Human Mosaic Systems Blog

In Cybertherapy, Avatars Assist With Healing

 
NY TImes article on the use of virtual worlds in psychotherapy: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/23/science/23avatar.html?_r=2&hp

Virtual World Learning and Training Partnership Formed

Cranial Tap joins forces with Innovative Decisions and Human Mosaic Systems to deliver comprehensive human understanding and solutions to virtual learning environments. www.prweb.com  ; http://lnkd.in/QT2g4T

Round Hill, Va., November 16, 2010 — Cranial Tap, Inc., a leading developer of virtual world solutions, announces a partnership with Innovative Decisions, Inc. and Human Mosaic Systems. The partnership will bring new capabilities and technologies to the virtual world learning, training and simulation fields.

Backed by proven cognitive decision-making technologies, students and trainees will benefit from critical thinking systems based upon dialog theory. Training no longer needs to be a series of static steps. The new partnership will offer dynamic processes that evolve to reinforce subject judgment. Training variables can dynamically change to accommodate choices made by individuals, and groups.  Simulated scenarios can be played out in endless configurations as driven by data, interactions, dialog and choices made. Virtual characters, or bots, will be programmed to interact intelligently and be capable of reason. Through these solutions, trainees will receive a realistic exposure to life situations.

Through the new partnership, a deep understanding of human psychology and social behavior will be applied to virtual learning simulations. Using scientific approaches, learning scenarios will anticipate human behavior to deliver maximum educational benefit. The introduction of the human element into complex training creates a more meaningful and rewarding learning experience for individuals and groups alike.

 Global corporations, institutions of higher learning and organizations are using virtual reality systems at an increasing rate. Virtual environments are effective in connecting dispersed team members, reducing travel costs, minimizing the need for physical space and high rates of subject matter retention. Visual learning and training environments allow individuals to experience situations without risk to human life or property.

Examples of learning and training scenarios in virtual world environments include nurse and technician training, commercial safety, group critical thinking exercises, product and facility orientation, scientific and academic research, workplace relationships and emergency preparedness.

“We are excited about this new partnership and the value it will deliver,” said Dave Levinson, President of Cranial Tap. “Organizations are seeking more effective and engaging ways to train their staff and students. This new joint relationship offers deep insight and knowledge that will take learning environments to new levels.”

Dennis Buede, President of Innovative Decisions, added “Our intelligent agent technology can dramatically improve the effectiveness of virtual training and education applications. We are enthusiastic about applying this technology, Dynamic Decision Networks, to the critical task of dramatically increasing the productivity and value of an organization’s most critical resource, its people.”

“Human Mosaic Systems is very excited to be a part of this partnership with Cranial Tap and Innovative Decisions”, said Beverly Gay McCarter, President of HMS. “The unique combination of each of our companies’ skills will help to move the field forward in realizing the incredible power and potential of 3D immersive environments, especially with regard to facilitating individual and group learning and interactions.”

About Cranial Tap, Inc.

Cranial Tap, Inc. is a leading virtual world development firm located in the metro Washington, DC area. The company supports corporations, universities and organizations around the world in the development of 3D environments embedded with productive technology solutions. With a focus on virtual learning and training solutions, the company designs and constructs highly interactive spaces with effective results. More than 500,000 people have been trained using their innovative solutions geared specifically to virtual world environments. As denoted by Linden Lab, parent of Second Life, the firms is recognized as a Gold Solution Provider. Cranial Tap’s clients include Corbis, Cognizant, AOL, 1-800-Flowers, Michigan State University College of Nursing, NIC USA, and University of Virginia. Website: cranialtap.com.

About Innovative Decisions, Inc.

IDI specializes in using analytical methods and models to bring insight and closure to decision makers. Our methods include decision and risk analysis, modeling and simulation, systems engineering, performance measurement, and facilitated group decision conferencing. Our Dynamic Decision Network technology has been implemented for dozens of applications associated with the Army’s Future Combat System. IDI’s analysts have decades of successful experience applying these methods to agencies in the Intelligence Community, the services and agencies in the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, and government contractors. Website: www.innovativedecisions.com.

