The Zip-Scene Conference takes XR/extended reality (VR/AR/MR) and Metaverse-related works seriously and treats them on equal footing to film and performing arts, and wishes to expand its scientific treatment and reflection. On this basis, we are inviting papers that address narrative experiences enabled by digital platforms, especially online and XR or related to the Metaverse. We are also looking for IDN practices and prototypes from medical and mental healthcare practices that could offer new approaches on how storytelling can be embedded in scientific practices.
The topic for the 2022:
From the Holodeck to the Metaverse: Interactive Speculative Narratives. Online, mixed reality, performing arts projects representing complex issues, addressing personal health and speculating about the future.
The Metaverse can be considered as a possible realization of the Holodeck concept, a fully realized immersive environment depicted in the Star Trek: The Next Generation TV series and described in Janet H. Murray’s seminal book Hamlet on the Holodeck. Although the Metaverse itself is not (yet) fully realized, the concept inspires us to develop and try out new formats for connecting the analogue and the virtual spheres. Performances made in social VR platforms experiment with the sense of shared liveness and common activities that have an effect in both the physical and the virtual spheres of our experiences. Productions for VR headsets are experimenting with various storyworld architectures while each consecutive announcement of a forthcoming AR headset creates additional expectations. The ever tighter connection between the physical and digital spheres does have the potential to create experiences that are more similar to the ones depicted for the Holodeck, with increased visual fidelity, more modes of interaction and a higher level of agency.
To better grasp the changing world and the complexity of the changes, it is important to improve emerging artistic and scientific practices to enable critical reflection. Virtual Environments and the Metaverse provide particular opportunities in this regard, provided we embrace the changing relations between creators, audiences and scientists they bring about. Virtual Environments could also be described as interactive design fictions (Sterling, 2012), virtual sandboxes to try out novel ways of communicating, interacting and expressing, in the sense of “Playful Utopias” (Koenitz 2019). This notion connects VEs to the long tradition of literary and cinematic utopias and their effect on reality (cf Shedroff et. al. 2012) and positions VEs as a more democratic, participatory form of speculative narratives, especially in the realm of Metaverse-like environments. In this year’s conference, we aim to have a special emphasis on how IDN’s and related applications can guide us to a more peaceful future and/or also guide us for taking better care of each other.
We also welcome presentations that discuss research results related to physical and mental healthcare and completed projects that use Interactive Digital Narratives (IDN) for representing complex topics or as actual tools used in healthcare. Existing research looks into mental health therapy applications, e.g. interactive story authoring to facilitate the process of reflection (see Brown and Chu 2021) or the use of a transmedia narrative framework can be used for pediatric counseling (Kadastik and Bruni 2021). In recent years, the use of interactive digital storytelling in interdisciplinary research and education methods became more prevalent (see Skains 2021) and we invite presentation of such projects to the Zip-Scene community to demonstrate how applied IDN research can serve as a tool for treatment, healing or relaxation.
Organised by:
Zip-Scene
Innovation Center of Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest
ARDIN – Association for Research in Digital Interactive Narratives
The topic for the 2022:
From the Holodeck to the Metaverse: Interactive Speculative Narratives. Online, mixed reality, performing arts projects representing complex issues, addressing personal health and speculating about the future.
The Metaverse can be considered as a possible realization of the Holodeck concept, a fully realized immersive environment depicted in the Star Trek: The Next Generation TV series and described in Janet H. Murray’s seminal book Hamlet on the Holodeck. Although the Metaverse itself is not (yet) fully realized, the concept inspires us to develop and try out new formats for connecting the analogue and the virtual spheres. Performances made in social VR platforms experiment with the sense of shared liveness and common activities that have an effect in both the physical and the virtual spheres of our experiences. Productions for VR headsets are experimenting with various storyworld architectures while each consecutive announcement of a forthcoming AR headset creates additional expectations. The ever tighter connection between the physical and digital spheres does have the potential to create experiences that are more similar to the ones depicted for the Holodeck, with increased visual fidelity, more modes of interaction and a higher level of agency.
To better grasp the changing world and the complexity of the changes, it is important to improve emerging artistic and scientific practices to enable critical reflection. Virtual Environments and the Metaverse provide particular opportunities in this regard, provided we embrace the changing relations between creators, audiences and scientists they bring about. Virtual Environments could also be described as interactive design fictions (Sterling, 2012), virtual sandboxes to try out novel ways of communicating, interacting and expressing, in the sense of “Playful Utopias” (Koenitz 2019). This notion connects VEs to the long tradition of literary and cinematic utopias and their effect on reality (cf Shedroff et. al. 2012) and positions VEs as a more democratic, participatory form of speculative narratives, especially in the realm of Metaverse-like environments. In this year’s conference, we aim to have a special emphasis on how IDN’s and related applications can guide us to a more peaceful future and/or also guide us for taking better care of each other.
We also welcome presentations that discuss research results related to physical and mental healthcare and completed projects that use Interactive Digital Narratives (IDN) for representing complex topics or as actual tools used in healthcare. Existing research looks into mental health therapy applications, e.g. interactive story authoring to facilitate the process of reflection (see Brown and Chu 2021) or the use of a transmedia narrative framework can be used for pediatric counseling (Kadastik and Bruni 2021). In recent years, the use of interactive digital storytelling in interdisciplinary research and education methods became more prevalent (see Skains 2021) and we invite presentation of such projects to the Zip-Scene community to demonstrate how applied IDN research can serve as a tool for treatment, healing or relaxation.
Organised by:
Zip-Scene
Innovation Center of Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest
ARDIN – Association for Research in Digital Interactive Narratives
Kontakt
ZIP-SCENE Conference
Innovation Center of Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, Zugligeti út 9-25
1121
Budapest, HU
http://zip-scene.mome.hu
zipscene@mome.hu
Mapa
1121
Budapest, HU