@@ -144,6 +144,119 @@ alt="Photo by Leslie Robbins" />
+
Backplaces
+
vulnerable-interfaces.xpub.nl/backplaces
+
Hi.
+I made this play for you. It is a question, for us to hold together.
+
Is all intimacy about bodies? What is it about our bodies that makes
+intimacy? What happens when our bodies distance intimacy from us? This
+small anthology of poems and short stories lives with these
+questions—about having a body without intimacy and intimacy without a
+body. This project is also a homage to everyone who has come before and
+alongside me, sharing their vulnerability and emotions on the Internet.
+I called the places where these things happen backplaces. They are
+small, tender online rooms where people experiencing societally
+uncomfortable pain can find relief, ease, and transcendence.
+
+
I made three backplaces for you to see, click, and feel: Solar
+Sibling, Hermit Fantasy, and Cake Intimacies. Each of these is the
+result of its own unique performance or project. Some of the stories I
+will share carry memories of pain—both physical and emotional. As you
+sit in the audience, know I am with you, holding your hand through each
+scene. If the performance feels overwhelming at any point, you have my
+full permission to step out, take a break, or leave. This is not
+choreographed, and I care deeply for you.
+
+
+
+This is the Index, the stage of my play.
+Each felted item is an act.
+
+
Solar Sibling is an online performance of shared loss about leaving
+and siblings. This project used comments people left on TikTok poetry. I
+extracted the emotions from these comments, mixed them with my own, and
+crafted them into poems. It is an ongoing performance, ending only when
+your feelings are secretly whispered to me. When you do, by typing into
+the comment box, your feelings are sent to me and the first act closes
+as the sun rises.
+
+
+
+The initial comment shaped poems and
+their sun count.
+
+
+
+The fillable comment where you can
+whisper your feelings to me.
+
+
Hermit Fantasy is a short story about a bot who wants to be a hermit.
+Inspired by an email response from a survey I conducted about receiving
+emotional support on the Internet, this story explores the contradiction
+of being online while wanting to disconnect. As an act it’s a series of
+letters, click by click.
+
+
+
+The first letter.
+
+
+
+The second letter.
+
+
Cake Intimacies is a performance that took a year to bring together.
+It is a small selection of stories people told me and I held to memory
+and rewrote here. The stories come from two performances I hosted.
+First, I asked participants to eat cake, sitting facing or away from
+each other and sharing their stories about cake and the Internet. The
+second performance was hosted at the Art Meets Radical Openness
+Festival, as part of the Turning of the Internet workshop. For this
+performance, I predicted participants’ future lives on the Internet
+using felted archetypes and received stories from their Internet past in
+return. Now the stories are here, each of them a cake with a filling
+that tells a story, merging the bodily with the digital and making a
+mess of it all.
+
+
+
+The first two stories and their memory
+illustrations.
+
+
+
+The second stories in the way they were
+meant to be experienced.
+
+
The play ends as all plays do. The curtains close, the website stays
+but the stories will never sound the same. For the final act, I give you
+the stories. It’s one last game, one last joke to ask my question again.
+Digital intimacies about the digital, our bodies and the cakes we eat.
+For the last act, I ask you to eat digital stories. To eat a comment, to
+eat a digital intimacy. Sharing an act of physical intimacy with
+yourself and with me, by eating sweets together. Sweets about digital
+intimacies that never had a body. There is no moral, no bow to wrap the
+story in. A great big mess of transcendence into the digital, of
+intimacy and of bodies. The way it always is. Thankfully.
+
+
+
+Accept My Cookies, biscuits for the
+performance.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
<?water bodies>
A narrative exploration of divergent digital intimacies
@@ -903,6 +1016,99 @@ University of Nebraska Press.
+<<<<<<< HEAD
+
+
+
Talking Documents
+
+
+
+
+WDKA- Winjhaven Building- February 2024-
+reading of act0 and act1
+
+
This project appeared as a need to explore potential bureaucratic
+dramaturgies within the educational institution I was part as a student.
+I was curious about educational bureaucratic mechanisms being driven by
+smaller-scale paperwork struggles and peers’ narratives, stories and
+experiences. However, unexpected emergencies - due to my eviction on the
+31st of January 2024 - placed centrally my personal struggles unfolded
+in parallel with the making period. I ended up conducting accidentally
+auto-ethnography as the project was dynamically being reshaped due to
+the material constraints of the bureaucratic timeline.
+
Talking Documents are performative bureaucratic text inspections that
+intend to create temporal public interventions through performative
+readings. I utilized the paperwork interface of my smaller-scale story
+in order to unravel and foreground questions related to the role of
+bureaucracy as less material border and as a regulatory mechanism
+reflecting narratives, ideologies, policies.
