Nonverbal communication is an important aspect of real-life face-to-face interaction and one of the most efficient ways to convey emotions, therefore users should be provided the means to replicate it in the virtual world. Because articulated embodiments are well suited to provide body communication in virtual environments, this paper first reviews some of the advantages and disadvantages of complex embodiments. After a brief introduction to nonverbal communication theories, we present our solution, taking into account the practical limitations of input devices and social science aspects. We introduce our sample of actions and implementation using our VLNET (Virtual Life Network) networked virtual environment and discuss the results of an informal evaluation experimen

TRANS-MOBILITIES IN POST-HUMAN ERA: HOW IS SOCIAL ORDER STILL POSSIBLE?

The today’s post-human era is characterized by transformation, mutation, and reinvention of social identities of agents. Transgenders, robots, сlones have been increasingly involved in social community and, thus, contributed to profound normative morphogenesis in the contemporary society. Consequently, there is a challenging primordial heteronormativity with some fundamental ascriptive binaries evident in transgressive confusion of the following oppositions: between human and subhuman (e.g. legitimation of animal or fetal rights); between cultural and natural (cyborgs); between animate and inanimate (android robots); between corporeal and incorporeal (virtual, ‘augmented’ and ‘mixed’ reality). A range of practices related to such transgression can be considered as trans-mobility that implies various selfdetermined individual transitions from the former ascribed position to a new transitive one and external transpositions due to forced alteration of individual or collective statuses/identities. The article considers three typical modes of morphological trans-mobility to identify the most important arrays the ontological binaries are de-ascribed in: visceral trans-mobility pertaining to all possible options to modify human corporality (including radical body modification); conversional trans-mobility beyond the line between life and death, being and nonbeing, corporeal (material) and incorporeal (immaterial) ontology (from bitcoins to clones); prosopopoeian trans-mobility involving initially non-social creatures into active social life (from pets to robots). The author seeks to answer the question of how current normative morphogenesis is embedded into social-normative order. Based on the theory of recognition, the article considers morphotaxis (an opposite of morphogenesis) as a latent compensatory mechanism to maintain the primordial social order by persistent reproduction of heteronormativity. Based on some empirical data, the author shows that dichotomized sexual (male-female), genetical (sexual-asexual) and biological (animate-inanimate) patterns with corresponding social norms still constitute the morphological foundation of the primordial social order despite the advanced post-human practices

Развитие вербализации и опознания эмоций как основа эмоционального интеллекта : этап 6

Заключительный этап научно-поискового исследования «Развитие вербализации и опознания эмоций как основа эмоционального интеллекта» был направлен согласно Плану экспериментальных исследований по Госконтракту № П1216 на обобщение результатов трехлетнего лонгитюдного экспериментального плана, выполняемого с целью получения новых данных о влиянии развития способности вербализировать и осознавать эмоции по лицевой экспрессии на показатели эмоционального интеллекта, а также сравнение полученных результатов с предварительными данными предыдущих этапов работы. Основная цель VI-го этапа исследования: описать основные тенденции развития эмоционального интеллекта на протяжение возрастного отрезка 14-35 лет, опираясь на данные трехлетнего лонгитюдного эксперимента и срезовых исследований, осуществленных в ходе выполнения НИР.ФЦП «Научные и научно-педагогические кадры инновационной России на 2009-2013 годы

Intellectual Property Rights in Virtual Environments: Considering the Rights of Owners, Programmers and Virtual Avatars

A virtual environment is a computer-generated world that can be used for training, data visualization, recreation, and commerce. The visitors of virtual environments include not only humans but also virtual avatars. The avatars can take on a range of shapes, characteristics, and personalities, and can perform a variety of tasks within the virtual environment. As the behavior of avatars becomes more realistic, sophisticated and intelligent- and the avatars become more autonomous in their decision making, the question of whether virtual avatars should have legal rights separate from those of their owner, becomes an issue. This paper discusses legal rights associated with the design and use of virtual avatars, commenting on the ownership rights of the creators of virtual avatars and the rights of avatars themselves should they gain intelligence and become independent decision makers and creators of intellectual property

Intellectual Property Rights in Virtual Environments: Considering the Rights of Owners, Programmers and Virtual Avatars

An emerging issue in online role-playing games is whether the licensor or participant owns the virtual property (such as a virtual avatar) created while the game is being played...Such rights have real world consequences for the objects created in the virtual world...Commercial software has been designed to allow people to create their own interactive, emoting 3D avatar using photographs of their individual faces, and their own unique voice as templates...Virtual environments can be designed for single inhabitants, such as a solo flight trainee, or for many, simultaneous participants... Further, people who spend significant amounts of time in virtual environments are doing more than playing video games...A major event in U.S. corporate law was the landmark Supreme Court decision to treat corporations as “persons” entitled to the equal protection of the laws under the 14th Amendment. Will there also be a similar landmark case for virtual avatars, or, as necessity dictates, will rights for avatars appear slowly without any particular landmark decision paving the way for their emancipation. Many questions remain unanswered, as there is literally no case law on the rights of artificially intelligent entities in general, and intelligent avatars specifically. However, given the increasing intelligence of avatars, significant legal disputes involving their actions very likely will arise in the future. This article provided a framework in which to consider how future litigation may develop, and potential causes of action which may be raised

