Here it is, the video about the WOW Pod, a collaboration Cati Vaucelle and Shada/Jahn that you can visit at MIT Museum from March-September 2009!
The WOW Pod is an immersive architectural solution for the advanced WOW (World of Warcraft) player that provides and anticipates all life needs. Inside, the gamer finds him/herself comfortable seated in front of the computer screen with easy-to-reach water, pre-packaged food, and a toilet conveniently placed underneath his/her custom-built throne.
When hungry, the gamer selects a food item (‘Crunchy Spider Surprise’, ‘Beer Basted Ribs’, etc.) and a seasoning pack. By scanning in the food items, the video game physically adjusts a hot plate to cook the item for the correct amount of time. The virtual character then jubilantly announces the status of the meal to both the gamer and the other individuals playing online: “Vorcon’s meal is about to be done!” “Better eat the ribs while they’re hot!” etc.
When the food is ready, the system automatically puts the character in AFK (‘Away From Keyboard’) mode to provide the gamer a moment to eat. When the player resumes playing, he/she might just discover his/her character’s behavior is affected by the food consumed in real life — sluggish from overeating or alternately exuberant and energetic.
The exterior of the WoW Pod mimics the look of authentic WOW architectural structures, whose swaths of flat, pixellated surfaces digitally recreate the built environment of an imagined past. But upon crossing the threshold and entering into the WOW Pod’s interior, the player finds the digitized look actually becomes the real life experience that World of Warcraft simulates.
WOW Pod web site
.............................................................................................
Blog Jouons 
Friday, March 20, 2009
A video for the WOW Pod!
Friday, September 19, 2008
Low cost wearable sensor for detecting Electromagnetic fields
My work "Electromagnetic Field Detector Bracelet" has been accepted as a video. The video will be presented at Ubicomp in Seoul South Korea during the one minute madness Monday 22nd and during the video reception 17:15 - 19:00!
Abstract of the work
We present the design of a cost-effective wearable sensor to detect and indicate the strength and other characteristics of the electric field emanating from a laptop display. Our bracelet can provide an immediate awareness of electric fields radiated from an object used frequently. Our technology thus supports awareness of ambient background emanation beyond human perception. We discuss how detection of such radiation might help to “fingerprint” devices and aid in applications that require determination of indoor location.
Come see me to talk about this work! If you cannot make it, here is the video:
A bit of motivation for this work
Today, many people fear electromagnetic fields. They believe that ambient fields can negatively influence their health. Perhaps, by visualizing the presence of common electromagnetic (EM) fields, users might feel in control of difficult-to-perceive information and transcend their fear, beginning the process of recognizing and moving beyond fear. An analogy might be found in the cheap RF power meters that are sold to enable people to gauge radiation leakage from their microwave ovens. Conversely, providing users with blind data could increase their paranoia when low-level field leakage from common appliances is visualized. Clearly, people need to be educated in how to properly interpret this data. Regardless of one’s belief on the health impact of background EM fields, visualizing the unseen in this way always leads to fascinating and playful exploration. All devices emit background signals (electrostatically, magnetically, acoustically, and optically) that are characteristic of particular devices and also sometimes indicate that device’s mode of operation. Indeed, government contracts mandate that computers and displays used in highly classified work be kept in shielded rooms (SCIFs) to thwart espionage that monitors such background leakage fields.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Jabberstamp awarded by I.D. magazine!
-> The I.D. review <-
A child playing with Jabberstamp and me in the background blurred by the magical photoshop touch!
Friday, July 11, 2008
Film assembly using toy gestures
My full paper Picture This! Film assembly using toy gestures has been accepted as a full paper for the technical conference on ubiquitous computing: UbiComp 2008. With an acceptance rate of less than 19% for technical papers in the field, it is very encouraging!
Abstract
We present Picture This! a new input device embedded in children’s toys for video composition. It consists of a new form of interaction for children’s capturing of storytelling with physical artifacts. It functions as a video and storytelling performance system in that children craft videos with and about character toys as the system analyzes their gestures and play patterns. Children’s favorite props alternate between characters and cameramen in a film. As they play with the toys to act out a story, they conduct film assembly. We position our work as ubiquitous computing that supports children’s tangible interaction with digital materials. During user testing, we observed children ages 4 to 10 playing with Picture This!. We assess to what extent gesture interaction with objects for video editing allows children to explore visual perspectives in storytelling. A new genre of Gesture Object Interfaces as exemplified by Picture This relies on the analysis of gestures coupled with objects to represent bits.
