Dear Terra Novans, Happy Novan Year 2011!
I have returned after a long hiaitus from this blog due to deep work on PhD research. I've arrived with my bags bulging with a some postings that might be of interest. Here is the first. A year ago I engaged in an email interview by Jeffrey Ventrella on the history and future of avatars for Jeffrey’s newly published book:
Virtual Body Language, The History and Future of Avatars: How Nonverbal Expression is Evolving on the Internet
Available now at: http://virtualbodylanguage.com/
... and here is that interview here...
(1) When you were working on (your book) Avatars! what had you predicted/hoped for avatar technology that later came true? Also, what things did you predict/hope that have not come to pass... (yet)?
A great question. Back in the early summer of 1995 a group us in the formation days of the Contact Consortium met in Anthropologist Jim Funaro's home in Aptos, California, and had a two day brainstorming on what inhabited virtual worlds would look like when they arrived (there were the first couple of examples appearing online by then). Pretty much everything we predicted came to pass, including ideas like "avatar changing rooms" where newbies would kit our their identities.
A summary of this brainstorming is on the Consortium web site at:
http://www.ccon.org/org/eevents.html#brain
and the resulting White Paper itself from July 9, 1995 is at:
http://www.ccon.org/org/vsysd1.html
which is where we took on the challenge of converting the experience of an existing educational MUD (Northern Arizona University's SolSys) to a 3D virtual world, the facilities needed etc.
Some items identified in this design study do indicate things missing from current worlds... I can do more of a summary of this if you like?
(2) What are the earliest examples of avatar body language that you can remember?
In May of 1995 the only virtual world on the Internet (that was at least being publicly used) was Worlds Chat. Body language was being experienced for the very first time by dial-up users of this world, which was represented as a multi-hubbed space station. The avatars in worlds chat were 2D sprites having no gestures so in fact you were represented as a static "chess piece" moving along floors and sliding along walls. After teleporting into the central hub of the Worlds Chat space station you learned how to move off that zone (where if you tarried others would seem to flash into being right on top of you) using keyboard key action and then started to explore. My first "in-world" experience was ever so timidly moving up to another group of avatars in the corner of the hub just after teleporting in. I kept back from them and typed a few words to engage in conversation. I had no idea what the rules of body contact were or whether I would be rude to interject my virtual body in between conversants. Others had no idea either so this was an interesting circumstance. Soon people (probably younger than me) were whizzing around, passing right through others' avatars (there was no collision active). So the social conventions were established for body language: ie it was OK to move around through other people but not pausing your avatar right up front of someone's view (all perspective was first person so this would occlude someone's view completely).
There were other interesting phenomena in this "first contact" world of Worlds Chat. Within a year there were worlds featuring large voice-enabled lip synching heads (Traveler), avatars with the first gestures (Alphaworld using LifeForms from Vancouver), and many others I could elaborate on.
(3) You are one of the first people to have pontificated and philosophized on avatarhood. How do you see the evolution of avatars unfolding?
Gosh this is a big order to ask. I am thrilled that after the first early adopter Internet virtual worlds (there was Habitat in the 1980s of course) of 1995-2000, there was a "second coming" of 2003-present and that the term "avatar" didnt die. The success of 3D user-built platforms like Second Life and the plethora of worlds platforms is thrilling. Many platforms will close of course but it is a genre that is here to stay. For this I am grateful. However, I feel that all the "niches" of user interface styles, user interaction modes and the general innovation has in some sense saturated. Ie: the first generation worlds pretty much explored the whole space of the medium and the second generation has not made much in the way of advancement, just become more widespread. Thus the in-world building of Second Life is more sophisticated but not different in degree than that back in AlphaWorld in 1995-96.
The coming of gestural interfaces, Augmented Reality (AR) interfaces and fims like Avatar are portents of a very different future for avatars, in which you will "walk in" to a projected reality around you in the real world. Think James Cameron holding the virtual camera and walking into an empty warehouse but seeing the completely rendered virtual set with the virtual and actual actors present. That portends something for the future of virtual worlds. I can send you an interview I just did for CNET on this subject.
