Project Description: In most chat environments we rely solely on text. Expression, intonation, and gesture do not get conveyed. As Goffman says, "only what you give out, not what you give off." This project is an experiment to bring the added context of a person?s expression into a 3D virtual chat environment. In this world, the user can shake their booty in front of the camera and capture an animation that is the sent to all other clients. It also looks at the idea of navigation by similarity. Most 3D worlds use a travel metaphor for navigation. In this world you move yourself into the company of other people with similar booty moves by moving your booty or by stealing other people's booty moves. This was a collaboration with Lili Cheng and Sean Kelly of Microsoft's social computing group.

Technical Notes: I wrote the video tracking software for capturing booty movement as a Java Applet. I did the scripting for the Microsoft VWorlds software in JavaScript.