Stefan Agamanolis

Stefan Agamanolis
is a Researcher / educator / innovator in digital media technology and human-centered design.His background and work straddles the domains of technology, design, and art. PhD in Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) andover 10 years of experience inside the MIT Media Laboratory. Currently is the founding chief executive and research director of Distance Lab, a unique research initiative in Scotland that created technology and design innovations to address challenges found in rural and remote areas of the world, particularly focused on health care but also learning, relationships and cultural heritage. Stefan Agamanolis is an artist that always explore and try out new interactive style that others doesn't use normally.He keep developing and executing the media that can use in public but not only in the gallery.

Unique Interactive -Remote impact


Remote Impact is a full body contact experience "Sports over a Distance" boxing game between geographically distant players. Unlike the Nintendo Wii which only supports hitting thin air, Remote Impact recognises and registers intense brute force. The physical intensity of the game contributes to general fitness, weight loss and stress relief at the same time it allows you to socialise and create new friendships over a distance in a fun way.

{C}===={C} {C} Interface ====

{C} Remote Impact is an example of an exertion interface that allows for brute force interaction.The interface is projected by a life-sized silhouette of the remote player which resembles a mattress standing against a wall. This silhouette is captured from behind, allowing for a close-proximity interaction without camera obstruction or distortion issues. A novel multi-touch detection system measures the location and intensity of multiple simultaneous impacts. Voice connection is available between the players from different locations.



Game Play
{C} Players can interacting using punch, kick, or throw their entire bodies against their projected opponent, and a hit or a miss that will trigal system recognises. Players can dodge hits by ducking or moving out of the way. Hitting one's opponent harder will help to gain more point.Players with the most points wins at the end of a specific time interval.



Publication Florian Mueller, Stefan Agamanolis, Martin Gibbs, and Frank Vetere, Remote Impact - Shadowboxing over a Distance (video), CHI 2009 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Florence, Italy, 5 - 10 April 2008, ACM Digital Library. ( PDF ) Florian Mueller, Stefan Agamanolis, Frank Vetere, and Martin Gibbs, Remote Impact - Shadowboxing over a Distance (poster), SIGGRAPH 2008 International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, Los Angeles, 11 - 15 August 2008, ACM Digital Library. ( PDF ) Florian Mueller and Stefan Agamanolis, Remote Impact: Shadowboxing over a distance to support Social Presence, Keho: the place for Presence research , issue 3, Spring 2008, pp. 19 - 21. ( PDF ) Florian Mueller, Stefan Agamanolis, Martin Gibbs, and Frank Vetere, Remote Impact - Shadowboxing over a Distance, CHI 2008 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems , Florence, Italy, 5 - 10 April 2008, ACM Digital Library. ( PDF ) Florian Mueller, Stefan Agamanolis, Frank Vetere, and Martin Gibbs, Brute Force as Input for Networked Gaming, Proceedings of OzCHI 2007 Australasian Computer-Human Interaction Conference , Adelaide, Australia, 28 - 30 November 2007, ACM Digital Library. ( PDF )

Unique Interactive -exertion interface over a distance
Breakout for Two employs an exertion interface -- an interface that deliberately requires intense physical effort and can be expected to be physically exhausting when used for an extended period of time.



The Breakout for Two game is a cross between soccer, tennis, and the popular video gameBreakout. Participants in remote locations need to throw or kick a real soccer ball at a local physical wall to break through a projection of virtual "blocks" that partially obscure a live video image of the other player. The effect is one of a virtual game "court" in which the competitors are separated by a barrier through which they can interact. When one player breaks through a block, the same block disappears from the other player's screen,these blocks on each player's screen are synchronized --. The player who breaks through the most blocks wins. Games can incorporate varying levels of difficulty,typically will last several minutes or more.



Our hypothesis is that augmenting an online sport or gaming environment with exertion will greatly enhance the potential for social bonding, just as playing an exhausting game of squash or tennis with a new acquaintance or co-worker helps to "break the ice" and build friendships. The heightened state of arousal induced by the exertion also potentially makes the interaction more memorable. We conducted a study to test these hypotheses and evaluate the effects of exertion interfaces, with encouraging results. Players in Breakout for Two said they got to know each other better, became better friends, felt the other player was more talkative, and were happier with the transmitted audio and video quality in comparison to a control group playing an analogous game using a traditional non-exertion keyboard interface. A potential future application is a sort of virtual "country club" or athletic facility that consists of several exertion environments for engaging in sports at a distance.