(4) What are your thoughts about the difference between video chat (i.e., Skype) and avatar chat?
Avatar chat places you in an interstitial place, a world between you and those who you are interacting with. Video chat very much anchors you in the place you are in real life. So they are really two different media altogether, although to some extent accomplishing the same thing. Skype and the like dont require a belief in a shared, created world and generally represent people who they are or behind the thin veil of a handle, whereas virtual worlds promote that concept of shared, created worlds and identities not tied to the real people behind the avatars.
(5) Do you think that the potentials of Digital Space Traveler have been fully realized? Is voice chat at a place where it needs to be?
Interesting that you ask as we are in a campaign to upgrade traveler's community support and servers. Traveler still has no equal in my opinion in the category of "intimacy" of communication. Back in 1996-97, Steve DiPaola, Ali Etakbar and the team used the metaphor of the cocktail party conversation as their goal for Onlive Traveler. So the design included: friendly polygonal and atmospheric worlds with good ambient sound containing avatars with large polygonal heads ("masks" not trying to be photorealistic which as we know can bring on the famous "creep out" effect), good-enough lip synching, attenuated and stereo sound, body contact with a "bump" sound, and more. This design was highly effective and is a model for how to do voice in virtual worlds very well. To date no other platform has emulated this exactly. Voice being "bolted on" to worlds which were primarliy full-body text chat spaces feels incongruous as indeed, primates are keyed to zeroing in on the face when communicating with voice, not hailing distant stick figures with radio waves emanating from their heads. The voice quality is fine in the newer platforms, its just not well designed to be natural and intimate for primates adapted by millions of years of face-to-face interaction.
(6) You are heading up the Virtual Worlds Timeline. Have you uncovered any cool tidbits? From your research, are there any new technologies that you are excited about related to avatars or online community?
I am amazed by the variety of modalities and creative forms and content represented in these platforms over the years. That creativity shows no end although the frame in which it fits is still pretty restrictive (for the most part interacting with a mouse and keyboard on a small screen while sitting). We are in a sense in the "keystone kops" era of virtual worlds, in reference to soundless black and white film shorts of the early 1900s.
(7) You have worked with NASA and many fellow visionaries looking beyond earth. Do you have any thoughts on how current technologies for remote communication may be applied to extraterrestrial search – or perhaps for communication with nonhumans?
Gosh that’s a question "out of the blue" or from "way out yonder". I have a whole perspective on the user of virtual worlds for simulation for the design of and operation of innovative new space missions. You can take a look at a couple of dozen of our projects at DigitalSpace
The EvoGrid concept goes even farther by posting that we can and must learn how to harness the power of evolution in software to "evolve" biota from scratch that could live natively in a variety of environments around the solar system. More on that by watching the "Asteroid Eaters" movie at http://www.evogrid.org
(8) How many avatars do you have? How many do you use? If you don't use avatars, why?
I generally use one identity throughout most worlds I inhabit, and his name is generally "Digi" with various next part variants "Gardener" in Active Worlds, "Weaver" in Second Life. I am always "me" in these spaces, although my role might be community or event organizer, mediator, judge, building foreman, or just plain avatar joe some times.
(9) Do you think climate change will have an influence on virtual worlds?
To the extent that climate change causes an interruption in our electric power supply, yes, I guess they would go dark.
Thanks Bruce!
Bruce, this is amazing material, and terrifically timely for me: I'm about to start teaching a grad course called "Discourse, Community and Power in Virtual Worlds," with a strong focus on the relationship of avatar technology to community.
This stuff's priceless - thank you!
Posted by: John Carter McKnight | Jan 07, 2011 at 11:38
So interesting, thanks!!
Avatars are like a funhouse of distorted mirrors that hint and some truths and hide others. My kid showed her annoyance with me (and the world) the other day by crafting the ugliest possible avatar she could, then proclaimed 'this is me!'. I feel like that some days, too. Mostly, though, I just want to be super me.
Posted by: LisaG | Jan 10, 2011 at 09:13