| dc.description.abstract | During the 1980s and the early 1990s, a considerable number of technology and application
trends were concerned with location transparency and virtual spaces, overcoming the
limitations of the physical space. Artists and technologists imagination was stimulated by the
potential and the possibilities of Networked, Online, Virtual Reality (VR) technologies
developed around ideas of connecting people and sharing information, beyond the restraints
of their physical locations. Through the World Wide Web, information was made available to
people regardless of their physical location. VR technologies and simulations were used to
create immersive experiences for people to move around computer-generated spaces such as
3D museums or archaeological sites reproductions, making the real space were the people
were actually based, transparent.
The last half of the 1990s and the first years of the succeeding decade has seen a different
trend in technology: the development and popular uptake of mobile media and wireless
networks technologies. Mobile technologies such as phones and handheld computers
distinguish themselves from their predecessors by their ability to deliver and extract data
from the physical space at different times and locations. The increasing popularity of these
technologies brings to the foreground the importance of physical space. Real space combined
with mobile, wireless, location-aware technology becomes a primary platform for mobile
media applications. Because of the difference in the use of space between mobile
technologies and their static predecessors, new design principles are defining the poetic and
the potential for cultural and narrative augmentation of space. This thesis contributes to the
exploration of mobile media identifying a specific kind of applications: Location Aware
Multimedia Stories (LAMS) and outlining aesthetic principles and guidelines for mobile
narrative production end evaluation.
Narrative is a structure of the human mind for organizing events in time and space. It goes
back millennia and it has used different media across times and cultures. In contrast with
stories delivered through linear media, such as books or films, often, in interactive narratives
the story experience progresses through the readers’ choices, and the immersive paradigm is
disrupted. In fact, the moment in which a choice is made is also a moment, in which the audience
interrupts their suspension of disbelief and makes their choices as external
observers. For those narrative experiences that require constant immersion as a necessary
characteristic of the engagement of the reader with the interactive the story, the experience
can be weakened by the switch between the immersive state and the awareness of process.
The approach to interactive narrative described in this thesis is intended to alleviate this
problem. LAMS foster the audience’s active engagement in the story by letting them
physically explore the real space in order to progress the narrative experience. The audience’s
active exploration of the story world will provide them with a sense of agency without
disrupting the immersive feeling. The resonance between the narrated events and the real
place, created by overlapping the real world with the story space, reduces the dichotomy
between immersive and interactive experiences.
Furthermore, beyond its architectural layout, a place is a complex space, made of colors,
smells, temperature, sounds as well as history, personal and shared memories and anecdotes.
The work described in the thesis is based on the idea that access to memories and stories
relating to a place can be used to transform and complete our perception of it, enhancing the
poetic potential of the place and enriching the experience of the person traversing it. The
story’s emotional impact is tied to the real place surrounding the viewer. The place is merged
with the story in the audience’s mind. Furthermore LAMS can also function as memories
catalysts providing an incentive for people to retrieve memories and stories that relate to the
place where the experience is set. To achieve this result, we identify and focus on a particular
branch of locative media: Location-Aware Multimedia Stories (LAMS), where the place, its
stories and the people that use the space are central to the investigation. The spatial
distribution of the story in the relevant locations is considered a design element and
expressive tool for the author. Two LAMS systems were produced and analysed to identify a
set of guidelines for the design of LAMS. One system, the Hopstory narrative, investigates
how buildings can be used as containers of stories. A multiple point of view narrative
structure unfolds through the audience’s exploration of an enclosed architectural space. The
audience maintains engagement and immersion in the narrative through the exploration of the
real space, merging it with the story experience. The other system, the Media Portrait of the
Liberties (MPL), captures local community anecdotes and memories in the form of
multimedia fragments and redistributes them through the real space of the neighbourhood. Local
residents and more transient visitors, roam the neighbourhood streets and access stories
and memories of the place. A user study was specifically researched, designed and conducted
to examine the audience reactions to the location-aware narrative. The study shows that, as a
result of the experience, locals feel stimulated to recall anecdotes, engage in storytelling
activity among themselves as well as with people not familiar with the area. People external
to the local community, engage in a treasure hunt for stories through the physical exploration
of the area and end up with a deeper awareness of space perceived as a place. The findings
resulting from the detailed MPL evaluation are described in details in the discussion chapter.
From the discussion, a set of design principles for authors of Location-Aware Multimedia
Stories is distilled. These principles form the main contribution of this thesis to the field of
Location-Aware Multimedia Stories. | |
