In her real life when she has something on her mind, Chestnut Rau invokes a series of subtle gestures that her husband's come to dub "the setup". That's because if he doesn't grasp that she's trying to express with that body language, she's likely to get irked at him for not being empathic enough. In SL, by contrast, there's no immediate and easy way to trigger those physical cues (say a loud sigh, a tilt of the head, and so on), and while that might seem like a drawback, Chestnut believes it's a good thing:
[O]ne advantage SL has for me is I can't pretend my glances or gestures or silences are packed with meaning. Since we don't have easy, natural body language I can't engage in the "set up...." [Instead w]e have to dig deep, listen to our own inner voices, find the words and say them.
There's been a lot of talk recently about developing video camera technology to record and translate real world expressions onto a user's avatar. (Early variations should arrive in the next few weeks.) Chestnut, however, suggests it's a blessing to depend so heavily on in-world text communication (chat and IM) to express ourselves. What will be lost, when we shunt aside the written word, and rely more and more on our actual body language to express how we're feeling?
Second life has quite a lot in the way of body language. There's plenty in the pauses, movements and looks that an avatar expresses if it's not totally locked up in an AO full of potted animations.
For oldies in SL i've noticed the more refined who _do_ use an ao tend to look for one in which the animations don't completely body lock so that folk talking to them can follow their gaze.
We have animated "emoticons" (in the form of gestures) available to us in SL and I use them myself. I would strongly oppose making these an automated standard though; just as the animated emoticons in yahoo chat irritated me immensely, I feel that this kind of self expression must be left up to the individual rather than provided by standard scripts. (The gestures/emoticons aren't the issue, it's the automatic insertion of them.)
Interacting through an avatar is difficult enough without the system taking the way you present yourself out of your own hands. So I'm quite happy with the way it works currently in SL. I can't say the same for googles lively, which irritated me immensely in the way it auto-triggered actions without my consent.
Posted by: Pavig Lok | Friday, September 12, 2008 at 09:20 AM
Indeed, Pavig, I agree.
Not to mention the small fact that we add yet another factor to the cultural mix. And I'm not just talking about national cultures, but urban, rural, subcultures, etc. Many are blissfully unaware of that they are addressing a person of another culture inworld. In text, no problem handling that, apart from possibly grammar or misunderstandings in translations.
Our RL communication in person is really complicated, believe it or not.
So unless we implement it with all the subtleties we have at our disposal in RL communication, body language, accentuating, and so on, it is bound to create more misunderstanding than actually be of any help. Unless you adhere strictly to the concept "If *I* understand what I mean, *YOU* should understand what I mean."
What I may see as an eloquent proposal may to someone else occur as I am 1. flailing my arms and forgot to take my prescriptions this morning or 2. have been watching waaaay too many imbecile rap vids on VH1.
(The latter annoyed me like h*** in Lively. I think I tried Lively, can't say I really remember what I did there. If I was there).
Posted by: Sin Trenton | Friday, September 12, 2008 at 10:48 AM
I agree with both Chesnut and Pavig. The lack of body language in the form we got used to in the meatspace made us explore us, our feelings and reactions much deeper by having to verbalize them. And then, there is that subtle layer of looks, pauses and spontanious moving that forms new body language, unconsciousness and spontaneous as it should be. It is new environment, there is new body language for it. It just takes time for it to form.
Posted by: dandellion Kimban | Friday, September 12, 2008 at 05:04 PM
My two bits agrees with Pavig, Sin and Dandellion. I think you've all said it better than I could have.
Body-language and physical gestures also predicate on you being able to *see* the person - something which isn't guaranteed and which can't readily be determined. Especially not if you have an oversized communications floater in the way.
Posted by: Tateru Nino | Saturday, September 13, 2008 at 08:22 AM
Just 4 days ago me and a GF of mine thought about the same thing and went out to buy us some nice basic animations like Yes, No , Bored, Confused and all that Things . We wanted to set them up as gestures so if we would type a Questionmark the avatar would react to it.
Guess what, as most Animations inworld are sold with some kind of Restriction (No Mod or No Copy or No Trans) - Gestures can only be made with Animations that have ALL PERMISSIONS ..
Again several 1000 Lindens down the Drain ..
it has something to do with the technical blockage behind the refusal of the GetInventoryKey() to return the ID key of any item that does not have FULL permissions.
And regarding culture. Basic Animations like Yes or No or a slight shrug of the shoulders if you type an ? wouldn`t be to wrong .. they are common all over the world
Posted by: Wordfromthe Wise | Tuesday, September 16, 2008 at 03:09 AM