{"id":1453,"date":"2013-09-14T23:23:41","date_gmt":"2013-09-14T23:23:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/memetechnology.org\/?p=2904"},"modified":"2013-09-14T23:23:41","modified_gmt":"2013-09-14T23:23:41","slug":"my-decoding-the-digital-presentation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/archaeology\/2013\/09\/14\/my-decoding-the-digital-presentation\/","title":{"rendered":"My Decoding the Digital presentation"},"content":{"rendered":"

I delivered my presentation at University of Rochester’s Decoding the Digital conference today, and it seemed pretty well received. So I present the text in full below, and you can see the accompanying Prezi here<\/a>. At some point I’ll see if I can do something to add a synced recording to the Prezi, but for now, I’ll make it a quiz. Can you work out which frames apply top which bits of the talk?<\/p>\n

Regular readers will find some parts of this familiar, which shouldn’t surprise, as this presentation is a synthesis of pretty much everything I’ve been thinking about so far. There was an interesting presentation today from Kathleen Fitzpatrick, during which she said that one result of “Digital” is that we academics should share more of our drafts, so I hope this blog does what she means.<\/p>\n

There were lots of interesting presentations over the last three days, but I’ll have to blog about them at a later date.<\/p>\n

The Interpretation Game: Research into digital narratives and cultural heritage interpretation<\/strong><\/p>\n

Matthew Tyler-Jones
\nDigital Economy USRG
\nUniversity of Southampton<\/p>\n

In his book, Designing Games, Tynan Sylvester says:<\/p>\n

\u201cIf 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\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cThese interactive forms \u2013 museums, galleries, real spaces, and life – should be [games designers\u2019] first touchstones as we search for narrative tools. These older forms address our most fundamental challenge: creating a story that flexes and reshapes itself around the player\u2019s choices, and deepens the meaning of everything the player does.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sylvester points game designers towards the heritage industry (and elsewhere) in an attempt to dissuade them from focusing on cinema as the sole source of narrative instruction. My own studies arise from wanting to look beyond linear storyforms (text, film) which exert a strong influence on museum and heritage interpretation designers looking to engage visitors\u2019 emotions. Games do a great job of getting players to care about watching mathematical algorithms choose what colour each pixel on a screen is.<\/p>\n

So, thank you<\/i> (on behalf of my profession) for the kudos, Mr Sylvester, but I think the learning can be two-way.<\/p>\n

To that end I\u2019ve been looking, these past few months, at three digital narratives (or computer games) that each take a different approach to create so-called \u201copen worlds,\u201d three-dimensional virtual story spaces around which the player can wander with apparent freedom. All succeed in creating emotionally engaging (story-worlds or) diageses.<\/p>\n

The first, Dear Esther, is described by its creator as an interactive ghost story. This was designed as an academic experiment in digital narrative, and has seen two incarnations, first as a \u201cmod\u201d or player-created content for Half Life 2, and subsequently as a standalone game, with a number of improvements.<\/p>\n

The next, Red Dead Redemption is at the opposite end of the commercial scale, a big budget production from international production company Rock Star. It\u2019s a western themed adventure that received a very positive critical and popular reaction.<\/p>\n

Finally, I\u2019ve been looking at is The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. An open world adventure with a traditional European fantasy theme. This offers a more dynamic narrative that either of the other two, and enables a greater degree of agency for the player.<\/p>\n

The designers of these three games experimented with form as they explored story telling within each game\u2019s virtual spaces. Cultural heritage institutions, including museums, built heritage, historic and ancient sites and heritage landscapes, have long been telling stories in three dimensions. Where it\u2019s done well, visitors to those sites, and players of the best games, can make an emotional connection with the stories that they co-author as they make choices\u00a0 about what to look at first and subsequently, and how deeply they want to explore individual points of interest.<\/p>\n

