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From: sobiloff@acc.stolaf.edu (Chrome Cboy)
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: Re: facial gestures in VR
Message-ID: <10591@milton.u.washington.edu>
Date: 5 Nov 90 08:03:23 GMT
References: <10521@milton.u.washington.edu>
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In article <10521@milton.u.washington.edu> dbs@speech2.cs.cmu.edu (David Sanner)
 writes:
>    body language, and in particular facial gestures, seem to convey an 
>  awful lot of "extra" information that can help us define the context of
>  converstation, for example.  i propose then, the DATAMASK(tm)(of course ;-)
>  this acts like a data glove, but is able to translate the activation levels 
>  of facial muscles into a stream of data.
>    any thoughts?

The Media Lab played with this concept a number of years ago (1979 was when
the project received funding from DARPA). They had a conference room with
plastic faces for individuals that were at remote sites. The faces were
actually molded faces of a video tube which displayed a picture of a remote
individual. Thus, individuals at remote sites had a camara pointed at
their face which transmitted their facial gestures to remote sites, and were
surrounded by plastic faces of the other individuals they were conferencing
with. Nicholas Negroponte claims that the effect was incredibly realistic,
but that business thought it was too frivolous.

It also seems that the rock group, "Talking Heads," took their name from
this project, and that the cover art on their first album was done by
students at MIT who were working on the Talking Faces project and who
had demo'd the system for the band.
--
                                                        ______________
_______________________________________________________/ Chrome C'Boy \_________
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