Imagine a pair of reading glasses that allow you to read more immersively, more critically, more to your liking. Imagine an augmented reality experience that allows you to keep the best part of reading the newspaper: the smell of newsprint, the flop of the page in your hands, the neat columns and sections that help you focus on one facet of life at a time.

Combine the two together and you have an augmented reality experience that allows you to keep all the best parts of reading the paper while harnessing the power of the internet.

design process 

I took care to notate our design process. It’s not everyday that we develop (hack together!) an un-tethered virtual reality experience and then work backwards to consider the possible applications of the device. While I can’t diagram out a particular iterative process, I can say that three different processes added three different types of insight in the process. Making technical prototypes helped us understand the affordances and limitations of VR, the Leap Motion, and the processing capabilities of Unity running on Android. From these affordances and limitations, we were able to draw out a core mechanic for our interaction designs. Considering real world uses for the tool helped us identify activities with rubrics for use that align with the core mechanics and draw attention to real world problem spaces. Considering imagined worlds, whether through game design or design fiction, helped us understand what design features were successful or unsuccessful and imagine future uses.

After building two technical demos, we sat down and talked about what we learned. We expanded our discussion to consider using the video feed from the phone and building an AR experience. We listed the affordances of limitations of AR and gesture recognition and came to the conclusion that the core mechanic we wanted to pursue was concealing/revealing. We then brainstormed real world scenarios that might include concealing/revealing. I used those brainstorms to quickly and indiscriminately write some design fiction-inspired use-scenarios. You can read the scenarios and more about the brainstorming process here.

The scenarios I wrote were predictable, stereotyped, shallow and sometimes even preachy. But the objective wasn’t to be clever or even imaginative, it was to riff off a brainstorm and mine our mundane visions of the future. By pushing myself to come up with some use scenario for each item that we brainstormed, I was able to look across the scenarios and pull out what was necessary for a successful use-scenario:

Guidelines distilled from design fiction scenarios:

1. The scenario must feature one object.
2. The object and its use must have subtext or a backstory.
3. There must be an established gestural vocabulary and rubric for using the object.
4. You must be able to interact with the object close to your body, in the space immediately in front of your head and chest.
5. The interaction must be constrained to the rules of the physical world.

Based off of these guidelines, we brainstormed a number of interactions from taking a toaster apart, to caring for a pet, to examining a patient. I broke down each interaction according to the features above.

Considering the core mechanic: concealing and revealing, and the above criteria, we landed on reading the newspaper. Investigative journalism is all about uncovering the truth, yet the news is veiled by subjectivism, bias, and sometimes outright deceit. The mechanic and the subtext of the object seemed to be in alignment.

I then began breaking down the gestural vocabulary of both newspaper reading and the Leap Motion:

matching gesture with mechanics:

Then thought about the paper itself, breaking down the interactions–starting with concealing and revealing–capable when interacting with a fully printed paper or when interacting with a completely blank paper:

Landing on three different models for the reading the news:

I then created some design fiction scenarios, including drafting fictional testimonials for a few of the a-news reading scenarios:

Paradigm 1: truth telling

The news represents the journalists’ best attempt at the TRUTH. The problem that this causes are 1) the sheer overwhelming affect of the truth 2) the truth is subjective. Leading us to…

The news comes to you redacted. When you put on the glasses and point to a redacted box, a warning menu pops up…

You could then choose to swipe off the redactions and read the text as it was written. Of course, you could designate your own personal tolerance settings before reading the paper…

Now let’s hear from one of our fine customers…

Full testimonial: “Every morning I sit at my desk with my cup of coffee and read the news. I survey the state of the union, so to speak, the state of the world, actually. There’s something about that that just, puts me in the right frame of mind to start my day. Reminds me of my place in the world. Why I’m doing all this in the first place. But the news today, it’s gotten so…lurid. So, colored…I mean, what are we doing about Syria? Just spell it out. Then there’s all this millennial-speak, the newest do-dad and such. If I hear the word millennial one more time, I think I’ll pull my hair out. Kids always think they’re the first one to do everything, to invent anything, to have a coherent thought. So I just block it out. All of this nonsense about standing in the streets, in the cold, with your little poster boards. You think you invented that? My generation, we perfected that, and what did it lead to? Death, death of all of those young men, the undermining of our military, of our whole society if you ask me. Read a history book. Oh, look at me, this is no way to start the day…no way at all.”

Paradigm 2: pandering

In this model, we think of the newspaper as a commercial product that panders to the views and values of its readership. If we think of the newspaper  this way…

…then we might think that in the future, all that we retain from the paper is its organizational structure. The paper itself becomes a generic associated press feed, organized into columns, by importance, date and theme. All of the interpretive power of the news is customized to the reader. For example, our advanced machine learning algorithms can translate the news into the language, style or vernacular of your pleasing:

If you can imagine translating the language of the newspaper, you might also translate the visual style of the paper. For example, you might translate both the linguistic and visual style of the paper to the era of your choice (Do you really belong in the ’80’s?).

Permutations of paradigms 1 & 2:

While you’re annotating the news, why not share those annotations with others? Start your own subscription channel, perhaps.

Local newspapers are closing down left and right. Maybe their value is not in reporting the news but in interpreting the news in ways that make sense to their local readership. The job of the writer is not to be the authority, to have the authorial voice, but in our (post-)postmodern understanding, the writer stands beside the reader as a guide in the interpretation of global and personal events. It’s up to the writer to convince the reader that he is a reliable guide because of the life experience, political, religious, or national allegiances, beliefs, points of view, and humanity he shares with the reader.

Let’s here a testimonial from one of the subscribers to our annotation subscription service:

Full testimonial here: “And I say, “down with the authorial voice!” You can pretend to be more important than the rest of us. You can pretend to be smarter, more worldly, more worthy. But we all know that you lucked into your position, just like the rest of us fell into ours. You’re just another guy, probably another white guy, probably from Harvard. I meet guys like you all the time.

And you, local newspapers, stop pretending like you’re doing more than wrapping up AP reports and press releases with exclamation points and sweeping generalizations. I know they’ve slashed you to the quick. I know it’s not your fault, but you gotta let go.