So what drives emotional engagement in digital narratives, and what can cultural heritage institutions learn from them to improve interpretation?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to take a few minutes to run through the emotional drivers I\u2019ve identified in the games I\u2019ve played, and with each, explore equivalents in real-world cultural heritage.<\/p>\n

Spectacle and sensation<\/p>\n

When I\u2019d just started playing Red Dead Redemption for this research, I spotted this tweet. (Prezi)<\/p>\n

Hennigan\u2019s Stead is one of the locations in Red Dead, so I followed the trail to this blog entry (Prezi), which demonstrates the power of visual spectacle to drive emotional engagement<\/p>\n

The visual spectacle of all three games that I\u2019ve been looking at is frequently lauded by players and in reviews.<\/p>\n

Emotion through spectacle\/beauty is something that my own organisation recognises. The full corporate name of the National Trust is, after all, \u201cNational Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty.\u201d Respondents to surveys at the Trust\u2019s most beautiful places, like Ightham Mote, for example, do report a higher emotional impact than elsewhere.<\/p>\n

But does the National Trust as an organisation rely too much on the beauty inherent in our places? Good museums know how to manipulate spectacle, by creating \u201cwow\u201d moments, often at the threshold of galleries. These can involve impressive exhibits, multimedia \u201cshows\u201d, interpretive \u201cset design\u201d or even the design of the spaces itself, such as the Great Court at the British Museum.<\/p>\n

Presence<\/p>\n

But the virtual worlds that these games create are not simply beautiful. They are immersive, creating environments which themselves tell stories. The way the long grass sways as your avatar walks through it, the shadow of a bird that you notice a moment before you sight the bird itself, the changing weather, all add to your immersion in the diagesis. The architectural details, textures and ephemera of your surroundings all have the power, to inform the story.<\/p>\n

Dan Pinchbeck, the academic and creator of Dear Esther calls this \u201cpresence,\u201d and indeed, Dear Esther was created as an experiment in the manipulation of narrative and presence. Of course one might argue that Pinchbeck\u2019s definition of presence thus includes all<\/i> the emotional drivers that I\u2019m discussing. But I\u2019ll think about that and save it for a later paper.<\/p>\n

Museums and archaeological sites often build reconstructed environments to encourage visitors\u2019 sense of presence among the exhibits. And many historic houses are presented in such a way as to suggest the visitor has walked in on a room only recently vacated by the building\u2019s historic inhabitants. Perhaps those that manage presence most successfully are the living history museums such as Plimouth Plantation<\/p>\n

Society<\/p>\n

There\u2019s still an unfair perception of computer gamers as solitary types with no friends, but of course most games, not just team sports, are ways of bringing two or more people together. Whether it\u2019s gathering around the screen in the amusement arcade, bedroom-coding or simply comparing high scores, computer games have always been social. But of course fast, cheap data communications have resulted in all sorts of social gaming from Words with Friends<\/i> to World of Warcraft<\/i>. So, how do my three games do?<\/p>\n

In fact, only Red Dead Redemption has a multi-player mode, and that only after you download an expansion. Dear Esther\u2019s isolation is part of the appeal of that game, and Skyrim offers stilted, repetitive, scripted conversations in place of interactions with real human beings.<\/p>\n

So this is one area where, it seems, cultural heritage is way ahead of computer games. People use museums and heritage sites as social spaces, to spend quality time with friends and family, without any intervention from the cultural intuition itself. Guides and docents have long been a part of the heritage infrastructure, and part of the enjoyment of visiting a place like Plimouth Plantation is navigating the sometimes archaic language and social mores of the costumed interpreters.<\/p>\n

Of course, people are an expensive asset for cultural organisations, and even volunteers are not free, so there are experiments inspired by gaming technology. A team working to interpret Monserrate Palace in Sintra, Portugal, have been experimenting with what they called Embodied Conversational Agents. The idea is that the virtual character would capture the visitor\u2019s interest with a non-interactive animated opening scene, in the manner of a cut-scene on a video game, but then would open up a real time conversation that would immerse the visitor with realistic \u201cface movements, full-body animations and complex human emotions.\u201d\u00a0 The conversation would be more sophisticated than a simple question and answer system, by being \u201ccontext aware,\u201d breaking up the knowledge base into modules, to make interactive responses more possible.<\/p>\n

