INDCOR white paper 4: Evaluation of Interactive Narrative Design For Complexity Representations

While a strength of Interactive Digital Narratives (IDN) is its support for multiperspectivity, this also poses a substantial challenge to its evaluation. Moreover, evaluation has to assess the system's ability to represent a complex reality as well as the user's understanding of that complex reality as a result of the experience of interacting with the system. This is needed to measure an IDN's efficiency and effectiveness in representing the chosen complex phenomenon. We here present some empirical methods employed by INDCOR members in their research including UX toolkits and scales. Particularly, we consider the impact of IDN on transformative learning and its evaluation through self-reporting and other alternatives.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2010.1013

The Aesthetic Responsiveness Assessment (AReA): A screening tool to assess individual differences in responsiveness to art in English and German

People differ in how they respond to artworks. Measuring such individual differences is helpful for explaining response variability and selecting particularly responsive subsamples. On the basis of a sample of items indicating relevant behavior and experience, we exploratively constructed the Aesthetic Responsiveness Assessment (AReA), a screening tool for the assessment of individual differences in responsiveness to art in English and German. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses suggested three first-order factors labeled aesthetic appreciation, intense aesthetic experience, and creative behavior, and a second-order factor aesthetic responsiveness. Aesthetic responsiveness was assessed in N= 781 participants from the United States and Germany, and measurement invariance analysis demonstrated full metric and partial scalar invariance across language versions. AReA scale scores yielded good reliability estimates. Validation studies confirmed expected associations between AReA scale scores and measures of related constructs, as well as continuously and retrospectively recorded responses to music, visual art, and poetry. In summary, the AReA is a promising, psychometrically evaluated instrument to assess aesthetic responsiveness built on a mixture of exploratory and confirmatory construction strategies. It can be used as a screening tool both in English and German speaking samples

INDCOR white paper 1: A shared vocabulary for IDN (Interactive Digital Narratives)

COST Action 18230 INDCOR (Interactive Narrative Design for Complexity Representations) is an interdisciplinary network of researchers and practitioners intended to further the use of interactive digital narratives (IDN1) to represent highly complex topics. IDN possess crucial advantages in this regard, but more knowledge is needed to realize these advantages in broad usage by media producers and the general public. The lack of a shared vocabulary is a crucial obstacle on the path to a generalized, accessible body of IDN knowledge. This white paper frames the situation from the perspective of INDCOR and describes the creation of an online encyclopedia as a means to overcome this issue. Two similar and successful projects (The Living Handbook of Narratology and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) serve as examples for this effort, showing how community-authored encyclopedias can provide high-quality content. The authors introduce a taxonomy based on an overarching analytical framework (SPP model) as the foundational element of the encyclopedia, and detail editorial procedures for the project, including a peer-review process, designed to assure high academic quality and relevance of encyclopedia entries. Also, a sample entry provides guidance for authors

Lights, camera, interaction! Interactive Film and its Transformative Potential.

This thesis concentrates on the emerging field of interactive film. Digital interactive and networked media offer so many possibilities to create stories that it is necessary to define what an interactive film is and whether there is any continuity with the linear film form. This thesis explores whether interactive narratives in the form of interactive film have the potential to offer a transformative learning experience regarding societal and political topics. Butterfly is an interactive short film that uses a second-screen technique to raise awareness of the dangers of cyberbullying. As a case study for a potential transformative experience, the film is described and evaluated by means of interactive screenings and a user experience study. Findings show there is definite potential for interactive films to create strong emotions in users and to possibly produce a transformative experience with educational implications. Keywords: Transformative design, Interactive Narrative Design, Interactive film, User Experience Evaluation

Psychophysiological Responses to Aesthetic Stimuli

A growing body of research investigates how people respond to art, how art preferences are related to personality traits, or what specific brain structures are involved in the appreciation of artworks. However, most of this research measures the aesthetic experience with a single item (e.g., “the artwork is pleasant”). The aim of the present work was to use a multidimensional approach to (I) analyze the factor structure of an aesthetic experience and (II) to construct the Art Reception Survey (ARS) to validly measure these factors. In study 1, 193 participants rated different art paintings of various styles and artists with a set of 76 items describing various components of an aesthetic experience. Principal component analysis revealed a six-factor structure including the recipient’s cognitive involvement, his or her positive and negative affective appraisal, self-referential aspects, judgments about the artistic quality and creativity, as well as information about the knowledge and comprehension the recipient has about the artwork. Furthermore, we examined the specificity of the ARS scales for art stimuli by comparing the questionnaire between art and non-art stimuli (study 2). The results of both studies indicate adequate reliability and validity of the instrument. In future research, the ARS and its specification of relevant facets of an aesthetic experience may help to gain a better understanding of the complex relationships with personality traits or even psychophysiological correlates

