A Thesis Fireside Chat

Liveness & Telepresence: Experience, Technology, Design,

Documentary (?)

The New TelepresenceAfter decades of sci-fi visions of videophones and moving-image co-presence, Skype and Google Hangout arrived in the home without much hype or heralding. The tech is commonplace. The familiarity is driving further innovations like telepresence avatars, which have multiple forms in the marketplace and in the cultural imagination. What is the relevance of widespread live video?

We understand the basic applications of the new telepresence

through its rise as a workplace technology

This photograph was taken at the Cambridge, MA venue in which I originally gave this talk; my classmate gave her thesis presentation via live video link from Grand Rapids, MI. It was added 10 minutes before I took the stage to present – a tiny gesture towards the dual impulses of liveness and documenting, and a good laugh-getter to boot.

In 2012, artist John Clang created Being Together, a series of Skype family photos capturing distant family members in a single portrait by projecting “Skyped in” individuals into their loved

ones’ physical space. It is a vision of telepresence as it was originally theorized, creating the feeling of being-at-a-distance.

But the new telepresence is not just at work.In the home, we’re beginning to realize the unique emotive power and strong social bonds transmitted and maintained by live video communication…

Research Snapshot Fall 2013: Telepresence

• Marvin Minsky: a vision of telepresence focused on remotely operable machines

• Utopian / Ubiquitous• Focus on use for social good

(safety, scientific discovery)

• High tech, high cost• Reserved for use at the

highest organizational levels

• Predominantly business applications

Where telepresence started… …and where it ended up.

What intervened between vision and reality?

• Legal limitations: telepresence installations for art and applications restricted from public places

• Technological limitations: low bandwidth = low quality = low “presence” experience

• Infrastructural / Market limitations: high cost, need for multiple communicable nodes to create a networked telepresence

But with the rise of affordable, accessible New Telepresence technologies, what else is holding back a rise in meaningful

global connection via live video?

“Skype, which was the fantasy of our childhood, gets you back to sitting there and being available in that old-fashioned way. Our model of what it was to be present to each other, we thought we liked that… But it turns out that time shifting is our most valued product. This new technology is about control. Emotional control and time control.”

Sherry Turkle(Call Me! But Not On Skype or Any Other Video Chat…, TIME, Jan. 2010)

Ethan Zuckerman on the problems of homophily online:

“Flocking” – Zuckerman zeroes in on the tendency for people to remain within their

comfort zones and to communicate among those

they perceive as familiar and similar, even on the web;

shared space isn’t the problem, shared experience

and perceptions keep people bound within particular

communities

“The Caring Problem” – Despite a conceptual desire for

global connection, it’s hard to generate empathy and caring

for those at a distance beyond our own limited set of social

ties

Research Snapshot Spring 2013: Julie’s Brain is a Complete Mess

And then…

OMG: I’m interested in this topic for the same reason I’m interested in documentary

(What if I combine them? Can you do that?)

Research Focus: Live Documentary

Live PerformanceExample project: Sam Green’s works Utopia in Four Movements and The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller take documentary back into the theater as semi-performed and semi-constructed

Live SubjectExample project: Elaine McMillion’s Hollow

is gesturing towards interactive components that link viewer and subject in

a direct conversation

Research Objective 1:Map the field of new format interactive documentary onto theoretical and historical frameworks of liveness and telepresence

Goals: Catalogue and critique current practices of “connection” between viewer and content | Illuminate complex media inheritances of interactive documentary beyond film (television, telepresence) | Reassess modern notions and impulses of documentary media

Research Objective 2: Follow the technologies to understand the experience of presence:

Examine current use cases of screen-based and robotic/mobile telepresence technologies, comparing:

• User Interfaces / Design• User Experiences

Goals: Assess the varied affordances of interfaces and technologies for generating “liveness” and “presence” in different contexts | Understand rationale for adoption of forms

September 2013: Media Lab Director Joi Ito visits the lab as “Joi Bot”

Research Objective 3:Design and prototype live documentary interventions to explore:

Can

•The extent to which set narratives can lead people past the impulse for self-representational control into unstructured, uncontrolled live conversation and connection •Whether live documentary can be a tool for ‘re-wiring’ the web and ‘bridge building’ (Zuckerman) in order to overcome in-group isolation•How live documentary may succeed and/or fail to extend the documentary medium’s ability to generate empathy and catalyze social change

Goals: Engage other makers in a dialogue about the viability and desirability of “liveness” as a design principle| Probe the affordances of the web for extending the documentary mission

MIT Open Doc Lab