For this blog, I am asking different people who have been involved to add to the blog. Karl has been invaluable over the last week, to discuss ideas, and help build the work. He is interested in the exploration of emotional contagion and interaction in the Chameleon Project.
I have had to cut this blog into four parts, the a-n blog allows a post of 500 words at a time
Dr Karl Broome Is currently a research fellow in the sociology department working on the project ‘Supporting Shy Users in Pervasive Computing’, an EPSRC funded research project on the WINES programme, undertaken by the departments of Informatics and Sociology at the University of Sussex
KARL BROOME: PART ONE
For Walter Benjamin, the term mimesis refers to the compulsion to
‘become and behave like something else’. When I sit and look at the Pixy
screen I think and feel about the ’emotional contagion’ that is to be
brought about through my ‘interaction’ with the screen in front of me.
Strictly speaking, it is not straightforwardly the screen in front of me
with which I am interacting with but more the small camera, which is
‘reading’ and ‘responding’ to my facial expressions, or rather, it is
interacting with me. But that said, sometimes it is kind of like looking
at the reflection of your own face in the ripples of water, except it is
not a reflection of your own face that you are partially seeing, but a
response to what is perceived as your emotional state, embodied in the
expression of another human being.
