Future-avatar dance party

In the future, the Augmentationist's avatars will look like this:
http://www.spiral-scratch.com/index.php?page=gamecam3d

Why does an avatar have to look like a Pre–Raphaelite painting? Cubist tries hard to look cubist, but Ian would prefer to look like an impressionist painting. Vibrancy and life at the expense of detail.

Imagine a shared space occupied by the live 'holograms' of real people like the one in the link. How would a virtual meeting be different if you could virtually shake hands at the start? Maybe people could learn dance moves together. (Dance distance learning?). The lack of authentic body language cues in conventional conferencing systems is a major problem. Slightly glitchy, but undeniably alive avatars might give off all the right signals to improve our chances of accurately judging mood.

The scary thing is, this could be actually quite straightforward, technically. We should play.

The Immersionist vrs the Augmentists (or is it Augmentationists?)

Steven alerted us to the debate about immersionists and augmentists when we met at KCL recently. For a good overview of the debate, look here:

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/1988/

Also, the Habitat plug on Lawrie's blog also mentions the fact that people will have a chance to engage with this debate at the Next Generation Environments conference:

http://lawrie.jiscinvolve.org/2008/03/20/immersion-or-augmentation-a-culture-or-just-another-tool/

The thing that brought this issue into focus for me was the impromptu meeting on Open Habitat island the other day. When I talk to Dave, I feel like an immersionist. When Cubist talks to Kisa, he feels like an augmentist. When I'm in SL with both immersionists and augmentists, both Ian and Cubist feel a little confused and anxious.

The post on Lawrie's blog identifies the Philosophy pilot as an immersionist thing, as it is about distance learning. The A&D pilot is seen as an augmentist thing, as it is about blended learning. However, I feel most like an immersionist when I am building (which is probably why Cubist started building a 3D diagram when he was supposed to be engaging in the debate at the meeting). I feel most like an augmentist when engaging in chat, but I don't feel confident in conversation in-world, as I rely heavily on visual cues and body language when I talk to people in real life. Voice is even worse for me, as the visual cues are even more divorced from the communication than with avie chat.

If we embrace the immersionist ethic when we meet in world, then we have twice as many project team members, with each constructed persona adding something extra but different to the project. If we want in-world meetings to be an augmentation of the real life aspects of the project, then perhaps we should use Wonderland/Darkstar, and be ourselves.