No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Why so serious? Raising curiosity for cultural heritage with playful games
... On the non-technical side, we are interested in defining metrics to analyze the achievements more deeply in relation to promoting reflection about cultural heritage, triggering curiosity and increasing retention. The grounds for such a study can be found in [26][27][28]. In particular, we want to gain insight into how those cognitive phenomena (and even emotional ones) can be fostered with a cross-border perspective by controversial characters or events that are viewed very differently in different countries, such as the figures of Gavrilo Princip (who is seen as a national hero by many in Serbia, whereas History textbooks in many other European countries present him as the villain who sparked the start of World War I) or Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (who was honored by UNESCO and the United Nations as a promoter of peace between nations, but is held responsible by many Greeks for acts of repression against minorities). ...
The Horizon 2020 project CrossCult aims to highlight historical and cultural associations between different characters, locations, events, venues, or artworks, to develop new strategies with which to promote intercultural and cross-border aspects of history and heritage. This paper presents a pilot app that provides graph-based visualizations of those associations, arranged by Humanities experts in relation to several reflective topics, and glued together by narratives that may present the same facts from diverse points of view. After querying a knowledge base that brings together several Linked Data resources, the associations are curated by the experts using a dedicated tool, to ensure that only meaningful associations appear on the mobile app. In turn, the app users can contribute new associations in the form of written text, which the experts can turn into new concepts and properties in the knowledge base. Here, we present the design of the mobile app and the experts’ tool, together with the results of early experiments aimed at assessing the instructional value of the proposal.
Il contributo presenta la realizzazione - su un caso studio applicativo - di un Sistema Informativo Semantico in cui il modello tridimensionale ottenuto dal rilievo, è scomposto semanticamente in elementi connessi secondo rapporti gerarchici, a cui sono associate
etichette per l’annotazione di contenuti digitali (fotografie, video, disegni tecnici, analisi del degrado) visualizzabili come layers sovrapposti al modello reale reso visibile in ambiente virtuale. Per superare l’indifferenziazione dei modelli parametrici, in cui la conoscenza, seppur strutturata, non è veicolata in funzione delle esigenze del singolo utente, o l’isolamento che crea la navigazione mediata da filtri esterni, come occhialini o tablet, è stato sperimentato l’impiego di guide virtuali per la generazione di presentazioni
conoscitive del sito culturale. Si tratta di studi interdisciplinari che intrecciano i saperi scientifici dell’Architettura con le tecnologie dell’Informatica e del Gaming.
Nel progetto presentato, è prodotto quindi un modulo di intelligenza artificiale/
avatar in grado di guidare il visitatore nel processo cognitivo, suscitando la sua
curiosità e stimolandone l’interesse. In questo modo, un qualsiasi fruitore può sia
inoltrarsi autonomamente nello studio dell’architettura, attraverso fonti adattate, che
servirsi di un ‘amico virtuale’ il quale, sulla base delle queries poste dal visitatore,
illustra la storia del sito e le sue caratteristiche.
The museum visit is a collaborative activity: people typically visit museums in social groups, and conversation between group members has been highlighted as a key aspect for an engaging visitor experience. In this work, we detail initial findings and experience results from the design and evaluation of a group-based digital storytelling journey, where visitor-to-visitor engagement takes place under the frame of an interactive, mobile technology-based story. The results suggest not only the potential to cultivate social interaction between individuals using their own mobile devices, but also to generate immediate transcultural and transgenerational understanding and cooperation in situ.
Interactive digital narrative (IDN) challenges basic assumptions about narrative in the western world—namely about the role of the author and the fixed state of content and structure as the audience takes on an active role and the narratives become malleable. 1 It seems quite clear that narrative theory—as is—cannot fully account for these changed conditions. Many scholars have reacted to these challenges by adapting established narrative theories. This approach has clear advantages as terms, categories, and methods of analysis are already well understood. On the other hand, analysing IDN with theoretical frameworks created to describe narrative in traditional media carries the risk of misunderstanding the nature of the change. In this regard, Espen Aarseth rightfully warns of the danger of " theoretical imperialism " (1997, p. 16). For example, once we focus on similarities with ancient Greek stage play we can become overly wedded to the framework of Aristotle's Poetics and prone to disregard aspects that do not fit that particular frame of reference. A more fully developed theory of digital interactive narrative should be careful to avoid such theoretical pitfalls. Before sketching out a specific theoretical framework for IDN, I will analyse several existing theoretical perspectives to foreground the scope and focus of earlier contributions and investigate which aspects are not fully covered yet.
