Shifting Views
Hamlet in Cyberspace: The Virtual Lives of Shakespeare View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Zafiris Nikitas
The works of William Shakespeare have entered cyberspace during the last years and his heroes are reincarnated in forms of animation and experimental visualization. The two leading companies in this regard are the Metaverse Shakespeare Company and the Avatar Repertory Theatre. The first one has created a series of productions on Shakespeare’s plays using Second Life and striving for a historically accurate presentation. The second one has explored the use of animation in order to portray fantasy worlds where Shakespeare’s plays (such as The tempest or The Merry Wives of Windsor) blend with aspects of gaming. These companies push further the boundaries of theatre and performance and explore the implementation of intermediality in order to (re)-imagine theatre. In a fusion of technology and drama the mise-en-scène of Shakespeare’s plays that is presented on the real stage with human actors is reincarnated into the digital stage of the metaverse with 3-D avatars. In the paper at hand, Ι look into the virtual lives of Shakespeare and investigate with interdisciplinary hermeneutic tools (from semiology etc.) the evolution of Shakespeare’s Folios into an experiment where Image, not Word prevails. This study builds on my ongoing research on cultural multimodalities in visual and performing arts.
The Seeable and the Sayable: Visual Advocacy in the Practice and Pedagogy of Social Change Lawyering View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Daria Fisher Page
In traditional legal education, students are taught extensively about oral advocacy and written advocacy, but they learn almost nothing about visual advocacy. In the 21st century, lawyers must understand and be able to use design, images, and other visual tools to make them effective advocates and persuasive storytellers. This paper looks at the role of visual advocacy in settings beyond litigation with a focus on the use of design and images in social change movements. It argues that visual advocacy and legal design are necessary components of legal education, despite being taught at only a handful of law schools, and key to making the law more accessible to users of the law and those without specialized training. Lastly the paper seeks to articulate goals and approaches for the teaching of visual advocacy to law (and policy) students. The study draws on Prof. Fisher Page's legal practice and teaching; builds on her clinical legal work at the Community Empowerment Law Project at the University of Iowa; and draws on her academic training in art history.
Image And Experience View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Mary Anna La Fratta
This research focuses on the same lesson in three different formats, each affording unique ways of interaction, communication, design, and user experiences: an animation, a web-based interactive version, and a large interactive wall display. The objectives include: visualizing an aspect of science, integrating Cherokee vocabulary related to the topic, and determining the effectiveness of each format. The research is a collaboration with the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians, faculty and staff at Kituwah Academy, located in Cherokee, North Carolina, a faculty member in Biology and an undergraduate research assistant and faculty mentor in Graphic Design, at Western Carolina University (WCU), Cullowhee, NC. Kituwah Academy is a private bilingual Cherokee and English language immersion school for students in kindergarten through sixth grade. The collaboration between Graphic Design at WCU and Kituwah Academy has spanned several years. The objectives have always been to visualize various topics developed by Kituwah faculty and staff, and to promote learning Cherokee language through animations that could be integrated into the curricula at the Academy. However, the effectiveness of the animations, have not been formally assessed and became an area to explore for this researcher. This research, although focused on developing effective learning modules for the Kituwah Academy, is valuable for university design curricula as well. It requires developing new technical skills working with multiple software, expanding skills in design thinking, semiotics, and developing a process for assessment.
The Image in the Act of Shaping Worlds View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Nancy Bookhart Wellington
It is nearly impossible to divide the image in society as art form from the primacy of reason that has orchestrated worlds since its nascent beginning in Plato’s epistemological divide in his republic. Presently we battle in perpetuity that which has fashioned specialties and has left society fragile and alienated signaling a clarion call for interdisciplinary measures in our pedagogical practices. Society is in a state of fragility because the singularity of knowledges as specialties leaves us without the holistic approach to the human condition and alienates society in such a way that one occupies themselves in the insistent of their chosen profession, and nothing else. This paper considers how the image has shaped worlds since the dialogues of Plato and the birth of imitation in the poetics of Aristotle in this: in Plato, the silhouette was the inferior image, and the arts (poets and imagery) were an abomination that could not yield a strong community. Differing from Plato, Aristotle adopted mimesis to inform society, but fashioned as a hierarchy of visibility. Jacques Ranciere’s writings are critical here for their unvarnished examination of the image in three regimes, which he denotes as Plato’s ethical regime of art, Aristotle’s representative regime of art, and the aesthetic regime of art. In Ranciere we understand that the image either offers itself as an image of Kantian disinterest with interest abiding in the critique of beauty, his Copernican Revolution or as one of finality, determined, an always already subjugated gaze.
Pedagogical Prospection of the Metaverse through Curatorship: Case Study of the 1964 IBM Pavilion as an Example View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Carmen Basanta, Javier Antón Sancho, Teresa Reina, Carmen Urpí
In order to explore the potential of the metaverse in the field of curatorship as a space of convergence between education and communication, this paper presents a descriptive case study of the IBM Pavilion designed by Eames and Saarinen for the 1964 New York World Fair. As an exhibition project that anticipated the possibilities of computers through an immersive experience in a changing historical moment, it now opens up for the present new scenarios for imagining how to approach the metaverse. Conclusions are drawn according to the initial theoretical framework with an interdisciplinary focus on the context of uncertainty in the emergence of the metaverse and its pedagogical possibilities through crosscutting capabilities.
The Otherworld in Its Postmodern Version View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Roger Ferrer
The conception of space has radically changed in the last fifty years. The notion of simulacrum has been enhanced for different aspects: for instance, thanks to new technologies and electronic media, with the creation of virtual environments, besides the emergence of video games both in its facet of experience for the receiver, and as a virtual space through which to move. This aspect is of great significance and stands out as an absolute novelty of the period. However, most films that have shown these virtual realities had been created within the fantasy genre close to horror. Several movies and TV series will be analyzed to show the development of the representation of virtual worlds, as it has been reflected in cinema. Tron (1982) is considered as a starting point. In this film there is already a certain component of horror in the face of that reality. This feeling of horror increases in The Lawnmower Man (1992), with metaphysical resonances. Two films from the end of the 1990s outline two of the problems derived from virtual environments and the universes they originate: first, as a way of escapism that blurs the contours of reality (eXistenZ, 1999), and second, its possible social use to subjugate the population (Matrix, 1999). Both issues, the warning about social dangers, as well as the creation of a specific iconography of the subgenre, continue in several of the chapters of Black Mirror (2011).
