'Stitched up' in the 'Conversengine': using expressive processing and multimodal languages to create a character-driven interactive digital narrative

My practice-based research, which this thesis supports, explores the question: How can a convincing interactive character, with apparent psychological depth, be modelled in a playable digital narrative that adapts to reader choice? To this end I am building my own platform, the 'Conversengine', for authoring and, in future, publishing and playing text-driven interactive narratives that rely on enactment rather than narration. Currently, the platform consists of the 'Convowriter', the authoring tool, which I am using to develop 'Stitched Up', an interactive psychological thriller. Using the concept of the black box from second-order cybernetics with possible worlds and theory of mind from narratology, I show how combining these theories, mapping one onto another, provides a framework for not only thinking about the character-driven interactive narrative, but also a methodology for authoring one, in both natural language and computer code, and designing its richly responsive visual interface. This incorporates a unique emotional data visualisation system ('emoviz') to dynamically represent interactive fictional characters. This system is built upon the Pleasure-Arousal-Dominance Emotional State Model (Russell and Mehrabian, 1977) and informed by existing psychological research into colour, shape and motion. I contend that abstract visualisations, coupled with the characters' text-based thoughts and/or speech, can eloquently express convincing mental and emotional behaviour. This provides the feedback in my cybernetic 'steering-a-course' game engine, which, whilst maintaining narrative coherence, allows the reader-player to steer their own course through the narrative. Creating an interactive narrative of this kind, which simulates psychological rather than physical action, requires a different approach to game writing, development and design. In part two of this thesis, I explore how the distinction between story and narrative discourse has practical implications for the creation of interactive digital narratives. I discuss how using existing game engines and tools can be limiting, and how this led to building my own interactive narrative engine with its own expressive domain-specific language. I show how the combined features of the 'Conversengine' offer a new way of representing complex interactive characters with psychological depth

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

2020-2021 Course Catalog

2020-2021 Course Catalo

2019-2020 Course Catalog

2019-2020 Course Catalo

2021-2022 Course Catalog

2021-2022 Course Catalo

2018-2019 Course Catalog

2018-2019 Course Catalo

ELO2019: Electronic Literature Organization Conference & Media Arts Festival, Programme and Book of Abstracts

The Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) is pleased to announce its 2019 Conference and Media Arts Festival, hosted by University College Cork. The conference and exhibition will be held from July 15-17, 2019, on UCC’s campus in the heart of Cork city, Ireland. The theme for ELO2019 #ELOcork is “peripheries”: delegates are invited to explore the edges of literary and digital culture, including emerging traditions, indeterminate structures and processes, fringe communities of praxis, effaced forms and genres, marginalised bodies, and perceptual failings. ELO2019 #ELOcork will mark the first time that the ELO conference has been hosted by an Irish institution: join us for this momentous gathering

ELO2019 Programme & Books of Abstracts

ELO2019 Programme & Books of Abstracts, University College Cork, July 15-17, 201

2017-2018 Course Catalog

2017-2018 Course Catalo

Reinventing the book: exploring the affordances of digital media to (re)tell stories and expand storyworlds

A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Professional Doctorate in Journalism, Media, Television and CinemaThe focus of this thesis is on analysing the affordances of new technologies of the book. It looks at the transition between the affordances of the material book and the digital, focusing on the formal aspects of the book and its digital production and consumption. The research uses a coreperiphery model to locate innovation, looking first at a range of practices and then at selected producers and artefacts to identify relevant uses of the affordances of digital media, namely participation, co-creation, online reading communities, and the potential for cross-media extension of stories into other forms. The analyses of selected digital artefacts evaluate their strengths and weaknesses and ask: how have the affordances of the digital medium been used? What do these affordances offer to producers and consumers? And how have certain affordances changed the use value, the pleasures and the suitability of texts for their intended functions? This evaluation takes into account professional publishing contexts and a range of practices, looking at the ways in which producers make, classify and present their works. Affordances theory is used throughout, and ultimately shows that good design practices reinvent the medium, push the boundaries of the book, whilst considering the habits, needs and expectations of readers/users. A practice-led project is subject to analysis and reflection on practice in order to draw further insights and recommend approaches and tools for designers, publishers and other producers. This project experimented with reader engagement and co-creation to adapt the Nature Mage fantasy book series (Duncan Pile, 2011, 2013, 2014, 2016) onto enhanced digital book and digital game texts. Media-specificity is used as a framework to look at the ways in which stories can be translated and expanded onto new forms that explore the affordances of digital media. The adaptations are located at the intersection of media, shaped by a range of intertexts from both analogue and digital media, and offering not simply another way of enjoying the narrative but texts that explore the digital affordances also to design features that relate to ludic, creative and social motivations and pleasures. Ultimately the thesis revisits the very definition of the book, its functions, its value and the ways in which emerging digital artefacts are doing the work of books and — thanks to new affordances and their hybrid nature — are not only changing the experience of reading, but also mixing it with the work of other media forms and genres. In doing so, this thesis contributes to furthering professional practice by highlighting a range of uses of the affordances of the digital medium to reinvent the book in the next chapter of its evolution