Introduction
We connect to our world using our senses. Every one of our senses is a knowledge shopper that grounds us in our surroundings [1]: with touch, one feels the texture of life, with hearing one perceives even the subtlest murmurs of our existence, with vision one clarifies their instincts. But human senses are not only about perception. We use gesture to apprehend, comprehend and communicate. We speak to ultimately translate and exchange with others. We visualize, record, and playback events using our memory to reflect on our history and to be immersed in experience. We as children and adults are engaged in everyday pretense and symbolic play. We embed and later withdraw from the world, using imagination to project ourselves into situations [35]. Our mental constructs are necessary to reach a deeper understanding of our relationship with our environment [3]. Children are offered stories by adults and are driven into fantasy play. They use toys to externalize and elaborate their mental constructions [8]. With character toys they create interrelationships and plots, a means to expose their social knowledge: knowing about human beings and social relationships [33]. If the toy has an immediately accessible visual perspective, a new world is opened to the child. The toy brings her into exploring visual and narrative perspectives of character props, expanding the discovery of her environment.
We imagine a world in which people play, create and exchange visual narratives with ease and transparency. Motivated by the playful improvisational environment of child storytelling with toys, we have developed a new category of video editing tools progressing towards the child’s natural expression of play. In Picture This! we combine the activity of play with the video making process. Whereas play emphasizes spontaneity and improvisation, video making necessitates structure and composition. We were inspired by the theater play of Goethe’s childhood [35], investigating what technology could add to the narrative and play experience. We use technology to offer visual feedback regarding how the scene looks like from the point of view of an imaginary audience. The child storyteller enters the world of the movie maker. Cameras become part of a toy system showing how things look from a toy’s point of view. They can be integrated in Lego people, car drivers, and even coffee mugs! The video process, supported by gesture induced editing, benefits children in practicing social interrelationships and visual perspective taking.
More about the system ->here <-
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
My contribution in the field of fashionable technology!
I had previously mentioned the book Fashionable Technology, edited by Sabine Seymour in which I present my work on fashion garments designed in the context of technology -including the Touch Sensitive apparel developed with Yasmine Abbas. The book is available on Amazon and I recently received my copy!
Here are the pages of my contribution and the book itself features outstanding designers. I will try to report about them soon !!!
Abstract: The interplay of electronic textiles and wearable technology, wearables for short, and fashion, design and science is a highly promising and topical subject. Offered here is a compact survey of the theory involved and an explanation of the role technology plays in a fabric or article of clothing. The practical application is explained in detail and numerous illustrations serve as clarification. Over 50 well-known designers, research institutes, companies and artists, among them Philips, Burton, MIT Media Lab, XS Labs, New York University, Hussein Chalayan, Cute Circuit or International Fashion Machines are introduced by means of their latest, often still unpublished, project, and a survey of their work to date. Given for the first time is a list of all the relevant information on research institutes, materials, publications etc. A must for all those wishing to know everything about fashionable technology.
->Buy the book<-
Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Fashionable Technology: The Intersection of Design, Fashion, Science, and Technology
July 2008 
I have authored a chapter in Fashionable Technology, book edited by Sabine Seymour!
I present my work on fashion garments designed in the context of technology -including the Touch Sensitive apparel developed with Yasmine Abbas. The book just came out and is available for pre-order on Amazon -> here<- Abstract: The interplay of electronic textiles and wearable technology, wearables for short, and fashion, design and science is a highly promising and topical subject. Offered here is a compact survey of the theory involved and an explanation of the role technology plays in a fabric or article of clothing. The practical application is explained in detail and numerous illustrations serve as clarification. Over 50 well-known designers, research institutes, companies and artists, among them Philips, Burton, MIT Media Lab, XS Labs, New York University, Hussein Chalayan, Cute Circuit or International Fashion Machines are introduced by means of their latest, often still unpublished, project, and a survey of their work to date. Given for the first time is a list of all the relevant information on research institutes, materials, publications etc. A must for all those wishing to know everything about fashionable technology.
->Buy the book<-
Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure.............................................................................................
Blog Jouons
Blog Maison Blog Passion
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Attachments to artifacts: Collect to connect to construct
I am thrilled! My proposal for book chapter titled Attachments to artifacts: Collect to connect to construct has been accepted! It will be part of the first Franco-English book that will tell you all you ever wanted to know about new technologies of the self, mobilities and (co-)constructions of identities.
