1. Wriggle! Creating a Platform for Dynamic and Expressive Social-Emotional Play Katherine Isbister*, Rainey Straus, Jennifer Ash* *Rensselaer (RPI)

2. Wriggle! Motivations Gestural exploration of emotion Linking emotion and body for players, allowing a ‘language’ of gesture to emerge that could be used as traces in virtual environments. Games + art + research = … Using play to investigate social emotional dynamics and push the boundaries of ‘game’ Empowerment Repurposing consumer components and encouraging player authoring.

3. Wriggle! Background/context An ongoing arts practice using player content creation strategies in the Sims games to produce artworks (www.simgallery.net).www.simgallery.net Exploration of affective systems and their evaluation, in collaboration with colleagues at the Swedish Institute for Computer Science. Exploration of nonverbal communication in digital interactions (e.g. game characters).

4. Wriggle! Demo Wii controller connected to Max/MSP/Jitter drawing patch Play with dynamics of the controller Looking for early feedback to drive control scheme design as well as visual feedback and game dynamics.