The Cultural Heritage experience at the museum begins before the actual on-site visit and continues with memories and reflections after the visit. In considering the potential of novel information and communication technology to enhance the entire visit experience, one scenario envisioned is extending the on-site visit boundaries, to help the visitors access information concerning exhibits that are of primary interest to them during pre-visit planning, provide relevant information to the visitors during the visit, and follow up with post visit memories and reflections. All this can be done by using today’s state of the art mobile and web-based applications, as well as any new foreseeable emerging technology. So far, research on applying novel information and communication technology in the cultural heritage domain has focused primarily on exploring specific aspects of the technology and its capability for supporting the individual visitor mainly during the physical, on-site, visit (and in some cases in additional specific phases such as prior or after the visit). This paper suggests a novel, integrative framework for supporting the pre, during and post visit phases in a personalized manner. It is based on a set of standard, common models: a visitor model, a site model and a visit model, all enable a large variety of services to store, update and reuse data during the three phases of the visit. Our contribution is presenting a framework architecture with its underlying infrastructure, and showing in a case study how this framework supports the various visit phases in an actual museum. The suggested framework is generic; it is not limited to a specific setting or scenario and it is open and can be easily adopted and used by practitioners and researchers to be implemented in different sites and settings. As such, it provides a further step in extending the cultural heritage experience beyond the on-site visit and towards linking individual episodes into complete, memorable personal experiences.
Digital storytelling is one resource museums have in hand for enriching their offer to audiences and society at large. But how is the museum to author digital storytelling experiences that cater to various needs while maintaining scientific integrity? In this paper, we report on a series of experiences involving the creation of several interactive rich-media museum stories. These digital stories were authored by experts who collaborated in numerous intensive, hands-on participatory design workshops held at high-profile cultural sites: the Acropolis Museum in Greece, the archaeological site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey, and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. We present the story-authoring methodology and discuss the lessons learned regarding collaborative authoring of museum stories. We conclude with the potential impact this authoring process may have at the institutional level.
Immersive technologies such as virtual environments and augmented reality have a clear potential to support the experiencing of cultural heritage by the large public, complementing the current tools and practices based on tangible goods such as museums, exhibitions, books and visual content. Serious games – videogames designed for educational objectives – appear as a new tool to learn cultural content in an engaging way. In this paper, we will provide an extensive portrait of the current proposition of serious games in the cultural sector, highlighting the educational objectives of games in this domain and analysing the complex relations between genre, context of use, technological solutions and learning effectiveness. We finally identify and discuss the most significant challenges in the design and adoption of educational games in cultural heritage.
Games have become an integral part of today's culture, most obviously among younger people. At the same time, learning games have proved that they can be a source of enjoyment and are, if well-made, powerful tools for communicating knowledge. For cultural heritage projects targeted to raising the awareness of the general public, the integration of interactivity and innovative storytelling techniques can be supporting elements to capture their target audiences' enthusiasm. In particular, games that deal with art history have particular flaws in integrating motivating elements. This observation led us to the development of the 3D online learning game, ThIATRO, that immerses the player an exhibition and, as a side-effect communicates knowledge of art history concepts to the player. Its playful approach not only increases motivation to learn but also raises interest in art history and cultural heritage in general. We provide an overview of the design ideas behind ThIATRO and summarize the results of evaluations conducted with a group of 14-year-old pupils in a classroom environment. The results indicate that ThIATRO changes the player's aesthetic response and allows him or her to perceive art on a deeper level.
