Pharaoh: Conceptual Blending of Cognitive Scripts for Computationally Creative Agents

Improvisational acting is a creative group performance where actors co-construct stories on stage in real-time based on actors’ perceptions of the environment. The Digital Improv Project has been engaged in a multi-year study of the cognitive processes involved in improvisational acting. This better understanding of human cognition and creativity has led to formal computational models of some aspects of our findings. In this work, we consider enriching AI improv agents with the ability to improvise new nontraditional scenes based on existing social cognitive scripts. This paper shows how the use of Pharaoh -a context based structural retrieval algorithm for cognitive scripts- and simple blending rules can help digital improv agents to create new interesting scenes. The paper also provides an illustrative example at the end

In the Truman show: generating dynamic scenarios in a driving simulator

All the devices, animals, and people make their decisions based on what you're doing, but you don't know it or even notice it. Your world is that of Truman Burbank, from the 1998 movie The Truman Show. With this idea in mind, we've taken the movie metaphor to implement a prototype simulation system where the user steps into Truman's shoes. The set of our "movie" is a driving simulator, and the user is learning to drive a car. During the driving lessons, users drive in a virtual world that lets them experience all kinds of traffic scenarios. The system generates the scenarios with the student as the focal point, and the other traffic entities respond to the student's behavior, without the student noticing. To control the traffic scenarios and make them more effective, our prototype employs an agent-based framework. In this framework, each entity in the simulator is an actor agent playing a role. The prototype also includes a hierarchy of directors that directs the main action and the behind-the-scenes activity. The advantage of the movie metaphor is that it helps separate scenario description from scenario playing. The agents can read their required information from a script and perform their actions based on that information. Using this framework lets us build software that's extensible, maintainable, and easy to understan

Agents for educational games and simulations

This book consists mainly of revised papers that were presented at the Agents for Educational Games and Simulation (AEGS) workshop held on May 2, 2011, as part of the Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems (AAMAS) conference in Taipei, Taiwan. The 12 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from various submissions. The papers are organized topical sections on middleware applications, dialogues and learning, adaption and convergence, and agent applications

Trust Performance and Dramaturgical Plays in Virtual Teams

The paper uses the dramaturgical perspective for conceptualising trust development within temporary virtual teams. The underlying assumption is that temporary teams do not have the luxury of time, which according to the traditional trust theories, enables familiarity among project participants and promotes trust development. Yet, in these teams, trust needs to develop quickly and it is important that it lasts throughout the short duration of the project lifecycle. Using the metaphor of a theatre, the dramaturgical model of trust relationships is developed and is used to present actors, co-actors and audience as all playing a key role during the scripting, staging and performing phases of virtual plays. Particular importance is given to the interactions between these players at the performance stage. As it is argued, these interactions elicit the process of trust development within the temporary setting of virtual teams constituting to a type of trust relationship that is mutually negotiated and jointly constructed. This type of trust is called situated trust and emerges from the scripted and unscripted computer-mediated interactions of virtual players

Playing with Shakespeare: Comedy as a Tool to Improve Fluency in the EFL Classroom

This paper aims to present drama as a tool for improving oral fluency in the EFL classroom through an intervention proposal based on William Shakespeare's play Much Ado About Nothing (1598) for a group of first year of Bachillerato students. First, I establish the importance of speaking and fluency in language teaching. Then, I discuss the role of literature in the Spanish curriculum, highlighting the benefits of drama project-based learning in the teaching process. This is followed by some evidence of the pedagogical value of William Shakespeare and his plays. Furthermore, the proposal based on Much Ado About Nothing (1589) is explained in terms of objectives, key and specific competences, assessment criteria and basic knowledge, together with the methodology employed and the assessment followed. Finally, a description of the proposal is presented in terms of the sessions that make it up and also the activities that are implemented.Este TFM pretende mostrar el teatro como herramienta para mejorar la fluidez oral en el aula de inglés como lengua extranjera, a través de una propuesta de intervención basada en la obra Much Ado About Nothing (1598) de William Shakespeare para un grupo de primero de bachillerato. En primer lugar, se establece la importancia del habla y la fluidez en la enseñanza de idiomas. A continuación, se comenta el papel de la literatura en el currículo español, destacando los beneficios del aprendizaje basado en proyectos teatrales en el proceso de enseñanza. A posteriori, se muestran pruebas del valor pedagógico de William Shakespeare, así como de sus obras. Además, se explica la propuesta basada en Much Ado About Nothing (1598) en términos de objetivos, competencias clave y específicas, criterios de evaluación y saberes básicos, junto con la metodología empleada y la evaluación seguida. Finalmente, se presenta una descripción de la propuesta en cuanto a las sesiones que la conforman y también las actividades que se implementan.Departamento de Filología InglesaMáster en Profesor de Educación Secundaria Obligatoria y Bachillerato, Formación Profesional y Enseñanzas de Idioma

