From interaction to trajectories: designing coherent journeys through user experience

notes: Best of CHI 2009 Awardpublication-status: PublishedThe idea of interactional trajectories through interfaces has emerged as a sensitizing concept from recent studies of tangible interfaces and interaction in museums and galleries. We put this concept to work as a lens to reflect on published studies of complex user experiences that extend over space and time and involve multiple roles and interfaces. We develop a conceptual framework in which trajectories explain these user experiences as journeys through hybrid structures, punctuated by transitions, and in which interactivity and collaboration are orchestrated. Our framework is intended to sensitize future studies, help distill craft knowledge into design guidelines and patterns, identify technology requirements, and provide a boundary object to connect HCI with performance studies

The poetics of planetary theatre: image and bricolage

Images are all around us. They serve as a tool of communication, whether transmitted in words, sound or in visual media. An image may simultaneously be a thing placed in front of us and a thing that we create in our minds – a fragment that fleetingly captures our attention and is difficult to articulate. To describe images is to undo them: they are too unstable, fluid, and personal to each of us, yet we constantly exchange them. In this sense, images become migrants as they travel through time, cultures and media; repeating, re-occurring, re-mixing and carrying the baggage of their contexts in their journeys. They contribute to shaping identities and culture in a global intermedial space saturated by media exposure. The central question of this study is how images work to make theatre. I place myself within the postdramatic and intercultural theatre context and consider how one of the tasks of the theatre-maker is to construct and shape images into a performance. Through a focus on several theatre productions, I investigate the features of theatrical images and highlight their usefulness within both the devising and performance stages of theatre-making. In doing so, I develop a poetics to establish an image-driven dramaturgy from rehearsal to performance. This poetics places the body in an intermedial space which constructs itself through the exchange and juxtaposition of images from across the planet. My investigation is guided by two interwoven theories. The first is that of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s (2003a) concept of the planetary, which asserts the necessity of recognizing diverse experiences and perceptions on the planet in order to redefine who we see as the “other”. I utilize her approach by juxtaposing fragments in order to defamiliarize theatrical images. Through the use of fragments, the second theory of bricolage is informed by, amongst others, Claude Lévi-Strauss (1966). I thus seek to identify myself as a bricoleur; someone whose art-making poetics is dependent on using pre-existing material through sampling and montage. These poetics seek to capture my own experience as a migrant, who sees the planet as a rhizome of images and their associations. My project makes the claim that a poetics of the planetary (dramaturgy) is found through the exchange of images drawn from those involved in the creation of an intermedial theatrical event

A Sensory Journey into the Middle Ground: Interweaving Multiple Identities through Voice

This PhD documents and analyses my vocal practice of ‘interweaving’ (Fischer-Lichte, 2014) different languages and practices to create new pieces of music. The backbone of the submission is constituted by five newly-created performances, each telling stories of real or fantastical characters, and each developed in collaboration with artists and musicians from diverse backgrounds. This commentary explains how these performances are part of a deep investigation into vocal plurality within the dynamic potency of the ‘Middle Ground’ (Trinh T. Minh-ha, 2011), a metaphorical space without polarity and divisions, where movement is possible in multiple directions. My discussion engages with issues of personal identity as they resonate within hegemonic structures of power on national, international and ultimately global levels. Three interconnected concepts are inherent in the processes of interweaving, as developed in my practice: Wandering (Travelling), Twilight (Immersing yourself in the Middle Ground) and Sensing (Reawakening the Senses). In combination, these shape my creative methodology for practice, as well as offering a framework to illuminate how I am thinking through my work. As experiences, and as lenses through which to examine what I have created, they are threaded through with an ethos of play and reflection. Where playfulness generates a mindset of fluidity, reflection articulates and grounds the transformative process. Through these processes my artistic voice has gained a new agency, which cannot but leave the spaces in which I work unaltered. Through my work I hope to transform that of others, and ultimately reach beyond our divisions to a place of new possibilities, even transcendence. The five performances are available to view at www.meritariane.com/research

Control and Being Controlled: Exploring the use of Technology in an Immersive Theatre Performance

Immersive theatre is a growing trend within theatre entertainment: audience members can now wander around performances and choose how the story unfolds in front of them. Technology can be used to create novel, multi-modal experiences for audiences in these performances; but when the rules of such an experience are ill-defined, how do users react to this technology? We present an evaluation of 25 performances of an immersive, in the dark performance. Issues of control can arise in situations where technology becomes an important part of such a performance. Participants take and relinquish control in three key areas: navigation, exploration and attention during the performance, and this affects their perception of both technology and the piece itself. We discuss how technology can play a positive role in immersive theatre and other cultural settings, yet its use must be carefully choreographed to ensure the audience experience matches the intended goal

Fargo: Seeing the significance of style in television poetics?

This article explores the adaptation of the original film to television and how a strain of art or independent cinema contributed to the development of the first series of Fargo (2014–present). By making this comparison, the transition to television of the storyworld established by the Coen brothers raises questions about who is talking in the TV drama – the Coens or makers of the series. At the same time, Fargo can be more easily explained and understood as a strategy by writers, directors and producers that further complicate ideas to do with Noah Hawley, as its showrunner and the show’s single-author status. In Fargo, fidelity to the Coen brothers as a testament to the memory of the original film is set against questions about the reliability of storytelling using complex imagery. By alternating between different levels of narration signified by its stylistic tonal qualities, Fargo succeeds in producing multiple meanings, representations and effects that call attention to textual pleasures in the complex television series

De-Placement: Constructing and Mapping Place in Collaboration with Artists

Extension of the formal report using images to present a more visual exploration of project findings.Arts and Humanities Research Counci

A mixed reality neighborhood tour: understanding visitor experience and perceptions

Museums are increasingly turning to technology to improve their offerings. This presents an opportunity to surrounding neighborhoods to take advantage of the museum in order to connect with visitors and offer them a glimpse into their community. The work presented in this article contributes to advancing the state of the art in designing Mixed Reality (MR) entertainment experiences by presenting and discussing Yasmine’s Adventures (YA), a mobile application aiming to extend the museum visitor’s experience into the surrounding neighborhood. YA demonstrates the potential of MR in engaging visitors to explore neglected urban areas. This is achieved by incorporating the opinions of community members, and other contextual information, into a fictional story telling journey, delivered through a MR entertainment experience distributed in real space. Consequently, users are provided with opportunity to connect with enriched portraits of these spaces. Results from a quantitative and qualitative evaluation showed that participants’ perception of the neighborhood was positively affected by the experience, which fostered curiosity and willingness to explore the neighborhood both at the spatial and social levels. By taking the tour, participants increased their interest in interacting with locals and fostered greater knowledge of the area, which they were willing to share after experiencing it.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Special Issue: 2023 Oxford Film Festival Guide: March 1, 2023

https://egrove.olemiss.edu/tlv/1026/thumbnail.jp