Acquisition<\/p>\n

Computer games often simulate the acquisition of wealth, equipment, or simply points. High totals are rewarded with new abilities, or unlocked levels and new play experiences. However the emotional value of simply beating your best score, or getting to the top of the high scores table should not be ignored.<\/p>\n

In Skyrim, you can pick up, buy or steal almost every object you see, and a new player\u2019s character will quickly get weighed down with useless cheap tableware and other ephemera, before making more rational choices and building a useful supply of weapons, potions, spell books and apparel. Eventually your character will be able to acquire one or more houses in which to keep the stuff you accumulate.<\/p>\n

In Red Dead Redemption, apart from the usual money and weapons, players can devote time to completing various quests which are rewarded with new outfits for their avatar to wear.<\/p>\n

Of the games I\u2019ve researched, only Dear Esther eschews acquisition as an emotional driver. But of course Dear Esther is all about loss.<\/p>\n

Cultural Heritage sites often relegate acquisition to children\u2019s trails. Many of which are \u201cI spy\u201d checklists, sometimes rewarded with a sticker to wear. The National Trusts \u201c50 things to do before you are 11 \u00be\u201d campaign encourages families to acquire 50 fifty life experiences (like making a mud-slide or flying a kite).<\/p>\n

I was also intrigued to recently discover this question (which measures an acquisitive impulse in visitors of all ages) among those evaluating a mobile guide app.<\/p>\n

Challenge<\/p>\n

As we\u2019re talking about games, the most obvious emotion driver should be the ludic one (which is to say, the one all about play). Games test the player\u2019s dexterity, pattern learning, and puzzle solving ability before rewarding him or her, not just with a sense of accomplishment, but progression within the game. Both Red Dead Redemption and Skyrim use the traditional (to video games) challenge of having to kill people to get where you need to be. Deconstruct computer game conflict however, and what the players do is very similar to what they do playing Tetris or Candy Crush Saga \u2013 the core of the challenge is to point at as many icons as you can before the time runs out.<\/p>\n

The National Museums of Scotland have experimented with introducing a time-based, ludic element to the cultural heritage experience. In Capture the Museum \u201cvisitors download an app to their smartphone and sign up to either the Red or Blue clan. The two sides plan their strategies then spread out across the National Museum of Scotland. A map that updates in real-time shows which clan owns which ‘territories’ \u2013 the differently themed galleries in the Museum. Players scan into territories using their phone’s camera, where they prove their understanding of the exhibits to earn the high score. After 30 fast and furious minutes the clan with the most territories is crowned the winner.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Visitors coming to the museum\u2019s programme of late-openings appear to enjoy the game, but time limits and territory capture may not be compatible with the every-day visitor\u2019s wants and needs. However Sylvester argues that challenge is not as essential to games as it might appear, citing Dear Esther as a game that can \u201ccreate powerful emotions without players struggling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Learning<\/p>\n

All three games put learning at the core of their gameplay. And I don\u2019t mean simply learning the patterns of the Space Invaders\u2019 irresistible advance. Books describing the history and culture of Skyrim are liberally scattered around that game\u2019s world. The player of Red Dead Redemption learns uncomfortable truths about their character, and the whole point of Dear Esther is to piece together seemingly random memories to reveal a tragic story. \u201cIf a lesson is obvious,\u201d says Tynan Sylvester \u201cthere\u2019s not much buzz in finally getting it because it was always fairly clear.\u201d Instead, he advocates a moment of insight, where everything that has come before \u201cclicks into place and reveals the shape of the whole.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure how successful cultural heritage sites are at shaping that moment of insight.<\/p>\n

