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Listening to Passengers, Listening to Stories: Interactive Storytelling Workshop
No full textIn metropolitan life, public transportation is essential to the everyday commute of people. Although they manifest important aspects of our culture, they also sometimes present issues of conflict by the violation of personal space, privacy, and other harmful and abusive behavior. This workshop aims to increase awareness of these conflicts and abusive behaviors in public transportation especially from the eyes of the victims. Transportation creates an impact on our daily roles, public persona, and social identity. This project aims to expose these issues by the contemporary critique of the cultural norms shaped by compulsory encounters happening in urban transportation. The project traces the ways that the participants, as passengers, would survive in such an oppressive cultural context. In doing so, we aim to ask the questions of how can one body turn invisible in such a physically limiting and politically controlling, gaze-centered space?
In this workshop, participants are given a story that takes place in public transportation with the circumstance of being in a threatening zone. While they are being told of how the story begins, it is up to them to decide how such conflict is, or can be, resolved given their imagined narrative construction. In this dialogical exchange of stories, participants are also welcomed to tell their personal stories regarding a trip in public transportation. After the participants share their stories, they are motivated to produce tactics and strategies to cope with what they have encountered in their experiences. The participants will practice listening to each other’s stories that stayed hidden or ignored by the public.
Listening as act of response-ability
No full textThe central question of reverberating interferences – explorations into thingness, a recent performative research project, pertains to listening. Asking "How do things speak?" inspired investigation into what constitutes a thing, revealing potential imbalances arising from western metaphysics\u27 denial of other matters\u27 agency. Karen Barad\u27s term of intra-action, which depicts a physicist-materialist interpretation of entanglement, is used to investigate this distortion theoretically and open up the question, “how can we listen?”
Based on the conceptual framework of motion, the project\u27s methodological focus was on the patterns of movement and countermovement created by human and animal bodies as intertwined indeterminacy (Barad) and the uncertainty of change (Rose). The aim of amplifying these ongoing interference reverberations before they become sedimentary and ingrained in planetary memory was to raise awareness that these interferences are manifestations of human and non-human planetary others, which include all mattering forms. Considering these \u27noises\u27 as an opaque, if not insignificant, voicing implies that what western modernity\u27s metaphysics has declared non-belonging and irrelevant nevertheless matters in its warped and diverted forms. Movement-based intra-actions (Barad) are thus launched as audible noise, amplified via digital sensory devices as audible acoustic signals of resonant interferences.
The project attempts to address a critical problematic in knowledge production intending to shift from a one one-world view (Law) towards a pluriversal approach. Emphasizing new materialism’s notion of situatedness establishes an opacity in which the researchers (performers) must confront their inability to classify ‘things’ outside of their educational epistemic realm. The flattening of de- and inhuMan categorizations (Wynter, 2015; Singh, 2018) necessitates a strategy to engage with other knowledges without appropriating them through \u27our\u27 inherited way of thinking. By considering critical positionality (Robinson), the notion of noise became an experimental indicator of the unknown or ignored. Noise increases the variability of information in information theory, with both extremes of too much or too little indicating a shift in the system’s exchange towards overload or flat sameness (Thompson, 2020; Malaspina, 2012).
