Reflection of Presence

Reflection of Presence	Stefan Agamanolis Alex Westner V. Michael Bove, Jr.

The purpose of this project is to create a more natural and intelligently responsive system for the composition of live audio and video objects to reflect presence and center of attention in a telecollaboration environment.
	Using visual and auditory cues, segmented video of remote participants is dynamically combined into a single frame using varying transparency, position or scale in order to emphasize or de-emphasize the presence of each.
Among the other core features of the system are spatialized audio and the ability to display and collaboratively navigate through various media objects in the background, such as documents, images, or prerecorded or live video with synchronized audio.
	One of the most simple and intriguing aspects of the system is its "reflection" metaphor. Each participant's image is reversed left-to-right, such that it feels like looking into a mirror, but a mirror also occupied by the other participants, creating a shared space with unique social characteristics.
We are experimenting with techniques for controlling and interacting with the space in a natural and seamless way. In one scenario, a single colored object may be used to navigate through documents in the background, shuttle through video sequences, and to make drawings or other annotations on the scene.
	This system is novel first in that it is implemented totally as a set of cooperating scripts written in Isis, enabling rapid experimental changes in the behavior of the prototype. The scripting environment consists of several multi-level tools which simplify the process of developing a highly distributed application which requires rich interactions between many media types.
Future experiments will include scaling the system to work fluidly with very large numbers of participants, rendering personalized views of the space for each participant, developing new techniques for more natural interaction, and applying the base system in other scenarios, such as an expressive or story-based environment.
Stefan Agamanolis Alex Westner V. Michael Bove, Jr.

This work is supported by the Digital Life Consortium at the MIT Media Laboratory.