About Human Mosaic Systems

Human Mosaic Systems facilitates human systems through designing robust 3D immersive environments with the complex dynamics of individuals and groups, their avatars, and the virtual environment in mind. We are architects who understand how individual and group dynamics in the physical world extend into 3D immersive or virtual environments and design spaces and courses/workshops with a deep understanding of how these complex dynamics impact organizations, teams, and individuals. We can help organizational leaders develop greater understanding and abilities to help meet the new challenges facing organizations in today's fast paced complex world. Website:  www.humanmosaicsystems.com.

Contacts

 For Cranial Tap:

Nancy Ritchie
703- 879-8499
info@cranialtap.com

 

For Innovative Decisions:

Dennis Buede

703-861-3678
dbuede@innovativedecisions.com

 

For Human Mosaic Systems:

Beverly Gay McCarter

 731-431-1596
bgmccarter@hmsystems.net

 

 

A 3D virtual training scenario using programmed dialog

An Artistic Exploration of What is an Avatar by Glyph Graves

 "Antarctica- An Individual Existence" by Glyph Graves. A dynamic, live data feed piece.

Artwork Machinima link to "Antarctica - An Individual Existence"

Glyph Graves is considered one of the great artists in Second Life. In real life he is a geneticist and evolutionary biologist in Sidney Australia. ( You will find one of his interactive pieces, Organic Recurve, at my HMS site. Google him to read more about his incredible installations, including those with IBM and to see the wealth of stunning images of his many works.).

His work has won numerous awards and often finds creative ways to push narrative immersion into the conversation of the work. Glyph's and other SL artists' works drive me to find a way to take this brave new direction they are taking and incorporate it into the immersive environment of 3D simulations to help create paradigm shifts in our understanding of the world around us.

This recent unique artwork shown in the machinima linked above explores the concept of what is an avatar through the use of live feed data.

Description of the dynamic live data feed piece, "Antarctica - An Individual Existence":

Created in Second life using real time data from 19 automated weather stations in Antarctica

Antarctica .. a continent of of ice, rock and wind that for most of its frozen expanse rises above the sea as the Antarctic High Plateau around 3000 meters. This piece brings the continent into a virtual world and poses the question : What is an avatar?

The word avatar is not a new word
--noun
1. Hindu Mythology. the descent of a deity to the earth in an incarnate form or some manifest shape; the incarnation of a god.
2. an embodiment or personification, as of a principle, attitude, or view of life.
3. Computers. a graphical image that represents a person, as on the Internet.

This piece is a personification of a continent, and a fragment of its current (real time ) existence is projected into virtual in the same way that we project a fragment of ourselves into SL and call it our avatar .

It speaks as a symphony of music that is generated by the wind direction from location across its body. Its form is described by the height and position of its parts. Its skin ( the thin layer of air just above the ice) coloured by its temperature.

As this is real time the composition will change from hour to hour, day to day as the conditions at each of the 19 locations on the continent change giving a song of Antarctica.

While the discs are visible as well as touching the disc there is also a colour scale that will tell you the temperature at each site at a glance.

This piece has two phases

Phase One

The first incarnation personifies the continent ice cover as a human figure.

It stands then breaks into its component parts. Each part is a real location on Antarctica, the site of an weather station that is streaming real time data on the conditions.

Phase Two

The second incarnation transforms into separate discs and takes the last 20 readings from each of the 19 weather stations (about the last 5 hours with the last being current).

Each disc represents an automated weather station and contains a set of individual notes. The direction of the wind at that location determines which note from each set is played at each location. NB there are no sound loops rather notes are generated one at a time depending on the wind direction.

The direction of the wind is also given by the direction of the texture animation and the particle stream.

The speed of the wind is given by the speed of the texture animation and the density of the particle stream.

The temperature is signified by colour - red is the hottest and bright blue the coldest. If it goes over 0 degrees it will begin to drip.

The relative height of the discs conform to the height of the weather station.


Technical aspects and Acknowledgements

I take the data from the web, pipe it though my hosted web site and transform it into music and colour.

It uses several transformations that are facilitated via scripts that modify the primitive parameters of each unlinked prim in the piece.

For the height of the station I have used the barometric pressure in the same way it is used by an aeroplanes altimeter. Any difference due to temperature or local air pressure changes is negligible compared to the variation caused by altitude.

The data is provided by the University of Wisconsin Madison through its AWS site and I gratefully acknowledge their permission to use it.