Inquiring as to how to facilitate a system\u27s (ex)change with and towards the disregarded, suppressed, or simply denied, I wonder if allowing noise can enable a more balanced interaction with other matter and its knowings
Listening to Radiation: Interactive Media and Celebratory Control at Fukushima Commutan Center
No full textHow does interactive media articulate what is fundamentally beyond human sensory capacity? The paper asks this in the context of Fukushima and radiation. Interactive informational media might itself hint at the answer given they run at speeds beyond human perception while nonetheless interfacing and therefore conditioning that perception apparatus. Thus, while much has been said about radiation and “silence,” this paper refuses that discursive regime, instead analyzing radiation through what Brinkema calls “the regime of near inaudibility,” a discurso-pragmatic approach to intensive relations, rather than a commitment to “being or not being.” That is, as an object restricted from immediate knowledge, radiation nonetheless becomes embodied knowledge as its existence and effects are navigated as a social force. To that end, the paper, based on field work, analyzes the way the Fukushima Commutan Center, a state-sponsored center sharing information about radiation and recovery, utilizes interactive media to produce particular embodied knowledges of radiation. I offer two examples: first, an interactive game in which children’s bodies are projected onto a screen to stop oncoming “radiation” with “blockers” (representing radiation-resistant material) mapped to their hand; and second, a spherical theatre dome covered entirely by screens and fit with surrounding speakers in which visitors stand suspended on a bridge, turning to watch the moving multi-directional video focal point. In each case, the media intend to communicate “radiation information”—the former case, “radiation protection is possible,” and the latter, “Fukushima has recovered despite radiation.” And yet, there is also, as Cecchetto puts it, an incommunicative aspect of these medias, an aesthetic, a structuring of the sensible that subtends the informational intent. This structuring, it is argued, encounters a context in visitors/users that has the potential to provoke a vaguely felt stress, anxiety, even trauma. This context irrupts in painful and fearful sensations in the otherwise celebratory media. What appears affirmative interactive media, then, manifest as a form of control conditioning the embodiment of radiation that serves the capital-nation-state. In other words, the social contract to live among radiation functions through an affective aporia where citizens are hailed to feel comfortable in that which makes them uncomfortable: the knowledge of radiation.
Rather than strictly an analysis of the content of the game or dome video, the paper forwards listening to ask how formal relations in the techno-movements constitute the paradoxical (non)lived reality of radiation. How is listening, then, not a form of attention, but a form of attunement in which a resonant logic is taken up between intra-acting subject/object? This demands another question: is attunement not then also implicated in capitalism’s interactive techno-logics. Listening must be attuned to its own reality as an attunement machine for the hope of investing in the world otherwise
But Do They Care? The Effectiveness of Interactive Storytelling
No full textThis paper considers the effectiveness of evolving formats of image work (online interactive, augmented reality, virtual reality) to help audiences understand multiple points of view on contested topics. It is based in the oral histories of six female landscape photographers, all of who photograph the impacts of the controversial oil and gas extraction technology known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. All of the photographers consider themselves environmentalists and are concerned with the environmental effects of the process.
In this experiment, we produced identical stories about the photographers and their work across the three different platforms. We then conducted focus groups to determine if a specific platform helped audiences better develop an “ethic of care”: an ability to understand multiple perspectives about a topic. We argue experiential immersion offers potential for both scholars and image-base dstorytellers. Unlike the still image or archive-based oral history, interactive storytelling allows for audiences to direct how they will experience images and understand complex issues in a tactile platform
Special Issue IFM2022 Conference Presentations: Presentation
No full textThe 4th Interactive Film and Media Virtual Conference reunites academics (faculty, researchers, and Ph.D. students) and practitioners (filmmakers, artists, VR and game designers, and media producers) to explore the definitions, terms, and practices to frame the conditions of interaction and interactivity in three strands: epistemology, listening, and ecomedia.
What are the interactive film and media epistemological contributions to contemporary art and media fields? How do/might interactive technologies, practices, experiences invite, or indeed, demand revised modes of listening? How might taking seriously the work of listening (as a form of attending to) open onto more generous ways of knowing, practicing, and being in an era of socio-ecological crisis?
This special issue features all the video presentations of the IV Interactive Film & Media Virtual Conference from June 8 to 10, 2022.
Iterative Loops: Approaching Digital Media with a Research-Creation Mindset
No full textThis scholarly essay is about research-creation in interactive, immersive and digital non-fiction storytelling. It seeks to shed light and update this research approach and to identify ways in which it can be rendered more accessible to both practitioners and researchers.
The essay revisits two recent factual narratives—the web-documentary Field Trip (2019) and VR experience Myriad (2021), projects in which the authors were directly involved as practitioners. Then, it positions these two digital practices in the body of literature on media innovations before qualifying them as interactive and immersive documentaries (i-docs).
