Narrative Architectures: Bodies, Spaces, Technologies in Contemporary Media Experience (original) (raw)

RealityMedia: immersive technology and narrative space

Frontiers in Virtual Reality

In this paper, we treat VR as a new writing space in the long tradition of inscription. Constructing Virtual Reality (VR) narratives can then be understood as a process of inscribing text in space, and consuming them as a process of “reading” the space. Our research objective is to explore the meaning-making process afforded by spatial narratives—to test whether VR facilitates traditional ways of weaving complex, multiple narrative strands and provides new opportunities for leveraging space. We argue that, as opposed to the linear space of a printed book, a VR narrative space is similar to the physical space of a museum and can be analyzed on three distinct levels: (1) the architecture of the space itself, (2) the collection, and (3) the individual artifacts. To provide a deeper context for designing VR narratives, we designed and implemented a testbed called RealityMedia to explore digital remediations of traditional narrative devices and the spatial, immersive, and interactive aff...

Structures of Experience: Media, Phenomenology, Architecture

Conditions of Mediation: Phenomenological Perspectives on Media, 2017

This chapter in the collection Conditions of Mediation: Phenomenological Perspectives on Media charts a link between architectural thought and current developments in urban public media by examining an often overlooked current of design theory - architectural phenomenology. A precedent to postmodern and poststructuralist practice, the philosophy of phenomenology was a particularly significant influence on the architectural discourse of the 1960s and 70s. Key figures, such as Jean Labatut, Christian Norberg-Schulz and Kenneth Frampton, are linked by their conviction that architecture’s fundamental concern is the creation of a historically situated “place” for being and that the social “meaning” of buildings must be accessed directly through bodily and sensory experience. The chapter begins by introducing some of the many architects and ideas that make up the genealogy of architectural phenomenology. It then discusses what such a perspective might contribute to a contemporary consideration of mediated urban space, and also what limitations or challenges this viewpoint might face. Finally, the chapter briefly considers the application of these ideas in the context of a specific media/architecture environment, United Visual Artists’s Momentum project, which was installed at The Curve gallery in London’s Barbican Centre in 2014.

Reading the Body: Interpreting Three Dimensional Media as Narrative

This chapter argues that virtual online worlds are sites for the realization of narrative, in a form of reading that is posthuman and performative. The in-world avatar is the embodiment of an interpreting agent in the virtual world. Such devices accomplish a number of functions in terms of narrative realisation. The avatar contributes to the realisation of narrative through the navigation of the spatial attributes, the setting up of perspective in terms of Point of View (POV) in the reading, and as a character agent in the narrative architecture of the virtual world. Such characteristics are in the cybernetic relationship between the virtual world as a text, and the responses that can be made to it in reception. Architecture becomes the grammar of reading in the virtual world, with design and code, copyright and address directing narrative. The body of the avatar and the body of the person operating it are joined across the spaces of the digital and the physical in the navigation of the virtual three-dimensional.

Spatial Storytelling: Finding Interdisciplinary Immersion

Interactive Storytelling, 2018

In view of the growing interest in narratives and narratology with regards to virtual reality products and game design, this paper recognizes interactive digital storytelling as a vibrant immersive media example that carries the potential to address, and shape up a cohesive framework, on the concepts of immersion. In this paper, we will focus on Spatial Storytelling to examine the narrative technique in conjunction with Spatial Presence, a commonly accepted subtype of Presence. How our real-life occupation is a constant narrative making exercise and how storytelling is ingrained in our movement in space. It is argued here that immersion and presence models stand to benefit from spatial theory, in particular, the body of work surrounding spatial practices and narratives. Further, that the incorporation of spatial theory adds to the necessary versatility required in approaching immersion, which has been thus far dominated by positivist empiricism reducing it to a system property alone. This paper looks at our situated condition to build on Interactive digital narratives, as a novel immersive media requiring interdisciplinary research in order to fully understand immersion .

Framing the Media Architectural Body

2012

This paper develops an argument about transformations in the experience of the urban as a consequence of the rise in, so called, augmented public space. Contemporary media spaces of which media architecture now plays center stage. The argument is this: that through artistic and creative interventions that deploy these technologies and the spaces that they are embedded within can have a direct impact on issues such as the mediation of place and locality; the central role of the body as a frame in contemporary media spaces; renegotiating distinctions between the virtual and real. Central to this argument is the idea that the ‘site specific’ nature of these environments is such that, rather than ‘participants’ being displaced from their physical surroundings, as is so often implicit in discussions of the consumption of media technologies in urban space, media architecture and associated technologies, can in fact be seen to embed ‘participants’ even further into their locality and produce an enhanced sense of place.

