Towards a crowdsourced solution for the authoring bottleneck in interactive narratives

Interactive Storytelling research has produced a wealth of technologies that can be employed to create personalised narrative experiences, in which the audience takes a participating rather than observing role. But so far this technology has not led to the production of large scale playable interactive story experiences that realise the ambitions of the field. One main reason for this state of affairs is the difficulty of authoring interactive stories, a task that requires describing a huge amount of story building blocks in a machine friendly fashion. This is not only technically and conceptually more challenging than traditional narrative authoring but also a scalability problem. This thesis examines the authoring bottleneck through a case study and a literature survey and advocates a solution based on crowdsourcing. Prior work has already shown that combining a large number of example stories collected from crowd workers with a system that merges these contributions into a single interactive story can be an effective way to reduce the authorial burden. As a refinement of such an approach, this thesis introduces the novel concept of Crowd Task Adaptation. It argues that in order to maximise the usefulness of the collected stories, a system should dynamically and intelligently analyse the corpus of collected stories and based on this analysis modify the tasks handed out to crowd workers. Two authoring systems, ENIGMA and CROSCAT, which show two radically different approaches of using the Crowd Task Adaptation paradigm have been implemented and are described in this thesis. While ENIGMA adapts tasks through a realtime dialog between crowd workers and the system that is based on what has been learned from previously collected stories, CROSCAT modifies the backstory given to crowd workers in order to optimise the distribution of branching points in the tree structure that combines all collected stories. Two experimental studies of crowdsourced authoring are also presented. They lead to guidelines on how to employ crowdsourced authoring effectively, but more importantly the results of one of the studies demonstrate the effectiveness of the Crowd Task Adaptation approach

In the Beginning was the Image

The authors outline the topic of visuality in the 21st century in a trans- and interdisciplinary theoretical frame from philosophy through communication theory, rhetoric and linguistics to pedagogy. As some scholars of visual communication state, there is a significant link between the downgrading of visual sense making and a dominantly linguistic view of cognition. According to the concept of linguistic turn, everything has its meaning because we attribute meaning to it through language. Our entire world is set in language, and language is the model of human activities. This volume questions the approach in the imagery debate

Perceptual fail: Female power, mobile technologies and images of self

Like a biological species, images of self have descended and modified throughout their journey down the ages, interweaving and recharging their viability with the necessary interjections from culture, tools and technology. Part of this journey has seen images of self also become an intrinsic function within the narratives about female power; consider Helen of Troy “a face that launched a thousand ships” (Marlowe, 1604) or Kim Kardashian (KUWTK) who heralded in the mass mediated ‘selfie’ as a social practice. The interweaving process itself sees the image oscillate between naturalized ‘icon’ and idealized ‘symbol’ of what the person looked like and/or aspired to become. These public images can confirm or constitute beauty ideals as well as influence (via imitation) behaviour and mannerisms, and as such the viewers belief in the veracity of the representative image also becomes intrinsically political manipulating the associated narratives and fostering prejudice (Dobson 2015, Korsmeyer 2004, Pollock 2003). The selfie is arguably ‘a sui generis,’ whilst it is a mediated photographic image of self, it contains its own codes of communication and decorum that fostered the formation of numerous new digital communities and influenced new media aesthetics . For example the selfie is both of nature (it is still a time based piece of documentation) and known to be perceptually untrue (filtered, modified and full of artifice). The paper will seek to demonstrate how selfie culture is infused both by considerable levels of perceptual failings that are now central to contemporary celebrity culture and its’ notion of glamour which in turn is intrinsically linked (but not solely defined) by the province of feminine desire for reinvention, transformation or “self-sexualisation” (Hall, West and McIntyre, 2012). The subject, like the Kardashians or selfies, is divisive. In conclusion this paper will explore the paradox of the perceptual failings at play within selfie culture more broadly, like ‘Reality TV’ selfies are infamously fake yet seem to provide Debord’s (1967) illusory cultural opiate whilst fulfilling a cultural longing. Questions then emerge when considering the narrative impact of these trends on engendered power structures and the traditional status of illusion and narrative fiction

