Seeker Number 1

Seeker Number 1 is an interactive story which combines performance, filmed by multiple cameras and streamed live, with an interactive installation at an exhibition space. Homer’s Odyssey, the story’s base narrative structure, is situated within multiple storylines and environments. Audience members are able to access and interact with the performance during the exhibition by exploring a physical setup with objects that relate to the story and characters. By experimenting with interactivity, open narrative structures, and the aura of live performers in the virtual space, Seeker Number 1 attempts to bring liveness and emotional affect to the Interactive Digital Narrative. This thesis uses research design methodology to explore how various combinations of dramatic structural elements, live performance, audience agency and computer procedural capabilities can collaboratively create meaning. Seeker Number 1 is a reflection on the emergent relationship between liveness and networked technology represented by the machine. Keywords: Interactive Storytelling, Digital Media, Live Performance, Liveness, Non-linear Dramatic Structure, Aura, Agency, Interactivity, Networked Technology, Broadcasting

Designing structural participation in an interactive film on mental health

The practice of interactive documentary can provide participatory opportunities thanks to its capacity for making space for audiences to leave their marks in a film. However, participants’ inclusion has often been limited to an a-posteriori contribution of materials rather than a structural involvement in the film design. What happens when we treat participants as authors and let them imagine and design their own interactive film? This paper explores how design processes from participatory filmmaking can be adapted to achieve this goal by presenting the design process that led to the production of an interactive participatory film on mental health, Stepping Through Interactive. Five participants with lived experience of mental health problems explored, designed, and produced a non-linear film form to effectively represent their personal accounts of mental health. We review the challenges faced and the strategies deployed in the design process in view of supporting similar forms of production in other contexts

Hands-off Interactive Storytelling in Cinematic Virtual Reality

This is a research by creative practice that aims to explore a form of hands-off interactivity in cinematic virtual reality (CVR). The proposed model for interactive storytelling is based more on intuitive reactions than on conscious decision-making, enhancing diegetic and, thus, narrative immersion. The initial hypothesis states that hands-off interactivity can allow a user to experience a diegesis in which they can avoid being “pulled-back” from the immersion, an interruption of the story produced by the consciousness of explicit interaction and extra-diegetic interfaces. To achieve this, this project uses immersion, spatial storytelling, and dramatically-motivated soundscapes to facilitate and encourage navigation through simultaneous acoustic and dramatic spaces in one immersive environment. Using this setup, the interactive storytelling takes place as users are presented with two simultaneous storylines with their respective protagonists, which happen to be interdependent, influence each other, and are part of one integral story. Users would then be able to freely navigate and alternate between the two storylines – being influenced by strategically designed visual and acoustic diegetic stimuli – and thus play an active role in getting to make sense of the narration. This way, users generate inputs with organic movements around the fixed axis in which CVR uses are placed. This research is strongly focused on creative practice, the generation of creative outputs, and the analysis of the procedures and production workflows, to understand what are the creative and technical challenges for the proposed type of interactive storytelling. The project is also faced from an interdisciplinary approach that, while centred in a filmmaker’s perspective, makes a critical integration of concepts and techniques from other relevant disciplines to approach the expressive challenges proposed by CVR as an experimental medium

Interaction design for live performance

PhD Thesis Multimedia item accompanying this thesis to be consulted at Robinson LibraryThe role of interactive technology in live performance has increased substantially in recent years. Practices and experiences of existing forms of live performance have been transformed and new genres of technology-­‐mediated live performance have emerged in response to novel technological opportunities. Consequently, designing for live performance is set to become an increasingly important concern for interaction design researchers and practitioners. However, designing interactive technology for live performance is a challenging activity, as the experiences of both performers and their audiences are shaped and influenced by a number of delicate and interconnected issues, which relate to different forms and individual practices of live performance in varied and often conflicting ways. The research presented in this thesis explores how interaction designers might be better supported in engaging with this intricate and multifaceted design space. This is achieved using a practice-­‐led methodology, which involves the researcher’s participation in both the investigation of, and design response to, issues of live performance as they are embodied in the lived and felt experiences of individual live performers’ practices during three interaction design case studies. This research contributes to the field of interaction design for live performance in three core areas. Understandings of the relationships between key issues of live performance and individual performers’ lived and felt experiences are developed, approaches to support interaction designers in engaging individual live performers’ lived and felt experiences in design are proposed and innovative interfaces and interaction techniques for live performance are designed. It is anticipated that these research outcomes will prove directly applicable or inspiring to the practices of interaction designers wishing to address live performance and will contribute to the ongoing academic discourse around the experience of, and design for, live performance.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

