Got alot of research now, it's going to take me a full week to read through it all fully and commentate and draw ideas from it. Got loads of ideas just from skim reading things. Alot of the feedback has been really thought provoking too. As has looking at other peoples blogs and giving them feedback. I made one comment about a show called Knightmare that has been echoing in my mind since I made it. The show is about 15 years old, and was about a dungeon master, a fantasy world, and groups of kids who would have quests in the world, which was a VR simulation. One kid would wear glasses and see parts of the wolrd, and his team members would watch on the screen and have acess to extra perspectives, and would guide him through the puzzles and offer help. There would be monster like bad guys, like evil wizards, out to sabotage you in the virtual world, and it was a really immersive game. Anyway, recalling it has got me thinking more about the idea of using the computer just as a tool, like so many texts I have read suggest, and placing ephasise on person to person interaction, so that people have to work together to get full use from some sort of interactive installation game. A bit like Sohelia spoke about last term, except I'm thinking of a more fantastical environment rather than robotic, or even no environment at all, just some sort of mentally challenging puzzle. I've also been thinking about the idea of forcing your opinions on another, and having them mistake the ideas as their own, another point made in a lot of the texts I've read recently (although I've looked at so many they are all beginning to blur in my mind- will be re-reading in full with lots of note making next week!), and was re-enforced by a comment in a Carlos Casteneda text that was recommended to me, about why forcing your ideas onto another is a bad thing. I have come up with a couple of ideas related to these ideas, to do with stories told through montage installations and lighting that guide one user to follow a certain narrative, but then using exactly the same images and lights, re-arrange the materials to be more mysterious and allowing of multiple narratives. It would need to work so that both users have someway of comparing experiences afterwards, but would explore the idea of how physically non-interactive materials can be arranged to really provoke mental interaction, dependant on the way they are presented, and how the user who could get the most mental interaction would benefit more and have a better experience than the user that couldn't. Perhaps this could even be in the form of a website where the user is asked to choose one 'portal' from the splash page, and then at the end reaches a forum where they can interact with others and discuss the experience. I'm thinking on my feet a bit here, as I find this blog most effective for typing out my ideas as they come to me, and then working them out in workbook, partially becuase all the feedback I've gotten so far has inspired me in one way or another.
However, time planning concern, by about Wednesday I think I'm going to stop sourcing out loads of research/inspirations for a bit, and review all my ideas and research so far, to figure out what direction to go in for the final idea, and start to develop/research it in more specific detail, although I'll keep an open mind the whole way towards change, I just think I need to give myself a little time to let what I have been inspired by and researched so far to sink in a little and brew, and it would be good to write more structured report/essay for my work book about what I have learnt about interactivity so far, because it's such a vast amount!
Friday, 30 November 2007
Brain Overload....
Thursday, 29 November 2007
Brainwave...
...new idea. Have been drawn recently to the idea of parellell universe and quantum physics, becuase it reminds me of the idea of interaction between non linear narratives in animation, as I have demonstratede in previous posts. Have been questiong whether I'm going to far off subject by thinking about it though. Now I'm reassured that it's okay to let the mind wander, because that idea has lead to the discovery of an article about 'Mental Time Travel'. The articlke is about how seeing something from our opast can trigger brainwaves that we have experienced in the past, essentially, we re-live the past in our brain. I think this would be a great idea for an interactive exhibit. The creation of something that produces a user to time travel in their own thoughts.
(This is not my 'idea', just ONE of MANY....I'm still researching!)
Discussion with Lucy Irving
I spoke with Lucy about my experiments with IQ testing the chatbot ALICE in reference to the Chris Crawford text, and she suggested that I look into 'The Chinese Room Argument', and 'The Turing Test'. The later is a way of measuring intelligence that I have looked at before, which I will do if I decide to create something that uses AI, or mental interaction, but will leave alone for the time being. The first I had not heard of, but after a little research discovered that it is abouit the computer being a tool in the mind, and the idea that they could one day think. Have only glanced at the article I found, but will read through it fully over the next week.
Also, we discussed the idea of getting together in a small group with others and having a mini-crit about our ideas sometime next week, maybe one lunch time or otherwise in class whenever it is possible. So, if your reading this and are interested...post a comment!
Discussion with Sarah Strickett
Today Sarah Strickett spoke to us about her animation work. In the afternoon session I spoke with her about my ideas for the project, to be specific, I said that I'm enjoying the theories behind interaction, and the ideas of playing with mental and physical interaction. Also I spoke about my idea of having a book that interacts someway, perpaps with sensors in the pages that trigger animated projections, maybe with a web camera in it. I like the idea of breaking through the 'fourth wall', and looking deeper into it. I asked if she knew of any interactive animation I could look at, but she didn't. What she did suggest was that I look at the film 'Being John Malkovich', becuase of the way it plays with realities, she said my explanation of the fourth wall to her reminded her of it becuase it's about walls between fantasy and reality. I will look into it.
Wednesday, 28 November 2007
End of week one. Progress so far....
We're about a week and a day into the project, and I've got quite a bit of research and a range of conceptual ideas so far. I'm enjoying the theory side of it alot, and am going to spend the next week continuing to research anything interactive realted over the next week that interest me, perhaps arranging my research into categories...'web interaction'....'game interaction'.....'installation interaction'...'psychical interaction'..........'mental interaction'....ect, I have ideas that fall into all these categories, and I'm enjoying being open minded about where the project could go and brainstorming lot's of ideas. I think at the end of next week though, or in two weeks at least, I should start to focus on one conceptual idea, and begin to develop it.