Apprehending paintings: an interpretative phenomenological analysis of the experience of viewing art

The experience of viewing art is typically considered to reflect a complex relationship between numerous interdependent factors. Psychological investigations are predominantly experimental. Aspects of the art-object and the perceptual, cognitive and emotional processing of it, are variously explored. Visual-stimuli and personal responses are quantified and measured whilst trying to accommodate the many contextual and individual factors potentially involved. Difficulties presented by quantification within art-viewing research are often acknowledged. Influential variables resist clear definition and constructs may lack standardisation. This thesis presents an exploration of art-viewing from an alternative perspective. The work here is concerned specifically with paintings. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis has been used to explore a collection of single encounters between one viewer and one image. Two studies are presented. In the first, five participants were each asked to select an unfamiliar painting from a collection provided. In the second, twelve participants looked at the painting Las Meninas by Diego Velazquez. Semi-structured interviews were conducted whilst participant and researcher viewed the image together. Both studies revealed a similar thematic arc. Initial themes regarding the inceptive moments of viewing emerged. Here the first grasps of attention and notable penetrating aspects of early engagement were described. Subsequently, themes involving deeper, extended interpretive activities were suggested. Paintings were descending into and explored and imaginative work flourished. Finally, in both studies, self-reflective experiences were recounted. Viewers considered and appraised their viewing activities and abilities. Self-evaluations and judgements collided with expectations and emotional responses. Overall it was revealed that notions of space, layerings and dynamic interaction pervaded the experiences described. Movements between positions both psychical and physical were suggested throughout. As a means to think about such momentums, the research concludes by considering accounts of seeing and being seen provided by phenomenological philosophy

Meaning and Meaning-Making: An exploration into the importance of creative viewer response for art practice

Empirical research suggests that gallery and museum audiences have a strong propensity to make sense of artworks by understanding what the artist ‘means to say’, or what the ‘encoded message’ of a work might be. Conversely, many contemporary artists subscribe to the idea that observers may (or even should) endow their work with their own meaning. In response to this situation, this thesis asks: How can one facilitate a more individual engagement by viewers in the meaning making process? To approach this task, the concepts of meaning and meaning-making are re-assessed and new definitions suggested that endeavour to relate these terms to discussions of art appreciation. A great deal of attention has been given to processes of meaning-making as a collective, social process. In this work the main emphasis will be placed upon the individual viewer’s encounter of a work of art. To develop the concept of meaning-making, arguments from post-structuralist discourses, literature theory, pragmatist aesthetics, and the psychology of art apprehension will be considered. The relation between meaning, verbalisation, and emotion, as well as between the viewer’s constructive activity and the artist’s intentions are discussed. This work also considers how the construction of meaning is influenced by contextual elements such as biological and social factors, the latter including the influence of the gallery environment. Existing theories, viewer testimonials, artists’ statements, and both contemporary and art historical examples are examined in order to determine various approaches that facilitate meaning-making processes. It will be argued that this interdisciplinary approach successfully brings together diverse and otherwise divided perspectives on the concept of meaning making and the meaning-making process. This research is ultimately aimed at developing a better understanding of the artist-audience relationship. It is anticipated this will proffer a resource for art educators and for other visual artists

What Opportunities For Storytelling Might Near-future Technologies Offer Creatives, And How Might Personal Data Affect This?

