Cyrafour: an experiential activity facilitating empathic distant communication among copresent individuals

Distant communication relies mostly on a non-embodied representation of participants (e.g. textual in chats, photographic in videoconference, auditory in telephony, etc) that lessens the sensory richness of conversational interactions. Cyrafour is a novel activity that explores the implications of using human avatars (cyranoids) for empathic interpersonal remote communication. An unscripted conversation between two individuals (the sources) is transmitted through radio waves and reproduced by two copresent subjects (the cyranoids) following certain conversational guidelines. In particular, the Sources were invited to discuss about a topic, play a conversation game and comment on an opinionated video. All Cyrafour sessions were video-taped and participants interviewed afterwards in order to support analysis and discussion. Cyrafour could be considered as a playful embodied identity game in which cyranoids are simultaneously together in and aside from a conversation generated elsewhere. This puzzling circumstance seems to allow for an empathic embodiment of the meaning transmitted and appears to create a frame for further discussion on the topics raised.