In this book chapter, I explore the psychological trade-off between what we call virtual and tangible “attachments”: I focus on people’s attachments to things, and through things, their relations to people (virtual and digital). I address the digital object collection mechanism in relation to the way we gather artifacts in the physical world.
Edited by Fred Dervin, Senior Lecturer, Department of French Studies, University of Turku, Finland and partner in crime Yasmine Abbas, Doctor of Design, Harvard, USA, ReD Associates, Denmark. The book will be published in Autumn 2009.
More info ->here<-
SYNOPSIS extraits/excerpts, in both French and English
L’hypermobilité physique comme virtuelle qui touche les individus contemporains conduit à multiplier les récits et discours sur les rencontres avec les autres, mais aussi avec soi-même. Qu’ils soient issus de migrants, membres de diasporas, réfugiés, personnes en mobilité à court ou long-terme, résidents virtuels, internautes, etc., ces témoignages sont transmis à travers différents média et espaces personnels et publics: du simple coup de téléphone au site internet et à l’e-mail, ou à travers des autobiographies, des témoignages écrits et oraux, des articles de presse, des documentaires, etc. L’avènement de nouveaux espaces relationnels tels que ceux proposés par les Webs 2.0 et 3.0 (weblogs, podcasts, vidéocasts, Facebook, Second Life, Youtube…) offre la possibilité à la fois de faire partager ses expériences de mobilité au quotidien et de construire son soi face à/avec des millions d’interlocuteurs potentiels et ce, de manière multimodale. La présence de ces témoignages de mobilité, qui s’apparentent à des actes de confession, donne accès à des données intéressantes et inédites dans plusieurs langues et cela, de façon illimitée…
The new interpersonal spaces created by web 2.0 and 3.0 technologies seem to correspond to the technologies of the self that Michel Foucault (1988) has addressed in his lectures at the Collège de France at the beginning of the 1980s. These new technologies enable the individual’s self to emerge publicly and to be worked upon with its “disciples”: be they companions in Second Life, readers (for example on a blog) or listeners (Podcasts). With high speed Internet access and increasingly generous capacities of storage (mp3, USB keys, iPhone, portable computers…), the opportunities for staging the self have become unlimited…
MEDIA TREATED blogs, forum, Life Forms, MMS, moblogging, mondes virtuels, photo et vidéo, photos et vidéos mobiles, robots de compagnie, sites Internet, téléphones portables. | Craigslist, digital artifacts, Del.ici.ous, World of Warcrafts, Facebook, Gaming, Geolocalisation, MMORPG, retail surveillance devices, SilkRoad online, Social Networking, YouTube, WWOOF, Second Life.
THEMES Photographies en mobilité, espaces relationnels, hétérogénéité culturelle, industries culturelles, identités migratoires, identité hmong, diaspora, NOTICs (Nouveaux Objets issus des Technologies de l’Information et de la Communication), infoguerre, mouvement en danse, personnage virtuel, avatars, Autre imaginaire, voyage réel et virtuel | Attachment, backpacking, collection, collective identity, participatory culture, politics, rhythm, second self, tourism, tribalism, virtual nomadism. Attachment, backpacking, collection, collective identity, participatory culture, politics, rhythm, second self, tourism, tribalism, virtual nomadism.
I could not help but join this picture sent to us by Edith Ackermann, also selected by Yasmine Abbas, because it directly refers to the ideal of mobility and its beautiful sacrifice. Edith says:" i am in Switzerland moving out from my apartment: a sweet dump i had rented since i am a student, filled with paintings from my grand father, mom’s carpets, and leather coated books. i never had to let go of so many evocative objects at once. a bit overwhelming really, but i guess i will feel lighter once i am done. good i have my “final home” coat, a gift from my japanese friend noboyuki…. objects come, objects go! and so do people :) " Edith tells us all about it ->here<-
.............................................................................................
Blog Jouons
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Demoing ideas!
Soon my research lab opens its house! It is reserved to corporate sponsors only, but the Media Lab recently started an initiative opened to the public. The initiative, the LabCAST, highlights projects in their latest stages through videos. I recommend watching them!
One of the lab's primary source of funding comes from more than 60 corporate sponsors whose businesses range from electronics to entertainment, furniture to finance, and toys to telecommunications! So we demo our latest prototypes and research ideas ranging from engineering to social sciences.