I’m an informed citizen. I read the news. In fact I read the news five or six times a day. Sometimes I read the same article five or six ways, just to try to figure out what’s really going on, you know, under the surface. I mean who doesn’t trust Ira Glass’s commentary, and I can just plug in the ear buds and listen to him explain shit to me anytime I want. Then there are articles that I just Russell Brand gonna go ape-shit on with some kooky video, dressed in his pajamas, and I just have to…I mean have to watch at least some of it. I follow serious stuff too. Rebecca Solnit and DeRay’s annotations are always on point. Maggie Atwood, or even Miranda July if I’m feeling a little whimsical. The point is staying informed is work, and I can’t just close my eyes and turn off my brain and assume that you know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

Paradigm 3: investigative reading

All of us are capable of reading and writing, all we lack is access to information. If you start with a blank newspaper, add an article or topic of your interest, you could  fill the pages yourself with your investigation.

Let’s hear from one of our investigative news readers:

Full testimonial: “You’ve noticed it right? A phrase that sticks out. It sounds official, like it’s always been there, but has “gentle loner” always been a category, a subsection of the sect: loners? Was my mortgage always “subprime”? Does Rick Warren “radicalize” his followers? When did the “war on Christmas” begin? And then there’s the idioms, the turns of phrase “the lipstick on the pigs” tucked away in the “lock boxes” of our minds–if you will. And we all know the coded language like “thug,” or “athletic”. I mean is it a “riot” or an “uprising”? Who makes those things up? Where’s the spin machine? I mean it’s not like it’s one news channel or the White House or a particular lobbying group. How can I read the news, I mean actively, critically, read the news, if I don’t know where this shit comes from? Who said it first? Who is the person or agency or machine? I don’t just mean your name. I mean, I want to read your Twitter stream. I want to know who pays your salary. What’s your record on this issue? All that information is out there, if you dig a little. I can fill this whole paper, the whole damn thing tracing one turn of phrase back to it’s origins, and then figuring out the origins of the origin. That’s how you learn, you know. Question what you read.”

In conclusion:

As you read through these, I’m sure that some stuck out more than others. Some of them make more use of AR and/or a gestural vocabulary than others. Some would be more successful that others if used with our system.

But none of them are intended to be built. They are intended only to be provocations. To be an imagined future that allows us to discuss and evaluate the direction of news, of reading, and of mixed reality. If there is one thing that we’ve learned over the course of the project is that the imagined world, the creative content itself, is a sort of discounted prototyping tool for the future. It is only intended to last as long as the experiment, and then the prototype is to be destroyed and forgotten.

I have never been in this situation. I’ve never had a piece of tech that I then tried to find and design a use for. My first thought was to riff off of something AR is already being used for: instruction. So, I bounced around the idea of making an experience that was a “critical how to.” In a previous blog I looked at some material from destructibles.org, some classics (how to pick a lock, The Anarchists Cookbook), some political propaganda, and some activist-oriented pieces.

Next, as a team, we had a brainstorming session. We started with the tech: AR and touch and tried to list the mechanics, affordances and limitations of those things as they stood. Ultimately, we were looking for the overlap between what AR is good for and what touch is good for. We both agreed that “to uncover” might be a good mechanic that might incorporate the hand and using the AR as a window to what lies beneath. This mechanic was potentially inline with the “critical how to” idea.

Top left: mechanics with AR; bottom left: mechanics and limitations of touch; mid: experience; right: connecting experience to life.

However, we wondered, if you are manipulating a virtual object overlaid on video feed of the real world, how necessary is the real world? Why wouldn’t it just be a virtual experience? How can we add interaction with the physical object and physical environment? It lead us down the path of thinking about a two-person experiences where one person uses the lenses to see a layer of reality hidden from the other person and must help the second person navigate the world. To help make the idea concrete we listed ways that this experience–when one world has an understanding of the world that other isn’t privy to–occurs naturally, in real life.

The next class session I expanded on our brainstorming. As an exercise, I tried to flesh out a possible use scenario for each category of experience we brainstormed. I typed quickly, paying little attention to detail or grammar. I also didn’t tie myself down to the limitations of our current technology (or any technology) instead I tried to let the story unfold and just “made up” the technical functions that I needed to keep the scenario moving. I also wasted no time trying to be original. I did not choose the best example from the category. I chose the most obvious, the most readily available in my mind. The point wasn’t to be brilliant, but just to find a direction.

Google Docs – via Iframely

After writing these out, as scattered as they were, it got me thinking about writing a series of short “plays” for VR/AR as design fiction. Not a “play,” per se, but still a script, a scenario, based on current technology but not being hampered by it. It might be an interesting way to get at the question posed earlier in the semester: “where is the subtext in VR?”

Then we talked with Larry. He was interested in the “man on the street” scenario. We watched Bjork explain television. We discussed the theatre involved in polling folks for their understanding of something like “the internet.” We also discussed using physical props to help someone explain the internet.

The most compelling part of the conversation for me was when he asked me if this was a useful methodology for me to pursue. The semester has been a difficult one for me research-wise as I try to define my area of study. I’ve been thinking a lot about methodology. I’ve been thinking about what it means to bring my humanistic background and expertise to system design. I am still an artist. In fact, my greatest strength as a scientist is that I am an artist. As a side project I’ve been developing movement/acting workshops as design probes–getting people up and moving and making together to reveal their values, expectations or mental models related to future technologies. The process is not so dissimilar to what I did on paper–hashing out scenarios not necessarily to design better things, but to understand what expectations and assumptions I have of the experience and/or technology. Time is running out in the semester, but maybe there’s the opportunity to pull some of these threads together.

What if…

We collected folks mental models of “going viral” or “twitter celebrity,” by piloting a movement/acting workshop that asks folks (folks in this case being people in class and those we can convince to come in) to create going viral in 3-d space and time. Then use the results of the workshop to suggest an AR experience that guides you through “going viral.” The workshop appeals to me over asking random people on campus 1) (IRB) 2) Any materials that I provide to explain the “going viral” will plant a metaphor in someone’s mind, 3) I’m, interested generally in using the body to express thoughts and feelings.

YouTube / Bloomberg Business – via Iframely

(This is less advanced, but you can see more of the interface:)

YouTube / Steven Henderson – via Iframely

…then, why not play the idea of an AR how-to that asks us to think about our world differently. Our set-up involves virtual touch. What does it mean to virtually touch something?

