Catherine Vaucelle

Design of haptic interfaces for therapy

Touch is fundamental to our emotional well-being. Medical science is starting to understand and develop touch-based therapies for autism spectrum, mood, anxiety and borderline disorders. Based on the most promising touch therapy protocols, we are presenting the first devices that simulate touch through haptic devices to bring relief and assist clinical therapy for mental health. We present several haptic systems that enable medical professionals to facilitate the collaboration between patients and doctors and potentially pave the way for a new form of non-invasive treatment that could be adapted from use in care-giving facilities to public use. We developed these prototypes working closely with a team of mental health professionals.

Dolltalk: a computational toy to enhance children's creativity

This paper presents a novel approach and interface for encouraging children to tell and act out original stories. Dolltalk is a toy that simulates speech recognition by capturing the gestures and speech of a child. The toy then plays back a childs pretend-play speech in altered voices representing the characters of the childs story. Dolltalks tangible interface and ability to retell a childs story may enhance a childs creativity in narrative elaboration.

Textable movie: improvising with a personal movie database

This sketch presents a new approach to improvising movies according to the inter-relationship between personal videos and the story of an experience. Textable Movie is a graphical interface that invites a storyteller of any age to compose and visualize movies, images and sound environments while writing a story; the system self-selects and self-edits movies in real time based on textual input from the teller. Textable Movie aims to exalt the imagination of its authors (writer, and film-maker) by immersing them in real time, in a co-constructed narration.

A system to compose movies for cross-cultural storytelling: Textable Movie

This paper presents Textable Movie, an open-ended interface that allows anyone to become ”video-jockey.” In the framework of computational storytelling, Textable Movie promotes the idea of maker controlled media and can be contrasted to automatic presentation systems. Its graphical interface takes text as input and allows users to improvise a movie in real-time based on the content of what they are writing. Media segments are selected according to how the users label their personal audio and video database. As the user types in a story, the media segments appear on the screen, connecting writers to their past experiences and inviting further story-telling. By improvising movie-stories created from their personal video database and by suddenly being projected into someone else’s video database during the same story, young adults are challenged in their beliefs about other communities.

Ambient urban interludes: passing glances

INTRODUCTION This paper describes a system in which transient audience participants co-create emergent narratives that are revealed in public space. Passing Glances enables users to create these ambient urban interludes through the use of SMS text messages. The Passing Glances system contains a wealth of keyword-associated imagery that is stored ‘in the city’. Images are revealed to the transient audiences when SMS message keywords trigger the system. The mobile phone therefore acts as an expressive device revealing hidden layers of the city to construct short-lived stories.

Hover: conveying remote presence

This sketch presents Hover, a device that enhances remote telecommunication by providing a sense of the activity and presence of remote users. The motion of a remote persona is manifested as the playful movements of a ball floating in midair. Hover is both a communication medium and an aesthetic object.