TRACTION PROJECT
(EUROPEAN COMMISSION
HORIZON 2020 Grant)
My work in the Traction project has been to develop technology to support community opera co-creation, bringing opera from the elite to the public as a path for social and cultural inclusion. As part of the project, I conceptualised and designed the Co-creation Space, that supports conversation dynamics around media in remote participatory art, and tested the dynamics of the system in two open pilots. I also worked on designing a Social VR lobby for opera performances, and on the Co-creation Stage, that connects communities and individuals in real-time, allowing multiple co-located stages and participants to perform together.
StreamBED VR:
Training Citizen Scientists to Judge Stream Habitats
My dissertation research trained citizen scientists to make qualitative assessments of outdoor stream habitats in multisensory VR. To do this, I conceptualised and designed the StreamBED VR system. I tested the value of the tool for learning qualitative assessment skills together with a multisensory VR training platform called the Ambient Holodeck.
The Ambient Holdeck Multisensory System
To support the StreamBED VR project, I designed the Ambient Holodeck, replicating environmental conditions of two stream habitats. We use this system to compare how learners make observations and infer patterns, with and without sensory cues. This work considers the effect of overlaying videos of outdoor habitats with ambient sensory stimuli (smell, heat, humidity, wind) on the level of detail with which participants make landscape observations.
Defining Audience Interactivity for Entertainment Domains
The concept of audience interactivity has been rediscovered across many domains of storytelling and entertainment—e.g. digital games, in-person role-playing, film, theater performance, music, and theme parks— that enrich the form with new idioms, language, and practices. The goal of this work was to support designers working in transmedia experiences by establishing a common vocabulary for the design space across entertainment domains.
This work won a best paper award at the International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling (ICIDS).
Use design process documents from an Audience participation for Twitch course, we developed a design space map for live-streaming spaces, around three framing concepts: Agency, Pacing, and Community. The map is for designers and students to compare existing interactive experiences, or to help designers as they create new experiences.
The full map can be found here.