I am considering themes:

how to perform…

safety

resistance

respectability

tolerance

freedom (of speech)

In just the last week we’ve seen these performed with

football helmets, cameras, posters and sharpies, hand-holding, black clothing, poetry (Claudia Rankine’s “Citizen,”), not to mention horrible violence.

Thinking about how-to’s:

The Freedom Fighter's Manual (CIA pamphlet dropped over Nicaragua in 1983)

Make your own Newspaper Headlines

uniteyouthdublin.files.wordpress.com – via Iframely

capricorn.org – via Iframely

antenaantena.org – via Iframely

Then there are survival guides:

Pocket Survival Guide

Also thinking about James Pierce’s work on designing resistant interactions (having just seen his thesis presentation last week). And the instruction manual that accompanied the Obscura 1C Digital Camera:

jamesjpierce.com – via Iframely

We are playing with the manner in which the distortion of fluid affects projected imagery. We are in a phase of figuring out the technical mechanics. We are projecting through a bowl of water. The water is distorted through an attached speaker and sounds created in OF. We hope to eventually use this technology to approximate the feeling of forgotten memory.

These are the links to past work we are referencing

Finnbogi Petursson

Funnbogi Petursson 2

YouTube / Her Story Video Game – via Iframely

The game revolves around a police database filled with video footage of a woman being interviewed with regards to a murder. The entire mechanic revolves around watching one of these videos and piecing together what actually happened. Having watched a video new videos are unlocked which the guest can find by entering a particular key word into the search box. The database is actually quite large and its best to keep the key word as specific as possible.

Each video shows an interview the woman gives at a different time period. Each video shows a different side to the woman. But what is most amazing is how much an unreliable narrator the woman is, the story being told changes from video to video, it forces upon us a relationship to the woman we see. Her body language, her reactions, her truths and lies connect us in a peculiarly unemotional yet critical way to the woman in the footage; we bond with the moving, changing and constructed story rather than her herself.

The most interesting part though is that there is an invisible wall between us and the character. This wall is formed by the immersion we have into the interactive piece. The amount of information we learn is completely based upon our biases, our opinions and primarily how much we buy into the experience. The more we role play a detective, or a prosecutor, or a defense attorney, the more we learn. At the end of the day one can merely walk away with whatever they believe to be true, but at the same time there is a draw, a hook, a drive to know who actually murdered this woman’s husband.

Now, I know that this is not in and of itself a theatrical piece but to me it has many elements that are relatable to the ideas that are proposed in the Epic Theater as realized by Bertolt Brecht.

Brechtian theater states that the audience should not emotionally attach to the characters and story but should provoke self-reflection and a critical perspective. In many ways this story forces that upon us. If played with a bias towards whether or not the actress in question is innocent but is best played as a detective breaking down the interviews with an analytical approach and hunting down clues with a hunger for the truth.

Verfremdungseffekt is technique of alienating or creating a sense of detachment in the audience so as to ‘force’ them to be critical rather than emotional. In ‘Her Story’ everything is viewed through a terminal to the police database, the footage looks like that of an old camera. There are no questions heard or interrogator seen, all we see are the responses. Emotionally we are detached from the character we have nothing to form a relationship with her, instead we look for her objectives, we critic her narrative, we question her motives. We use waht we find from this inquiry to delve deeper into the narrative, literally by putting the word into a search box.

This is a highly analytical relationship which is very different from most games. Normally in a game that is story driven the narrative puts us in a position to want to help someone, the narrative and mechanics are all based upon an emotional connection we have to our surrounding cast, we are the hero or villain who is all powerful. Yet here we are nothing to this character, we are merely watching her in an awkward Alfred Hitchcock-esque method.

But the whole purpose of alienating the audience creating a distance between them and the theater is to showcase just as the theater which a representation of reality can be changeable so can reality be changeable. And here we are looking at a person who like ourselves is changing over time, her recollection like ours becomes hazier, stories get mixed up words get changed. In many ways it is as though we are in some vague third person way looking at recordings of our lives and the way that we have changed over time.

But here is what keeps me drawn to this ‘game’ such a viewpoint as stated above requires reflection after being immersed, whether emotionally or analytically. The more we contribute in terms of time effort interest the more we receive from the game, the more immersed we become, yet we continue to maintain emotional distance from the character and are connected with the overall experience and narrative without drive. At this point we are immersed in the game and the representation of reality but in some ways are detached from the actors and know that this is merely a representation, merely a game.

“On the one hand the spectator must become more distant, on the other he must lose any distance. On the one hand he must change the way he looks for a better way of loo king, on the other he must abandon the very position of the viewer.” – Jacques Ranciere.

While I may be pushing it in terms of co-relation as again this is not a theatrical production. I feel that the core construct of what this piece is trying to be is an attempt at creating a narrative that is both linear yet not a narrative where the audience gets as much as they put in a narrative where the audience is moving towards becoming ‘emancipated’.

A lot of what Ranciere talks about in his speech has to do with the analogy to a teacher-student relationship. In many ways Brecht in his attempt to show the audience a subject has chosen to be a ‘teacher’. Yet what I understood from Ranciere was that the best way for the teacher to teach, they must allow for the student to mire through the world and find the answer to the questions and the teacher without bias must present all that can be mired through. This is what ‘Her Story’ does well. We find a mass of videos based on what we asked for and it now our responsibility to mire through it. Whether we take upon this responsibility and find something new learn something about this person is up to us,we can just as easily walk away or try another search query. This empowers us as the audience to become able to construct our own montage of representative footage, akin to what Brecht used in his works,yet again it is montage that is provided to us by the ‘teacher’ – the game. We are able to represent this woman, this mirage of what is real, throughwhat we have seen and whatwe have decided upon from an analytical viewpoint.

Obviously the game does not speak in particular about a social issue that needs to be dealt with although it does speak a lot about how we change over time and how our memory is exceedingly fickle, I believe that this type of approach can be used to change the way theater and other arts that are pushing to find ways to involve, immerse and empower the audience.

But this game does something more than just allow for a singular experience to be constructed and wlaked away from. Due to its very nature of personal analysis it opens up a forum for discussion. A forum where clues are shared, opinions are argued through, where a discourse about this fictional character and the crime committed are constantly discussed.