The Dark Ride : The Translation of Cinema into Spatial Experience

Abstract This research examines the translation of the visual language of cinema into a spatial experience. An investigation into early moving images reveals the role that amusement parks played in exploring narratives using architectural spaces. This exegesis will address the history of entertainments, in particular the ‘dark ride’, which have an emphasis on narrative over and above effect. The practice-based research explores how the iconography and atmospheric qualities associated with cinema can turn into mediated spatial experiences. Through studio investigation, virtual models are built from filmic set pieces; they are adapted, collaged and redistributed into physical installations which offer an original experience of the cinematic scene. Experiments in early cinematic presentation are key to the new media discourse in which this research and studio practice finds its context. Contemporary installation artists such as Gary Hill and Paul McCarthy will be discussed with reference to the history of immersive spaces, from early cinema to amusement parks, especially with regard to their finding new approaches to the medium and using it to examine critical issues in society. To aid studio development and give unique insight; extensive field research was undertaken at historical sites across the east coast of the USA. Over twenty key popular entertainments were experienced first-hand, from Coney Island’s legendary ‘Spookarama’, to the earliest dark ride in operation, ‘The Old Mill’ at Kennywood in Pittsburgh. The research culminates in a final studio work designed for examination: ‘Terrorium’, a hybrid multi-screen piece, which is complemented by documentation of assorted works exhibited throughout the research program. Outcomes of the project demonstrate a range of approaches to spatial storytelling using digital media as well as an investigation of the aesthetics of these early thematic entertainments.

“Vision and Virtuality: The Construction of Narrative Space in Film and Computer Games.”

Screenplay: Cinema/Videogames/Interfaces, 2002

In opening sequences of Tron (1982), Flynn, a computer specialist, works under the watchful ‘eye’, a laser-optic apparatus, of the master-computer. In a moment of rebellion, the computer, through the electronic eye, transports Flynn into a virtual world created by the computer programme. It is also at this point that special effects dominate the film as the spectator is treated to a spectacle of special effects. The sequence of events where the characters fight for their lives to survive in this fantastic but brutal virtual world becomes then the main narrative sequence of the film. The game becomes a film and the film becomes a game in an inter-affective exchange. Enthused by the example of Tron, this paper will explore the concepts of spatiality and perspective in cinema and 3D computer games, and consider the intimate inter-affectivity of these two genres with relation to space and vision. It will specifically challenge the common understanding of cinematographic viewpoint as a “fourth wall” dividing the spectator (as passive viewer) from the action, and the usual deliberation of 3D computer games as an interactive ‘space’ created through the (inter)active involvement of the spectator and the resultant dissolution of the “fourth wall”. According to Stephen Heath, filmic narratives are weaved together through a stitchwork of sutures that requires the spectator’s participation. The combination of cinematographic techniques and editing requires the viewer to recognise these markers of spatial and narrative gaps (i.e.. camera movements and angles), and actively process them into a whole narrative experience. In 3D computer games, however, the sequence of simulated spatial movement is continuous, and the narrative sequence generally linear (e.g. current hits like Half-Life, Duke Nuke’m). This results in a reduction of the level of organisation and processing of narrative sequence. As such, this paper de liberates the notion of inter-activity in computer games by suggesting that such interactions are limited to the simulation of the immediately visual and aural.

Embodied virtual geographies: Linkages between bodies, spaces, and digital environments

Geography Compass, 2022

Within an ongoing debate about the relationships between the body and technological experiences within virtual reality (VR), there has hitherto been limited consideration of the spatial. Geographers, meanwhile, have only just begun to engage with VR and its spatialities but have paid less attention to its embodiment. The technology allows users to go beyond merely imagining themselves in a different world, creating a real sense of presence in the digital realm. Immersion and presence in VR are, however, a mix of space, embodiment and the digital. As such, any discussion of VR requires critical consideration of both embodiment and space. This paper therefore explores some of the linkages between bodies, spaces and VR to demonstrate how engagement with VR can enrich geographical scholarship.