Implicit Interaction with Textual Information using Physiological Signals

Implicit interaction refers to human-computer interaction techniques that do not require active engagement from the users. Instead, the user is passively monitored while performing a computer task, and the data gathered is used to infer implicit measures as inputs to the system. Among the multiple applications for implicit interaction, collecting user feedback on information content is one that has increasingly been investigated. As the amount of available information increases, traditional methods that rely on the users' explicit input become less feasible. As measurement devices become less intrusive, physiological signals arise as a valid approach for generating implicit measures when users interact with information. These signals have mostly been investigated in response to audio-visual content, while it is still unclear how to use physiological signals for implicit interaction with textual information. This dissertation contributes to the body of knowledge by studying physiological signals for implicit interaction with textual information. The research targets three main research areas: a) physiology for implicit relevance measures, b) physiology for implicit affect measures, and c) physiology for real-time implicit interaction. Together, these provide understanding not only on what type of implicit measures can be extracted from physiological signals from users interacting with textual information, but also on how these can be used in real time as part of fully integrated interactive information systems. The first research area targets perceived relevance, as the most noteworthy underlying property regarding the user interaction with information items. Two experimental studies are presented that evaluate the potential for brain activity, electrodermal activity, and facial muscle activity as candidate measures to infer relevance from textual information. The second research area targets affective reactions of the users. The thesis presents two experimental studies that target brain activity, electrodermal activity, and cardiovascular activity to indicate users' affective responses to textual information. The third research area focuses on demonstrating how these measures can be used in a closed interactive loop. The dissertation reports on two systems that use physiological signals to generate implicit measures that capture the user's responses to textual information. The systems demonstrate real-time generation of implicit physiological measures, as well as information recommendation on the basis of implicit physiological measures. This thesis advances the understanding of how physiological signals can be implemented for implicit interaction in information systems. The work calls for researchers and practitioners to consider the use of physiological signals as implicit inputs for improved information delivery and personalization.Implisiittinen vuorovaikutus viittaa ihmisen ja tietokoneen välisen vuorovaikutuksen tekniikoihin, jotka eivät vaadi käyttäjän tarkkaavaisuutta. Tämän sijaan järjestelmä kerää käyttäjästä tietoja passiivisesti ja käyttää näitä tietoja operatiivisina syötteinä. Esimerkiksi viestiä kirjoitettaessa (eksplisiittinen vuorovaikutus) järjestelmä tunnistaa tekemämme kirjoitusvirheen ja automaattisesti korjaa väärin kirjoitetun sanan (implisiittinen vuorovaikutus). Implisiittinen vuorovaikutus mahdollistaa näin uusia vuorovaikutuskanavia vaivaamatta lainkaan käyttäjää. Mittauslaitteiden kehityksen myötä implisiittisessä vuorovaikutuksessa voidaan hyödyntää myös fysiologisia signaaleja, kuten aivovasteita ja kardiovaskulaarisia reaktioita. Näiden signaalien analyysi paljastaa tietoja käyttäjän kiinnostuksen kohteista ja tunteista suhteessa tietokoneen esittämään sisältöön, ja tarjoaa näin järjestelmälle paremmat mahdollisuudet vastata käyttäjän tarpeisiin. Väitöskirjani tarkoituksena on tutkia käyttäjien fysiologisia signaaleja sekä kerätä tietoa heidän reaktioistaan ja mielipiteistään suhteessa tekstipohjaiseen informaatioon ja käyttää näitä signaaleja ja tietoja implisiittisen vuorovaikutuksen mahdollistamiseksi. Tarkkaan ottaen tarkoituksenani on tutkia a) fysiologisten signaalien kykyä kertoa siitä, miten kiinnostavana käyttäjä kokee lukemansa tekstin, b) fysiologisten signaalinen käyttökelpoisuutta ennustamaan, minkälaisia tunnereaktiota (esim. huvittuneisuutta) tekstit herättävät lukijassa sekä, c) fysiologisen signaalien käyttökelpoisuutta reaaliaikaisessa implisiittisessä vuorovaikutuksessa. Tutkimuksen tulokset osoittavat, että fysiologiset signaalit tarjoavat toimivan ratkaisun reaaliaikaiseen implisiittiseen vuorovaikutukseen tekstipohjaisten sisältöjen parissa. Tutkimuksen löydösten pääviesti tutkimusyhteisölle ja alan ammattilaisille on se, että implisiittisinä syötteinä fysiologiset signaalit helpottavat informaation kulkua ja parantavat personalisoimista ihmisen ja tietokoneen välisessä vuorovaikutuksessa