Apply this mechanic or tool or experience generating system to a meaningful discourse or a story about a social issue that is currently prevalent. We now have equipped our productions with an ability that can incite to some extent discourse by the audience, with the audience about their own analysis of a piece of story or narrative that may not mean much as itself, but has through being experience, generated meaningful conversation. We have taught not by giving the answer or by telling the guests or the audience what we believe to be the answer but rather by allowing them to search through a narrative to construct their own experiences and then argue about what truly the experiences and the narrative meant and tried to show. And this argument is not a destructive hate filled one that entertains a third party but rather a constructive one which causes people to re-watch to re-experience to search again in thr hope of finding more.

I believe that such games may contain the solution to making an empowered audience, an audience that is not merely given the power to see and do what they want within the construct of affordances provisioned but are able to experience what they in a meaningful way that can be enhanced through sharing and creates even more inquiry within them.

References:

1. herstorygame.com
2. ‘The emanipated audience’ – Jacques Ranciere
3. Brecht, Bertolt. 1964. Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic. Ed. and trans. John Willett.
4. http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/brecht.pdf

When my parents says that we are going to the theatre tonight, they mean we are going to a nice building with air conditioning, sitting is some comfy seats, and that we will be entertained. We will watch others perform a story. After two to three hours we will get up and take a taxi home. Blast Theory is a collective from the UK who blows this set up into dust. At the moment, I am experiencing their project Karen that is a digital life coach who you speak with every day. This project in collaboration with national Theatre Wales takes us into the realm of intimacy, entertainment and the uncanny. One interacts with this piece through an app on your phone. You begin and it feels like a real Skype type conversation, and then the questions begin. They reach these themes through use of advanced technology, play with how humans interact ion the digital age, and trust.

The media technology behind this is a phone app and the analysis of hundreds of personality tests. Karen asks you questions and you answer in words or a sliding scale from agree to disagree. From the questions you have answered behind the scenes technology processes that data to come to conclusions that seem almost magical. It seems as if Karen has been spying on you. “We’re interested in the intimacy of mobile phones,” Matt Adams, one of the creators, said. “How they might be thought of as a cultural space. Karen was an opportunity to take this strategy further — how you might engage with a fictional character who is software-driven.’ Phones are a part of everyday life, so Blast Theory harnessed that technology to put it towards a different end then normal. Phones are as much of a cultural space as a coffee shop. One can chat or pontificate with or at others with a touch of the screen. Karen is successful in that it extends theatre using fairly simple technology that’s already in our pocket.

Phones are how we as a society now live. The NY Times reported “The Pew Research Center survey found 63 percent of mobile phone owners now use their phone to go online. And because 91 percent of Americans now own a cell phone, this means that 57 percent are cell Internet users.” Blast theory is building on this societal mechanism, which is constant in our lives. One goes to dinner and everyone is on his or her phone. People use it for fitness tracking, calendar, research, entertainment, and actual mental health. There are many actual therapy apps such as Talkspace, My Psych, and Couples Counseling. People use these in moments of desperation and on a daily basis. The space Karen plays with is really a way people reach out for help. Karen allows people to naturally slip into this world of theater. It’s not jolting like leaving a street and going into a luxurious theatre. I pulled out this piece of theater and watched a scene in between doing classwork in a computer lab. Karen achieves the goal of integrating into my life through using the space and terminology that I am used to.

This use of technology does more than take us out of a white box gallery space or theater, it immerses theatre into our every day lives and breaks down barriers. Guy Debord wrote in Towards a Situationist International from 1957 “The most general aim must be to broaden the non-mediocre portion of, to reduce its empty moments as much as possible” (97). This from of expanding theatre is the epitome of reducing empty moments. If you have a free second in between riveting action in life, you can call up Karen and have a chat about your day. This is a way to have immersive theatre enter people’s lives and all that is required is a smartphone. This form of theatre is quite strong because it breaks down barriers such as transportation and intimidation. No one is nervous to type on their phone but many people are scared or lack the ability to pay for a ticket and get to a major theatre. The way technology is expanded in this piece is required to get the message across and introduces the world to a new way to interact with performance.

The premise of this piece is to play with our relationship with big data and the way in which corporations quietly collect data on us for their own use. This combines with the makers research into psychotherapy to create a disturbingly uncanny experience. Evgeny Morozov the author of The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom called out the “disturbing trend whereby our personal information—rather than money—becomes the chief way in which we pay for services—and soon, perhaps, everyday objects—that we use.” Karen does not cost paper money unlike most theatre pieces but it does require vast amounts of personal data to interact with it. The user has to answer on a sliding scale how they feel about themselves, how smart they think they are, and how happy their childhood was. I wouldn’t want this info getting to my professors, bosses, or parents! Yet to interact one must continue. This is the same as using gmail or facebook. Google’s terms of use state “Our automated systems analyze your content (including emails) to provide you personally relevant product features, such as customized search results, tailored advertising, and spam and malware detection. This analysis occurs as the content is sent, received, and when it is stored.” That means Google is checking for keywords to let advertisers know whom to target. Our everyday is affected by big data like Google’s ad system, we just don’t normally notice. Karen is a form of this, but more in your face. She asks you personal questions and you don’t really trust her but you give it anyway. The questions range from quite tame to intensely personal as time goes on. She then analyses that data and assumes things about you. These conclusions tend to be true which is the scary part.

This work is stunningly invasive which calls to mind the subtlety of the big data giants and the way in which humans automatically trust them. The app sends you notifications late at night to remind you to call Karen. Half an hour after our fourth call, she calls me again. This time she shows me a man she lives with stark naked. Logically you know this is not real, but your mind is unable to separate this interaction from the reality of talking to someone, seeing his or her facial expressions. Karen becomes part of your life, a hectic part. Karen plays with how humans trust and interact with each other. Trust is an integral part of being part of a functioning human society. Amanda Palmer, a musician and do-gooder, said, “When you trust people to help you, they often do“. Karen sets of this situation where we are encouraged to trust her yet something feels off. She looks (really sees nothing) at you and it feels just as real as skyping your parents. The user trusts Karen as a life coach to help, but she is not helping you.