Publications and Links

Breakout for Two demo movie (Quicktime, 5 minutes long) small (4 MB) / medium (12 MB) / large (29 MB) / extra large (98 MB) Breakout for Two was exhibited at Powering up with Broadband, the 2004 conference of the UK-based Access to Broadband Campaign , Aviemore Conference Center, Aviemore, Scotland, 2 - 3 November 2004. Breakout for Two was exhibited at the Wired NextFest, Festival Pavilion, Fort Mason Center, San Francisco, 14 - 16 May 2004. Florian Mueller and Stefan Agamanolis, Exertion Interfaces (workshop), CHI 2007 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, San Jose, California, 28 April - 3 May 2007, ACM Press. ( PDF ) Florian Mueller and Stefan Agamanolis, Sports Over a Distance, ACM Computers in Entertainment , vol. 3, no. 3, July 2005. ( <span style="font-size:13px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(34,34,187);white-space:pre-wrap;">link ) Florian Mueller, Stefan Agamanolis, and Rosalind Picard, Breakout for Two: An example of an Exertion Interface for Sports over a Distance, Adjunct Proceedings, UbiComp 2003 Fifth International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing , Seattle, 12 - 15 October 2003. ( <span style="font-size:13px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(34,34,187);white-space:pre-wrap;">PDF ) Florian Mueller, Stefan Agamanolis, and Rosalind Picard, Exertion Interfaces: Sports over a Distance for Social Bonding and Fun, Proceedings of CHI 2003 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems , Ft. Lauderdale, 5 - 10 April 2003, ACM Press. ( <span style="font-size:13px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(34,34,187);white-space:pre-wrap;">PDF ) Florian Mueller, Stefan Agamanolis, and Rosalind Picard, Exertion Interfaces for Sports Over a Distance, Conference Companion, UIST 2002 Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology , Paris, 27 - 30 October 2002. ( <span style="font-size:13px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(34,34,187);white-space:pre-wrap;">PDF ) Florian Mueller, Exertion Interfaces: Sports over a Distance for Social Bonding and Fun, MS Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, September 2002. ( <span style="font-size:13px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(34,34,187);white-space:pre-wrap;">PDF ) Floyd's <span style="font-size:13px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(34,34,187);white-space:pre-wrap;">web site about Breakout for Two.

 Unique Interactive - remote awareness system based on sleep patterns 



Aura is a prototype background communication device that aims to create a sense of emotional presence between two people who are separated by space or time. Sleeping rhythms and infers an emotional state of the wearer had being records by an augmented sleeping mask. A personal keepsake "music box" that represents the remote partner will be keep receiving information from a remote location and mapped to musical selections.



Sense of awareness of each other's emotional state is one of the most delicate forms of connection between close partners. For example, one partner can often tell if the other is feeling down by interpreting, sometimes unconsciously, a variety of subtle signals to which they have been attuned over a period of time, like body movement, facial expression, voice quality, and so on. Physical or temporal separation, consequently, can impede partners from maintaining this kind of intuitive awareness. Aura investigates the possibility of reinstating this subtle awareness regardless of separation. Rather than just a cognitive awareness of someone else's state, Aura aims to convey emotional information in a visceral way, similar to what is sensed when one has a "gut feeling" about something.

Adetect eye movements typical of REM sleep detected by the embedded electro-oculargram that install in a sleeping mask of Aura. Data from the mask is used to grossly estimate whether or not the wearer has had a good night's sleep, which is in turn used to infer if he/she is in a good or bad mood the following day. This information is transmitted to the remote location and mapped to music compositions or selections that play inside a precious box recalling a jewelry or music box. By opening the box the remote partner can listen to music that was composed from their loved one's previous night of sleep. Music was chosen as a medium because we felt it was something that could evoke the visceral quality of the emotions inferred from the captured data. Conceptually, Aura aims to enable the user to not only listen to but also feel their distant loved one's emotional state. The project has highlighted a number of difficulties in designing remote awareness systems, especially those that use physiological measurements as a basis for capturing emotion. Ultimately we feel that a greater understanding of the mechanisms of human emotion is required to produce communication devices capable of abstracting and reconstructing emotional information effectively.

Publications and Links Joëlle Bitton and Aoife Ní Mhóráin, Human Connectedness, Atopia Journal , issue 4.33, Atopia Projects, 2005, pp. 87 - 92. ( <span style="font-size:13px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(34,34,187);white-space:pre-wrap;">link ) Aoife's <span style="font-size:13px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(34,34,187);font-weight:bold;white-space:pre-wrap;">personal web site.