Sharing emotions and space - empathy as a basis for cooperative spatial interaction

Boukricha H, Nguyen N, Wachsmuth I. Sharing emotions and space - empathy as a basis for cooperative spatial interaction. In: Kopp S, Marsella S, Thorisson K, Vilhjalmsson HH, eds. Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA 2011). LNAI. Vol 6895. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2011: 350-362.Empathy is believed to play a major role as a basis for humans’ cooperative behavior. Recent research shows that humans empathize with each other to different degrees depending on several modulation factors including, among others, their social relationships, their mood, and the situational context. In human spatial interaction, partners share and sustain a space that is equally and exclusively reachable to them, the so-called interaction space. In a cooperative interaction scenario of relocating objects in interaction space, we introduce an approach for triggering and modulating a virtual humans cooperative spatial behavior by its degree of empathy with its interaction partner. That is, spatial distances like object distances as well as distances of arm and body movements while relocating objects in interaction space are modulated by the virtual human’s degree of empathy. In this scenario, the virtual human’s empathic emotion is generated as a hypothesis about the partner’s emotional state as related to the physical effort needed to perform a goal directed spatial behavior

Life-Sized Audiovisual Spatial Social Scenes with Multiple Characters: MARC & SMART-I²

International audienceWith the increasing use of virtual characters in virtual and mixed reality settings, the coordination of realism in audiovisual rendering and expressive virtual characters becomes a key issue. In this paper we introduce a new system combining two systems for tackling the issue of realism and high quality in audiovisual rendering and life-sized expressive characters. The goal of the resulting SMART-MARC platform is to investigate the impact of realism on multiple levels: spatial audiovisual rendering of a scene, appearance and expressive behaviors of virtual characters. Potential interactive applications include mediated communication in virtual worlds, therapy, game, arts and elearning. Future experimental studies will focus on 3D audio/visual coherence, social perception and ecologically valid interaction scenes

Methods in Contemporary Linguistics

The present volume is a broad overview of methods and methodologies in linguistics, illustrated with examples from concrete research. It collects insights gained from a broad range of linguistic sub-disciplines, ranging from core disciplines to topics in cross-linguistic and language-internal diversity or to contributions towards language, space and society. Given its critical and innovative nature, the volume is a valuable source for students and researchers of a broad range of linguistic interests

Space, Territory, Occupy: Towards a Non-Phenomenological Dwelling

This thesis analyzes the relationship between the body and space through the works of Henri Lefebvre, and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. The aim of the project is to move beyond Lefebvre’s theory of the production of space, which relies on a phenomenological understanding of the body and space. In order to do so, it will find in Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of ‘territory’ a non-phenomenological and constructivist concept of space that does not posit the ‘lived body’ as a transcendent ground. As a result, it will also attempt to trace out a non-phenomenological concept of ‘dwelling’ that is not based on a concept of the subject, but is ‘involuntary’ and constructive, and emphasizes the spatio-temporal dynamisms or rhythms that a ‘space without world’ consists of. Finally, by being loosely guided by the global Occupy movement, it seeks to invoke a politics ‘of’ space, where the concept of ‘occupy’ emphasizes a being-in-space that is primarily political and only secondarily ontological

Community in the Crowd: Motivations for Commenting on Twitch.tv Live Streams

Twitch.tv is a growing platform designed or interaction, communication, and socialization. It is space for content creators and viewers can to interact and build communities. Although it is not exclusively video game streams, Twitch.tv has become a major player in the industry. This study is a thematic analysis of comments made during live streams of video game content. The questions guiding this research were: What do viewers comment about on streams? What do these comments reveal about their motivations for participating? What are the variations between content types? After analyzing 9084 comments across 10 streams, what was found was that a major motivation for Twitch.tv viewers is the creation and maintenance of social bonds. Additionally, the building of hype was a large motivator. There was a small but widespread number of toxic comments. This research shows that Twitch.tv acts as a center for communities to grow around unique streamers and the potential significance of the platform itself