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Wearable Interactive Physical Avatars , A. Fisher∗ University of Toronto, Dept. of Computer Science firstname.lastname@example.org Tel. (416) 978-5036 Abstract has not kept pace with the move from physical stone A wearable physical avatar facilitates desponsibility. fortresses to informational protection of buildings. The wearer is required by law, custom, employment Little likewise has been done to address the protec- contract, or other obligation, to interact with the world tion of the individual. through a body-worn avatar. In one embodiment, a wearable talking ﬁsh is used. The wearer is not allowed 1.1 Subservience empowerment to talk to anyone directly, except when authorized by This paper presents a simple concept called “being the ﬁsh. The ﬁsh as avatar forms an existentialist user bound to freedom”. There are various ways in which interface (EUI) for street theatre of the absurd (e.g. as the individual can wear or carry an apparatus of self- a modern equivalent of Samuel Beckett’s, Theatre of demotion (self-corporatization), within the context of the Absurd). street performance, or street theatre of the absurd. By Keywords becoming one with the corporatized ideal of diﬀuse in- direction, we can, in eﬀect, tame the monster of glob- 1 Introduction: Buildings and bureau- alization and corporatization with a piece of itself. cracy 1.2 Theoretical framework: Can humans The present paper pertains generally to a wearable being clerks make clerks be human? apparatus that provides the user with desponsibility The fundamental problem the individual faces when to strangers, especially criminals with a stolen security interacting with the ever increasing scope of larger and guard’s uniform, or criminals in positions of authority. larger global bureaucracies, is that of imbalance and Children are often advised by their parents: “Don’t asymmetry. talk to strangers!”. However, many times individuals may be stopped on the street and do not know whether Typically this imbalance is evident by way of an or not they are talking to terrorists. individual interacting with a clerk who either is, or pretends to be, under the control of a manager who In today’s society which is teeming with danger- either is, or pretends to be under the control of a higher ous criminals, buildings often have sophisticated access authority, and so on. control to make sure that everyone entering the estab- lishment is properly processed, but ordinary citizens A typical example of such a situation is when an lack such protection. individual attempts to negotiate with a used car sales- Buildings have forms of access control, such as card man, and the used car salesman might say something readers, along with the ﬁeld of biometrics, for a fu- like “I’d love to give you the car for two thousand dol- ture in which certain select individuals can know the lars; let me check with my manager”. The used car whereabouts of most other individuals at all times. salesman then disappears into a back room, alone, and has a coﬀee, and reads a newspaper for a few minutes, Physical protection of the body through armour is a and then comes out and says “I’d love to give you the centuries–old aspect of the prior–art, dating back to the car for two thousand dollars but my manager won’t let days when ﬁve to seven layers of rhinoceros skin were me.”. Although the salesman never talked to a man- used to protect the body during battle. Such physi- ager, the salesman has some degree of power over the cal protection of the body has not kept pace with new customer by virtue of being able to credibly pretend developments in protection of property. Protection of that he is bound by a higher and unquestionable au- property has evolved from medieval fortresses toward thority. A credible, articulable, higher and unquestion- bank towers with glass doors protected by card read- able authority allows representatives of organizations ers and retinal scanners. The protection of the body to obtain external blame and excuses for what would ∗ Pseudonymous to protect the lives of innocent ﬁsh otherwise be irrational or disagreeable actions. 