I pull the information from that site and then pre-processed on my hosted site ( I learnt php for this project)

Each element in the piece then request the last 20 readings ( about the last 5 hours ). I use the temperature, wind speed, wind direction and barometric pressure.

All scripts (off world and inworld), sculpts and textures are my own.

The music come from sets of notes in each element. I utilise 4 instruments to create the symphony.

Ghost Blow notes created by Jovica - www.freesound.org
flute - by Lorin Tone
Chord set by Lorin Tone.
Violin notes London Philharmonic

---

The Psychology of Virtual Worlds

 

Welcome to the brave new world of understanding the power of virtual worlds: not only is it a great place for learning, for collaboration, for R&D, for prototyping, and data analysis, … but,  it is also able to impact us psychologically, behaviorally, and physically.

It is a medium where we truly extend ourselves and meld into the environment. As a result, organizations that use this environment need to begin to pay special attention to the psychology of design involved with the avatars used, as well as the interactive space of the virtual world. The psychology of the avatar and our interactions with others in the space is what creates presence… that all important and elusive element that builds trust and cooperation enabling collaborative efforts that transcend time and place in this hyper connected world.

This is an area that has not been focused on in the past in research, but one which is gaining importance and attention.

One paper on this issue was recently published in the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, Who am I - and if so, where? A Study on Personality in Virtual Realities by Benjamin Gregor Aas, Katharina Meyerbröker, Paul M. G. Emmelkamp (http://journals.tdl.org/jvwr/article/download/777/707 ). This paper examined the stability of personality traits in virtual worlds and found that personality traits remained stable as users entered virtual worlds.

However, another study seems to suggest that attention needs to be paid to how we design our avatars, as their results seem to suggest that how we represent ourselves in virtual worlds affects our  behavior  in our physical world. (The Proteus Effect: The Effect of Transformed Self-Representation on Behavior, http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.134.6224&rep=rep1&type=pdf ) 

We become or behave like that which we “put on”, much like our behavior may change depending on the type of people with whom we associate. If we are affected by the behavior and life styles of friends of friends of friends (3 degrees of separation http://tinyurl.com/7fpamh ), how much more easily affected are we by stepping into an avatar that is an extension of ourselves with inherent feedback loop capability?

Another study published in the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research , The Effects of Avatar Appearance in Virtual Worlds, supports this idea and points out that one’s avatar’s appearance does indeed affect our behavior. (http://journals.tdl.org/jvwr/article/download/843/706 )

Further evidence of the mind seamlessly embracing virtual worlds and that possible feedback loop is the success and increased applications of psychological therapies in virtual worlds.   Psycho-therapy and various physical therapy treatments dealing with pain and burn patients would not be so successful in a 3D immersive environment if the mind did not reach out and immerse itself in the environment. In fact, the video “Snow Worlds” talks about how immersing the burn victim in the virtual world during therapy and bandage change is able to reduce the pain because the virtual environment is able to physically dampen the pain centers of the brain. In addition, Club One Island has done research to prove that engaging in a weight reduction and physical fitness program in a virtual environment actually leads to behavioral changes that result in weight loss.

Virtual worlds or 3D immersive environments are a powerful medium that is not a brick and mortar space that does not touch who we are. Virtual worlds are nebulous spaces that allow our minds to extend themselves as never before. The mind wants to reach out into its environment as known by any who have ever used a stick to explore a dark hole and can “feel” what the end of the stick touches. Virtual environments and the avatars that inhabit them are extensions of ourselves and we need to be mindful of this as we design these incredibly powerful spaces that are becoming more commonly used in today’s educational, organizational, and personal lives.

Much more research needs to be done in this area, and it is not one to be taken lightly.

 

Beverly Gay McCarter has her M.S. in Counseling Psychology and Human Systems, her M.F.A. in Fine Art, and is published in the field of complex systems.  Working in virtual environments, she focuses on the psychology of creating the avatar and designing virtual environments.

