• Allow for a wide spectrum of facial expressions in Traveler Utopia, far more than the default ones
• Create a Meta-Avatar-Talking-Head (The Zanshin Phuckface) which is formed out of five different avatars gathering together, willing to communicate in order to 'build'
• The Zanshin Phuckface-Avatars will meet in a specially designed environment,The BlueBox

• Being a group, our product inherently shows not only what we went through as a group to create it, but what it is like to bring a larger project to life being an Avatar in Traveler Utopia! Zanshin Phuckface reflects not only team work for users, but our group's dedication to put VS visitors into our position (or at least into a virtual interaction that goes beyond mere audio communication).

Traveler Utopia, the world we've been chosen to work on, confronted us with several limitations.

Compared to other virtual worlds we decided Traveler Utopia, could not represent what a virtual zone of freedom could feel like,as discussed in TAZ (Temporary Autonomous Zone) just for its basic disadvantages despite its wonderful audio novelties.

The course goal was to give Avatars a feeling of freedom through our developments. We turned our group into a TAZ itself, figuring out how to overcome the above mentioned restrictions, and founded the Zanshin Phuckface Designers, a temporary autonomous group (TAG).

This project became a major challenge. The meetings we held in the beginning of our group process were very intense and included theoretical arguments, different pitches-- the common stuff. The pitches we started with included: a 3D maze, The EndZone where Avatars consciously leave the Virtual Stage, and The Wisdom Project. The latter brought up the idea of totally unbinding the cultural inscriptions of race, gender, ethnicity etc., by creating a highly detailed Avatar that would serve visitors as a digital representation to share their ideas without any prejudice, connotation or misinterpretation, a plain but multi-polygonal icon everybody could inhabit. A specially designed lecture space would have put other Avatars into an audience. The problems stemming from this approach are numerous, and this is not the time and place to mention them!

Eventually, we decided on designing one Avatar. A single avatar seemed to simple...and too easy for a group of eight. Then it clicked - we just turn one problem with the Wisdom project (How could we incorporate many listeners into one digital representation in order to underline the importance of the anonymous Wisdom Avatar?) upside down? No, let's put it this way: inside out.

"What would happen if many Avatars would form one, that would be cool, uhhhm, hey, what could it be, I mean, a Zanshin Phuckface, yeah, a Zanshin Phuckface, and you know what, it's kind of a game, you know, like, we'll split up the face into a number of Avatars, and then they have to come together, and we overcome the expression limitation by different emoticons that will give way to many more expressions when the users work together, when they communicate…" (this is how we went, and with many steps and questions in-between, technical and theoretical - "If we pick a certain Zanshin Phuckface, does this not always transport and imply a certain connotation?", "Will people recognize the idea?", "How can we get the Avatar Authoring Kit?", "Is there any beer left ?") We agreed on choosing Japanese Noh Theater masks as a basis, especially for their wonderful scale of expressions, although we're quiet clear that we could imply so many things experts wouldn't agree on in this context.

We also visited Stasia McGehees web page to research the design process and further strengthen our knowledge of Traveler. As one of the first employees of Onlive! who created Traveler Utopia she was involved in designing most of Utopia's Avatars.

We simply found a group consensus towards the aesthetics of the Noh masks, and took the artistic and guerilla attitude to decontextualize and have our brand mask, Zanshin Phuckface, into a new sphere.

11/15/98

Journals

We debated and finally found a solution. Because there are apparently highly skilled members when it comes to 3D modeling, we decided to let them do the main portion of it in first instance, allowing the rest to teach themselves 3D Studio MAX (which is the software we're going to use). But still, there would have been an unequal distbibution of input. The discoursive strategy of this project is, as mentioned before, to incorporate the group itself as part and outcome of the project, to get away from a single-goal-oriented notion but plaster instead the scholastic gap between form and contents.