Some of my research so far has included relating Chris Crawfords ideas on the threee key elements of conversation, 'listening', 'understanding', 'speaking', and asking ALICE about his ideas. She did not know. She also failed. She said she had a human IQ, but I tested her with a question from an actual IQ test, and she failed to comprehend the question. So, clearly ALICE does not fit in with CC's ideas as well as she is meant to.
This week I am also going to examine the idea of the forth wall and identify whether breaking it is actually a good thing or not. The microsoft paperclip in word does begin to break it, by confronting the user, and most people hate it. I am going to examine in whatcases NOT breaking through the forth wall could make the interactive experience better.
Ultimately, I am still most interested in creating some sort of interactive installation that does break the fourth wall, and plays around with the ideas of mental(or 'emotional') interaction and physical interaction. Howeve, I want to learn as much as I can about general interaction before I focuss on this task ,and give myself the option of going in another direction.
Idea Generating Exercises
Ok, so, I spoke earlier about some of the ideas I'd developed from the digital storytelling text we were all asked to read. Now we've been asked to do the excersises, which I already read through and those are what inspired me to develop those ideas. To be more specific, here are my responses to the questions:
1: What traditional ritual have you participated in that reminds you of an interactive narrative?
Pantomine- actors address audience, you address them- similar to digital tv shows that tell you to 'press the red button', to interact with the show and vote ect.
Kids puzzle books- your meant to solve puzzles on the page for the character, so it can proceed to the next page. quite mentally engaging for kids in a fiction al way- similar to computer game.
2: What game or sport have you played that could be adapted tp a form of iinteractive entertainment?
Chess- a computer game. Sounds basic, but I'm thinking of having it from the perspective of ONE piece, so you don't see the whole board, and have to work as a team with other pieces, perhaps as an online group game. would excerise the mind and induce interperson-interaction ( teamwork!)
3: What work of trad. storytelling have you read that has a narratve technique that could be aplied to digital media?
The Jane Austen Book Club (book) compares a number of characters to different Jane Austen books, telling their tales over time as the group meet, discuss and grow via flashbacks, Jane Austen quotes, and present day plot. It would make an excellent film, following the goings on of different people, and cutting it up to reveal the plot from different peoples perspectives. But altering the question to relate to Int.Media, I would say perhaps developing a DVD only bersion of a film, where you select the charcter you want to view the whole perspective of the plot from. Would be quite weak interaction though, mainly just one choice you can make, but would lead to altered perceptions of the media. wouldn't really work out though for finanical reasons. If all tv started being filmed from every angle, so many sub-plots would dvelop that it wouldn't be worth watching.
4: Describe how hyper text can deepen the characterization of a character.
Pretty obivous answer- links. Press on a name, go to a page about them. Wikipedia does it as do alot of other sites. To dwell on this a bit though, I think it is a shame that this idea of fictional characterization isn't a bit more exploited comercially. On Home and Away, if you miss an episode, you can go to the online blog of one of the characters- 'Sallys Blog' and read about the episode from her perspective (or at least used to be able to. Not certain if it still exists) This sort of idea doesn't break the fourth wall of interactivity, but I think it get's close, as the blog is being written and directed at the audience. It is a nice idea to build up a charcter online, and really give them an identity, and I think that this could be used more to generate interests in tv shows and films.
5: Can you think of any work of traditional entertainment that breaks the 4th wall? How could this be done in Int.M?
This question brings to mind a cartoon where a little boy would draw a perons or animal each epsidoe with chalk and the character would come to life and they would have an adventure. Not really breaking the 4th wall, but the idea within it is that the little boy is interacting with his drawings. Also, I am reminded of a book about a boy that has a character come out of a book, and has to convince him to go back and end the story. Think the boy then goes itno the book. These kind of magical experiences always seemed appealing to me when I was young, and I think modern interactive media is really making experiences like that seem possible, making everything in old media such as tv shows more lifelike. I'm not really answering the question here, just noting down thoughts related to the project that the questions has sparked in me. I really like the thought of making a plain book into a much more interactive object.
And finally.....
a little off subject of the text, but the idea of narrative has reminded me of a tv show I watched the other day on quantum physics, about the man who invented the theory of paralell universes and hopw they work. To recap extremely sketchily, because I'm not so sure on the specifics myself, and didn't agree with his ideas exactly, he developed a scientific idea that atoms can be in two places at once, and addressed a scientific problem about a cat in a box. If some of the atoms that form poisen react one way, the cat dies, if they react another, it lives. The spectator cannot see in the box, so it is plausible that both things happen. The cat is both dead and alive at the same time. It prompts a paralell universe. Every tiny change in the world prompts an inumerable number of them. I'm not explaining the theory too well, but that's beside the point. The whole idea of paralell universes makes me think of DVD's that offer us multiple endings, or games where we can do one thing, but know other people may be doing something else at the same time in the same game. I'm sort of typing as I'm thinking here, but I think exploring the concept of parallel universes could produce some ideas for digital narratives to use with my ideas for this project.
