Abstract :
Our group is exploring models and interfaces for advanced conferencing, especially considering "narrowcasting," a filtering of sent or received media streams, and "multipresence," designation by each human user of possibly multiple avatars, iconic delegates in a virtual conference space. Shared virtual environments, like chatspaces, require generalized control of user-dependent media streams. Privacy operations can be specified as various narrowcasting commands, which are compounded by multipresent designations, arbitrary mappings between users and avatars. These distributed multiuser narrowcasting and multipresence configurations can be compiled into connectivity state suitable for configuring media servers. The transitive closure of the composition of the narrowcasting and multipresence models the communication ¿indirectionability¿ of the system, setting limits on media stream privacy.
