Category: technology

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REACT Lunchtime Talk: Elements of Interactive Storytelling

During his lunchtime talk Daniel Burwen explained that careful consideration of the four elements plus the four spaces equals coherence for storytelling using technology. Here are my notes for the talk Elements of Interactive Storytelling.

  • The four elements are User experience,  Story, Technology and Aesthetics
  • The four spaces are Hearth, Reading nook, Anywhere and Workbook
  • The spectrum of Narrative mechanics between Games (interactive and mechanic depth) and Films (passive and emotional complexity)
  • Doing (games) vs feeling (films)
  • 1978 laser disc
  • 1983 dragons lair – depth was press button to not die
  • 1985 Mario brothers run, jump’ stopm’ kick shoot
  • 1991 another world – cut scenes appear
  • 1993 virtual fighter – 3d games emerge, camera language and large data
  • Mechanical depth and emotional complexity
  • Uncanny valley for virtual characters
  • Last of us game – unified aesthetic between film and game. The game is built for mechanical depth and is highly abstract
  • Attention economies for TV, laptop, tablet and mobile vary but the longer the attention the higher the value.
  • TV is $10- $60, mobile is free to $5
  • Focusing on tablets gives a good trade-off
  • Game called winosill might be helpful for displays e.g. at blaise Castle Museum 🙂
  • Mouse and keyboard vs touch
  • Interactive narrative is a goal as you can get mechanical depth and emotion
  • New PS4 and Xbox enable body movement and may be tipping point beyond control pads
  • Oculus rift headset – the less abstraction in interface the more emotional connection we can have and this type of device may be the new era post control pad
  • So where is this going? from first moving image film to Citizen Kane was a breakout experience for its time and it has been 41 years since pong
  • Wii came put in 2006 and since then we have great things across all the devices eg the oculus rift’ and Xbox kinnect, maybe we are about to bring them together

Since making my notes I have stumbled across the talk as a slidedeck on Prezi which you should check out.

 

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GDS Service Manual – the ebook

Back in July Jukesie asked if I could knock out the GDS Service Manual for his commute and as a handy guide to refer back to.

I completely forgot I did this ebook and meant to stick it online somewhere so here it is…kinda. It was a bit of a rush so PLEASE do let me know about missing/broken bits.

I have the EPUB version (ipad, tablets of all flavours etc) and Kindle kicking around. As I am still on holiday the epub will have to do for now as I don’t have access to my FTP and WordPress has a 2mb limit (aargh).

Soon I will post the epub and Kindle properly, not from my phone abroad when I’m meant to be offline !

Note that I purposefully left out the YouTube videos as myself and others may not regularly have WiFi so I figured this was a fair compromise. If there is interest in the video I can put one out.

I hand coded this file so there may be errors which are likely mine!

I hope you’ll find it useful as I know Matt Jukes and I have.

 

 

 

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Introducing the Mac Mini to the toy box

At the museum we have a collection of devices for tasks such as running our video projectors and as interactive kiosks (widely used at M Shed and the Egypt gallery at Bristol Museum and Art Gallery) .
Some of the kit dates back 5-8 years and I need to get my head around repairing, replacing and planning for the future in the area referred to as “interactives”. Some of the oldest devices are Mac Mini computers. I began to wonder if these needed replacing “like for like” or if we should look at alternatives. Either way I figured having a number of tablets, mac mini computers and PC equivalents (e.g. Arduino or Raspberry Pi) to begin tinkering with would be a good idea. As yet I don’t have an R+D budget and I’m not sure I ever will so I asked twitter if anybody had some older kit that they wouldn’t mind parting with.
Very kindly Mark Annand raised his hand and gifted me a Mac mini PowerPC G4 running 10.5.8.
I now have a device that I can start to play around with – should it be used as a kiosk, can multiple computers be connected and controlled (with dropbox serving files), and all the common uses for kiosk requirements. I stumbled across a blog post on mac mini configuration by Graham Thorne which sounds well researched and road-tested so i’ll probably start here. Of particular interest is getting notifications when a device fails to start-up which is an inevitable consequence of running many devices.
So watch this space!
Also if anybody has played much with computers as kiosk and control devices i’d love to hear from you.
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My first month at the museum

This week marks the end of my first month working as Technical Development Manager across Bristol Museums, Galleries & Archives.
The role is positioned around supporting ‘everything digital’ across our 5 locations AND the web.
What makes this exciting is that we need to work with digital for people on-site and online as museums attract tourists from around the globe as well as researchers.
I have spent much of my time meeting people across the service and being nosey about what they do, how they do it and if they have ideas we can develop.
I have been grappling with tools to capture ideas, to-do lists and seeing a map of the activity with Trello starting to look a real winner.
The breadth of work is very diverse but nowt I haven’t come into contact with in previous jobs.
I have a very supportive boss and I manage a small team of 4 who have a wealth of experience to help tackle our plans. The local digital scene really has come on leaps and bounds in the last 5 years and I have been meeting an inspiring range of artists, academics and business folk.
In addition to the normal run of work I managed to speak at the ARLIS conference on self-publishing and attended the excellent UXBristol.