+
Central element of this project is a seven-act scenario that
+construct my personal paperwork story, unraveling the actual struggles
+of my communication with the government. The body of the text of the
+“theatrical” script is sourced from the original documents, email
+threads as well as recordings of the conversations with the municipality
+of Rotterdam I documented and archived throughout this period. I
+preserved the sequence of the given sentences and by discarding the
+graphic design of the initial forms, I structured and repurposed the
+text into a playable scenario.
+
+
+
+
I perceive the document as a unit and as the fundamental symbolic
+interface of the bureaucratic network. The transformation of the
+materiality of a document into a scenario to be enacted collectively in
+public aims to examine these artifacts and highlight the shrouded
+performative elements of these processes.
+
I see the collective readings of these scenarios as a way of instant
+publishing and as a communal tool of inspecting bureaucratic bordering
+infrastructures. How can these re-enactments be situated in different
+institutional contexts and examine their structures? I organized a
+series of performative readings of my own bureaucratic literature in
+different spaces and contexts, pubic and semi-public WDKA, Art Meets
+Radical Openness Festival in Linz, the City Hall of Rotterdam where I
+invited people to perform the play together, like a tiny theater.
+
+
+
+Art Meets Radical Openness Festival –
+Linz, Austria - May 2024 - Reading Act 2 and Act3 in the
+tent
+
+
+
+
The marginal voices of potential applicants are embodying and
+enacting a role. “The speech does not only describe but brings things
+into existence”(Austin, 1975). My intention was to stretch the limits of
+dramaturgical speech through vocalizing a document and turn individual
+administrative cases into public ones. How do the inscribed words in the
+documents are not descriptive but on the contrary “are instrumentalized
+in getting things done”(Butler,1997). Words as active agents. Bodies as
+low-tech “human microphones”. A group of people performs the
+bureaucratic scenario in chorus, out loud, in the corridor of the
+school’s building, in the main hall, at the square right across, outside
+of the municipality building.
+
I documented and recorded these public acts and I re-created the
+collectively voiced scenario. This audio piece is a constellation of
+different recordings and soundscapes of these public moments, a vocal
+archive, published in the graduation exhibition of XPUB in 2024.
+
+
+
+City Hall Rotterdam - May 2024 - Reading
+of Act 5 and Act 6
+
+
+
+The statue in the garden of Gemeente is
+reading the scenario
+=======
Backplaces
@@ -1006,20 +1212,36 @@ story in. A great big mess of transcendence into the digital, of
intimacy and of bodies. The way it always is. Thankfully.
+<<<<<<< HEAD
Accept My Cookies, biscuits for the
performance.
+=======
+Accept My Cookies, biscuits for the performance.
+>>>>>>> 5264c0f25c152d3370ff159766536dec0e9fc515
+>>>>>>> 563e7d7a543dc75999f10235e940e55346a3738c
+<<<<<<< HEAD
+
+
+
@@ -1929,46 +2151,160 @@ and solidarity in the wake of Europe’s refugee crisis. London: Rowman
-
-
-
Talking Documents
+
+
+
+
Wink!
-
+
A Prototype
+for Interactive Children’s Literature
+
Wink is a prototype for an interactive picture book platform. This
+platform aims to make reading into a mindfull and thought provoking
+process by using interactive and playful elements, multiple stories
+within one narrative and sound elements. Especially today where
+consumerism and low attention span is a rising issue especially amongst
+young readers, this was an important task to tackle. The thought of Wink
+emerged to find a more sustainable and creative way of reading for
+elementary school children.
+<<<<<<< HEAD
WDKA- Winjhaven Building- February 2024-
reading of act0 and act1
+=======
+<<<<<<< HEAD
+
+The twine map of text based story,
+reachable from Bee Within.
-
This project appeared as a need to explore potential bureaucratic
-dramaturgies within the educational institution I was part as a student.
-I was curious about educational bureaucratic mechanisms being driven by
-smaller-scale paperwork struggles and peers’ narratives, stories and
-experiences. However, unexpected emergencies - due to my eviction on the
-31st of January 2024 - placed centrally my personal struggles unfolded
-in parallel with the making period. I ended up conducting accidentally
-auto-ethnography as the project was dynamically being reshaped due to
-the material constraints of the bureaucratic timeline.
-
Talking Documents are performative bureaucratic text inspections that
-intend to create temporal public interventions through performative
-readings. I utilized the paperwork interface of my smaller-scale story
-in order to unravel and foreground questions related to the role of
-bureaucracy as less material border and as a regulatory mechanism
-reflecting narratives, ideologies, policies.