Karen is using the power of everyday instead of relying on fantastical. Seen through the exact wording of Technology and the Avant Garde by Terry Eagleton, this work is an absolute failure. Eagleton asserts that technology means novelty. He says, “What do all moments of modernity supposedly have in common? – just the fact that they are new, the bald formal property of novelty”. Karen is new, created in 2015, but it is not novel in its mechanisms. It is not a new form of visually enticing theatre, but it is a new way of distorting everyday life. It injects theater into the banality of a phone and our everyday. Karen is successful if seen through the core sentiment of this writing. Eagleton seems to mean that new ways of using technology in theatre captures people’s attention which allows the creator to assert his or her own moral imperative onto the viewer. Karen is not a new exciting firework, but it is an extension of non-typical theatre. Eagleton would be amazed by what Karen is able to produce in the viewer.

Karen is building on our relationship with corporations, our trust in technology, and our state of being, quite well, but the question is if it succeeded as a piece of theatre. Theater entertains and educates. It amazes and frees. This piece in not glittering on a Broadway stage and never will be. It relies on blending into the continuation of daily life. It succeeds in planting itself into your actions. You get a notification and you stop what you are doing and experience Karen. Karen cannot be escaped or forgotten because your phone will remind you. This work does not allow you to be an ambivalent spectator; you have to divulge your dark secrets to this sentient program. This piece is successful because it extends the way one interacts with theater while presenting interesting technological and moral issues. It takes on the issue of how we trust big data while entertaining the viewer/participant.

Citations:

“5 Encouraging Therapy Apps for When You Need Some Support.”Mashable. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Sept. 2015.

Asay, Matt. “”Big Data Ethics” Sound Great, But They Won’t Stop The NSA—Or Facebook.” Weblog post. Readwrite. N.p., 24 Nov. 2014. Web. 16 Sept. 2015.

Debord, Guy. “Towards a Situationist international.” in Bishop, Claire. “Participation, Whitechapel”, 2006.

Eagleton, Terry. “Cultural Technology and the Avant Garde”, from CULT 2001 Conference Copenhagen, 2001.

“Google Terms of Service – Privacy & Terms – Google.” Google Terms of Service – Privacy & Terms – Google. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Sept. 2015.

“Phones Growing as Primary Source of Internet.” NY Daily News. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Sept. 2015.

Rancière, Jacques. “The emancipated spectator”. Verso Books, 2014.

Rose, Frank. “Karen, an App That Knows You All Too Well.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 04 Apr. 2015. Web. 17 Sept. 2015.

Vimeo / Blast Theory – via Iframely

YouTube / The Lizzie Bennet Diaries – via Iframely

Fandom by Design

by Judeth Oden Choi

The Lizzie Bennet Diaries was a popular web series based on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Created by Hank Green and Bernie Su, the series aired on YouTube from April 9, 2012 through March 28, 2013. During the year that LBD ran, it aired one hundred episodes on its primary YouTube channel, plus an additional fifty episodes across four character spin-off YouTube channels. Most importantly, LBD’s “interactive team” operated thirty-five social media accounts across numerous social media platforms, including Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn and LookBook. Spanning multiple media forms, LBD is part of a field referred to as transmedia storytelling. Henry Jenkins defines transmedia storytelling as “the art of world making” (Jenkins 2006). The consumers must navigate their own paths, “chasing down bits of the story across media channels, comparing notes with each other via online discussion groups, and collaborating to ensure that everyone who invests time and effort will come away with a richer entertainment experience” (Jenkins 2006). A transmedia storyworld refers, according to Peter von Stackelberg, “to the shared universe within which the settings, characters, objects, events, and actions of one or more narratives exist.”

Winning the 2013 Creative Arts Emmy for Original Interactive Programming and accumulating over forty million views, LBD is one of the most successful independent transmedia projects to date. What makes LBD’s critical and popular success unique is that it was almost entirely web-based (there was a book) and was not part of a larger marketing campaign or fundraising effort. Other successful transmedia projects like Why So Serious?, promoting the film The Dark Knight, or Canal + Spain’s Game of Thrones season 4 companion MMORPG, web series and social media campaign, are designed to enrich the consumer experience, thus compelling more consumers to turn on their televisions, go to the theatre or purchase products. In 2010, Tim Kring, funded by Nokia and supported by the NGO WeGiveBooks.org, developed Conspiracy for Good. An augmented reality game, the campaign was immersive and expansive in scope, ultimately building and stocking five libraries in rural Zambia and funding fifty scholarships for schoolgirls. LBD, on the other hand, was not primarily designed to drive consumer behavior ‘in real world,’ but was built to engender online fandom of the media itself. In fact, although the central and titular character is Lizzie Bennet, the most important character in the narrative and commercial structuring of the Lizzie Bennet Diaries may be ‘The Fan.’

On the Nerdist Writer’s Panel podcast, Bernie Su explains why he believes The Lizzie Bennet Diaries was a unique format: “Sure it’s a web series, but it’s not like a third person web series, it’s a first person web series. And it’s not TV; it’s not movies chopped up into two, three-minute videos. It’s its own thing.” It was theatre, an event that unfolded in real time before an audience on a stage that was the internet itself. It carefully considered the distance between audience and performer, between fiction and life. The primary medium the creators chose for their adaptation, the first person vlog, evoked YouTube celebrity and fan culture.

Well-timed Twitter announcements, character reveals, and plot points, matched up with real-world conventions, sponsorship offers and spin-off opportunities, increasing the vlog’s exposure and boosting fan engagement. A careful relationship was maintained between the audience and the performers by encouraging fans to create their own fan art, fan fiction, blogs, discussions and communities, but maintaining character blogs, namely Twitter, as devices to further the story, re-establish the parameters of the storyworld, and persistently re-cast the audience as fans, denying them any greater sense of agency.

 To Become a YouTube Celebrity, First You Need Fans

LBD’s fandom was nurtured by the very medium through which the story was told: the video blog or “vlog.” The typical vlog is composed of one person looking directly into a camera—even the factory-installed camera on one’s computer will do—usually in the privacy of his/her own room. I can’t think of any other media that so clearly conjures Ranciere’s question, “Why  not think, in this case too, that it is precisely the attempt at suppressing the distance that constitutes the distance itself?” By attempting to close the distance with first person vlogs, and invitations for interactivity, it actually accentuates the gulf between the youtube stars and the fandom.

