Abstract:

It is a challenge to explore computational modes of visual narrative in art, design and computer science classroom environments. Students need to learn, practice and synthesize a collection of skills when they develop projects (coding, art production, animation, interactivity, game design, etc.), and such efforts often requires cooperative work in team-based environments. These challenges are acute in domains such as augmented, mixed and virtual reality, where teams are also tasked to innovate in emerging platforms, as standards, affordances and potentials are open-ended and changing rapidly. Students address such design problems with creativity, as they practice divergent thinking, and ingenuity, solving problems in inventive ways -- these skills are difficult to teach.

Innovative curricular strategies sometimes focus on fostering collaborative spaces and challenges that require multidisciplinary problem solving for unorthodox scenarios and the interplay of technology, arts, and design thinking. That is the focus of this paper, we present a project and technology platform called Story-Go-Round. The particulars of the platform are evolving-- it was developed over a semester, as an assignment for an undergraduate art and design studio. The project involves a collection of technologies and a flexible, open-source design-- a 3d camera, actuated physical stage, electronics, fabricated cabinet, computer and game controls, and collection of software templates. The students are asked to consider the affordances of the system and think about its potential to be hacked and hybridized, towards the goal of creating a novel, cyclical storytelling experience.

Story-Go-Round is a mythotrope, meaning “story turning”, a term coined by the authors as a reference to a zoetrope, a historic cylindrical pre-film animation device developed in the 19th century. It is an experimental physical development platform for producing augmented digital experiences. Students construct dioramas in an actuated carousel or spool, and then integrate the hand-crafted sets and engineered hardware system with software-based content, animation, gameplay and effects.

The platform is not intimidating, it first involves crafting using methods familiar from childhood. It introduces foundational topics, allowing the students to show off expert skills, while at the same time crossing discipline domains into unfamiliar areas. Along the way students consider the history of animation, interactive entertainment and digital media.

As educators in this highly virtualized era, we are tempted to shift the focus exclusively to digital tools; however, this limits the design that students produce to obvious choices offered by software, and the results become alike and repetitive. We wanted to create an assignment that functions by combining two made-up worlds: one that is physically produced and another that is digitally animated and controlled.

When students try to develop a multi-faceted project like this, which crosses multiple technical and artistic domains, they get to experience the remix/mashup, open-source making culture, which is so prominent in the way we work today. How else can young creators best learn the duct-tape and jerry-rigging skills which will allow them to see potential opportunities in disparate things, and find new ways of hacking them together to create something new, even if what they create is also “ridiculous”, and often not practical?

Keywords:

Augmented reality, project-based learning, multidisciplinary problem solving, visual narrative, game design, animation, digital fabrication, DIY electronics.