shy guy
shyness
As I was thinking of ways to convey creatureness, and in light of the showcased examples of curious bots, my mind went to the sort of opposite direction of curiosity; the opposite of being engaged and curious towards others could perhaps be shyness. Furthermore, I have often considered myself quite shy, yet I try to combat this by listening to my inner curiosity and by thinking of what I would want to say and get off my chest. In a way curiosity and shyness are thus on opposite sides of the social spectrum.
Shyness can be displayed in many ways, through body language, through physical reactions such as blushing, through silence and through lack of eye contact.
I am making this assignment in the train, and I can definitely tell I like to avoid eye contact with the people sitting directly across, yet eye contact can never be fully avoided, because both parties are seemingly always slightly curious to see who is in front of them. When thinking of the minimal means required to convey shyness, I would say the emotion is mostly seen in the eyes.
Shy Poster
After some Google Dorking I found the following interactive art poster, embodying shyness in a creative way. I quote:
"... the poster gains personality by personifying shyness in an interactive installation. If the poster is left alone its colourful inner character is revealed. However, if someone interrupts this personal comfort zone the poster immediately retracts its doors hiding itself within the conformity of its background. Providing the new visitor is patient and tactful, the Shy Poster will become comfortable and slowly reveal its true personality. Yet, you must be careful… Any large movements are detected by motion sensors which trigger the doors to slam shut!"
shy
comfort
Shy eye, a.k.a. Shye
For the way I would like to wizard of Oz an emotion such as shyness through the eyes, I think only 1 controllable eye (albeit a physical or digital one) and a webcam is needed. The webcam keeps track of whether someone is looking in the eye's direction, in which case the eye just wanders away and looks around randomly, or looks at the floor, anything to avoid eye contact. These tiny differences can perhaps already have a big impact on the way viewers perceive the shy guy. When the person is looking away, (implementable using e.g. recognition of the side of a face, or when no eyes are recognized), only then does the eye stare at the person. The viewer will probably catch a glimpse of the eye looking, as latency is inherent in the setup, after which the eye quickly looks away as if it felt caught and tries to play it off.
Using such a setup, a viewer can already interpret the eye in many ways. Perhaps it can be seen as having a crush on the person, as it does stare at the person when he/she is not looking, instead of just glancing over sometimes. Perhaps we can easily make it randomly choose a person to look at, and only care about the eyes of that person. My point being here that this system could be perceived in many ways, and I imagine that viewers will have to figure out its behavior by themselves.