The Routledge Handbook of Museums, Media and Communication

Museums today find themselves within a mediatised society, where everyday life is conducted in a data-full and technology-rich context. In fact, museums are themselves mediatised: they present a uniquely media-centred environment, in which communicative media is a constitutive property of their organisation and of the visitor experience. The Routledge Handbook of Museums, Media and Communication explores what it means to take mediated communication as a key concept for museum studies and as a sensitising lens for media-related museum practice on the ground. Including contributions from experts around the world, this original and innovative Handbook shares a nuanced and precise understanding of media, media concepts and media terminology, rehearsing new locations for writing on museum media and giving voice to new subject alignments. As a whole, the volume breaks new ground by reframing mediated museum communication as a resource for an inclusive understanding of current museum developments. The Routledge Handbook of Museums, Media and Communication will appeal to both students and scholars, as well as to practitioners involved in the visioning, design and delivery of mediated communication in the museum. It teaches us not just how to study museums, but how to go about being a museum in today’s world

A theory of the transmedia franchise character

In contemporary media landscapes characterised by technological, industrial, and cultural convergence, transmedia fictional practice, that is, the generation of multiple texts, products and experiences across multiple media outlets cohered by a common narrative reality, cast of characters, or entertainment brand, is in the ascendancy. This thesis begins from the observation that although transmedia practice is coterminously beginning to receive more and more critical attention, there remains much work to be done theorising the “total entertainment” experiences (Grainge, 2008: 11) it produces in fictional terms. It identifies a particular need for further critical investigation of how transmedia fictional practice interacts with the design, development, and representation of character. It takes as its fundamental starting principle the assumption that transmediality can be defined and operationalised as a particular modality of fiction, producing particular orientations and operations of meaning and representation, and that the trans-textual, trans-medial extension of a fiction can be identified and delineated as a fictional practice. In dialogue with existing critical work organised by the concept of transmedia storytelling, and industrial discourses and practices of cross-platform production, I conceptualise and define the object of study of this thesis as the practice of transmedia franchising, of which transmedia storytelling is positioned as a sub-genre. The thesis comprises an original theory of the transmedia franchise character as a fictional object, situated in a poetics of transmedia franchising as a fictional practice. It proposes conceptual tools, theoretical frameworks, and critical positions for understanding and analysing the processes of meaning and representation that build up a picture of a character as it is franchised across texts and media, and how they are shaped and influenced by key contextual factors. The six chapters map six core features of the transmedia franchise character as a fictional object, each then providing a granular elaboration of some of the formal, operational, functional, and critical implications of these features. Chapter One engages the problem of the instability of “the text” as critical concept and material artefact relative to transmedia franchise fiction; Chapter Two theorises the franchise character as extensible, designed to anticipate, sustain and generate serial development and representation across multiple texts; Chapter Three presents transmedia franchising as an art of multiplicity, and explores how it builds up a picture of character through setting in play dialogues between rewrites, reimaginings, and alternate versions; Chapter Four focuses on the multimediality of the franchise character specifically; Chapter Five discusses how paratextual material interpolates into and contributes to the actualisation of the franchise character; and Chapter Six explores the franchise character as site and technology of participation, interactivity, and immersion in the franchise world

Concurrency in auditory displays for connected television

Many television experiences depend on users being both willing and able to visually attend to screen-based information. Auditory displays offer an alternative method for presenting this information and could benefit all users. This thesis explores how this may be achieved through the design and evaluation of auditory displays involving varying degrees of concurrency for two television use cases: menu navigation and presenting related content alongside a television show. The first study, on the navigation of auditory menus, looked at onset asynchrony and word length in the presentation of spoken menus. The effects of these on task duration, accuracy and workload were considered. Onset asynchrony and word length both caused significant effects on task duration and accuracy, while workload was only affected by onset asynchrony. An optimum asynchrony was identified, which was the same for both long and short words, but better performance was obtained with the shorter words that no longer overlapped. The second experiment investigated how disruption, workload, and preference are affected when presenting additional content accompanying a television programme. The content took the form of sound from different spatial locations or as text on a smartphone and the programme's soundtrack was either modified or left unaltered. Leaving the soundtrack unaltered or muting it negatively impacted user experience. Removing the speech from the television programme and presenting the secondary content as sound from a smartphone was the best auditory approach. This was found to compare well with the textual presentation, resulting in less visual disruption and imposing a similar workload. Additionally, the thesis reviews the state-of-the-art in television experiences and auditory displays. The human auditory system is introduced and important factors in the concurrent presentation of speech are highlighted. Conclusions about the utility of concurrency within auditory displays for television are made and areas for further work are identified