Reservoir hill and audiences for online interactive drama

This paper analyses the interactive experiences constructed for users of the New Zealand online interactive drama Reservoir Hill (2009, 2010), focusing both on the nature and levels of engagement which the series provided to users and the difficulties of audience research into this kind of media content. The series itself provided tightly prescribed forms of interactivity across multiple platforms, allowing forms of engagement that were greatly appreciated by its audience overall but actively explored only by a small proportion of users. The responses from members of the Reservoir Hill audience suggests that online users themselves are still learning the nature of, and constraints on, their engagements with various forms of online interactive media. This paper also engages with issue of how interactivity itself is defined, the difficulties of both connecting with audience members and securing timely access to online data, and the challenges of undertaking collaborative research with media producers in order to gain access to user data

De-Roling from Experiences and Identities in Virtual Worlds

Within dramatherapy and psychodrama, the term ‘de-roling’ indicates a set of activities that assist the subjects of therapy in ‘disrobing’ themselves from their fictional characters. Starting from the psychological needs and the therapeutic goals that ‘de-roling’ techniques address in dramatherapy and psychodrama, this text provides a broader understanding of procedures and exercises that define and ease transitional experiences across cultural practices such as religious rituals and spatial design. After this introductory section, we propose a tentative answer as to why game studies and virtual world research largely ignored processes of ‘roling’ and ‘de-roling’ that separate the lived experience of role-play from our everyday sense of the self. The concluding sections argue that de-roling techniques are likely to become more relevant, both academically and in terms of their practical applications, with the growing diffusion of virtual technologies in social practices. The relationships we can establish with ourselves and with our surroundings in digital virtual worlds are, we argue, only partially comparable with similar occurrences in pre-digital practices of subjectification. We propose a perspective according to which the accessibility and immersive phenomenological richness of virtual reality technologies are likely to exacerbate the potentially dissociative effects of virtual reality applications. This text constitutes an initial step towards framing specific socio-technical concerns and starting a timely conversation that binds together dramatherapy, psychodrama, game studies, and the design of digital virtual worlds

Inputs and outputs: engagement in digital media from the maker's perspective

In the process of developing a technology assembly that can objectively measure engagement on a moment-by-moment basis, subjective responses to stimuli must be shown to correlate with the component technologies, such as motion capture or psychophysiology. Subjective scales for engagement are not all consistent in segregating the measurement of causes (inputs to the audience) and effects (outputs from the audience); this lack of separation can obscure appropriate inferences in the relationship between cause and effect. Inputs to the audience are scripted, and are controllable by the maker. An output is what the designed experience engenders in the end-user, and outputs can include both mental states (satisfaction) and physical activities (heart rate) during the stimulus and subsequently. Inputs can be maximised by design, whereas to optimise outputs from the end-user, one needs an empirical process because outputs are dependent upon an interpretive process or entry into a biological system. Outputs will be highly dependent on audience and context, and they will often be quite variable, even in individuals from a similar audience profile. It is critical that, in instruments assessing the relationship between inputs and outputs, controllable inputs to the end-user must not be conflated with outputs engendered in the end-user

Echo's body: play and representation in interactive music software

This paper examines Hans Georg Gadamer's theory of play (as it is presented in Truth and Method) and adapts it to the context of interactive music software. I aim to show that interactive technological environments afford play in ways which, because they relate to truth and selfhood, are cognitively and philosophically significant and are not 'merely' playful

Designing online role plays with a focus on story development to support engagement and critical learning for higher education students

Online role plays, as they are designed for use in higher education in Australia and internationally, are active and authentic learning activities (Wills, Leigh & Ip, 2011). In online role plays, students take a character role in developing a story that serves as a metaphor for real-life experience in order to develop a potentially wide range of subject-related and generic learning outcomes. The characteristics of these stories are rarely considered as factors in the design―and success―of these activities. The unspoken cultural assumptions, norms and rules in the stories that impact on the meanings students make from their experiences are also rarely scrutinised in the online role play literature. This paper presents findings from a case study of an asynchronous text-based online role play involving politics and journalism students from three Australian universities. The findings highlight the centrality of students’ collaborative story-building activity to their engagement and learning, including their development of critical perspectives. The study underlines the importance of certain aspects of the role play\u27s design to support students\u27 story-building activity

Evaluation Report of Prospero’s Island: an Immersive Approach to Literacy at Key Stage 3.