A couple of decades ago (which is in itself a scary fact) I was at a conference like this, sitting where you are now, listening to Judy Rand describe a model of interpretation which starts off with the main message, or theme, which she describes as the \u201csingle most important idea you want people to leave with.\u201d With the theme in place, and informing all the subsequent decisions, all the other story elements or messages fall into one of three categories, primary, secondary, or tertiary, in decending order of importance.<\/p>\n

Rand explains that this process is more than an arrangement of the relative value of the messages, it suggests a floorplan, with primary messages becoming sub-divisions of the exhibition and secondary messages indicating the contents of individual exhibits. Tertiary messages are only found by the most interested visitors.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a sensible model, and one you can see in exhibition galleries right around the world, most obviously those that begin with an introductory video to put everything else in context. But it front-loads the moment of revelation, of insight.<\/p>\n

The best attempt to subvert expectations I\u2019ve seen recently was the Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum exhibition, recently hosted by the British Museum. The introductory video was still there of course, but the final exhibit was an opportunity to remember that the reason we have discovered so much about the Roman way of life was a terrible intimate catastrophe.<\/p>\n

Character Arc<\/p>\n

Playing Dear Esther, you are intrigued to discover snippets of insight into a number of characters shared by a nameless narrator that may, or may not, be your avatar in the virtual world. Though there is an element of randomness in what you hear, the little world you inhabit is so tightly structured, that there is a very definite character arc.<\/p>\n

Similarly the apparent open world of Red Dead Redemption, seems to offer a wide range of player choices, at first. But the choices are illusionary, you can\u2019t change the story. As play progresses, you are forced towards your avatar, John Marston\u2019s inevitable fate.<\/p>\n

So Red Dead Redemption takes a more cinematic approach to narrative than Skyrim. In that game, you have more control over who your avatar is to begin with, and the avatar you design will affect how the game-world reacts to you to some degree. There\u2019s far less control on where you go than in either Red Dead or Dear Esther, and a far wider choice of stories to explore.<\/p>\n

In fact, each story turns out to be a lot more linear than Red Dead Redemption. Yes you can hop between stories, and tackle challenges in a wider variety of ways, so your avatar\u2019s personal narrative may well be unique. But\u2026 the ending of Red Dead Redemption is powerful, and in Skyrim, I\u2019ve saved the world twice already, and yet I\u2019m still waiting for, longing for<\/i>, the end credits.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll see that, of the two, Skyrim\u2019s narrative structure is closest to Rand\u2019s model of interpretation. It just fizzles out when we get to bored to enjoy it any more. So my challenge to cultural heritage, is can we structure our stories to end with something closer to Red Dead Redemption and Dear Esther\u2019s emotional punch?<\/p>\n

The Holburne Museum in Bath recently experimented with a ludic interactive narrative form of interpretation. The project, called Ghosts in the Garden,<\/i> involved giving groups a steam-punk listening device, which would allow twenty-first century visitors the opportunity to listen in on early nineteenth century conversations, taking place around the museum\u2019s gardens, which were once a popular \u201cpleasure grounds\u201d attraction. At every location, users were given a choice about where to guide their nineteenth century interlocutor next, in the knowledge that they choice they made would change the outcome of the story, just like a \u201cchoose your own adventure book.\u201d<\/p>\n

I was interested in the emotional impact this innovative story-telling method might have, and offered to help evaluate the project with a user questionnaire. I received the data only recently, and I\u2019ve not yet had time to analyse it properly. But one result I\u2019ve already noticed is an apparent scepticism from users that they were actually changing the story.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019m just beginning to wonder if making a story interactive, is of less<\/i> value than creating a strong character arc?<\/p>\n