The conceit of LBD was that Lizzie Bennet, based on Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice, is a twenty-four year-old mass communications graduate student from small-town California who keeps a video diary presumably about her mother’s desperate attempts to marry off Lizzie and her two sisters. Most of the story was told from Lizzie Bennet’s perspective; however, several characters made guest appearances, stumbled into, or “interrupted” her vlogging. Because Lizzie was a YouTube vlogger, and LBD was itself a YouTube vlog, the character’s success as a rising YouTube star and the success of the LBD were intertwined; one would not make sense without the other. It was no coincidence that once LBD gained sponsorship and financing for the remainder of the series, they also began gearing up for Episode 60, the first on-camera appearance by William Darcy. Episode 60 accumulated over 100,000 views in the first twenty four hours (Shields), and became an event remembered in blogging history as #darcyday. After all, the web series, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, was about a woman making a web series called The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. Lizzie Bennet and her co-stars’ rising popularity became a plot device that forwarded the action and set the stage for the major story modernizations, namely Mr. Collins’ proposal, Lydia Bennet’s scandal, and Lizzie and Darcy and Jane and Bing’s eventual unions.

In the early episodes of LBD, Lizzie feels free to speak her mind about everyone she meets. She does not consider the possibility that any of her friends, family or acquaintances might watch the videos. As the series went on, and LBD became increasingly popular, Lizzie became more aware of her vlog’s reach. It is because LBD was so popular, that the characters themselves watched the video diaries, a device that fueled the resolution of plot conflicts and united our couples. In Episode 60, soon after William Darcy first sits down with Lizzie, Darcy confesses his love for her. After Lizzie refuses Darcy’s advances, Darcy says, “I was unaware of your feelings towards me.” Lizzie replies, “You were unaware? Then why don’t you watch my videos?” Lizzie is telling Darcy that he has to become her audience, one of her fans, to truly know her and win her love. To be the audience of LBD is to at once become part of Lizzie’s inner circle, to be her confidante, her follower and her fan.

Reigning in the Seahorses

Fan interaction was built into every aspect of the LBD experience. Creator Bernie Su described the show as the “true definition of the web” (Farber). During a Google+ Hangout, LBD fans happened to share an image of a seahorse with William Darcy’s head, thus the LBD fan community named itself “The LBD Seahorses,” or simply “The Seahorses.” “The Seahorses” started their own Tumblr pages, Lizzie Bennet Diaries subreddit, Twitter account and YouTube channel. LBD actors, writers and producers made occasional appearances in The Seahorses’ videos, comments and chats, remaining directly connected to the fans. Lizzie also occasionally made—seemingly random—references to seahorses in her videos, reminding her fans of their insider status. LBD fans also generated over eight hundred works of fan fiction on websites such as fanfiction.net.

Each LBD character had their own Twitter account, which they updated every few days during the show, with posts about major story events and the mundane. Jay Bushman, the transmedia director, calls the short, contained Twitter conversations “playlets” (Nerdist). Typically these conversations were written between characters, but fans also inserted themselves in the conversation, sometimes eliciting real-time responses from the characters:

@TheLizzieBennet curious since Jane Austen was instrumental in your life-long friendship with @TheCharlotteLu, do you celebrate her bday?
—Erin Wert (@erinwert, a fan)

@erinwert Maybe we should! But I think @TheLizzieBennet might still be recovering from the last b’day party.
—Charlotte Lu (@TheCharlotteLu, a character)

@TheCharlotteLu understandable, it sounds like Lydia went a little overboard, and likened it to Hanukkah… #8crazynights @TheLizzieBennet
—Erin Wert (@erinwert)

Producer Alexandra Edwards describes these conversations, “It works a lot like improv, actually: a character might start the scene, so to speak, with a certain Twitter update. Then fans will respond, and how the conversation goes really depends on the interaction” (Prior). Depending on which character(s) the fan followed, when and how often s/he read Twitter, each audience member gathered different pieces of the story that formed his or her own experience.

While it may appear that consumers’ (note the word “consumers”) had endless opportunities to interact with LBD, the role of the audience was narrowly defined. The only roles in the world of YouTube are the vloggers and the fans. Therefore, it follows that the audience must behave as fans in order to interact in the storyworld. On the occasions when audience members strayed from their role as fan, or tried to push the conversation in a new direction, away from the narrative, the characters were quick to redirect them to their role as consumer.

One of the most obvious instances of recasting the audience in the role of the fan occurs during Lydia’s scandal. The conversation began on January 26, five days before the news of Lydia’s sex tape broke via the vlog.

I love @TheLydiaBennet more than anything. I hope the whole world knows it. I hope she knows it.
—George Wickham (@TheGWickham)

@TheGWickham I do. I know. I know you do.
—Lydia Bennet (@TheLydiaBennet)

@TheLydiaBennet @TheGWickham no no no no non—Rachel Bloom (‏@dramadork884, fan )

@TheLydiaBennet @TheGWickham YOU TWO ARE LIKE THAT COUPLE ON FACEBOOK WHERE EVERYONE WANTS YOU TO JUST STOP well, mild exaggaration.
—Amy Hetland (‏@mrherondales, fan)

@TheLydiaBennet @TheGWickham Come on, you guys. Stop with this bullshit already, Lydia deserves someone better than YOU, Wickham. —Sois-belo ‏(@soisbelo, fan)

@TheLydiaBennet I told you I’d tell everyone. I don’t care who knows. That’s how important you are.
—George Wickham (‏@TheGWickham)

Lydia’s Twitter followers knew Pride and Prejudice, so they knew that George was not truly in love with Lydia and must be trying to manipulate her. The followers asserted themselves into Lydia and George’s conversation, trying to stop them as a loyal friend might.

@TheGWickham @TheLydiaBennet She is important to the rest of the world too that is why we want you out of her life
—Rachel Bloom (‏@dramadork884, fan)

@dramadork884 @TheGWickham I don’t want that. Stop.
—Lydia Bennet (‏@TheLydiaBennet)

@TheLydiaBennet @TheGWickham I care why to much about you to stop.
— Rachel Bloom ‏(@dramadork884, fan)

@dramadork884 @TheGWickham GEORGE cares about me. You guys just don’t freaking get it.
—Lydia Bennet (‏@TheLydiaBennet)

When Rachel Bloom wrote to George “we want you out of her life,” she was presumably speaking on behalf of Lydia’s fans. However, when Lydia replied to her directly, Ms. Bloom seized the opportunity to address Lydia, not as a fan, but as a dear friend, someone who cares for Lydia “way to [sic] much.” Lydia tried to reframe the conversation by addressing all of her fans: “you guys don’t freaking get it.” Thus denying Ms. Bloom any special position in the narrative by lumping Ms. Bloom with the rest of her fans.