Proceedings of the VIIth GSCP International Conference

The 7th International Conference of the Gruppo di Studi sulla Comunicazione Parlata, dedicated to the memory of Claire Blanche-Benveniste, chose as its main theme Speech and Corpora. The wide international origin of the 235 authors from 21 countries and 95 institutions led to papers on many different languages. The 89 papers of this volume reflect the themes of the conference: spoken corpora compilation and annotation, with the technological connected fields; the relation between prosody and pragmatics; speech pathologies; and different papers on phonetics, speech and linguistic analysis, pragmatics and sociolinguistics. Many papers are also dedicated to speech and second language studies. The online publication with FUP allows direct access to sound and video linked to papers (when downloaded)

Digital Media and Textuality: From Creation to Archiving

Due to computers' ability to combine different semiotic modes, texts are no longer exclusively comprised of static images and mute words. How have digital media changed the way we write and read? What methods of textual and data analysis have emerged? How do we rescue digital artifacts from obsolescence? And how can digital media be used or taught inside classrooms? These and other questions are addressed in this volume that assembles contributions by artists, writers, scholars and editors. They offer a multiperspectival view on the way digital media have changed our notion of textuality

Digital Media and Textuality

Due to computers' ability to combine different semiotic modes, texts are no longer exclusively comprised of static images and mute words. How have digital media changed the way we write and read? What methods of textual and data analysis have emerged? How do we rescue digital artifacts from obsolescence? And how can digital media be used or taught inside classrooms? These and other questions are addressed in this volume that assembles contributions by artists, writers, scholars and editors such as Dene Grigar, Sandy Baldwin, Carlos Reis, and Frieder Nake. They offer a multiperspectival view on the way digital media have changed our notion of textuality

Painting Pictures with Words - From Theory to System

A picture paints a thousand words, or so we are told. But how many words does it take to paint a picture? And how can words create pictures in the first place? In this thesis we examine a new theory of linguistic meaning -- where the meaning of words and sentences is determined by the scenes they evoke. We describe how descriptive text is parsed and semantically interpreted and how the semantic interpretation is then depicted as a rendered 3D scene. In doing so, we describe WordsEye, our text-to-scene system, and touch upon many fascinating issues of lexical semantics, knowledge representation, and what we call "graphical semantics." We introduce the notion of vignettes as a way to bridge between function and form, between the semantics of language and the grounded semantics of 3D scenes. And we describe how VigNet, our lexical semantic and graphical knowledge base, mediates the whole process. In the second part of this thesis, we describe four different ways WordsEye has been tested. We first discuss an evaluation of the system in an educational environment where WordsEye was shown to significantly improve literacy skills for sixth grade students versus a control group. We then compare WordsEye with Google Image Search on "realistic" and "imaginative" sentences in order to evaluate its performance on a sentence-by-sentence level and test its potential as a way to augment existing image search tools. Thirdly, we describe what we have learned in testing WordsEye as an online 3D authoring system where it has attracted 20,000 real-world users who have performed almost one million scene depictions. Finally, we describe tests of WordsEye as an elicitation tool for field linguists studying endangered languages. We then sum up by presenting a roadmap for enhancing the capabilities of the system and identifying key opportunities and issues to be addressed

Reading the Margins: The Politics and Processes of Feminist Comics-Based Research and Pedagogy

This multi-methods dissertation explores the politics and processes of creating comics-based research and pedagogy. My central framework of “reading the margins” refers to the process of asking critical questions about the history, genealogy, and methods of comics studies, particularly as it intersects with feminism. I argue that considering feminist studies and comics studies together centers each field’s history with marginality and envisions their shared potential for making arguments through the critical and self-conscious representation of marginalized experience. Throughout this project, I examine the formal properties, stylistic conventions, and narrative patterns that make the comics medium particularly effective for feminist scholarship. I do this first through a review of examples of popular feminist educational comics, examining their use of the comics medium for feminist pedagogy through common tropes and discourse analysis. Next, I offer an original piece of feminist comics-based scholarship to demonstrate a few of these formal commitments and affordances