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (with flying robots)

Seven flying robot “fairies” joined human actors in the Texas A&M production of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The production was a collaboration between the departments of Computer Science and Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Theater Arts. The collaboration was motivated by two assertions. First, that the performing arts have principles for creating believable agents that will transfer to robots. Second, the theater is a natural testbed for evaluating the response of untrained human groups (both actors and the audience) to robots interacting with humans in shared spaces, i.e., were believable agents created? The production used two types of unmanned aerial vehicles, an AirRobot 100-b quadrotor platform about the size of a large pizza pan, and six E-flite Blade MCX palm-sized toy helicopters. The robots were used as alter egos for fairies in the play; the robots did not replace any actors, instead they were paired with them. The insertion of robots into the production was not widely advertised so the audience was the typical theatergoing demographic, not one consisting of people solely interested technology. The use of radio-controlled unmanned aerial vehicles provides insights into what types of autonomy are needed to create appropriate affective interactions with untrained human groups. The observations from the four weeks of practice and eight performances contribute (1) a taxonomy and methods for creating affect exchanges between robots and untrained human groups, (2) the importance of improvisation within robot theater, (3) insights into how untrained human groups form expectations about robots, and (4) awareness of the importance of safety and reliability as a design constraint for public engagement with robot platforms. The taxonomy captures that apparent affect can be created without explicit affective behaviors by the robot, but requires talented actors to convey the situation or express reactions. The audience’s response to robot crashes was a function of whether they had the opportunity to observe how the actors reacted to robot crashes on stage, suggesting that pre-existing expectations must be taken into account in the design of autonomy. Furthermore, it appears that the public expect robots to be more reliable (an expectation of consumer product hardening) and safe (an expectation from product liability) than the current capabilities and this may be a major challenge or even legal barrier for introducing robots into shared public spaces. These contributions are expected to inform design strategies for increasing public engagement with robot platforms through affect, and shows the value of arts-based approaches to public encounters with robots both for generating design strategies and for evaluation

Digital-enabled service transformation in public sector: Institutionalization as a product of interplay between actors and structures during organisational change

The derailment of large scale Digitally-Enabled Service Transformation Projects (DEST) in public sector has generated much attention and debate among the research community. However, most of the debates focus on the technology imperatives and/or strategic choices view. The micro-process of institutionalisation involving interplays between actors and structures in forming an institutionalised approach is hardly brought to the surface. Complex structure of government institutions, interaction of actors from various contexts and integration of multiple resources during DEST implementation has made the process of institutionalisation difficult. Combination of Institutional Theory (IT) and Structuration Theory (ST) concepts are used in this paper to examine an exemplar DEST project in the UK - 'Tell Us Once' (TUO). Findings show that actors and structures played significant roles throughout the institutionalisation stages. The actors reinforced or modified existing structures to suit their actions, and in return, the structure governed the actors' actions, to form desired behaviour. This social phenomenon happened recursively over period of time until a common practice emerged and the desired objective is achieved. The findings provide useful insights on good institutionalisation practices concerning the role of actors and structures within the institutionalisation process

Process Drama in the Virtual World - A Survey

Process drama is a form of improvisational drama where the focus is on the process rather than the product. This form of improvisational activities has been used extensively in many domains. Role play, for example, has been used in health therapy as well as for training health personnel. Creative drama is a form of process drama that focuses on the use of story dramatization techniques; it has been extensively used to promote language and literature skills as well as creative and critical thinking. In these domains process drama exhibit itself in physical space. Recently, there have been many advances in technology that allows process drama to be exhibited in virtual space. In this article, we look at the form and structure of process drama. We specifically discuss process drama, especially Creative Drama. We outline several key factors of process drama that affect its effectiveness as a learning vehicle, including involvement and reflection. Through this lens, we survey several cases of virtual process drama both as a single person experience as well as a multiuser internet-based virtual experience