Additional Resources:

• Online Therapy Institute's Trainings Receive BACP Endorsement! - http://shar.es/0PMV8
• New research on use of online resources by male adult survivors of abuse - http://shar.es/0PMTq
• Info about impact of avatar on individual  http://www.onlinetherapyinstitute.com/second-life/
• Coming Home _ Veteran’s Healing Space: www.cominghomecenter.org
• Telehealth and Technology_Psychological applications: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sqr_BygETSs
• Not a Game: Inside Virtual Iraq  (READ THE STORY: http://tinyurl.com/5npux5)    Some scenarios from Virtual Iraq, a virtual-reality simulation used to treat veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Virtual Iraq is adapted from the video game Full Spectrum Warrior. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6kl2BuhKmM
• Snow Worlds – pain management through immersion in virtual worlds; Article and video: http://www.virtualworldsnews.com/2008/11/snow-world-virtual-reality-used-to-treat-burn-patients.
• Club One Island Weight Loss: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SswlXujVUxk .  Club One Island is a virtual health world focused on changing behavior to improve lives. Club One Island combines cognitive behavioral, gaming and social-networking elements with a rich sensory experience for the greatest impact on personal habits. Club One Island is the first of many immersive digital environments from Club One, one of the premier fitness club networks in California. Learn more about Club One Island at www.cluboneisland.com or Facebook.com/cluboneisland .

Quantum Mechanics and the Stock Market and more….

 ( http://tinyurl.com/2vowroy)

There has been a flurry of posts relating to quantum mechanics that in light of the stock market plunge in May of 2010 (How one automated trade led to stock market flash crash http://business.newsplurk.com/2010/10/how-one-automated-trade-led-to-stock.html ) give pause to examine closer.

Thomas McCabe in a recent post with the Kurzweil blog (When The Speed Of Light Is Too Slow: Trading at the Edge http://pulsene.ws/jnFI ) talks about the problem with latency issues in today’s high speed trades and the desire to maximize profits that is driving the search for ways to enable even faster trades. Over the last few years traders have been building automated high-frequency trading (HFT) systems that compete by making thousands of trades a minute to maximize profit. However, high density areas slow down the computer’s ability to send and receive information. One option talked about in this article is placing computers further away from populated areas, and more in the middle of the path between major trade markets. That would put a computer in the middle of the Atlantic to optimize the London to NY market path.

Another published report describes how quantum computers are closer to being a reality (Quantum computers a step closer to reality thanks to new finding http://pulsene.ws/iUxC ) with great implications for encryption as well as the ability to handle quickly the large and complex innundation of information today.

And finally, the article/interview with Seth Lloyd of MIT published in CBC News that addresses the newly discovered quantum mechanics principles at play with animals and plants. (Quantum 'weirdness' used by plants, animals http://ow.ly/39ccO ) Imagine tapping into the entanglement phenomenon to understand what is happening in a distant place to trigger a response on your part, or the ability to navigate a complex morass of information and clearly see the path that will get you to where you need to be…

Amazing! The implications of this go well beyond the stock market, and may foretell a host of future problems, too….

** NOTE: Explanation of Quantum Entanglement and how it would relate to our personal lives: Everyday Entanglement - Science News http://bit.ly/baEgdV

The Virtual World Revolution

 (map of technological change over time)

I ran across this blog post today that echos what I said at a meeting  at the National Defense University last year: we are indeed in the middle of a major revolution!  "Of Grids and Webs" http://bit.ly/b8hU46

I do feel the 3D immersive environment (virtual world) movement we are currently experiencing is a major revolution that will impact our society and culture globally as dramatically as did the Agricultural and Industrial revolutions. Complexity has grown as our world has become hyper connected and collaboration in decentralized environments has not only grown, but become necessary to cope with the speed and cost of this constantly dynamic and changing environment.

User interfaces that are intuitive are moving at an incredible speed as demonstrated by the successful hacking of Kinect within only 3 hours of its release! ("US$3,000 bounty claimed for open source Kinect drivers - http://gizm.ag/cM4QkO" )  This unleases the potential for incredible creativity regarding applications of the program.

Intuitive user interfaces going mainstream is the key to mass adoption of 3D immersive environments. UIs like Kinect and Emotiv are speeding us towards that intuitive interface.

This blog article that discusses decentralization and the internet (my presentations on this the past 2 years raised sooooo many eyebrows here in DC, especially among those in DoD….) explains this very nicely.

