Page 245 - Culture Technology Communication

228 Lorna Heaton

as support of multi-way round-table meetings and multiple eye con-
tact; maintenance of peripheral gaze awareness; seamless presenta-
tion of life-size images of participants to achieve a sense of reality;
and a shared work space (Okada et al. 1994, 385).
The creation of a seamless environment and sense of presence in
MAJIC relies extensively on non-verbal behavioral information,
such as eye contact, gaze awareness, gesture and body language,
and on contextual cues such as image size, distance and background.
References to these elements are extremely specific. For example,
the MAJIC team refers to symmetrical or asymmetrical postures
and body orientations as important cues: “In this way we sense the
atmosphere in the meeting room and the aura of the participants,
and, consequently, we can understand the opinions of the partici-
pants clearly and make the meeting productive” (Okada et al. 1994,
386). They cite gaze as a means of controlling a meeting: “A chair-
person sometimes gazes at participants to urge them to speak when
there is silence in a meeting” (386). They also discuss the social uses
of eye contact: “Of course eye contact is very important in communi-
cating with one another, as mentioned above, but especially in Japan
it is impolite to look into someone’s eyes for a long time” (387). In
their observations of face-to-face meetings, the designers noted that
participants most commonly averted their eyes by looking down at
material on a table in front of them, and decided to provide such a
table in their design (390).
Referring to Hall’s (1976) classifications of appropriate dis-
tances for interactions, the MAJIC team discusses elements which
may affect virtual distance (the sensed distance among partici-
pants): physical distance from the display, the size and quality of
video images, voice fidelity, backdrop, etc. In fact, this has been the
central focus of most of the MAJIC research. Starting with the as-
sumption that image size of participants and background are the
two important factors in achieving a sense of reality during video-
conferencing, MAJIC I was designed to project life-size video images
and to simulate a virtual social distance of approximately four feet
between participants.
The central element of MAJIC is a large (four-by-eight feet),
curved semi-transparent screen. Each MAJIC unit also contains a
workstation (with a recessed, tilted monitor), two video projectors,
two video cameras, two directional microphones and two loudspeak-
ers. Video images of the participants are projected onto the screen
and captured from behind it. Each participant sees the frontal view
of the others and the edges of the images overlap slightly (see Fig-
ures 2 and 3).