Our research is going well but we still have more work to do! Following this week’s meeting with our instructors, the following points were emphasized in our research:
More examples
We’re adding more examples to our list, focusing on “what” and “how” (concrete descriptions of the experiences and the manner of interaction) rather than “why”. This should give us a common knowledge base of the work already out there that we can use in conversation with our instructors and project partners.
We’ve edited our wall mural to better organize conceptually the results of our search. We still have an “less agency – more agency” spectrum, but vertically we also separate the works we find by categories.
- We find that with this method similar works are grouped together and works which give audience a particularly large amount of agency stand out.
- We also added tags for use of technology to help those projects stand out and help us take a look at where they are scattered.
- We are starting to notice interesting gaps where a particular medium hasn’t given guests much agency, or a particular point on the chart that doesn’t have an example of heavy use of technology.
- We need more examples to help potential gaps become clearer
New wall mural and key: x-axis – agency, y-axis – category; performance or game-like
Previous ETC projects
We’ve included relevant ETC past projects in our list. Projects that particularly interest us include:
In all cases there were interesting or demonstrative use of technology and the guests interacted in interesting ways. The amount of agency they grant to guests tend to vary and they place at very different locations on our charts.
Reaching out
We’ve begun to reach out to creators of live performances that particularly interest us to ask more questions. We keep track of our communications on a spreadsheet.
Taxonomy
The most valuable result of our early research would be a taxonomy (or quasi-scientific classification) of the works that we have encountered.
To start, we have come up with a working definition of the most important terms:
Agency – the capacity to influence the narrative
(Example usage: “The audience has (some) agency in the performance”)
Interactive – an experience that give guests either a sense of agency or actual agency
Immersive – an experience that surrounds guests and may allow them to participate but does not necessarily give them agency
Chart describing how we are currently measuring the amount of agency in a performance by the guests’ capacity to influence the narrative
Production
- We posted to our composition box to a Playtest to Explore workshop to receive feedback from our peers at the ETC
Composition box for our project
- Quarters
- We’ve started our quarters slides, to be filled in next week. Our goal is to present our team’s taxonomy, research questions, and potentially prototype ideas to ETC’s faculty for feedback.
- Team dinner:
HungryTeam.gif
-Healthy & Tina