Well, here I come again with my doubts and new definitions and new focus and new paths.

Something sort of new today, we'll sort of let down the buzzword virtual reality and substitute it only for videogames.

We were talking yesterday about the fact that the convergence is being approached through film entertainment area and not the art, alternative or independent field. So why do we want to look at Virtual Reality art installations? That makes no sense. In order to follow a scientific systematization we need to develop a multidisciplinary work but we also need to develop convergences between convergent fields, fields with some common inside. And that common inside is also the common goal of the overall work, and that is nothing more that the developing of tools that will be able to deliver an Entertainment Experience, emotionally and significantly richer.

Because of that our area is now more clearly defined and we can say it without shame that we?re really developing academic work in the area of games. We chose for now to call them VR Games instead of video or computer games. Because we'll not define aesthetics in Tetris or Pac-man but we'll work only with games that we'll be able to proportionate a virtual experience in the sense of the world depth being displayed tridimensionally. We are here also talking about a truly interactive story experience in spatial and temporal environment that awaits the user actions to reveal and not a multi-linear bag of cinematic sequences that asks players what story ending they want.

So we're trying to develop systematization or taxonomy of emotions in interactive storytelling through film and vr games, defining aesthetics convergences.

Love Robot
From Schopenhauer 'Metaphysics of Love' to Bjork/Cunningham 'All Is Full of Love'

Machines will never have real emotions because they don't need them.

Love doesn't make any sense in a machine because we only have this feeling to feed the passion and attraction necessary to provoke reproduction of our species (Schopenhauer).

So machines doesn't need to play sex to reproduce they will generate themselves in assemblage lines.

In this way what we need from robots is not a development of structures to generate emotions in robots we don't need them to be feeling robots.

They will need to be able to generate representations of human emotions - expressing emotions - and also able to recognize human emotions and having algorithms able to response to humans.
Robots will need this only in communication between robot-human not robot-robot.

What is ART?
 
Three theories or perspectives to look at art.

a)      emotivist theory - artistic expression of emotion, artist-based emotional theory of art
b)      sentimentalist theory - emotional responses of the viewer/listener, audience-based emotional theory of art
c)      rationalist theory - rational communication + rational production

Using the three perspectives we can try to look at art as:

Something created intentionally, being able to communicate anything that will elicit a determined set of emotions in the receiver
 

In the beginning I was looking for the convergence between film and virtual reality. I had a path to follow, to do a profound film study of 3-4 movies related to virtual reality, analysing the future consequences of VR in reality, in life, society, film - in the end a cultural analysis.
 
Then I turned my interests to storytelling - narratives, the art of storytelling, stereotypes of narrative - more versed in art theories.
 
Then I looked at emotions, the way to build emotions in a videogame through storytelling - psychology is over my head. 

In some way i've returned back to my prior quests before the PhD - Why is interactive content communication (like virtual reality) not as emotional as film?
 
Don't know where I'll be in the next couple of months. I feel that I need to focus, and above all to find a strong link between these works already done. I'll need to bang my head in looking for answers. Where is the goal, what is my final target, what am I trying to prove that nobody else have already tried?
 
Just know that I want something that mixes emotions, film, VR and storytelling. I also know that there are some people out there working in the same area and that probably already found some solutions. Maybe that I need to focus a bit more in a sub-area of all this 4 mixed areas... at the same time I'm afraid to go deeper because every time I've to write something (papers) on the area, I've to justify and explain everything in the beginning because not everybody is aware of the state-of-the-art in the 4 areas.
 
So, that's where I'm now. I'm working in the building of a straight line for this multidisciplinary PhD. Hope to find some answers till the end of the summer, in the between I'll have to finish the chapter on film study.  

I, Robot (2004)

I, Robot by Alex Proyas

«Asimov... making machines an example of how the world could be bettered through the mastery of technology. ..The robot was artificial intelligence in a man's shape, a foil for asking what it means to be human and what rules should govern us.
...
The idea that we can take our social interactions and code them with an Asimovian algorithm ("allow no harm, obey all orders, protect yourself") is at odds with the messy, unpredictable world.
...
This need for people to behave in a predictable, rational, measurable way recalls Mr. Spock's autistic inability to understand human emotion without counting dimples to discern happiness or frown lines to identify sorrow.»

in http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.07/machines_pr.html

Today is a happy day :)

Yesterday I've won the prize for the best paper presented at the conference

Games2004 - Digital Entertainment and Interactive Games, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, 12 July

I presented the paper "Emotion and Suspense in the Interactive Storytelling".

I argued in this paper that we can develop suspense in both cinema and interactive storytelling but the emotional result from suspense diverge completely. Then I presented some new perspectives to allow some convergence in the emotional experiences in order to raise the amount of significance of the experience to the user.

I'll post soon the slides from the conference at my homepage.

T-Shirt TV Screen

"A model at Loews Theatres on Boston Common invites onlookers to watch a movie trailer on the flat-screen TV embedded in her T-shirt."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0708/p11s01-wmgn.htm

ICO new analysis paths



Myst + D. Quixote + Conan, Boy in the Future + ...

CONAN, the boy in the Future by Hayao Miyazaki (1978)

It's amazing how Miyazaki has been present since my infancy in my life. I had 4 years when he made this fabulous TV series. I saw it only when I was about 8 and since then i never forgot it.

Conan produced and huge memory mark in me. In the sunny days when I'm relaxed and have time to look at my infancy it's hard to avoid the Conan feelings. Visuals, music, voices, character movement, the apocalyptic scenario, Conan happiness with the little things, the loneliness.

Today when i look at a movie like "Spirited Away" i just feel this as to come from the same genius mind.

I came to the conclusion that "ICO" in some way, used some of these artistic atmospheres from Conan and that's maybe one of the reasons for ICO having touched me so profoundly.

Sex, Technology, Storytelling and Emotions

Today "Wired for Sex" [1] was about the new tech sex toys for the elicitation of human orgasms, male or female. Products are getting better and better in touch/sense simulation, but the interviewed people were not yet satisfied. They said they could get orgasms but they don't get their sex needs, completely fulfilled. They didn't come to feel the intensity they await from a normal sex relation.

The real problem I'm seeing for technological sex is the same I see for digital storytelling. Human Emotions.

Everybody that has experienced sex with a stranger knows that the only thing he gets from that act is the orgasm deprived of feelings.

If you don't care about the other being you'll never get the top climax that a sex relation can provide.

In sex you need to feel that there's another being there. Besides the one and only "love" feeling that is so vast and difficult to define we can talk about the self-esteem. To get in a sex relation you need the sexual organs from your opposite [2], be it technological or in flesh but to feel it intense you need complicity, respect, admiration, etc. from the other being.

Feelings emanated from the other being will intensify the mechanical act, will elicit brain activity of self-esteem that bond with the act in itself will finally explode in a powerful outcome.

In a story is the same thing. If you don't come to care, feel angry, sorrow or happiness about the characters in the story, you'll never feel the emotional intensity and so the feelings of the story will come to be boredom and a waste of time.

I believe that sex technology could be a very good framework to show the peculiarity of human sensations, the human need of the other. Relations.

So if we want to provide anything technological that can someday elicit emotional intensity we'll need to get to emotional machines, which in some way can reach a point of emotion simulation, illusionary enough to fool our mind.

[1] TV Docummentary: Episode 4 - VIRTUAL REALITY SEX
[2] hetro relation