Music<\/p>\n

And finally, we come to music.<\/p>\n

Tynan Sylvester has this to say about music in games \u201cNobody ever gives it the credit it deserves because nobody consciously pays attention to it during play. But even though the conscious mind is oblivious, the unconscious is still processing the music into a continuous flow of feeling. You can tell because music is easily separable from the rest of the experience. Listen to a game soundtrack by itself, and you\u2019ll feel much of what you felt during play. Play the game in silence, and you\u2019ll be surprised at how hollow it feels.\u201d<\/p>\n

I know that\u2019s true, the song that plays over the end credits of Red Dead Redemption has the power to bring a tear to my eye.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to lay my cards on the table here and say I think cultural heritage uses music incredibly badly (at least when music isn\u2019t the subject at the centre of the heritage experience). Museums and Heritage sites too often resorting to clich\u00e9d soundtrack choices or only-just-appropriate royalty free generic music.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s an opportunity to use music far more intelligently in heritage spaces, Cohen (Prezi)\u00a0explains how computer games use music to indicate breaks in the narrative, direct attention to particular spaces, communicate meaning, and trigger moods. The Dear Esther soundtrack is exemplary in this regard. The power of the music to invoke memories or \u201cprepare the mind for a type of cognitive activity\u201d is well recognized in advertising and sonic brands such as those created for Intel and Nokia. Why is the leitmotiv, such a useful tool in operatic storytelling for hundreds of years, so seldom used by museum spaces?<\/p>\n

Conclusion \u2013 where next?<\/p>\n

The sample size for my research around Ghosts in the Garden is too small, and of course, I\u2019m sure I\u2019ll discover I\u2019ve asked the wrong questions. But I\u2019ve got the opportunity to improve on the method with a similar project taking place at Bodiam Castle in Kent. I want to use that to test the validity of the emotional drivers I\u2019ve defined today.<\/p>\n

I also want to explore in more detail in the impact of, for want of a better word \u201cdesigned music\u201d on emotional engagement with cultural heritage sites. There\u2019s something about how the games I\u2019m examined use music (and silence) dynamically, that I\u2019d like to find collaborators to help me test.<\/p>\n

And I\u2019m curious that participants of Ghosts in the Garden didn\u2019t believe that their interaction really changed the story. It reminds me of what Aylett refers to as the Narrative Paradox\u00a0 – allowing your audience to interact with, and change the story, reduces its cohesion. Colleagues at Southampton wrote a paper last year on the Narrative Braid, which attempts to tackle the narrative paradox in documentaries. I\u2019m convinced that combining their ontologies, and concepts of narrative atoms, molecules and threads, with location and object based orientation, could make for exciting possibilities in heritage interpretation.<\/p>\n

I wonder if interpretive narratives can become, if not interactive, then dynamic, in a similar way to computer game music, sticking to a well written engaging narrative arc, but layering different elements, tones and details into the story, depending on the agency of the visitor and where they choose to go with the heritage space.<\/p>\n

