Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

‘Gulliver’s World’ is a Multi User Mixed Reality Environment that is part of the Ars Electronica Center Exhibition in Linz/Austria. In a public laboratory situation, the installation functions simultaneously as interactive edutainment platform as well as flexible infrastructure for the expansion of mixed reality environments via innovations in information and communication technology and media art. The installation is characterized by a nonlinear exhibition concept at the nexus of theater, digital film production and game development. At seven workstations, people of all age groups range along the reality-virtuality continuum while collaboratively creating 3D-worlds. As research project, ‘Gulliver’s World’ features multilevel infrastructure with exemplary content: The latest insights and models to emerge from HCI research, concepts of mixed reality and virtual environments and their supporting technology are brought together and developed further. They are assembled on a multimedial platform that enables scientific development to dovetail with an educational application that is demonstrated in this paper.

In this paper we present an approach that examines if storytelling techniques can be used to relate navigation instructions and if such a presentation improves retention of instructions. We describe the concept of a system to present geographical information as a sequence of story elements; present an initial prototype and the design of an experiment to evaluate this approach.

The recent past has seen a proliferation in the amount of digital video content being created and consumed. This is perhaps being driven by the increase in audiovisual quality, as well as the ease with which production, reproduction and consumption is now possible. The widespread use of digital video, as opposed its analogue counterpart, has opened up a plethora of previously impossible applications. This paper builds upon previous work that analysed digital video, namely movies, in order to facilitate presentation in an easily navigable manner. A film browsing interface, termed the MovieBrowser, is described, which allows users to easily locate specific portions of movies, as well as to obtain an understanding of the filming being perused. A number of experiments which assess the system’s performance are also presented.

The Eastern edge of Nottingham (UK) city centre is undergoing substantial restructuring, which will have a major impact on the people living in the area. Future Garden is an interactive story, delivered on a handheld PDA device, which explores the past, present and possible futures of Sneinton Market, one part of the area to be re-developed. This paper introduces Future Garden including its novel navigation interface based on video and self-reporting and some early results of the still ongoing evaluation.

Today’s popular presentations of immersive digital narrative experiences commonly utilise wide screens or forms of panoramic projections to display visually realistic content. The shift of focus to other media forms that includes non-realistic and aesthetic expression using audio and small displays is a challenging step. This paper describes an interactive narrative content and design approach that explores small displays and wide perceptual audio projections to achieve an immersive experience. A mixed media content known as Autophobia was implemented as a proof of concept. Autophobia uniquely presents film, radio, and photomontage to achieve an alternate reality experience.

The authoring and the design of immersive, non-linear plots remains one of the main challenges in interactive digital storytelling. This paper introduces the concept of , which combines the potential of complex (non-)linear narratives (e.g. books and radio plays) with interactive elements from computer games. The design concentrates on a flexible degree of interaction, in a way that the listener’s experience ranges between a passive listening to an interactive audio-only computer game. In this paper we discuss the story-engine used in interactive audiobooks, as well as present an authoring framework along several design guidelines to create them. Finally, we demonstrate the capabilities of our system with an adaptation of a short story from Edgar Allen Poe.

“CitizenTalk”, an applied research project at FH Erfurt, investigates the potential and challenges of interactive communication using chatbots as an innovative tool for involving citizens in public planning processes. This comprises research into the state of the art in virtual planning communication, as well as the technical possibilities of chatbot communication. We present the opportunities and limitations associated with the adoption of chatbot concepts and show future prospects offered by storytelling mechanisms. An authoring tool is presented together with a new scheme to control the communication process better than current chatbot technologies and approaches allow.