1 Unfortunately the individual person does not ordi- made to seem as if it occurs merely by chance or with- narily enjoy the same luxury as the clerk, and must out intention or calculation. An incidentalist imaging therefore behave more rationally, or risk seeming irra- system may in fact blatantly capture images (as by an tional, rude, or otherwise inappropriate. articulable requirement from a higher authority to do Another example is that of video surveillance. If we so), or it may present itself as a device that could cap- visited a friend’s house where video surveillance was ture images in a way in which it is diﬃcult to discern used because that person did not trust us, we would the intentionality of the use of the invention. likely be quite angry. However, we often accept the The utter absurdity of the ﬁsh, makes criticism of use of video surveillance systems by owners of large the image capture process equally absurd. An oﬃcial organizations, simply because it is not clear who is re- complaining about the camera in the ﬁsh’s eye would sponsible for the installation of such systems. indeed seem utterly paranoid, to be afraid of a talking When we attempt to follow the chain of responsi- ﬁsh. bility upwards, management indicates that the direc- The talking ﬁsh also functions as an avatar, in real tive was from head oﬃce, and head oﬃce argued video physical existence, where the device provides the de- surveillance was just policy, or for insurance purposes, sired empowerment through self–demotion. In the or the like. Thus there is no clear accountability for same way that clerks facilitate empowerment of large the situation. organizations, the ﬁsh facilitates personal empower- If an individual carried a handheld video camera ment by allowing its host to be a mere clerk. Self- around videotaping clerks, casino operators, police of- demotion provides a deliberate self-inﬂicted dehuman- ﬁcers, customs oﬃcials, and the like, the individual ization of the wearer, so that those the wearer encoun- might be regarded as strange, rude, or otherwise acting ters, such as clerks and oﬃcials in the oﬃcial business in an inappropriate manner. of global e-commerce solutions, must suddenly realize The individual could rely on religion, as a manager, the absurdity of such bureaucratic human endeavour by, for example, wearing a camera contraption as part which forces the clerk to become human. of a religious order. Just as religion allows individuals In summary, humans being clerks can make clerks the right to wear special headwear even as uniformed be human. employees (e.g. to wrap their heads in various materi- 2 Street theatre of the absurd: Can als that would otherwise be regarded as inappropriate), Fish being Humans make Humans be a new religion such as the “personal safety religion”, or even a “school of ﬁsh” religion could be invented, that Fish? required its members to wear cameras, computers, and The talking ﬁsh was implemented using a “Billy other devices. Bass” toy ﬁsh, purchased from a Canadian department Thus religion could form a similar purpose to the store. The “Billy Bass” (TM) product was originally manager for the individual, but there is the danger that mounted on a wooden plaque, having a motor inside others (including clerks) may dismiss the individual as the ﬁsh to cause the tail to wiggle1 . The plaque also a religious freak. Moreover, the post September 11th had a speaker in it, so that the toy ﬁsh could speak. atmosphere is one of distrust toward religious fanatics. For the purpose of this research, the ﬁsh was re- moved from the plaque and aﬃxed to a black T-shirt Therefore, what is proposed is another way for the with a chest support under the shirt. The motor (orig- individual to have excuses for, and to externalize blame inally running at 5 volts DC) was interfaced to the for, otherwise irrational or disagreeable actions. parallel port of a wearable computer, to make the ﬁsh An important aspect of the invention is for the in- tail wiggle, and another motor for the head was used, dividual to be able to nonconfrontationally obfuscate to mimic natural speech lip movements. A small con- their actions, in much the same way as a large building troller for the ﬁsh was built using a PIC microcon- allows the manager to be unaccountable for his or her troller, to interface the ﬁsh to the wearable computer. actions, and thereby show the absurdity of the global- The speaker that was behind (inside) the wooden ized world in which we life. plaque was removed and installed inside the ﬁsh, since The wearable talking ﬁsh is a physical avatar, that the plaque was discarded. Additionally, the left eye of forms just what is needed for such street theatre of the the ﬁsh was removed and replaced with a small camera absurd. See Fig 1. ﬁtted with a ﬁsheye lens. The ﬁsh has a ﬁsheye lens, in each eye, being for a 1 Rather than merely a periodic motion for the tail, it was camera, so that the ﬁsh can “see”. Incidentally, there- found that the most naturally appearing probabilistic distribu- fore, the ﬁsh captures pictures of everything it sees. tion for tail motion was a Poisson distribution, especially in the Incidentalist imaging refers to imaging which can be tails of the distribution. Figure 1: The wearable physical avatar in the form of a talking ﬁsh. The mouth of the ﬁsh moves in synch with the voice as it talks, whereas the tail follows a Poisson distributed random variable, and the head moves as well (3 degrees of mechanical movement). . Originally the “Billy Bass” product originally con- ment at the University’s School of Fish (SoF). See tained a microchip speech synthesizer that was re- Fig. 3. moved for the research. Instead, speech was synthe- sized on the wearable computer using the Festival pro- 3 Further research gram. Additinally, a speech recognition feature was In another theatrical performance outﬁt for satire added. The speech recognition feature was not present of bureaucracy, the user wears a country as a garment. in the original “Billy Bass” product, but presently this The country is called “C-LAND”, or FISH-LAND. feature allows the system to recognize speech, so that A map of a country is indicated on a garment, to the ﬁsh can talk as well as listen. The ﬁsh uses the show that the person’s body is being its own sovereign special reserved keyword “please” to denote the end nation state. of each sentence. Thus the host must terminate each While the country need not be built to scale, many sentence with the word “please” when speaking to the elements of the country are preferably built to approxi- ﬁsh. mately 1/12 scale. Inhabitants of the country are dolls, such as Ken (TM) and Barbie (TM) sewn to the shoul- A simple computer vision algorithm uses the Horn ders of the wearer of the country. and Schunk equations to do simple optical ﬂow. Based To emphasize that this is in fact a country, with on Focus of Expansion (FoE) analysis, the device de- a passport oﬃce, and to satirize bureaucracy, surveil- tects the presence of people walking up to the ﬁsh, and lance, photo ID cards, and the male gaze, it is prefer- the ﬁsh begins speaking. The ﬁsh also stores pictures able that inhabitants might be engaged in the act of of people that it “meets” together with a short speech producing a passport. For example, a Ken (TM) doll recording of people’s voices as they introduce them- may be situated behind a small scale model counter of a selves to the ﬁsh. The host (person wearing the ﬁsh) is miniature passport oﬃce on the wearer’s left shoulder, not allowed to talk to the audience directly, so the ﬁsh whereas a Barbie (TM) doll might be situated in front will respond with the phrase “my host is not allowed of an ID card camera on the wearer’s right shoulder. to talk to you without my permission” as appropriate. Preferably the Ken (TM) doll can be turned around Presently the ﬁsh is controlled by a Cappuccino com- 90 degrees so that he can photograph real people who puter that has been adpated into wearable conﬁgura- are an audience to the wearer’s performance. Thus per- tion with a mesh housing and ﬁlter system over the sons wishing to converse with the performer can be told air intake. The computer provides a 1.0 GigaHertz that they must ﬁrst apply for a passport before being P3 processor and 256M RAM with 40G hard drive to allowed to talk to the performer. An oﬃcial talking store pictures, etc.. Although the processor may seem to the performer may thus be told that he needs to excessive for simply controlling a ﬁsh, the high speed get a passport, and the performer can then turn Ken computer is needed to do the speech recognition, to- (TM) doll to face the oﬃcial and then it will be a mat- gether with the capture and processing of images. The ter of Ken (TM) doll photographing the oﬃcial and a speech synthesis, however, only uses a small percentage small wearable printer can print out a miniature pass- of the CPU processing power. port photo ID card that the performer can hand to the Figure 2 shows the talking ﬁsh in the semi-public oﬃcial. setting of a ﬁsh market and meat store. The passport oﬃce has a roof overhead, and the roof Then at the checkout, the ﬁsh directs the process, is also over the head of the performer wearing the appa- and requires its host to follow company policies and ratus. The roof portion of the apparatus is supported procedures as set forth by the Management Depart- by support which is connected to a backpack. The (a) (b) (c) Figure 2: (a) Fish theatre at the ﬁsh market. (b) Fish food being shown to the ﬁsh. (c) Curious ﬁsh. . Figure 3: At the checkout, especially when handling cash, the host must obey all commands from the ﬁsh. The ﬁsh must in turn obey commands as sent by wireless data link from the University’s School of Fish and Planning. . backpack also houses the computers needed to run the C-LAND also has various billboards, some of them body-worn country. being LED billboards, whereas others are made from The is made as a 1/12 scale suspended ceiling. In- miniature ﬂat panel television screens that form what stead of 4 (approx. 122cm) foot long ﬂuorescent lights, amount to giant billboards along the roads in C-LAND there are 4 (approx. 102cm) inch long miniature ﬂu- scale. orescent tubes. A satisfactory tube is the 4-inch T1 Flags may also ﬂy proudly throughout the garment made by Kino Flo. Tubes are sold in “T” units where to show the sovereignity of C-LAND. one “T” is 1/8 inch (approx. 