Con-Tact without touch?
Touch and Communication in virtual environments
Barbara Becker
Universität Paderborn
Content
• I: Phenomenological concepts of body and
touch --> Background of my analysis
• II: Bodies and Contact in virtual
communication environments
• III: Embodied emotional Agents:
Communication of humans and
machines
First Part:
Phenomenological conceptions of
body and touch
Characteristics of the body
(Merleau-Ponty, Waldenfels, Meyer-Drawe..)
• Presence: The body is always there -we cannot
get rid of our physical being in the world
• Double sensation: We are always subject and
object in the same moment (CHIASMUS)
• Situated in the world: As corporal subjects we
are always integrated in a social and „natural“
environment
Charcteristics of the body ff
• Selfsplitting: In observing ourselves, there is a
split between me as an observed object and me as
an observer
• Blind space: This observer position includes a
blind or unmarked space
• Strangeness: Corporal existence implies
remaining a stranger to oneself to some extent
Responsivity
• The individual is irretrievable embedded in
a situation and in a social context
• There are affordances of this specific
environment to which the corporal
„Subject“ answers
• Our senses and our „socially being in the
world“ enable us to re-act to the implicit
demands without being always aware of this
Reciprocity
• Intentions, actions and reflections are not
products of a solipsistic, individual person,
but are integrated in complex interactional
processes
• Meaning emerges in these reciprocal
interactions
Communication as Response
--> Communication cannot be described by a simple
sender-receiver model, because the
communicative actor already re-acts to the implicit
demands and corporal signs of the other - there is
a continuous implicit as well as explicit dialogue
between the interaction partners (dialogicité)
Decentration of the Actor
• The actor has to be regarded as a RE-actor,
whose intentions and actions are influenced
by the explicit and implicit affordances of
the „Other“
• The intentional dominating subject has to be
given up by replacing it through the concept
of an „Answering Ego“
• Corporal Ego = „treshhold existence“
Part II: Touch
• Touch: an amalgamation of passivity and
activity
• The touching person is subject and object
in the same moment
• Selfsplitting, ambiguity and implicitness of
touch: --> treshhold existence of the
individual
Touch
Two different perspectives:
1) Touch as a cognitive (gnostic) process, linked to
intentional actions
2) Touch as something which happens to someone,
independent of subjective intentions
Touch as a cognitive process
• Important approach to the world in the cognitive
development of children
• Relevant in science and medicine (method of
empirical verification)
• Necessary in arts (tactile exploration of esthetic
material)
--> Touch is an intentional approach to something,
accompanied by action and always influenced by
the touched instance
Touch as a „pathic“ process
• Touch happens to somebody, one is touched
by something
• Touch as a concrete tactile event which
occurs to somebody (physical process)
• Touch as an emotional feeling
• Touch as Con-Tact (touch as an act of
communication)
Touch as „a silent dialogue with
the world“
Touch is a continuous and neverending contact with the world (we are always in contact with
something or somebody)
• Being-in-Touch with the world implies an
impregnation and „infection“ by the world
• Touch evocates a dimension of implicite
meaning and creates subtle atmospheres
(which influence our behavior)
Touch as a silent dialogue II
• Touch means to be affected and moved by
the Other
• Touch evocates emotions
• In touching something or somebody, one is
imbued with the other
• Touch reveals the continuous chiasmus of
subject and object
Touch and the strangeness of the
Other
• Touch illuminates the strangeness of one s own
and of the Other
• Gaps between me and the Other (human or
physical object) become apparent in touch
• In touching something, the resistance and own
dynamic of i.e. materiality is perceivable
• Tactile experience shows the limits of control
• The experience of touch remains implicite to a
large extent - it creates a „surplus du sens“
Touch III
• Touch elucidates the continuous
amalgamation of the alien and the own
without creating a unity - differences still
remain
• Touch is a never-ending process of
„dialogicité“
• Touch is an oscillation between proximity
and distance
Part III: Touch/Con-Tact in
virtual environments
• Touching virtual objects
• Con-Tact between humans which present
themselves by texts and/or avatars
• Con-Tact of humans and virtual agents (embodied
conversational agents
--> Which kind of touch is taken place in VE?
Touch as a gnostic process in
virtual environments
• Touching virtual objects: the resistance of
materiality cannot be sensed, the „dialogue“
between subject and object is interrupted
• The own complex dynamic of the material
object is no longer experienced in VE
• In VE, significance does not emerge in a
responsive relation, but depends on
individual ascriptions.