@TheLydiaBennet @dramadork884 @TheGWickham lydia, we are doing this because we love you as your loyal viewers
—Barbara Mora Mendez (‏@Barbandita, fan)

@Barbandita @dramadork884 @TheGWickham Telling someone who cares about me to go away? Why would I need viewers like that?
—Lydia Bennet ‏ (@TheLydiaBennet)

A second follower, Barbara Mora Mendez, tried to correct Ms. Bloom’s overreach and restore the status of Lydia’s fandom by reminding Lydia that “we love you as your loyal viewers.” But for Lydia it was too late to restore this conversation. It had done the job of furthering the story by establishing Lydia’s “us vs. the world” mentality, strengthening her tie to George, and isolating her from her loving fans.

In an August 2013 article in Wired magazine, Rob Hinchcliffe writes that “when we think about transmedia and multiplatform, we should also be talking about transexperience and multicontributor.” The web, says Hichcliffe, “does not want to simply be another channel, another delivery system. It wants to be a toolbox, a sandbox, a toybox all rolled into one.” LBD fell short of that promise. It did not provide its audience with endless ways to play in its storyworld. It is prescriptive, even didactic, in its insistence that the fans stay in their seats. By making fandom the only way the audience could participate in the storyworld, it milked adoration but strangely also evoked genuine love from the audience. Did LBD work despite the limited agency of the audience? Or did it work because it asked nothing more from its audience than to be consumers? In 2013 transmedia storytelling had its moment, and as theatre practitioners we were excited by the potential of “transexperience,” “multicontributor” media. Since then it has only thrived as a marketing tool–is that where it belongs?

Transmedia may be built of commercial platforms for commercial purposes, but what if the machine can be re-appropriated? What if we can as Eagleton describes Piscator’s ‘theatre machine,’ “harness this revolutionary cultural machine to revolutionary political ends, to lay bare, estrange, objectivate, demystify, dismantle, transform the relations between stages and audiences, dispel the aura of bourgeois theatrical magic with a breath of cultural materialism”? Does harnessing these technologies make the culture that we produce slave to the technology (“instrumental” as Eagleton described)? Or does culture emerge from the tools (and maybe in response to the limitations) that surround us?

I am convinced that ‘new media theatre’ will take advantage of all of the social, creative and collaborative potential of the internet (and digital technologies), and I am exploring what agency and performance, collaboration and conflict look like in online worlds.

Cited:

Bushman, Jay, Margaret Dunlap, Rachel Kiley, Kate Rorick, and Bernie Su. “Nerdist

Writer’s Panel: The Lizzie Bennet Diaries.” Interview by Ben Blacker. Audio blog post. Nerdist Writer’s Panel. Nerdist Industries, 9 July 2013. Web. 20 Nov. 2013.

Eagleton, Terry. “Cultural Technology and the Avant Garde.”

Farber, Betsy. “Case Study: How “The Lizzie Bennet Diaries” creator has changed the face of storytelling.” iMediaConnection Blog. iMedia Communications, Inc., 17 Sept. 2013. Web. 1 Nov. 2013.

Green, Hank and Bernie Su. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. Pemberly Digital. Web. 20. August 2013.

Hinchcliffe, Rob. “Transmedia storytelling: what’s the alternative to alternate reality games?.” Wired UK. Condé Nast Digital, 29 Aug. 2012. Web. 1 Nov. 2013.

Jenkins, Henry. Convergence culture: where old and new media collide. New York: New York University Press, 2006. Print.

Prior, Karen Swallow. “The New, Old Way to Tell Stories: With Input From the Audience.” The Atlantic. The Atlantic Monthly Group, 18 Oct. 2013. Web. 18 Oct. 2013.

Ranciere, J. (2007). The Emancipated Spectator. Artforum, 271–341.

Shields, Mike. “The Biggest Web Series Opportunity for Brands Wasn’t at the NewFronts: Encore to Austen-inspired Lizzie Bennet Diaries Set for This Summer.” AdWeek. Guggenheim Digital Media, 20 May 2013. Web. 15 Nov. 2013.

The first exhibition at which “Surface Tension” was shown was in Madrid in 1992. At this time the  Gulf War (or the First Iraq War) was still very fresh in people’s minds, as was the weapons technology used. The guided bomb was not quite a new idea, but an idea that revolutionized how the war was fought. Laser guided bombs established the United State’s supremacy in the airspace around Iraq and Kuwait and allowed the United States to destroy or at least hinder command centers, supply lines, bunkers, tanks and troops at will, all while sustaining surprisingly few casualties. The impersonal nature of this destructive interaction was shocking for many.

In 2001, the USA Patriot Act was passed which allowed the government access to personal information of United States citizens. Perhaps this was even more shocking because surveillance technology was now being used directly on citizens.

“Surface Tension” commented on this digital awareness in a very straightforward way. The capacity for governments to watch us (and thus to oppress us) was becoming increasingly real; the technology increasingly more ubiquitous. Hearkening back to George Orwell’s 1984, the Iraq War and the USA Patriot Act were steps towards a potentially oppressively surveillant government. In Orwell’s book, citizens are kept under constant surveillance and harshly punished for any crime, even crime that have not been fully articulated— thought crimes. The eye which follows the viewer around the room evokes the same feelings as the characters in  Orwell’s work of fiction may have felt. Even now, amidst new technologies in the capitalist realm, we must answer that question. We are constantly being bombarded with targeted advertisements and our information is being bought and sold as a commodity. Where can we draw the line between surveillance and oppression?

Having provided a sufficient context for the piece, I will now discuss the work with respect to George Simmel’s ideas in “The Metropolis and Mental Life.”  Simmel argues that the goal of urban life, or in today’s society of digital interactions and constant media,  is to retain some individuality. In certain cases that may be to specialize in a field and thus develop a codependency on others in your community. He says of this goal, “the deepest problems of modern life flow from the attempt of the individual to maintain the independence and individuality of his existence against the sovereign powers of society, against the weight of the historical heritage and the external culture and technique of life.” In Simmel’s work there is a great amount of contrast between the individual and the collective.