Research on curiosity has undergone 2 waves of intense activity. The 1st, in the 1960s, focused mainly on curiosity's psychological underpinnings. The 2nd, in the 1970s and 1980s, was characterized by attempts to measure curiosity and assess its dimensionality. This article reviews these contributions with a concentration on the 1st wave. It is argued that theoretical accounts of curiosity proposed during the 1st period fell short in 2 areas: They did not offer an adequate explanation for why people voluntarily seek out curiosity, and they failed to delineate situational determinants of curiosity. Furthermore, these accounts did not draw attention to, and thus did not explain, certain salient characteristics of curiosity: its intensity, transience, association with impulsivity, and tendency to disappoint when satisfied. A new account of curiosity is offered that attempts to address these shortcomings. The new account interprets curiosity as a form of cognitively induced deprivation that arises from the perception of a gap in knowledge or understanding. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Typically, the political and ideological foundations of media-related events hold little significance for the alteration of political attitudes and behavior. But this weak relationship may be attributed to weak stimuli, and the influence of different media events is likely to be dependent upon the strength with which certain political attitudes and beliefs are held. We examine the extent to which a major media event—the film Malcolm X and its reinforcement in the media—influences political attitudes among African Americans. We find that individuals who saw the film and received reinforcement from a televised documentary became more racially conscious, more concerned about race relations, and more knowledgeable about Malcolm X the man. When age differences in the perceptions of Malcolm X are considered separately, younger African Americans born after the civil rights movement appear more positively disposed toward him.
Takayuki Kanda is a computer scientist with interests in intelligent robots and human-robot interaction; he is a researcher in the Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories at ATR (Advanced Telecommunications Re-search Institute), Kyoto, Japan. Takayuki Hirano is a computer scientist with an interest in human–robot interaction; he is an intern researcher in the Intelli-gent Robotics and Communication Laboratories at ATR, Kyoto, Japan. Daniel Eaton is a computer scientist with an interest in human–robot interaction; he is an intern researcher in the Intelligent Robotics and Communication Labora-tories at ATR, Kyoto, Japan. Hiroshi Ishiguro is a computer scientist with in-terests in computer vision and intelligent robots; he is Professor of Adaptive Machine Systems in the School of Engineering at Osaka University, Osaka, Ja-pan, and a visiting group leader in the Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories at ATR, Kyoto, Japan. ABSTRACT Robots increasingly have the potential to interact with people in daily life. It is believed that, based on this ability, they will play an essential role in human society in the not-so-distant future. This article examined the proposition that robots could form relationships with children and that children might learn from robots as they learn from other children. In this article, this idea is studied in an 18-day field trial held at a Japanese elementary school. Two English-speak-ing "Robovie" robots interacted with first-and sixth-grade pupils at the perime-ter of their respective classrooms. Using wireless identification tags and sensors, these robots identified and interacted with children who came near them. The robots gestured and spoke English with the children, using a vocabulary of about 300 sentences for speaking and 50 words for recognition.
Virtual environments have been valued as being extremely motivating for learners and therefore are employed as an innovative, more accessible framework to deliver education and entertainment to the public. Recent advances in creating videogame applications imbedded with effective learning principles, along with the evolution of human computer interfaces performed within the entertainment industry, suggests that a combination of successful practices in these areas could potentially transform virtual environments to a significant educational tool that could facilitate the learning process. This paper describes a virtual reality exhibit implemented for the museum of Thermopylae located at the site of the original battle, near the city of Lamia in Greece. We utilized storytelling techniques and principles of modern videogames to disseminate historical knowledge about the battle and the associated legends. After describing the hardware and software components comprising this installation we elaborate over the educational techniques designed to reinforce the strength of virtual reality technology as a mean of designing educational experiences in the context of historical events.
Using prevalent teaching methods, such as classroom teaching, art historical facts can be tedious to communicate. Especially when it concentrates on teaching artists names, artworks and their corresponding era of art. Knowing about the cultural-historical background of art history can play an important role in raising a student's interest in contemporary culture and cultural heritage. We propose the online multiplayer Serious Game ThIATRO that helps students learn art history. This playful approach is intended to not only increases the motivation to learn but also compel the player to think about, organize and use information in ways that encourage active construction of knowledge.
