(DIP) Research and Theory

Here are a few point and click flash game examples, that relate to what I hope to achieve in my design.

The Blue Beanie
http://www.gameshot.org/?id=4133

This point and click adventure is based on small objects which you must find within the animation. It is a linear style game that requires you to think about what objects will combine with each other for the character to progress. The art style is very unique in its own way, using real life images as the background, and making the foreground cartoon drawn characters making the make look somewhat cute.

Scary Sleep Over
http://www.gameshot.org/?id=4226

This is another point and click game with a different style. The player must click the different buttons, which make scary noises or things appear in front of the character, and must be triggered when the character walks in that direction of the room. The objective of the game is to make the characters heart beat rate increase to unlock additional buttons to scare him even more.

ClickPlay 2
http://www.gameshot.org/?id=4235

Here is another point and click game in another different style. The objective is to find the play button within each of the puzzled mini stages, allowing the player to progress further into the game. Every stage has its own unique style of point and click action, making the game more fun each time you go through it.

A Theory of Adaptation
By Linda Hutcheon

Interacting, Telling or Showing

"The formal and hermeneutic complexity of the relationship between the telling and the showing modes that I have been exploring so far is certainly matched by that of the shift of level and type of engagement from either of these modes to the participatory one. “Deliberate user action,” to use Marie-Laure Ryan’s term, is what is considered fundamental and “truly distinctive” in digital media (2004c: 338), along with the interface and database (Manovich 2001). But the dice game adaptation of Jane Austen’s (1796/1813) novel, Pride and Prejudice, arguably involves deliberate user action as well: the winner is the player who gets to the church first in order to marry. Computerized gaming, however, is the most frequent form taken by this particular adapting process. Nika Bertram’s novel Der Kahuna Modus (2001) has a computer game adaptation (available at http://www.kahunamodus.de/swave.html) that, according to those who play it, changes how we read and interpret the novel. But most videogames have a close, not to say permeable, relationship to film, rather than to prose fiction and not only in the obcious sense of usually sharing a “franchise.”" (Page 50)

The Video Game Theory Reader
By Mark J. P. Wolf, Bernard Perron

Computer Games Alternating with Stories

"If we are to achieve interactive storytelling, we must concentrate all our energies on two factors: interactivity and storytelling. None of the cited approaches make that effort. Fortunately, we have accumulated a grand repository of expertise in storytelling. Since earliest times, each culture has developed and nurtured its core stories in the form of mythology.
Interactivity, however, remains little-understood. Many seem to have difficulty understanding the concept of interactivity. I define interactivity to be “a cyclical process in which two actors alternately listen, think, and speak to each other.” A good conversation provides the ideal example of rich interactivity. Other definitions abound; most make essentially the same points. A few of the definitions I have seen are truly idiotic; the worst of these was: “by definition, the thing people do on computer have always been interactive.”" (Page 262)

Interactive Video
By Educational Technology Publications

What is Interactivity?

"In general, interactivity enables learners to adjust the instruction to conform to their needs and capabilities. The learner becomes an active participant, rather than a passive observer, making significant decision and encountering their consequences. More specifically, interactive lessons are those in which the “learner actively or overtly responds to information presented by the technology, which in turn adapts to the learner, a process more commonly referred to as feedback” (Jonassen, 1985).
Cohen (1984) has expanded on the burdens that interactivity places both on the interactive program and on the learner. Her definition of interactivity requires that the learner make some sort of qualitative response in order for the instruction to continue, that the instruction be dependent upon the learner’s entry and be “designed to accommodate many different styles of learning, many different types of responses, and many different pathways through the program.”" (Page 42)

Interactivity Encourages Active Learning

"Learning is an active process. Learners necessarily must process information actively in order to comprehend and remember it (Ausubel, 1960). Therefore, the more mentally active the learners are as they process information from the computer-based program (i.e., as they interact with the materials they are trying to comprehend), the more likely they are to comprehend them." (Page 42)

The Language of New Media
By Lev Manovich

The Myth of Interactivity

"In relation to computer-based media, the concept of interactivity is a tautology. Modern HCI is by definition interactive. In contrast to earlier interfaces such as batch processing, modern HCI allows the user to control the computer in real-time by manipulating information displayed on the screen. Once an object is represented in a computer, it automatically becomes interactive. Therefore, to call computer media “interactive” is meaningless – it simply means stating the most basic fact about computers." (Page 55)

Visual Digital Culture: Surface play and spectacle in new media genres
By Andrew Darley

Interactivity

"Even the computer game, in many respects perhaps the 'freshest' of the mass digital genres at issue in these pages, is both shaped and fed by other media and entertainment forms. True, it introduces the distinctive and potentially, perhaps, radical element of ‘interactivity’ – though what it does with this is far more continuous with forms such as the cinema, television and video than some would care to admit. Similarly, the ‘game’ genre is very much under the sway of the current more general ‘culture of the copy’. Like the other digital forms at the centre of this discussion it lies close to the heart of the repetitive and superficial impulses that, it is argued, are coming to govern cultural production generally.
And yet there is something different occurring within the computer game genre and, clearly, this has much to do with its so-called ‘interactive’ aspect. In many respects interaction is not as new a concept as many would have us believe; it occurs in all aesthetic reception – be it perceptual, cognitive, psychical, interpretative. What is being signalled here, however, is a rather different mode of immediate engagement with technically reproduced art works. In computer games the spectator is positioned as a real-time participant within the diegetic space of the game world – given the ability to affect what happens and a certain agency and control over how the game unfolds. Although, clearly, the interactive player does not operate with anything approaching total freedom – rules and constraints are often all too apparent – nevertheless, it constitutes an intriguing and potentially important development." (Page 194)

