WHAT IS THE TRUST PROJECT?

TRUST SINGAPORE PROJECT GAME CHARACTERS

Most projects setting out to explore scientific applications regarding HCI (human movement interaction) fail to include a suitably qualified and trained interdisciplinary team from the outset, with the result that technology tools are created that often just miss being truly useful for the widest target population.

Teams of creative anthropologists, clinicians, medical experts and also performance technology and cultural application experts are required for production of the highest quality, most innovative and most scientifically useful results in this area (see Goodman et al, RADICAL Project publications for the European Commission, 2001-3). The TRUST Project is created by just such a team, with each PI representing a major body of work in a related field.

In TRUST, we aim to move beyond standard methodologies for creation of single tools for single problems, often too expensive or abstracted from user need to be made available in public settings.

Performance Technologists, Puppeteers, Dancers and Actors, like people with disabilities, know from life experience that ‘avatars’ and most existing animation formats do not come close to representing or ‘capturing’ human movement. Avatar-booth technologies create ‘uber-realistic’ characters, too true to life to be true to life, and nearly always missing the spark of the human which is found in eye contact, physical proximity, humour, and what was once known as ‘bedside manner’.