"Adventures in Science" illustration by Allan Sanders
A very busy time for us bricoleurs-researchers as we need to put together our latest ideas in a demo-able format. We need to reorganize the demo space, clean the old toys, bring new ones, empty the entire floor, use carpet cleaners, basically make the space looks bright and shiny!
I recently reorganized my research area to bring my projects together, start presenting a story about my line of work. From Psychohaptics a set of haptic garments for health care, to Picture This! a new input device for video capturing and editing! Working on the proposal for my general exams for my PhD I am defining a framework for my research that I hope to present at the open house.
.............................................................................................
Blog Jouons
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
The sense of smell in interaction design
I came across the concept of a Scentsory phone by Nokia on Gadgettastic. The phone uses the human senses of sight, sound, touch and even smell for an ultimate multi-sensory experience. It could detect, transmit and emit smells, as well as radiate colors, lighting, and temperature from the caller’s environment. Its electronic nose works with highly sophisticated (i.e. unknown) sensors. The nose samples the odor of the caller’s environment and transmits this to the recipient electronically. 
Nokia Scentory Phone
Smells' detection and re-creation is a fascinating topic today most probably because it is still very hard to achieve technically. Last year I started developing the Odora Storyteller, a smell collector. It encompasses the experience of the everyday collector and creates an associative memory of smells, places and objects. The prototype was conceived for children to collect samples from their environment. The children can reveal and create associative connection between smells, textures and visual components of elements that they gather. The collected elements are then used to create and recall stories. I also envisioned this for persons suffering from Alzheimer's disease. People with Alzheimer’s could benefit from associative memory between smell and souvenirs of places.
Apparently it could work due to "distinct genetic patterns that are associated with every odor, and it’s simply a matter of matching electrical harmonics with gene activity" sounds like the equipment involved in this affair would go beyond the portability of such device. Could the perception of a smell by electrical stimulation be technologically induced? 
.............................................................................................
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Algorithmic film assembly using toy gestures
A new input device for video capturing and editing! Designed for young children, ages five and up, it allows them to craft compelling movies through the motion analysis of their interaction with toys.
A child playing with Picture This and his Naruto action figure
Continuing my research on perspective taking and tangible video editing, I recently finished the development of Picture This, a video editing and capturing device designed for young children. It allows them to craft compelling movies through the motion analysis of their interaction with toys. Children's favorite props alternate between characters and cameramen in a film. As children play with the toys to act out a story, they conduct algorithmic film assembly.
Picture This's web site.
In my prior work, Moving Pictures, I wanted to offer children the opportunity to gather imagery from their environment in the form of short video clips captured on video camera platforms modified for the application. I wanted to provide a transparent experience for the user, in which the cumbersome process of capturing and editing becomes fluid in the improvisation of a story and accessible as a way to create a final movie.
Web site for my past work on Moving Pictures.
Tangible interfaces combine operations on physical objects with digital data. I have sought to develop interfaces where either digital data can be overlaid onto physical objects in a display space or physical objects can act as handles into the digital space. The tangible handle is more than a marker or place-holder for digital data. It has the power to materialize and redefine our conception of space and content during the creative process.
If the toy had a visual perspective immediately accessible to the child, a new world would be opened to her. The toy could potentially bring the child into exploring visual and narrative perspectives of these character props, expanding her discovery and understanding of social interrelationships.
A video snippet of Picture This and a 6 minutes video for its interaction design.
The Picture this tool is an audiovisual device that combines two digital video cameras and two accelerometers. The tool captures motions, video and sound in real-time while an algorithmic video editing system composes a movie from these inputs. A motion based editing engine fluidly assembles the film as its story is being narrated, while respecting the conventions of continuity editing, namely, a sequence of shots that appear to be continuous. 
This style of film editing is made possible in Picture This by detecting turn taking behaviors between the toys. Two toy props are augmented with video cameras and custom accelerometer hardware. They use the Picture This tool both as a doll hand-bag or a doll audiovisual recorder. The tool is flexible for a child to take the perspective of props she selected for her movie.
Posted by Cati Vaucelle
♥ Architectradure
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Aerial Jewelry
I design Jewelry in the form of aerial patterns of a city. My vision is to have in miniature the multitude of patterns that one can see from a distance.
I research on how digital technologies make us re-evaluate the physical world. We perceive a new physicality through digital materials. In this project, I study the materiality perceived through aerial technologies. I believe that this modification of our perception of the environment is developed through our experience with the digital.
