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June 2013, Page 2

A little epiphany

Today I saw a diagram that looked a bit like this: It was in the chapter on Narrative from Tynan Sylvester’s Designing Games. He explains that with this this sort of structure, “any given player misses most of the content”. There’s another problem too – with this sort of structure, it’s incredibly difficult to pace the emotional rhythm of the narrative. Continue reading →

Emotional Triggers

In his book, Designing Games, Tynan Sylvester says: If we look around, we find interactive narrative everywhere. Museums and art galleries are interactive nonlinear narratives where visitors explore a story or an art movement in a semi directed, personal way. Ancient Ruins and urban graffiti tell stories… These interactive forms – museums, galleries, real spaces, and life  - should be our first touchstones as we search for narrative tools. Continue reading →

The Langley Academy

The museum at the Langley Academy A few weeks back, I visited the Langley Academy. This new-build school opened in Slough in 2008, as part of the original academy programme, before every other Tom, Dick and Johnny-come-lately school saw the writing on the wall and moved to become academies too. Its a science specialist school, but with a twist – inspired by the New York City Museum School, the Langley Academy is built around museum learning. Continue reading →

Twitter is your friend

I note that one of the most popular searches driving traffic to this blog is “narratology vs ludology.” I must admit, I’m not entirely sure why. I’ve written only one post addressing that debate, and over all, I guess I’m taking quite a narratological point of view. This post however may begin to address the balance, as this is where I begin to get all “ludological. Continue reading →

Survey and Excavation at Cranborne Chase

After a few weeks of survey in the New Forest, teaching of practicals and writing up of some papers, it was good this week to get back out in the field with staff and students from the University of Southampton. This time we headed out to Dorset for excavation and survey at Down Farm on Cranborne Chase, with teams of students involved in excavation, finds processing and recording, together with some topographic survey and magnetometry. Continue reading →

Laser Scanning at Portus

In October of 2012 myself and Gareth Beale were in Portus collecting a series of datasets, these included a series of high resolution 360 panoramas around the site which Gareth has processed and a full laser scan model of the Palazzo Imperiale. The panoramas have been explained in a previous post by Gareth and after several months of processing the data, I am able to present some of the completed work through this blog. Continue reading →

The need to keep technology in the background

My wife, who is currently working with a landscape design company, discovered this great post on Digital Storytelling from US based practice, Cannon Design, which concludes: Our understanding of the environment can be enlightened by technology, but should not be replaced by it. So much of our human experience relies on our ability to explore, learn, and interpret. In many ways, GPS devices and online services are helping us better understand our world. Continue reading →