Environment expression: Expressing emotions through cameras, lights and music

Abstract

Environment expression is about going beyond the usual Human emotion expression channels in virtual worlds. This work proposes an integrated storytelling model - the environment expression model - capable of expressing emotions through three channels: cinematography, illumination and music. Stories are organized into prioritized points of interest which can be characters or dialogues. Characters synthesize cognitive emotions based on the OCC emotion theory. Dialogues have collective emotional states which reflect the participant's emotional state. During storytelling, at each instant, the highest priority point of interest is focused through the expression channels. The cinematography channel and the illumination channel reflect the point of interest's strongest emotion type and intensity. The music channel reflects the valence of the point of interest's mood. Finally, a study was conducted to evaluate the model. Results confirm the influence of environment expression on emotion perception and reveal moderate success of this work's approach. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.