Now that we constantly travel by plane, use GIS, google map, satellite imagery, our vision is expanded. Our everyday objects have a language that adapt itself to our influences. As much as the car has influenced painting and the representation of space and movement, I want to show how the use of new technologies can change our way to design personal objects as exemplified by Aerial Jewelry.
Aerial Jewelry web site
Sunday, October 07, 2007
Sweet logo
To design psychohaptic's logo, I searched a visual identity for the research. The logo that I ended up creating visually represents a mix between therapy and artificial comfort: a cross pink. The pink reminded me of artificial candy' sweetness, and the cross aimed to connect to medical care. Creating an artificial sensation of touch with Psychohaptics for therapy, the pink cross logo worked pretty well.
I recently discovered Happy Pills, a sweet shop in Barcelona designed in homage to traditional pharmacies. The logo is exactly the same one than the one I made for our project at MIT. I started to be interested in the common points between projects with similar logos. I envision a database of logos with a few keywords on the rationale for their design choices and their corresponding projects. As for a navigation system through design works, that would be very exciting! 
M designed the branding and packaging as well as the interior of the store. “When you get candy in your mouth, your mood lifts, you feel better,” says M partner Marion Donneweg. “It’s like a bite of happiness.”
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Interact 2007 presentation
Today at Interact 2007 I presented my research conducted from 2002 until 2005. I presented the story of a Graphical User Interface that became a Tangible User Interface. The presentation introduced a novel approach to collecting, editing and performing visual and sound clips in real time.
The cumbersome process of capturing and editing becomes fluid in the improvisation of a story, and accessible as a way to create a final movie. It was shown how a graphical interface created for video production informs the design of a tangible environment that provides a spontaneous and collaborative approach to video creation, selection and sequencing.
Iterative design process, participatory design sessions and workshop observations with 10-12 year old users from Sweden and Ireland were presented and discussed. The limitations of interfacing video capture, editing and publication in a self-contained platform were addressed.
I uploaded my presentation in .pdf format here
Paper in .pdf
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Cooling down or heating up the body
At MIT, Tangible Media Research Group, we created Cool Me Down, a flexible fabric wrap with electronic heat pumps and metallic sinks that generates a cooling sensation. we originally designed the system for the treatment of schizophrenia within a care-giving facility. Conducting case studies at a local hospital, we discovered that this technology could be used to accompany usual treatment for other mental conditions. 
Throughout the research I explored ways of heat synchronization with the body instead of triggering artificial heat independently from the body. I recently found a fascinating product CoreControl developed by researchers Dennis Grahn and H. Craig Heller.
Problem: "Overheating is a serious concern when exercising in hot environments, wearing insulative clothing, or during high intensity activity. CoreControl can be used to effectively remove heat from the body in a variety of settings."
Solution: "CoreControl TM powered by RTX cools you quickly and safely from the inside out. With patented, cutting-edge technology, it rapidly cools your body core first, unlike ice packs, vests, and misting fans, which cool you from the outside in. CoreControl enables you to consistently perform at your peak."
CoreControl diagram by Nigel Holmes, from Just Cool It's article in Stanford Magazine.
CoreControl's web site
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Kinetic vs electric toys
Odo by Sony
We change our habits and we design accordingly. In the era of socially responsible design, a new business model is emerging. Discovered on Idealist, Odo by Sony is a generation of toys that takes advantage of user-generated kinetic energy. As mentioned in Sustainable Day: "there are a lot of conceptual solar powered cell phone prototypes and hand cranked chargers popping up in response to the strong consumer interest in more environmentally responsible products but in general consumer electronics usually lag behind in the development of green alternatives."
Odo Spin N'Snap
In 2005, I co-designed Playpals, a set of figurines with their electronic accessories that provide children with a playful way to communicate between remote locations. In our first prototype, the figurines were activated using the child-generated kinetic energy. We tried to find a branch of alternative to electrical by using reverse motors.
Playpals movie
Friday, July 20, 2007
An Investigation into Perspective Taking Skills
"Children believe that animals understand them and that they can share some of their problems with animals. Animals unconditionally love children without judging them so children can easily share their daily problems with animals"
An Investigation into the Perspective Taking Skills of 6-Year-Old Children in Terms of Pet Feeding and Gender Variables by Aysel Koksal Akyol and Vuslat O uz. In Humanity & Social Sciences Journal 2 (1): 08-13, 2007
Paper available online.