IF you have any thoughts on digital in the museum space do get in touch, i’d love to hear from you.

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First use of the Oculus Rift VR headset

Me about to try the headset

Yesterday I got to use the developer version of the Oculus Rift headset which provides an immersive gaming environment. Stephen Gray got the headset a few weeks ago and has already been making some headway into building his own environments.

Essentially the headset design enables you to view a virtual world without any awkward gaps between your vision, the headset and the ‘real’ world. Two views of the virtual environment (as shown below) are overlapped and off you go.

Computer showing my VR view

It is hard to describe but the VR world does actually feel very real and my tiny brain was partly tricked into believing I was dropping from the clouds onto a runway. Because you can look anywhere with a smooth transition using your head, everything starts to feel natural.

I tested about 3-4 environments including a rollercoaster…then I felt my tongue start to dry and an odd feeling in my tummy. Fast forward an hour and back at home I started to feel a little sick… I have long suffered from a problem with the refresh rate on CRT screens and I wonder if this was triggered using the headset. When you switch game you leave the VR world and can see a really bad version of the computer desktop and I wonder if it was this switching that set me off.

I can see great potential in this type of tool for use in education, museums and the design industry. The headset brings the opportunities of the digital world into our natural ‘view’ of the world. Immediately I could see training scenarios, interpretation and gaming uses for the tool. It also strikes me as a true ’emerging’ and uniquely digital tool, maybe on the level of ‘touch’ devices. I wouldn’t put it into the bracket of a widely popular device for the average person, but certainly for niche markets in the short-medium term.

Once I have had the chance to have a better play i’m sure uses will start to come to me.

Now let me just sit down and recover.

 

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Individual as Institution by Lawrie Phipps

As more academic and academic related staff adopt the ‘individual as institution’ approach, institutions must reflect on their response.  Readers familiar with Twitter may be familiar with the phrase “The views expressed here are mine and do not reflect the views of my employer”.  This is an often cited phrase designed as a response to risk averse “social media policies”, which have the effect of further distancing the individual and individual thought from host institutions.

Read. 

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How to copy images to Google Nexus 7

Showing the drag and drop between 2 folders

To copy images from your computer to the nexus 7 you need to drag and drop the photos from your computer across to the photos folder on the tablet.

Notice I said DRAG, it won’t allow you to copy and paste, hopefully this gets fixed as it is annoying!

If you are using a Mac, first you need to install Android File Transfer which will automatically pop up when connected to the tablet.

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The new HLF policy

The Heritage Lottery Fund has just announced new policy and requirements for projects from July 2012.

IT Services R&D /ILRT including myself had a hand in producing the new requirements and it is great to see positive feedback on this move to allow digital only projects with the HLF. We quietly worked on the guidance and delivered a series of workshops around the UK to HLF staff. Something that I am really proud of is that all projects will be using Creative Commons Licensing which we hope will enable new uses and help prove better value for use of public money.

 

 

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The research behaviour of Generation Y doctoral students

JISC have released the results of a 3 year study into my generation (Y) research studying behaviour.

Our research findings reveal:

  • Doctoral students are increasingly reliant on secondary research resources (eg journal articles, books), moving away from primary materials (eg primary archival material and large datasets).
  • Access to relevant resources is a major constraint for doctoral students’ progress. Authentication access and licence limitations to subscription-based resources, such as e-journals, are particularly problematic.
  • Open access and copyright appear to be a source of confusion for Generation Y doctoral students, rather than encouraging innovation and collaborative research.
  • This generation of doctoral students operate in an environment where their research behaviour does not use the full potential of innovative technology.
  • Doctoral students are insufficiently trained or informed to be able to fully embrace the latest opportunities in the digital information environment.

These findings raise important questions about research development, training and support within research led organisations and the openness and sharing of research.

I say WHY are things the way they are.

Read the study.