Prospero's Island is an immersive theatre project created by Punchdrunk Enrichment and sponsored by Learning Partner, London Borough of Hackney (Hackney Learning Trust). The project sought to inspire and motivate students’ engagement with the English curriculum, and to develop an immersive approach to teaching literacy that would improve students’ learning. Prospero’s Island took place in a secondary academy in Hackney, London over two school terms (autumn 2014-spring 2015). The project was embedded in existing schemes of work, and included the following elements: • An immersive theatre installation for Year 7-8 students (aged 11-13 years); this took the form of an interactive game based on The Tempest; over a two-week period groups of students participated in this experience for a morning or afternoon (autumn term); • A Teaching and Learning Day (TALD) and eight twilight CPD sessions on immersive learning techniques for school staff and teachers across London (autumn term); • A return to the installation for one lesson, led by English teachers (autumn term); • Follow-on work by teachers to develop immersive learning in English lessons (spring term); • An independent evaluation of the project (autumn and spring terms)

Responsible research and innovation in science education: insights from evaluating the impact of using digital media and arts-based methods on RRI values

The European Commission policy approach of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) is gaining momentum in European research planning and development as a strategy to align scientific and technological progress with socially desirable and acceptable ends. One of the RRI agendas is science education, aiming to foster future generations' acquisition of skills and values needed to engage in society responsibly. To this end, it is argued that RRI-based science education can benefit from more interdisciplinary methods such as those based on arts and digital technologies. However, the evidence existing on the impact of science education activities using digital media and arts-based methods on RRI values remains underexplored. This article comparatively reviews previous evidence on the evaluation of these activities, from primary to higher education, to examine whether and how RRI-related learning outcomes are evaluated and how these activities impact on students' learning. Forty academic publications were selected and its content analysed according to five RRI values: creative and critical thinking, engagement, inclusiveness, gender equality and integration of ethical issues. When evaluating the impact of digital and arts-based methods in science education activities, creative and critical thinking, engagement and partly inclusiveness are the RRI values mainly addressed. In contrast, gender equality and ethics integration are neglected. Digital-based methods seem to be more focused on students' questioning and inquiry skills, whereas those using arts often examine imagination, curiosity and autonomy. Differences in the evaluation focus between studies on digital media and those on arts partly explain differences in their impact on RRI values, but also result in non-documented outcomes and undermine their potential. Further developments in interdisciplinary approaches to science education following the RRI policy agenda should reinforce the design of the activities as well as procedural aspects of the evaluation research

Adventures in the Not Quite Yet: using performance techniques to raise design awareness about digital networks

Technologists promise a future in which pervasive, distributed networks enable radical change to social and political geographies. Design of these abstract, intangible futures is difficult and carries a special risk of excluding people who are not equipped to appreciate the ramifications of these technological changes. The Democratising Technology (DemTech) project has been exploring how techniques from performance and live art can be used to help people engage with the potential of ubiquitous digital networks; in particular, how these techniques can be used to enfranchise people with little technical knowledge, but who nonetheless will have to live with the design consequences of technical decisions. This paper describes the iterative development of a performance workshop for use by designers and community workers. These workshops employ a series of simple exercises to emulate possible processes of technological appropriation: turning abstract digital networks into imaginable, meaningful webs. They were specifically designed to target a technologically excluded group, older people, but can also be used with other groups. We describe the process of workshop development and discuss what succeeded with our test groups and what failed. In offering our recommendations for working in this space, we consider the methodological issues of collaborating across science/art/design borders and how this impacted on evaluation. And we describe the final result: a recipe for a performance workshop, also illustrated on a DVD and associated website, which can be used to explore the dynamics of technical and social change in the context of people’s own lives and concerns. Keywords: Performance; Older People; Marginalisation; Person-Centred; Ubiquitous Digital Networks; Interdisciplinary; Technology; Future; Evaluation</p

Player agency in interactive narrative: audience, actor & author

The question motivating this review paper is, how can computer-based interactive narrative be used as a constructivist learn- ing activity? The paper proposes that player agency can be used to link interactive narrative to learner agency in constructivist theory, and to classify approaches to interactive narrative. The traditional question driving research in interactive narrative is, ‘how can an in- teractive narrative deal with a high degree of player agency, while maintaining a coherent and well-formed narrative?’ This question derives from an Aristotelian approach to interactive narrative that, as the question shows, is inherently antagonistic to player agency. Within this approach, player agency must be restricted and manip- ulated to maintain the narrative. Two alternative approaches based on Brecht’s Epic Theatre and Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed are reviewed. If a Boalian approach to interactive narrative is taken the conflict between narrative and player agency dissolves. The question that emerges from this approach is quite different from the traditional question above, and presents a more useful approach to applying in- teractive narrative as a constructivist learning activity