A common feature of storytelling, at least when it comes to a western, and classical perspective, is that of linearity. Stories often have a single path through them that the content of the story, the Fabula, is arranged along, with this arrangement of the content of the story, the Syuzhet, often being dictated by a single authorial voice. However, a rise in technology and an audience’s willingness to experience new storytelling methods has helped give rise to more experimentation, leading to the popularisation of audience-controlled linearity and interactive storytelling. There can be tension within this way of telling stories as it is commonly believed that in order to increase the interactive quality of a story you have to reduce the quality of the narrative, with some storytellers and researchers approaching narrative and interactivity as opposing forces. I believe that, by doing this, researchers and artists are accidentally limiting the scope of the combinations of Narrative and Interactivity they consider when researching these qualities of storytelling experiences. Narrative and Interactivity are neutral and complex features that can be mediated in different ways throughout a storytelling experience to create enjoyment in an audience, one of the main aims of most stories. Perhaps the multi-faceted nature of enjoyment has made reliably researching it seem difficult, futile, or even perhaps unscientific in the past, but using Roth’s (2015) battery of experimentally valid enjoyment questionnaires allows me to examine the enjoyment elicited in responses to an interactive narrative experience in an experimentally valid and appropriately detailed way. This means that I should be able to derive which quantities and qualities of interactivity and narrative create or hinder the creation of not just enjoyment in an audience, but specific facets and flavours of audience enjoyment. In order to test this hypothesis I had to build an interactive storytelling experience that could vary its amount of Narrative or Interactivity, and it became apparent while doing this that the system that runs this, a branching narrative that presented different video clips depending on audience responses, could also be used to run the research itself, not just deliver the narrative content of the research experience. Using this system, and taking inspiration from my experience with making interactive digital theatre and using magician’s crowd control techniques, such as the Equivoque Force or Barnum Statements, an automated researcher was created to help brief the participants, calibrate the audience behaviour data tracking system, and deliver quantitative and qualitative data collection procedures to the audience. This researcher felt lifelike without the use of complicated AI or machine learning by using a clever mix of simple narrative path systems and a careful anticipation of likely participant responses. The effectiveness of this sort of automated researcher was also investigated as part of this thesis. I found: • Various new methodologies that have wide uses for different researchers, including the automated research assistant and a way of analysing and comparing digital theatre experiences, called a Dramatography, as well as continued evidence for the use of a Performance Led Research and Rapid Iterative Prototyping a valuable methodology for examining these sorts of creative research questions. • In spite of the theory concerning the balance of Interactivity and Narrative, I found that a narratively rich and meaningfully interactive experience is achievable via a creative, low- resource methodology, that a minimal use of easy-to-measure audience behaviour data is required to create the feeling of meaningful interactivity and liveness, and that the type of audience behaviour data used to create that feeling didn’t have a significant effect on audience enjoyment. • That a majority of participants had positive things to say about the automated research assistant and found the experience of undergoing the research user-friendly in spite of the lack of a human researcher, meaning that a scalable and on-demand research methodology for both complex quantitative and qualitative data collection, with a recognisably human face, is possible

What Opportunities For Storytelling Might Near-future Technologies Offer Creatives, And How Might Personal Data Affect This?

A common feature of storytelling, at least when it comes to a western, and classical perspective, is that of linearity. Stories often have a single path through them that the content of the story, the Fabula, is arranged along, with this arrangement of the content of the story, the Syuzhet, often being dictated by a single authorial voice. However, a rise in technology and an audience’s willingness to experience new storytelling methods has helped give rise to more experimentation, leading to the popularisation of audience-controlled linearity and interactive storytelling. There can be tension within this way of telling stories as it is commonly believed that in order to increase the interactive quality of a story you have to reduce the quality of the narrative, with some storytellers and researchers approaching narrative and interactivity as opposing forces. I believe that, by doing this, researchers and artists are accidentally limiting the scope of the combinations of Narrative and Interactivity they consider when researching these qualities of storytelling experiences. Narrative and Interactivity are neutral and complex features that can be mediated in different ways throughout a storytelling experience to create enjoyment in an audience, one of the main aims of most stories. Perhaps the multi-faceted nature of enjoyment has made reliably researching it seem difficult, futile, or even perhaps unscientific in the past, but using Roth’s (2015) battery of experimentally valid enjoyment questionnaires allows me to examine the enjoyment elicited in responses to an interactive narrative experience in an experimentally valid and appropriately detailed way. This means that I should be able to derive which quantities and qualities of interactivity and narrative create or hinder the creation of not just enjoyment in an audience, but specific facets and flavours of audience enjoyment. In order to test this hypothesis I had to build an interactive storytelling experience that could vary its amount of Narrative or Interactivity, and it became apparent while doing this that the system that runs this, a branching narrative that presented different video clips depending on audience responses, could also be used to run the research itself, not just deliver the narrative content of the research experience. Using this system, and taking inspiration from my experience with making interactive digital theatre and using magician’s crowd control techniques, such as the Equivoque Force or Barnum Statements, an automated researcher was created to help brief the participants, calibrate the audience behaviour data tracking system, and deliver quantitative and qualitative data collection procedures to the audience. This researcher felt lifelike without the use of complicated AI or machine learning by using a clever mix of simple narrative path systems and a careful anticipation of likely participant responses. The effectiveness of this sort of automated researcher was also investigated as part of this thesis. I found: • Various new methodologies that have wide uses for different researchers, including the automated research assistant and a way of analysing and comparing digital theatre experiences, called a Dramatography, as well as continued evidence for the use of a Performance Led Research and Rapid Iterative Prototyping a valuable methodology for examining these sorts of creative research questions. • In spite of the theory concerning the balance of Interactivity and Narrative, I found that a narratively rich and meaningfully interactive experience is achievable via a creative, low- resource methodology, that a minimal use of easy-to-measure audience behaviour data is required to create the feeling of meaningful interactivity and liveness, and that the type of audience behaviour data used to create that feeling didn’t have a significant effect on audience enjoyment. • That a majority of participants had positive things to say about the automated research assistant and found the experience of undergoing the research user-friendly in spite of the lack of a human researcher, meaning that a scalable and on-demand research methodology for both complex quantitative and qualitative data collection, with a recognisably human face, is possible