3D Virtual Worlds have the potential to expand the knowledge of a foreign culture by presenting the information in a visual context. In this paper we describe the design and evaluation of ICURA, a Serious Game that provides an opportunity to learn more about Japanese culture and etiquette. ICURA incorporates different game design and learning principles to effectively communicate knowledge. The main goal is to combine aspects of learning and fun in an immersive 3D Environment to make the communication of knowledge an entertaining experience. We evaluated the game through a user study with 20 participants. The comparison of pre- and post-test results highlights the positive learning effect of ICURA.
In this paper, we present an application for character-based guided tours on mobile devices. The application is based on the
Dramatour methodology for information presentation, which incorporates a dramatic attitude in character-based presentations.
The application has been developed for a historical site and is based on a virtual character, “Carletto”, a spider with an
anthropomorphic aspect, who engages in a dramatized presentation of the site. Content items are delivered in a location-aware
fashion, relying on a wireless network infrastructure, with visitors who can stroll freely. The selection of contents keeps
track of user location and of the interaction history, in order to deliver the appropriate type and quantity of informative
items, and to manage the given/new distinction in discourse. The communicative strategy of the character is designed to keep
it believable along the interaction with the user, while enforcing dramatization effects. The design of the communicative
strategy relies on the fact that the units of the presentation are tagged with metadata concerning their content and communicative
function. The description of the application is accompanied by an evaluation study based on a sample of about 300 visitors,
carried out in April 2006, when the installation was open to the public for 1 week.
A meta-analysis of 128 studies examined the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation. As predicted, engagement-contingent, completion-contingent, and performance-contingent rewards significantly undermined free-choice intrinsic motivation (d = -0.40, -0.36, and -0.28, respectively), as did all rewards, all tangible rewards, and all expected rewards. Engagement-contingent and completion-contingent rewards also significantly undermined self-reported interest (d = -0.15, and -0.17), as did all tangible rewards and all expected rewards. Positive feedback enhanced both free-choice behavior (d = 0.33) and self-reported interest (d = 0.31). Tangible rewards tended to be more detrimental for children than college students, and verbal rewards tended to be less enhancing for children than college students. The authors review 4 previous meta-analyses of this literature and detail how this study's methods, analyses, and results differed from the previous ones.
In many cases, visitors come to a museum in small groups. In such cases, the visitors'social context has an impact on their museum visit experience. Knowing the social context may allow a system to provide socially aware services to the visitors. Evidence of the social context can be gained from observing/monitoring the visitors'social behavior. However, automatic identification of a social context requires, on the one hand, identifying typical social behavior patterns and, on the other, using relevant sensors that measure various signals and reason about them to detect the visitors'social behavior. We present such typical social behavior patterns of visitor pairs, identified by observations, and then the instrumentation, detection process, reasoning, and analysis of measured signals that enable us to detect the visitors'social behavior. Simple sensors'data, such as proximity to other visitors, proximity to museum points of interest, and visitor orientation are used to detect social synchronization, attention to the social companion, and interest in museum exhibits. The presented approach may allow future research to offer adaptive services to museum visitors based on their social context to support their group visit experience better.
Objectives
Media effects research has generally ignored the possibility that popular films can affect political attitudes. This omission is puzzling for two reasons. First, research on public opinion finds the potential for persuasion is highest when respondents are unaware that political messages are being communicated. Second, multiple studies have found that entertainment media can alter public opinion. Together, this suggests that popular films containing political messages should possess the potential to influence attitudes. Methods
We develop a laboratory experiment where subjects were randomly assigned to watch a control movie with no political messages, a movie with subtle political messages, or a movie with strong and explicit political messages. ResultsWe find that popular movies possess the ability to change political attitudes, especially on issues that are unframed by the media. Furthermore, we show such influence persists over time and is not moderated by partisanship, ideology, or political knowledge. Conclusions
Our key findings suggest that a renewed scholarly interest in the political influence of popular movies is clearly warranted.