Field Trip is a browser-based 92-minute documentary taking a deep dive into the history and social struggles around the Tempelhof Field, Berlin’s former airport turned public park. Myriad is a 32-minute immersive VR experience narrated from the perspective of globally migrating animals, sensitizing the audience to the interplay and interrelationship of all life forms.
The authors explain how these projects have, in their separate and singular ways, opened spaces for iterative loops between creative practice and theory. Field Trip exemplifies how triangulation can be applied to creative media practice. This method, albeit a relatively classic in research, continues to be a challenge for practitioners. The case of Myriad, in turn, discusses two additional methods: core to audience and interdisciplinary iteration in experimental aesthetics. While these two methods in format development and artistic enquiry might sound familiar to practitioners, they are promising for closing some gaps in academic research design.
The two case studies speak to the diversity of research-creation approaches, methods and formats while illustrating how research-creation, as a research mindset, can facilitate the output of two things at once: a more ‘educated’ artistic expression and more grounded academic knowledge.
The essay further identifies the need to systematize and offer continuous support to researchers-creators. It argues that this fits the mandate of higher education art and design schools, which should be understood as research-creation competence centers.
The paper ends with five learnings meant to encourage digital media practitioners to develop an enquiry reflex and media scholars to “get their hands dirty” in partaking in innovative, creative media projects
DE\GLOBALIZE : Matters of Violence - Epistemic Violence and Knowledge Production in Interactive Media
No full text»Everywhere in the world where knowledge is suppressed - knowledge that, if it became conscious, would shock our view of the world and question ourselves - everywhere there the heart of darkness is taking place. What is missing is the courage to understand what we know and to draw the consequences from it.«
Sven Lindqvist
The artistic research cycle DE\GLOBALIZE is a media ecological search movement for the terrestrial. After examining matters of fact in India (2014-18), matters of concern in Egypt (2016-2019) and matters of care in the Upper Rhine (2018-22), the focus turns toward matters of violence in the Congo (2022). From matter to mater, mother-earth, the garden to exploitation. From science, water and climate to migration, oppression and extermination.
The long-term research is accessible through interactive web documentation. The platform serves as a continuous media-archaeological archive for a speculative ethnography. The relational structure of the videographic essay is enabling the forensic processing of single documents in the sense of the actor-network theory.
The subject of the presentation at IFM is a field trip to the Congo planned for March 2022, which will focus on the ambivalence of violence and care in collaboration with local artists. The field trip is based on the postcolonial reflection luderitzcargo by the author from 1996, in which a freight container was transformed into a translocal cinema in Namibia.
Through the journey to Congo, a group of media artists, a psychotherapist, a theater dramaturg, a filmmaker and a philosopher intend to explore the political, technological and psycho-geographic borders. By artistic interventions with locals, we want to interfere with relational string figures as part of the new Earth Politics. They are focusing on the displaced consumption of resources which are hard-fought and guarantee prosperity in the global north. The so-called ghost acreages are repressed and justified as part of a civilizational mission. With this trip, we want to confront our self-lies with the ones of our hosts. We want to confront ourselves with the foreign, the dark and the displaced ghosts within ourselves. In the presentation at the #IFM2022 Conference, the platform DE\GLOBALIZE will be problematized itself as an example of epistemic violence for the ethnographic memory of (Western) knowledge.
We are not the missionaries but the perplexed travellers. In our search movement, we are dealing with psychoanalysis, video, performance and trance. As disoriented white men we try the reversal of Black Skin and White Mask by Franz Fanon without blackfacing. We will not only care about the sensitivity of our skin but that of our g/hosts and the one of mother earth
Reconfiguring Archives in Interactive Documentaries: From Interactive and Intermedial Experiences to Networked Archival Imaginaries
No full textBesides presenting a creative account of reality as a digital format, the interactive documentary plays with the interconnectedness of intermediality by assembling various audio and visual sensory modalities, including moving images, photography, illustration, animation, text, and sound (Whitelaw 2002; Aston and Gaudenzi 2012; Nash 2021). Following this train of thought, using archival footage may open creative possibilities, as it entails repurposing historical, institutional, or personal audiovisual materials into new narratives. Several authors (Russel 1999; Bruzzi 2006; Haggith 2012; Baron 2014) have significantly contributed to the critical reflection on the use of archives within traditional documentary forms, considering the historical, creative, and ethical layers of such content manipulation. On the other hand, archives in interactive documentaries still require more critical analysis, as archival footage drifts from its indexical nature (Haggith 2012) through decontextualization or repurposing, affecting the textuality of the interactive narrative.