More articles the past two days continue to point out the direction we are going:

1. "Thanks to technology, it’s an increasingly digital world" http://bit.ly/bl6ddc talks about how “smart systems” or sensors are being used in ever increasing places gathering data and helping individuals and cities become more efficient in the use of resources;
2. Complex adaptive systems_Robot musician jams with humans http://pulsene.ws/hSep - robots are now being designed to recognize and interact with musicians as it joins in playing jazz… Jazz is a dynamic changing and unpredictable musical form. No two performances are ever identical;
3. Mergence of physical world and virtual world_“"MIT Media Lab builds game space of the future" http://bit.ly/bxToPk”. Playtime Computing combines computer graphics projected on a wall and floor, motion-capture sensors and a robot to let children (it's build for kids for now) interact with characters that move between the projection screens and the physical world.  This is taking Kinect a step further, blurring the lines between our physical world and the virtual one;
4. And combined with the incredible applications of presence and transference in virtual worlds as demonstrated by the host of psycho-therapeutic applications, especially where Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder  (PTSD) is concerned we begin to see its power to change not only the way we work, but the way we think and experience life. The latest neurological research into the way the brain imprints horrific events that cause PTSD and the effects of the computer game, Tetris, on nullifying it, begins to look at this component. (When it comes to traumatic flashbacks, Tetris blocks http://pulsene.ws/habA)

 We are in the middle of an incredible revolution! And we are changing not only culturally, but perhaps neurologically as well. All of this continues to point to the importance of paying attention to the avatars we create and the design of the 3D immersive environments we utilize and explore. We affect and change technology, and through using it, we affect and change ourselves and our culture.

Process.org

A new way to visualize the diverse data that surrounds our world.

Free, open source programming language whose site includes tutorial on how to start designing and working with it. Imagine combining this into a 3D environment!

Link: Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to create images, animations, and interactions. Initially developed to serve as a software sketchbook and to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context, Processing also has evolved into a tool for generating finished professional work. Today, there are tens of thousands of students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists who use Processing for learning, prototyping, and production.

Example of use:

The Emergence Project
by Daniel Sauter, Mark Hereld

Realtime art installation that explores how complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of simple interactions.

 

"Crowds and Clouds: Data, Sheep, and Collaboration in the Works of Aaron Koblin" by MIT World

The visualization of dynamic systems where information assumes forms both abstract and familiar...

 

About the Lecture

Where others see just data points and fodder for bar graphs, Aaron Koblin visualizes dynamic systems where information assumes forms both abstract and familiar. In this talk, Koblin shares recent projects that meld statistical science and art to convey a really big picture, while often inviting the viewer to partake in a more personal experience.

Koblin explores those “interesting traces” left after humans interact with each other and with computers -- what he calls “data trails.” One work, Flight Patterns, depicts the flow of air traffic over North America in a 24-hour period. The east and west coasts light up in sequence, and lines shoot out of great cities in swarms at busy times of day, like brain scans showing bursts of activity among neural centers.

Koblin is not simply fascinated by a bird’s-eye view of human networks. In the Sheep Market, he seeks to “juxtapose the humanity of an individual process with a gigantic, alienated system.” With the help of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, software that allows online users to contribute a tiny part of a large project for very little compensation, Koblin collected thousands of drawings of “a sheep facing left.” The result is a black and white mosaic of 10,000 Lilliputian animals, each one of which when selected emerges as an individual drawing. (Participants were paid two cents a head). Similarly, in Ten Thousand Cents, online participants drew a tiny piece of a $100 bill (for a penny). The collage, “the largest distributed forgery project on the planet,” looks remarkably like the real thing when viewed from afar, but says Koblin, “if you drill in, you can see smiley faces, stippling, and sketching” -- a wild variety of artistic styles. He has tested the crowd-sourcing concept with audio as well, creating a version of “Daisy Bell” for 2,000 sampled voices, which “sounds like a pack of gremlins,” or HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey on steroids.

Koblin’s work maps comfortably onto the music video world. His tribute to Johnny Cash features a multitude of drawings by fans, and he collaborated on a “music video without video” for Radiohead that employed laser scanners and light patterns. Koblin wants to marshal data, as well as the collective intelligence of the Internet, to create a meaningful experience on a human scale. “I nerd out on a lot of this technology stuff,” Koblin admits, but he also suggests there is no point to art without “emotional resonance.”