Abstract This research has been designed in order to investigate the perspective taking skills of 6-year-old children in terms of the variables ‘pet feeding at home’ and ‘gender’. 100 six-year-old children attending nursery schools participated in the research. Data were collected through a “Personal Information Form” and the “Perspective Taking Test”. In analyzing the data, t-test was applied. As a result of the analysis, it has been determined that the status of pet feeding has an impact on the perceptional perspective taking skills of children (p<0.05) and the gender of the child has an impact on the cognitive perspective taking skills (p<0.01). Consequently, some recommendations have been made.
Overview
This paper presents the potential of a pet, as a companion for a child, transitioning from stuffed animals to communicating with others and supporting the child's emotional development. Communication with pets can be mainly non-verbal so that children with communication difficulty progress with pets. Also a study demonstrated the important correlation between the level of the relationship of children with their pets and their level of empathy.
The authors present a comprehensive definition for perspective taking
Perspective taking skills are formed from perceptional (to be aware of what another person sees), cognitive (to be aware of what another person thinks) and emotional (to be aware of how another feels) elements(...) Perspective taking is also defined as the emotional reactions shared in the experience of the child against the emotional reactions of the other person. Perspective taking includes both cognitive understanding of another person’s experience (playing a role) and the emotional understanding of another person’s emotional situation (experiencing). A person with the perspective taking ability can feel the other’s emotions after defining his emotion and perspective partially
Study
The study in this research involved 100 and 6-year-old children. Children take the “Perspective Taking Test (Perceptional Perspective Taking Test, Cognitive Perspective Taking Test, Emotional Perspective Taking Test)” and parents take the Personal Information Form and the Empathetic Skills Scale. In the results, the empathy points of pet feeding children are higher. In children’s interaction with animals, their being able to put themselves in the animal’s place is important for them to understand whether the animal is hungry or not, whether they are hurt or not, or else whether they want to be taken care of or not. The perceptional perspective skills of pet feeding children may have resulted high for this reason.
They conclude that the communication skills of pet feeding children improve and their perspective taking skills are affected positively. They propose that parents support the love and interest of their child to their pet. Children’s love for animals can be developed through visual mass communication tools and the media, by allocating more space for animal related publications and broadcasting.
Based on this result, I wander if children playing with Tamagotchi perform better at empathy, unless the attribution of feelings to a character that is virtual kind of mix the cards ...
I am particularly interested in the subject of perspective taking. Studying perspective taking in discourse structure as well as social perspective, I designed from 2000-2002 a computational toy to enhance narrative perspective-taking. The most fascinated finding in the part of this research on social perspective taking, is that children benefited from the technological toy in reflecting on their hypothesis about their environment, about people, about their personal experiences. I discovered there was a huge potential in computing toys for comforting children in their natural discoveries. Technology cannot replace human or pets interrelationship, but it has the advantage to be neither of these and just offer children fun, authorship and feedback on their creation. In this process a mechanism can be designed to reinforce a particular cognitive skill.
I later designed video systems for children to share creations with one another using video game controllers in a public museum space. Computational tools for adults and children to perform videos in real time using their video database, as well as sms'ing in the public space using a community video database, and a tangible system for remote communities to create, edit, perform and share video creations.
The power of video is immense, it is the witness of an event. I am now researching on the relationship with perspective taking between personal video and personal voice using tangible materials.
Picture extracted from my thesis Dolltalk: A computational toy to enhance narrative perspective-taking. Thesis available online
Dolltalk (2000)
I created DollTalk to help young children take different perspectives during storytelling play. The child tells his/her story to an animated computer character, using two stuffed animals as props while their story is recorded. The stuffed animals contain accelerometers that monitor the movement of those toys; statistical analysis of children's play with props allows the system to assume that if a toy is being shaken, then the child is narrating a story segment associated with that toy. The system also computes different types of motions, from a single toy being shaken, to multiple ones and their frequencies over time. In parallel, the system analyzes the speech of the child. The combination of sound and gestural parameters analysis allows Dolltalk to determine the structure of the narration: from a dialog to a narrator voice, this to offer adequate interaction. In Dolltalk "easy mode", when the child is done telling a story, the recorded audio is played back with two different pitches to signify the stuffed animal that was speaking at the time. In a more "advanced mode", the story is played back using a narrator voice and offers different understandings for the same story using the storyline of the child.
