INVITED SPEAKER
Inhabited 3D Virtual Worlds:
Interactivity and interaction between avatars, autonomous agents, users etc.
Jens F. Jensen,
InterMedia-Aalborg & Department of Communication,
Aalborg University, Denmark
Three-Dimensional Virtual Worlds (3D VWs) are currently becoming a reality. It happened first in computer games and stand-alone multimedia applications, but is increasingly appearing in network-based systems, e.g., the Internet, intranets, and the World Wide Web. 3D VWs are characterized by being generated from software – i.e., they exist only in cyberspace – and by containing computer generated representations of users. In order for users to move through 3D worlds, and so that others can see them, they must be represented as moveable computer graphics, in the form of so called ‘avatars’. In short, this software is inhabited, – by its users, designers and developers.
While the Internet has, until now, primarily been a set of sites which could be visited, documents that could surfed, it is rapidly becoming a space that can be lived in and populated. In these Virtual Worlds it’s possible to meet with and have (mediated) social interactions and communication with other users on the network in real time. In other words, the Internet is changing from a pile of documents, a dead library, to a social and communicative space: a web of human relationships – a community. And users are transforming themselves as well from ‘surfers’ to ‘settlers’.
The talk will address some of the central questions currently related to ‘inhabited 3D Virtual Worlds’ and their virtual interactions and communication. It will focus on the following issues:
- The social construction of 3D VW-technology
- Dominant applications of 3D VWs: entertainment, communication, transaction, information, and navigation
- Modes of (virtual) social interactions and simulated communication in 3D VWs: interaction between avatars, interaction with agents etc. (appearances, functionalities, behaviors, personalities, etc.)
- Cyber-Hybrids (of avatars and agents): virtual humans, game characters, mask characters/CyberMasks, characters using genetic algorithms, biotas, bots and other strange inhabitants of Virtual Worlds
- Construction of an interaction based typology of autonomous agents, avatars, users etc.
- Some problems in virtual appearance, virtual body language, virtual gestures/postures & virtual facial expressions
- Navigation and the structuring of space and time in avatar based 3D VWs
- Mini-case studies illustrating key features of virtual social dynamics (identity, community etc.) in 3D VWs
- The changing Internet – and the Virtual Futures of Inhabited 3D VWs
Jens F. Jensen is an associate professor in computer media and computer-mediated communication at InterMedia-Aalborg and Department of Communication, Aalborg University, Denmark. His current research interests include networked based multimedia, Internet & WWW, digital media, Interactive Television, Human-Computer Interaction, the aesthetics of multimedia, interaction and interactivity, and inhabited 3D Virtual Worlds. Mr. Jensen is on the editorial board of the scientific journal K&K, and is the general editor of the series Media & Cultural Studies as well as the FISK-series from Aalborg University Press. He is the editor of several anthologies, such as: The Computer as Medium, Cambridge University Press 1993 (co-edited with P.B. Andersen and B. Holmqvist); The Television of the Future, or the Future of Television? (co-edited with C. Toscan, Aalborg University Press, to be published summer 1999), and The Aesthetics of Television (co-edited with G. Agger, Aalborg University Press, to be published summer 1999); and has published more than sixty articles and papers on new media and the social and cultural implications of information and computing technology, including an expert opinion about Multimedia and Technological Development in charge of the Danish Department of State (1995). Currently, Mr. Jensen participates in a national research program on "The Staging of Virtual, Inhabited 3D-Spaces" as well as a research project on "Multimedia in the Home". Further information is available at: http://www.hum.auc.dk/i11/ansatte/profiler/jfj/
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F. Jensen