Touch as a pathic process in VE
• The „silent dialogue“ between me and the
object is cut up in VE
• Limited mainly to our visual and acoustic
senses, the implicit demands of the object
are seldom perceivable in VE
• In VE, the „Otherness“ of the Other can
easily be blanked out by projections and
imaginations
Con-TACT: Corporal
communication I
Implictness of body movements (bodymovements can tell more or something different
than our verbal communication)
• Unconscousness of mimic and gesture
(we are often not aware of what we are expressing
with our gestures and facial expressions)
Corporal communication II
• Ambiguity of body signs: (The „message“ of the
body is often difficult to interpret)
• Intercorporality (Social embeddedness):
(Often, we act in anticipating the expectation and reaction
of the other)
• Undeterminability of significance: (body signs
produce a multiperspective and pluralistic space of
meaning)
Communication in VE
• Body signs are reduced to simple gestures
presented by Avatars
• Intercorporality do not exist
• Facial expressions are rarely integrated in
the communicative process (smilies)
• Reciprocal relations seldom come up
• Atmospheres will rarely be evocated
Evaluation
(based on an emprical survey)
• The strangeness and unavailibility of the
counterpart in interaction can easily be
blanked out
• The intentions and actions of an actor are no
longer irritated by the demands of the Other
• INTERCORPORALITY does not exist in
VR
Con-Tact does not take place in
cyperspace
• The other one, presented by text or an avatar,
remains mainly a product of the own imagination
• The others are becoming controllable objects of
own projections and phantasies
• The strangeness and otherness of the partner in
interaction can be integrated in the own space of
semantics or even be ignored
• The „answering Ego“ is replaced by a dominating
subject (again)
Response and Responsibility
• Responsivity will not emerge in virtual contacts
(we are not in touch with each other)
• We are seldom touched/moved by the other one
because we can keep distance to the other
• Reciprocal communication will seldom take place
• We dont have to overtake responsibility for the
other, because their demands have not to be
answered
Problems
Evocating responsive relationships in virtual
environments meets fundamental difficulties, if
people are not in contact in „reality“. In particular,
feeling responsible for the other intensify the
problem of keeping distance, which exists in our
society in general.
----> Open Question: How can RESPONSIBILITY
for the otherone can be evocated in virtual
environments??
„Communication“ with embodied
virtual agents

1.
2.
3.
Assumption, that humanlike avatars
facilitate communication between human
and machine
Construction of emotional embodied
agents in the field of:
Education
Information/Advice
Entertainment
Virtual agents
==> Embodied emotional conversational
agents (ECA´s)
• They have a virtual body
• They seem to express feelings by facial
mimics
• They „communicate“ via language and
gestures
• They can take up different body postures
Perspectives of constructing
ECAs
• „Making interactions between humans and
machines more natural“ (Wachsmuth/Knoblich
2005)
• „Construction of believable virtual interaction
partners“(Pelauchaud/Poggi 2005)
• Facilitating and manintainance of the
communicational process by humanoid virtuel
agents (research program Humaine 2004)
Emotional believable Agents
• Construction method:
1.) Observing humans:
- conversation analysis via video,
- observing actors while they express feelings
(in films or TV shows..)
2.) Classifying their expressions by construction
emotional categories:
- sadness, anger, happiness, disgust,
astonishment...
Constructing ECA´s II
3.) Conceptualization of abstract schemes which
construct an interrelation between a facial
expression, gestures and body bostures and a
specific emotional state
4.) Design of emotional conversational agents with a
very simplified imitation of mimic and facial
expressions according to the described feeling
How do they look like?
• Abstract models without „individuality“
• Stereotypes according to cultural
conventions
• Extremely limited „expressivity“ of body
language (i.e. gesture is reduced to a sign)
• Emotionality is reduced to some
minimalistic „facial mimic“
Problems
• The plurality, contingency and complexity of
corporal expressions are ignored
• The ambiguity of individual corporality and
corporal expressions are neglected
• The contextual embeddedness as well as the
situatedness of corporal existence has been
replaced by abstract models
• Intercorporality (our social-being-in-the-world) is
not considered
Being in touch with virtual
agents?
• Embodiment and Emotions are realised in agents
only on a simplified behavioural level
• The spectrum of observable emotions is extremely
limited and unambiguous
• ECA´s don´t have or experience the feeling which
they imitate physically - the dichotomy between
the experienced body and the physical body is
restituated by these experiments
Possible Consequences
• Research about embodiement and emotions
in this field is dominated by behavioristical
and psychophysiological approaches
• This corresponds to general tendencies of
naturalisation (example: discussion about mirror cells as an
explanation for intersubjectivity)
• The stereotypized ECAs support a social
tendency of normalization (by categorizing emotions)