3.2mm) Normal ceiling Small toy guns, such as mini squirt guns, water pis- tubes are typically 12T and 4 feet long so the 1T tube tols, and toy soldiers may be lined up along the arms that’s 4 inches long is exactly 12 times smaller in both and shoulders, showing a right to bear arms for na- length and diameter. tional security. An irrigation system may also be in- Ceiling tiles of size 2 inches by 4 inches (approx. stalled, along with a spray park, or “sprayground” that 51 by 102mm) are therefore aﬃxed to the wearable can shoot water up to 30 inches (approx. 76cm) in the ceiling. Some of the ceiling tiles are made of smoked air (30 feet, or approx. 914cm in C-LAND scale). A acrylic, just like in department stores where some ceil- water reservoir in the backpack serves the needs of C- ing tiles are smoked acrylic to create a comforting sense LAND and ensures that anyone getting close to the of security. wearer gets totally soaked. Of course the TV sets, etc., Additionally, some 2 inch (approx. 51mm) diame- need to be sealed, so that the 480 to 800 volt lines ter dome cameras are installed on the ceiling. These therein do not become laden with water. are exactly 1/12 the size of standard 24inch (approx. Flower beds with real vegetation may also be 61cm) diameter ceiling domes. The so-called “2inch planted on the garment, so that the irrigation system dome” is very popular and readily available. can be put to good use. The irrigation system may also Now let us suppose that the wearer of the appara- come on randomly so that if persons get too close to tus meets an oﬃcial. The wearer might remark, when look into C-LAND, they get squirted by the system. asked what the ceiling domes are, that they are for se- curity, and that “people under my roof, such as Ken 4 Conclusions: Theatre of the absurd; (TM) and Barbie (TM) want to feel safe and secure, the ﬁsh needs food and since you are also under my roof, you will also feel The host (wearer) became a clerk who was bound safe and secure, but criminals will no doubt feel para- by an employment contract set forth by the ﬁsh, and noid. However, in this country you need to abide by thus the host was used to take the ﬁsh out for a late the laws of the land, and the laws require that anyone night grocery shopping trip. The host (the wearer) and under this roof be under surveillance.”. the ﬁsh went to a grocery store that had as many black The country also has telecommunications, com- ceiling domes as a casino, which prompted the ﬁsh to prised of miniature telegraph poles running along the wonder if there was any illicit trade going on at this right arm of the wearer. Actual wiring running on the facility. telegraph poles connects to various surveillance cam- The Fish as an avatar for the host, functioning as a eras on the poles to the wearable computer in the back- clerk for the ﬁsh, proceeded to locate food and drink. pack. It was noted by the ﬁsh that many clerks refused to Miniature cameras of today’s generation are ap- recognize the prominent position that the ﬁsh held. In proximately 1/12 the size of traditional pole mounted fact, many attempted to interact with the Fish’s host surveillance cameras, adding further to the beautiful (e.g. the wearer) directly. This of course would be ap- fashion statement aﬀorded by the apparatus. propriate for clerks of a large organization. Once the Highways connect the city together. Generally it is host employee (wearer) clariﬁed the appropriate line of not possible to maintain the 1/12 scale model entirely, authority, the Fish Market’s clerks were put at ease so the roads are done at a smaller scale, such that the and found the situation to be calming and relaxing. telegraph poles do not stick out so high. However, once they were notiﬁed that the host was C-LAND also has a radio station and the smaller “carrying” constant video surveillance they were “as antenna transmits video in the UHF band around per store policy” forced to become hostile and threat- 440MHz over amateur packet radio at 56kbps. How- ening. This is in direct contrast to the clerks working ever the antenna is fashionably done in the style of a conditions in which they were “under” constant video real AM radio station. A highway running down the surveillance. Perhaps they were unaware of this fact? left arm of the wearer has cars 1110 and a dotted line The ﬁsh as a prudent manager and aware that they 1120 running down the middle of the road. were in an establishment of commerce decided to make a small purchase and leave the premise as requested. This was in consideration of being on “private” prop- erty and opposite to the laws requiring a citizen to document the scene of criminal activity. Indeed, were the ﬁsh to notice any crime, it would be a civil duty of the ﬁsh to document said crime, as store policy cannot prevail above and beyond the law.
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