THE REALISM OF ALGORITHMIC HUMAN FIGURES A Study of Selected Examples 1964 to 2001

It is more than forty years since the first wireframe images of the Boeing Man revealed a stylized hu-man pilot in a simulated pilot's cabin. Since then, it has almost become standard to include scenes in Hollywood movies which incorporate virtual human actors. A trait particularly recognizable in the games industry world-wide is the eagerness to render athletic muscular young men, and young women with hour-glass body-shapes, to traverse dangerous cyberworlds as invincible heroic figures. Tremendous efforts in algorithmic modeling, animation and rendering are spent to produce a realistic and believable appearance of these algorithmic humans. This thesis develops two main strands of research by the interpreting a selection of examples. Firstly, in the computer graphics context, over the forty years, it documents the development of the creation of the naturalistic appearance of images (usually called photorealism ). In particular, it de-scribes and reviews the impact of key algorithms in the course of the journey of the algorithmic human figures towards realism . Secondly, taking a historical perspective, this work provides an analysis of computer graphics in relation to the concept of realism. A comparison of realistic images of human figures throughout history with their algorithmically-generated counterparts allows us to see that computer graphics has both learned from previous and contemporary art movements such as photorealism but also taken out-of-context elements, symbols and properties from these art movements with a questionable naivety. Therefore, this work also offers a critique of the justification of the use of their typical conceptualization in computer graphics. Although the astounding technical achievements in the field of algorithmically-generated human figures are paralleled by an equally astounding disregard for the history of visual culture, from the beginning 1964 till the breakthrough 2001, in the period of the digital information processing machine, a new approach has emerged to meet the apparently incessant desire of humans to create artificial counterparts of themselves. Conversely, the theories of traditional realism have to be extended to include new problems that those active algorithmic human figures present

Technology Immorality and Its Legal Issues

Immorality is a concept recognized in literature and human aspirations but not in the law. Human beings or natural persons under the law hold limited rights and are often transformed into property after death. As a result, rights and liabilities extinguish at death and are transferred to the next-of-kin through testamentary or intestate succession. The dead in most jurisdictions are not right holders and the legal protections natural persons enjoy are eliminated. It\u27s in this vacuum where technology drastically changes the playing field. Hollywood and the entertainment industry have adopted different types of new-age technology to give us realistic postmortem performances by beloved actors and musicians who have now left the physical world but have left a lasting legacy behind them. Audiences were shocked and amazed to see the now deceased Carrie Fisher reprise her role as Princess Leia in the stand alone Star Wars movie Rogue One, in a much younger version of herself, superimposed onto a Norwegian actress to give audiences the feel of being in a time machine, transported back to the year 1977 of the New Hope. Another example is that of deceased actor Paul Walker\u27s face superimposed onto hos brother using 350 Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI) shots in order to complete the filming of Fast and the Furious 7 after his sudden tragic car accident. While those renditions were limited to the big screen, but we not see holograms also used to resurrect dead musicians like Tupac or Michael Jackson, or even animated and fictional characters such as Homer Simpson. And perhaps notably, across the globe in India, the current Prime Minister Narenda Modi made use of these holograms politically, by using the technology to deliver campaign speeches to voters across 90 rallies during an election season. This is all possible through the use of CGI, special effects, and post production editing and holographic technologies. While the entertainment industry has demonstrated its interest in postmortem technologies in the most prominent ways for the public to see, private research by corporations are showing more promising results in terms of true immortality. Postmortem presence by a celebrity can be done by merely producing a realistic rendition through clever mediums like holograms or CGI for audience to see. While these techniques raise their own set of unique legal issues, it is not true postmortem existence as the digital copy has no sense of autonomy or sentience. The main hurdle is that the postmortem rendition has no brain function and can be viewed merely as a performance in a new medium. However, nuanced aspects of the human mind can be recreated now with the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Personal Data. Research around the world promises the growth of virtual humans who can speak, hear, touch and be touched, exhibit behavior and think just as we do. Whole Brain Emulation ( WBE or also colloquially known as a mind-uploading or mind-filling ) offers an interesting avenue to postmortem existence by using large data-sets of personal information and a medium for communication with the living. The technological advances mentioned above shows us that the dead can establish a presence and existence in our modern physical world. The law unfortunately hasn\u27t caught up to this fact in many aspects. After death, a natural person is transformed into property and loses a right to privacy, the right to contract, and the right to hold and alienate property themselves. Depending on the jurisdiction the dead can be the rights-holder or a mere conduit for the beneficiary estate. Technologies like holograms or CGI present legal issues related to the talents, likeness, mannerisms, voice, image, and personality of a deceased performer by building on their previously established legacy without the celebrity\u27s presence or artistic autonomy in the choice of performance. This translates into issues related to copyright law, personality rights (or the Right of Publicity as known in the US), and possibly trademark law. While issues related to the talent and personality of an artist will likely around the entertainment industry, WBE and other technological means for postmortem existence will go into aspects of privacy, personal data and copyright law