Wikipedia

"In the fields of information science, communication, and industrial design, there is debate over the meaning of Interactivity. In the "contingency view" of interactivity, there are three levels: Noninteractive, when a message is not related to previous messages; Reactive, when a message is related only to one immediately previous message; and Interactive, when a message is related to a number of previous messages and to the relationship between them."

Interactivity in new media

"New media is an expanding term that encompasses all new technologies we have today. Interactivity is seen as a key association with new media as it basically sets apart the 'old' and new medias. Old media could only offer a sit-back type interaction, whereas new media is much more engaging to their audiences."

"Technologies such as DVDs and digital TV are classic examples of interactive media devices, where a user can control what they watch and when. However, the Internet has become the prime model of an interactive system. Users can become fully immersed in their experiences by viewing material, commenting it and then actively contributing to it. McMillan (2005) states that interactivity can occur at many different levels and degrees of engagement and that it is important to differentiate between these levels. Use-to-user interaction via the internet; para-social interaction, where new forms of media are generated online; and user-to-system interactivity which is the way devices can be engaged with by a user."

"Lev Manovich (2001) also makes a clear definition of what interactivity means for the user. He refers to 'open interactivity' as actions such as computer programming and developing media systems, whereas 'closed interactivity' is merely where the elements of access are determined by the user. This definition is part of his principle of variability (one of Manovich's key features of new media)."

"Interactivity also relates to new media art technologies where humans and animals are able to interact with and change the course of an artwork. Artists and researchers around the world are working on unique interfaces to allow new forms of interaction that extend beyond the QWERTY keyboard and the now ubiquitous mouse. Artists, such as Stelarc work to define new interfaces that challenge our notion of what is possible when interacting with machines. His Hexapod for example looks like an insect though walks like a dog and the locomotion is controlled by shifting the body weight and turning the torso. Others like Ken Rinaldo have defined unique interfaces for fish in which Siamese Fighting Fish are able to control their rolling robotic fish bowls to interact across the gap of the glass. Simon Penny's Petit Mal allows a two wheeled sculpture to sense and respond to human presence and intelligently navigate the environment."

(DIP) Off Screen Interactivity

Tent London

Here are a few videos of motion sensor and touch sensitive interactive pieces that were displayed at Tent London.
This shows that interactivity can be achieved through many different means and not just on a screen.

Design for Interaction Project (DIP)

Brief

This module aims to give students experience of making direct connections between critical thinking and practice by developing concepts for practical projects that reflect theoretical models.
I am required to design and develop an interactive project that explores/plays with these concepts. Audience interaction is an integral part of a concept.
It could be a game, an experimental website, an interactive art-piece/animation, a non-linear story or a design for an interactive environment, such as retail space, a museum, a learning zone or as a response to a public arts commission - but the subject matter and purpose of the design should be self defined.

So basically I need to create an interactive piece based on interactive theories. I must look into different theoretical concepts of what interactivity is and how it works with different target audiences.
My research starts with different examples of interactive animations, games and concepts that could relate or give me ideas on what approach I could take to design an effective interactive piece. I will also look into different theoretical books on interactivity and see what parts of interactivity strike me the most to reflect on my ideas for an interactive animation. Since animation is something I am most comfortable with doing.

Interactive Pieces

Interstellar Marines - The Vault

The vault is an interactive 3D environment in the Interstellar Marine universe. Originally prototyped to test the capabilities of the Unity engine. Unity is a multiplatform game development tool, designed from the start to ease creation. A fully integrated professional application. The vault requires the viewers to download the Unity plugin in order to experience its interactive 3D environment.

The thing I like most about the vault is its user friendliness and how it engages with the users, giving them background story of the game and whats to come, using voice over audio and movie guides which you can choose to initiate.

Mouse Interactivity

This is a website I stumbled upon after searching on google for interactive flash pieces, which has different variations of interactive mouse control primarily for website design. Showing how the movement of the mouse cursor can shift/change the way certain shapes/patterns behave, giving them a different animated effect with every movement.

Eyezmaze

Eyezmaze is an interactive flash animation, which acts as some sort of growth simulator. Its popular series 'GROW' has its own unique concept in non-linear flash animation. Giving the user many different choices and outcomes that could get someone to be playing the game for a good while till the puzzles are 100% finished.

FASCO-CS

FASCO-CS has 4 unique flash puzzle games which are non-linear and are interactive in a 3D looking environment.

Kagi Nochi Tobira

Kagi Nochi Tobira (AKA The Escape Game) is another very well made linear puzzle game which consists players to find a key, then find the door to put it in. It requires players to think out of the ordinary when it comes to finding the key and the door in many unique ways as it gets to the harder stages.