This paper aims to merge these two territories and analyze how archival footage contributes to an epistemological account of reality in interactive documentaries. Drawing upon De Jong’s (2012) taxonomy to classify how archives are used in traditional documentaries, we analyze how two interactive documentaries - Welcome to Pine Point (Simmons and Shoebridge 2011) and A Short History of the Highrise (Cizek 2013) - reuse and repurpose analogue archives, while interplay these archival materials with other multimedia formats. Departing from the traditional formats of documentary film, De Jong identifies the following uses of archive footage: i) the archive as an illustration (a visual reference and indexical clue); ii) as a historical backdrop (a historical framework and context for the narrative); iii) a metaphorical tool (to produce subjective layers of meaning or create critical or ironic tones); iv) a narrative resource (to create a new dramatic narrative); v) and the archive as legal evidence (an indexical link to past events, referring to legal circumstances). De Jong’s taxonomy provides a methodological framework for the development of this study, which also aims to analyze the documentaries through the concept of “archive-image” (Didi-Huberman 2008); i. e., how archives are used in interactive documentaries and the meaning deriving from how such footage is placed within the navigation structure of the interface, contributing to the multimodal narrative.
We argue that interactive documentary provides a territory of engagement and continuous momentum to revive the past by using the archive as historical validation and a shared collective memory space while reimagining new readings and engendering multiple archival imaginaries
COVID-19 Health Literacy Scale Development
No full textObjective: The purpose of this study was to develop a COVID-19 Health Literacy (HL) scale. Material and Methods: Data were obtained from three samples of medical students (n=628) having different demographic characteristics in different regions of Turkey. A pilot study was conducted to assess language validity. Several psychometric tests were conducted to assess the tools’ reliability and validity. Results: A .963 Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) value was obtained, in addition to a 72.26% variance score. The scale also demonstrated reliability values (internal consistency; α=.94). Two dimensions consisting of 20 items were identified to represent and the COVID-19 HL. Conclusion: The COVID-19 HL scale demonstrated robust psychometric properties. It was also deemed to be reliable and valid in assessing health literacy of COVID-19 among the medical students and will also be useful in increasing COVID-19 awareness among individuals
Transition to online education in Sri Lanka during COVID-19: A descriptive phenomenological study
No full textThe novel coronavirus (COVID-19) that originated in China was declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization in March 2020. To limit the spread of the disease, the Sri Lankan government announced the closure of all educational institutes. The school closure encouraged the use of home-based learning, and this transition was a critical period for both teachers and students. Because most Sri Lankan children reside in rural areas, our study examined how teachers in rural schools experienced the lockdown in relation to their teaching role during the pandemic. We used a descriptive phenomenological study design with purposive sampling until we achieved the saturation point. In-depth interviews were conducted via the Zoom platform, using a validated guideline that was piloted before the study and analyzed based on the thematic analysis approach. We identified five major themes: (1) adjustment to the online teaching/learning process; (2) experience of challenges; (3) experience of new opportunities; (4) impact of parental involvement; and (5) impact of teachers’ and children’s physical, psycho-social well-being. The study identified lack of access to technology and lack of proper guidance from the family as challenges during home-based learning. Parental involvement during teaching sessions decreased teachers’ autonomy. Inadequate and inaccurate evaluation of the students disrupts the learning process. Teachers perceived that children’s distance from classroom learning and their peer groups will affect the children’s development.