Monkey business furthers this work with animatronic agents, as seen earlier with the Cellular Squirrel. We plan to create a peer-to-peer network of animatronic monkeys that act as audio-enabled agents, keeping members of a distributed group of people informed about each other’s current state and level of availability. We can also use the animatronic monkeys as media to which we can send “behavior messages” from cell phones; the monkeys, upon receiving these messages, will move and make sounds in such a way to indicate certain emotions or behaviors.

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Tags: information visualization, interaction design, new technology, wierd