Thank you.<\/p>\n
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In my free time, I volunteered as a costumed interpreter at Kentwell Hall and, with re-enactment societies, at various medieval sites around the UK and France. When, one evening, a few of us said \u201cwe could make a business out of this\u201d I left my job at the bank to go to college, first to get an Art Foundation and then to Manchester Polytechnic to join an innovative course called Design for Communications Media. I specialised in Educational Media Design, with the intention of applying what I was learning to cultural heritage. During my vacations and upon graduation I worked for the nascent company my friends had started, Past Pleasures, creating immersive living history festivals at Lancaster and Tunbridge Wells, as well as projects including: an exhibition for the centenary of the Commonwealth Institute; a design for a metafictional Sherlock Holmes exhibition in Croydon; and, a game that combined real-time investment advice from 300 year-old characters at the Bank of England Museum with a digital simulation, tracking the players\u2019 investment portfolio from the founding of the bank to its tercentenary. In 1996 I helped found JMD&Co, and for two years I also lectured on Heritage Tourism and Visitor Management and Interpretation modules for a Portsmouth University validated HND\\\/degree course at Farnborough Technical College. Subsequently, I enrolled in the new Distance Learning delivered Masters\u2019 degree in Museum Studies at Leicester University, where I became interested in the social use of space, particularly Bill Hillier\u2019s \u201cspace syntax,\u201d and the increasing futility of cultural heritage sites trying to tell doggedly linear stories in three-dimensional spaces. Although my dissertation explored models for mapping interpretation, and particularly learning styles, onto spaces, a satisfactory reconciliation of linear story and three-dimensional space eluded me. After graduation, I decided my time in the \u201csmall business\u201d end of cultural heritage was over for a while, and I left JMD&Co to join a cultural institution, the National Trust, as a Regional Community, Learning and Volunteering Manager. I brought the first National Trust iPad into use at Batemans, where, combined with a wax cylinder record player, and the help of renowned folk singer, Jon Boden, we\u2019ve returned Rudyard Kipling\u2019s voice back into his old home. However, one of the innovations which I am most proud of is the National Trust\u2019s virtual tours. Working with a small company, and a range of disabled stakeholders, we created a touch-screen based human computer interface that could also, if required, be controlled with other input devices, and allowed visitors with a variety of disabilities to fully enjoy the virtual tour. The teams\u2019 achievement was recognised with a Jodi Award for Excellence in accessible digital media in 2008.\",\"sameAs\":[\"http:\\\/\\\/memetechnology.wordpress.com\\\/\"],\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\\\/archaeology\\\/author\\\/matthew-tyler-jones\\\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"My Decoding the Digital presentation - Archaeology Blogs","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/archaeology\/2013\/09\/14\/my-decoding-the-digital-presentation\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"My Decoding the Digital presentation - Archaeology Blogs","og_description":"I delivered my presentation at University of Rochester’s Decoding the Digital conference today, and it seemed pretty well received. So I present the text in full below, and you can see the accompanying Prezi here. At some point I’ll see … Continue reading →","og_url":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/archaeology\/2013\/09\/14\/my-decoding-the-digital-presentation\/","og_site_name":"Archaeology Blogs","article_published_time":"2013-09-14T23:23:41+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/feeds.wordpress.com\/1.0\/comments\/memetechnology.wordpress.com\/2904\/","type":"","width":"","height":""}],"author":"Matthew Tyler-Jones","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Matthew Tyler-Jones","Est. reading time":"17 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/archaeology\/2013\/09\/14\/my-decoding-the-digital-presentation\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/archaeology\/2013\/09\/14\/my-decoding-the-digital-presentation\/"},"author":{"name":"Matthew Tyler-Jones","@id":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/archaeology\/#\/schema\/person\/a61d3a83f159c463727cd087c1ce643e"},"headline":"My Decoding the Digital presentation","datePublished":"2013-09-14T23:23:41+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/archaeology\/2013\/09\/14\/my-decoding-the-digital-presentation\/"},"wordCount":3420,"image":{"@id":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/archaeology\/2013\/09\/14\/my-decoding-the-digital-presentation\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/feeds.wordpress.com\/1.0\/comments\/memetechnology.wordpress.com\/2904\/","inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/archaeology\/2013\/09\/14\/my-decoding-the-digital-presentation\/","url":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/archaeology\/2013\/09\/14\/my-decoding-the-digital-presentation\/","name":"My Decoding the Digital presentation - Archaeology