Recent advances in computer video projection open up new possibilities for real-time interactive, persuasive displays. Now a display can continuously adapt to a viewer so as to maximize its effectiveness. However, by the very nature of persuasion, these displays must be both immersive and subtle. We have been working on technologies that support this application including multi-projector and implicit interaction techniques. These technologies have been used to create a series of interactive persuasive displays that are described.

In this paper, we introduce Folk Computing: an approach for using technology to support co-present community building inspired by the concept of folklore. We also introduce a new technology, called “i-balls,” whose design helped fashion this approach. The design of the i-ball environment is explained in terms of our effort to simultaneously preserve what works about folklore while also using technology to expand its power as a medium for community building.

We present a system for animating an articulate figure using a physical skeleton, or armature, connected to a workstation. The skeleton is covered with sensors that monitor the orientations of the joints and send this information to the computer via custom-built hardware. The system is precise, fast, compact, and easy to use. It lets traditional stop-motion animators produce animation on a computer without requiring them to learn complex software. The working environment is very similar to the traditional environment but without the nuisances of lights, a camera, and delicate foam-latex skin. The resulting animation lacks the artifacts of stop-motion animation, the pops and jerkiness, and yet retains the intentional subtleties and hard stops that computer animation often lacks.

We present an interactive modeling and animation system that facilitates the integration of a variety of simulation and animation paradigms. This system permits the modeling of diverse objects that change in shape, appearance, and behaviour over time. Our system thus extends modeling tools to include animation controls. Changes can be effected by various methods of control, including scripted, gestural, and behavioral specification. The system is an extensible testbed that supports research in the interaction of disparate control methods embodied in controller objects. This paper discusses some of the issues involved in modeling such interactions and the mechanisms implemented to provide solutions to some of these issues.The system's object-oriented architecture uses delegation hierarchies to let objects change all of their attributes dynamically. Objects include displayable objects, controllers, cameras, lights, renderers, and user interfaces. Techniques used to obtain interactive performance include the use of data-dependency networks, lazy evaluation, and extensive caching to exploit inter- and intra-frame coherency.