WEDNESDAY 2ND APRIL 2003

PAUL SERMON
Focus: TELEMATICS

CONCEPTS and CHARACTERISTICS

• Existing outside own space
• Means of extending consciousness
• Means of extending body beyond screen
• Extending sensory inputs of sight and touch – sight exchanged for touch, using eyes to touch
• Telepresence state of mind -experience cognitive process in slow motion
• Body is affected and transformed by telematic processes
• Temporal displacements
• Double consciousness – state of being accessed
• Quality and nature of the communication through no contact in physical realm.
• The creation of a third location
• Narcissism

USER EXPERIENCE

• You are having an out of body experience’
• Users reluctant to enter telematics environment – embarrassment – concern with their distant body not near physical one – issue of proximity relations
• User behaviour - lots of fun and laughter – funny? enjoyable?
• People love idea of communication at a distance
• Etiquette rules in telematic communications

FORMS IN USE

• Installation which exists in a digital network
• Different telepresence interfaces: use of everyday objects/familiar environments: personal spaces, domestic situations, public spaces
• ‘There’s no simulation like home’
• Telematics as a debating forum
• Making the technology invisible
• Issue of screen based interfaces
• Notion of real and virtual – all realities as a construct of language
• Sound/image interaction experimentation

TECHNOLOGIES IN USE

• Network matrix
• Video conference technology
• Chromakeying
• Mixed image projection
• Head mounted displays