Blogs","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/archaeology\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/archaeology\/2013\/09\/14\/my-decoding-the-digital-presentation\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/archaeology\/2013\/09\/14\/my-decoding-the-digital-presentation\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/feeds.wordpress.com\/1.0\/comments\/memetechnology.wordpress.com\/2904\/","datePublished":"2013-09-14T23:23:41+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/archaeology\/#\/schema\/person\/a61d3a83f159c463727cd087c1ce643e"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/archaeology\/2013\/09\/14\/my-decoding-the-digital-presentation\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/archaeology\/2013\/09\/14\/my-decoding-the-digital-presentation\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/archaeology\/2013\/09\/14\/my-decoding-the-digital-presentation\/#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/feeds.wordpress.com\/1.0\/comments\/memetechnology.wordpress.com\/2904\/","contentUrl":"http:\/\/feeds.wordpress.com\/1.0\/comments\/memetechnology.wordpress.com\/2904\/"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/archaeology\/2013\/09\/14\/my-decoding-the-digital-presentation\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/archaeology\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"My Decoding the Digital presentation"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/archaeology\/#website","url":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/archaeology\/","name":"Archaeology Blogs","description":"Archaeology Blogs","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/archaeology\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/archaeology\/#\/schema\/person\/a61d3a83f159c463727cd087c1ce643e","name":"Matthew Tyler-Jones","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/b05de4152c16b059324bcceb7e15c65ec426d00af787220dcbb922248b71de61?s=96&d=mm&r=g","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/b05de4152c16b059324bcceb7e15c65ec426d00af787220dcbb922248b71de61?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/b05de4152c16b059324bcceb7e15c65ec426d00af787220dcbb922248b71de61?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Matthew Tyler-Jones"},"description":"I came to cultural heritage via five years working at Midland Bank when I left school. In my free time, I volunteered as a costumed interpreter at Kentwell Hall and, with re-enactment societies, at various medieval sites around the UK and France. When, one evening, a few of us said \u201cwe could make a business out of this\u201d I left my job at the bank to go to college, first to get an Art Foundation and then to Manchester Polytechnic to join an innovative course called Design for Communications Media. I specialised in Educational Media Design, with the intention of applying what I was learning to cultural heritage. During my vacations and upon graduation I worked for the nascent company my friends had started, Past Pleasures, creating immersive living history festivals at Lancaster and Tunbridge Wells, as well as projects including: an exhibition for the centenary of the Commonwealth Institute; a design for a metafictional Sherlock Holmes exhibition in Croydon; and, a game that combined real-time investment advice from 300 year-old characters at the Bank of England Museum with a digital simulation, tracking the players\u2019 investment portfolio from the founding of the bank to its tercentenary. In 1996 I helped found JMD&Co, and for two years I also lectured on Heritage Tourism and Visitor Management and Interpretation modules for a Portsmouth University validated HND\/degree course at Farnborough Technical College. Subsequently, I enrolled in the new Distance Learning delivered Masters\u2019 degree in Museum Studies at Leicester University, where I became interested in the social use of space, particularly Bill Hillier\u2019s \u201cspace syntax,\u201d and the increasing futility of cultural heritage sites trying to tell doggedly linear stories in three-dimensional spaces. Although my dissertation explored models for mapping interpretation, and particularly learning styles, onto spaces, a satisfactory reconciliation of linear story and three-dimensional space eluded me. After graduation, I decided my time in the \u201csmall business\u201d end of cultural heritage was over for a while, and I left JMD&Co to join a cultural institution, the National Trust, as a Regional Community, Learning and Volunteering Manager. I brought the first National Trust iPad into use at Batemans, where, combined with a wax cylinder record player, and the help of renowned folk singer, Jon Boden, we\u2019ve returned Rudyard Kipling\u2019s voice back into his old home. However, one of the innovations which I am most proud of is the National Trust\u2019s virtual tours. Working with a small company, and a range of disabled stakeholders, we created a touch-screen based human computer interface that could also, if required, be controlled with other input devices, and allowed visitors with a variety of disabilities to fully enjoy the virtual tour. The teams\u2019 achievement was recognised with a Jodi Award for Excellence in accessible digital media in 2008.","sameAs":["http:\/\/memetechnology.wordpress.com\/"],"url":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/archaeology\/author\/matthew-tyler-jones\/"}]}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/archaeology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/archaeology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/archaeology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/archaeology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/337"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/archaeology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/archaeology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/archaeology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/archaeology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/archaeology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}