Today many of us try to exaggerate our personal element, to develop an identity. But what is our identity to others, or to the scrutinizing eye of our society or our government. Even in DeBord’s work which we examined in discussions, we are shaped by other’s observations of us. In a way, we become what they see. Lozano-Hemmer’s work, the human eye creates a presence, there is a vague assumption of consciousness and we see ourselves in relation to the eye. The eye which follows us around, sees us. We then relate to how the eye must perceive us. There is a lot of footage of viewers trying to walk out of sight of the eye, to crouch or to walk to the furthest peripheral vision to avoid the gaze— to avoid the expectation of what they would be. Avoiding scrutiny or detection seems to be a basic reaction to the piece.

In relation to DeBord, this piece is perhaps even more relevant. DeBord discusses his theory of the “spectacle” which is not a system of images but a social relationship mediated by images. If anything this work perfectly exemplifies this notion. The eye is an image that mediates the social relationship between the viewer and the omnipresent surveillance. It is an image that captures this idea and displayed it simply and eloquently and yet the metaphor could be almost endlessly expanded. In a world where our interactions are increasingly more visual, more representative we recognize that these images are not real— the relationships mediated by them are. This work also fits into DeBord’s instruction for escaping this pre-defined institutionalized identity of who we should be. We develop identities based on how society sees us, but according to DeBord, we can escape this in several ways. One of which is to actively break rules, to create some kind of unmediated experience. The experience the viewer has in observing this work is mediated but very self-aware. When the viewer avoids the gaze of the eye, the viewer metaphorically transcends his imposed identity.

Finally, to examine this piece with Jacques Rancière’s “The Emancipated Spectator” in mind, we can really see how the work can be viewed as an extension of theater and its components of actors and viewers, but also as a comment on the paradigm of actors and viewers.

Rancière, in his writing, rejects the notion of an enlightened master teaching a student. Instead he refers to an “ignorant schoolmaster” who does not present information in hopes of relaying it to a student but rather creates an experience or an idea which can be approached by both the teacher and the student. Because the process of transmitting information is lossy, or imperfect, the student would be learning a distorted lesson. With the “ignorant schoolmaster” process, there is room for learning in a broader sense of the word. “Surface Tension” is an interesting visualization of this process as the installation— the screen and projection itself— is informing the viewer of an idea, or rather presenting it. The artist is the ignorant schoolteacher and the viewer is the student. Although we use this template for understanding, the interaction between the work and the viewer is where the real learning experience takes place. The knowledge could not be transmitted directly from the artist to the viewer, but rather it is inherent in the interaction. Both the artist and the viewer learn from the encounter.

This project was also particularly relevant because it blurs the lines between the “audience” and the “performer.” It raises questions about who is watching who, and who the actor is. In Rancière’s work, the theater is in desperate need of reform because the notion of a passive audience is inherently bad. According to Rancière, one solution is to acknowledge that the spectator is also an actor in their own respective story as the actors are spectator in their own stories. This blurring the lines between passivity and agency, audience and spectator is a way of resolving the problem of a passive audience.

“Surface Tension” is particularly adept at this goal because the connotation of the eye is that there is a digital presence that permeates our lives that is constantly watching us. The government and various commercial enterprises monitor our existence. In this way we are the performers. If we switch perspectives though, and think about the work on a smaller, simpler scale, the performer is the artwork and the audience is the viewer that the eye follows. In both scenarios, this perfect metaphor of passive spectator breaks down. In the later, the viewer who is considered the audience is moving around in attempts to engage the eye, or the performer, in the former context, the watchful eye is interacting directly with the viewer. Or instead, the government is hardly a passive force in our lives, which is why the notion their observing of the citizens can be so horrifying. In “Surface Tension” the distance between the performer and the spectator is not merely mediated but confused and swapped. There can be no strict line that divides them.

“Surface Tension” may be an installation piece, but the content of it makes it very relevant as a comment on the relationship between a performer and an audience and in this way can be a very compelling expanded theater piece. By allowing such an unmediated experience take place between the viewer and the watchful eye in the installation, the experience is educational for all parties involved and in fact may even provide a way of escaping structurally defined systems as described by DeBord. It fosters a self awareness of watchfulness and the passivity of spectatorship that would not be otherwise possible in a direct transmission of information. This piece also speaks on the individual and collective in the way that it hearkens back to Orwellian ideas of the elite observers and enforcers of laws, and the personal, individual citizen.

Google Docs – via Iframely

I didn’t just see the horrible image once. The one of the child, Aylan Kurdi, lying there dead in the surf. I saw it again and again every time I opened Facebook or Twitter, every time I scrolled down the page. When faced with images of death and destruction, my first response is to turn away, to assure myself that I am aware of the evil in the world, that I’ve seen suffering, that it is not required that I feel the sorrow just this instant, just because Facebook says I should. But as the image was repeated, I dared myself to look longer, to see the details, the grooves on the soles of his shoes, his curled fingers. The more I looked, the less real it became, the more holes there were in my vision, the more aware I was of the limits of my screen. I was confronted with what I don’t know about Syria, about migration, about the other dead children.

To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge — and, therefore, like power. — Susan Sontag

In this sketch we will explore our desire to make an image real, to make it known and understood, and our frustration with the limits of that knowledge and experience. The audience member will approach a screen with an image (perhaps video) of a refugee camp, as he approaches the screen the image will fade as we zoom in on a 3-D rendering of the same image (created in agisoft). The closer to the screen the audience moves, both the more detailed and the more distorted the 3D image will appear.

We are asking the spectator to stand in our shoes, to look closely, to look from a distance, to choose their distance. We are relying on the limitations of the media (the 3-d rendering) to mediate (and complicate) the experience of the audience. The secondary audience, those watching the participant approach the screen, will have the opportunity to interpret the choices and responses of the participant, to judge them as they see fit. In this way, the secondary audience is watching a Brechtian piece of theatre. When it is his turn to participate in the experience, he will be able to judge his own choices and reactions against those he has watched experience it. But in the moment that he approaches the screen his participation, his freedom to choose, while not truly Artaudian, it does lie in the experience, in between thought and gesture.