Oliver Stone's controversial film, JFK induced an array of psychological sequelae in an educated, politically diverse audience seeing the film under natural circumstances. Fifty-three adults were surveyed as they entered a theater to see the film, while another 54 respondents answered the same questions as they exited from seeing the film. The film significantly aroused anger and changed beliefs toward accepting the broad conspiracy hypothesis of multiple agents and agencies involved in the Kennedy assassination and its cover-up. The film's impact on moods, beliefs, and judgments was found to be specific to the themes and persuasive message of the film and did not carry over to general political judgments or to perceptions of conspiracies in viewers' own lives, with one exception: viewing JFK was associated with a significant decrease in viewers' reported intentions to vote or make political contributions. A general helplessness effect is proposed to account for the increase in feelings of anger and hopelessness and the decrease in intentions to vote or make political contributions.
The hedonic principle that people approach pleasure and avoid pain has been the basic motivational principle throughout the history of psychology. This principle underlies motivational models across all levels of analysis in psychology from the biological to social. However, it is noted that the hedonic principle is very basic and is limited as an explanatory variable. Almost any area of motivation can be discussed in terms of the hedonic principle. This chapter describes two different ways in which the hedonic principle operates—namely, one with a promotion focus and other with a prevention focus. These different ways of regulating pleasure and pain, called “regulatory focus,” have a major impact on people's feelings, thoughts, and actions that is independent of the hedonic principle per se. The chapter also presents some background information about another regulatory variable, called the “regulatory reference.” A self-regulatory system with a positive reference value essentially has a desired end state as the reference point.
Abstract This article examines the ways in which the narrative or story form generates personal connections between visitors and content and thus is ideally suited to the work of museums. Starting with a review of the qualities of narrative, the article provides specific examples of how stories and storytelling have worked in exhibitions, public programs and outreach to schools.
Using handheld devices and situated displays for collaborative planning of a museum visit
- I Belinky
- J Lanir
- T Kuflik
Belinky, I., Lanir, J., Kuflik, T.: Using handheld devices and situated displays for
collaborative planning of a museum visit. In: Proceedings of the 2012 International
Symposium on Pervasive Displays. p. 19. ACM (2012)
Big and slow: adventures in digital storytelling
- D Birchall
- A Faherty
Birchall, D., Faherty, A.: Big and slow: adventures in digital storytelling. In: Proc.
of Museums and the web (2016)
Story proof: The science behind the startling power of story
- K F Haven
Haven, K.F.: Story proof: The science behind the startling power of story. Greenwood Publishing Group (2007)
Keeping the player on an emotional trajectory in interactive storytelling
- S P Hernandez
- V Bulitko
- M Spetch
Hernandez, S.P., Bulitko, V., Spetch, M.: Keeping the player on an emotional
trajectory in interactive storytelling. In: Eleventh Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference (2015)
The game narrative toolbox
- T Heussner
- T K Finley
- J Brandes-Hepler
- L Ann
Heussner, T., Finley, T.K., Brandes-Hepler, J., Ann, L.: The game narrative toolbox. OUP Oxford (2014)
Telling Tales: A guide to developing effective storytelling programmes for museums
- E Johnsson
Johnsson, E.: Telling Tales: A guide to developing effective storytelling programmes
for museums. Museums Hub (2006)
Why pandora opened the box: Curiosity as a desire for missing information. Unpublished manuscript, Department of Social and Decision Sciences
- G Loewenstein
- D Adler
- D Behrens
- J Gillis
Loewenstein, G., Adler, D., Behrens, D., Gillis, J.: Why pandora opened the box:
Curiosity as a desire for missing information. Unpublished manuscript, Department
of Social and Decision Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA (1992)
Expectancy and emotion
- M Miceli
- C Castelfranchi
Miceli, M., Castelfranchi, C.: Expectancy and emotion. OUP Oxford (2014)
Towards a collaborative filtering framework for recommendation in museums: from preference elicitation to group visits
- S Rossi
- F Barile
- D Improta
- L Russo
Rossi, S., Barile, F., Improta, D., Russo, L.: Towards a collaborative filtering framework for recommendation in museums: from preference elicitation to group visits.
In: Proc. of the International workshop on data mining on IoT Systems (2016)
The art of game design
- J Schell
Schell, J.: The art of game design. CRC Press (2015)