-
Central element of this project is a seven-act scenario that
-construct my personal paperwork story, unraveling the actual struggles
-of my communication with the government. The body of the text of the
-“theatrical” script is sourced from the original documents, email
-threads as well as recordings of the conversations with the municipality
-of Rotterdam I documented and archived throughout this period. I
-preserved the sequence of the given sentences and by discarding the
-graphic design of the initial forms, I structured and repurposed the
-text into a playable scenario.
+
Working as a children’s literature editor for years, I came to a
+realisation that picture books were turning into another object that
+kids read and consume on daily basis.
-
-Act 2 “Call with the municipality about
-the rejection of my application”
+
+Click game story of the Queen
+Bee.
+
+
Teachers and parents were finding it difficult to find new books
+constantly or were tired of rereading the same book.
+
+
+Example page from the print version of
+the picture book.
+
+
+
+Example page from the print version of
+the picture book.
+
+
+
+
As a young person in the publishing sector, I believe there should be
+more options for children as there is for adults; such as ebooks,
+audiobooks etc. But moreover a “book” that can be redefined, reread or
+be interacted with… So I revisited an old story I wrote, translated to
+English and called it, “Bee Within”.
+
Bee Within, is a story about grief/memory and it is based on my
+experiences throughout the years. I erased it, rewrote it, edited it,
+destroyed it multiple times over the past years; simultaneously with new
+experiences of loss. In the end, I believe the story turned out to be an
+ode to remembering or might I say an ode to not being able to forget or
+an ode to the fear of forgetting which I now think is a great and sweet
+battle between death and life. I think it is an important subject to
+touch upon, especially for children dealing with trauma in many parts of
+the world.
+
+
+Example page from the picture
+book.
+
+
+
+Example page from the picture
+book.
+
+
+
+Example page from the picture
+book.
+
+
Over the past two years, experimenting with storytelling techniques,
+interactivity options and workshops with children and adults, around
+reading and doing various exercises on Bee Within, I improved the story
+to be a more playful and interactive one which can be re-read, re-played
+and eventually re-formed non digitally to be reachable for all
+children.
+
+
+A tag made by a participant in the public
+moment at XPUB studio. Trying to understand different approaches to
+certain emotions/states for a bee.
+
+
+
+From the event at Leeszaal West,
+experimenting with knots and poetry. How can we see movement in
+text?
+
+
+
+From the event at Leeszaal West. Some of
+the results of knotting text.
+
+
+
+A small sequence of onclick animation for
+Bee Within.
+
+
+
+A screenshot from Wink!
+=======
+WDKA- Winjhaven Building- February 2024- reading of act0 and act1
+>>>>>>> 563e7d7a543dc75999f10235e940e55346a3738c
+
+
This project appeared as a need to explore potential bureaucratic
+dramaturgies within the educational institution I was part as a student.
+I was curious about educational bureaucratic mechanisms being driven by
+smaller-scale paperwork struggles and peers’ narratives, stories and
+experiences. However, unexpected emergencies - due to my eviction on the
+31st of January 2024 - placed centrally my personal struggles unfolded
+in parallel with the making period. I ended up conducting accidentally
+auto-ethnography as the project was dynamically being reshaped due to
+the material constraints of the bureaucratic timeline.
+
Talking Documents are performative bureaucratic text inspections that
+intend to create temporal public interventions through performative
+readings. I utilized the paperwork interface of my smaller-scale story
+in order to unravel and foreground questions related to the role of
+bureaucracy as less material border and as a regulatory mechanism
+reflecting narratives, ideologies, policies.
+
Central element of this project is a seven-act scenario that
+construct my personal paperwork story, unraveling the actual struggles
+of my communication with the government. The body of the text of the
+“theatrical” script is sourced from the original documents, email
+threads as well as recordings of the conversations with the municipality
+of Rotterdam I documented and archived throughout this period. I
+preserved the sequence of the given sentences and by discarding the
+graphic design of the initial forms, I structured and repurposed the
+text into a playable scenario.
+
+
+Act 2 “Call with the municipality about
+the rejection of my application”
of Act 5 and Act 6
+<<<<<<< HEAD
The statue in the garden of Gemeente is
reading the scenario
+=======
+The statue in the garden of Gemeente is reading the scenario
+>>>>>>> 5264c0f25c152d3370ff159766536dec0e9fc515
+>>>>>>> 563e7d7a543dc75999f10235e940e55346a3738c
@@ -2044,8 +2385,8 @@ reading the scenario
-
-
+
+
Fair Leads
Fair
@@ -2247,8 +2588,13 @@ numeric order, according to their color/mode.
1 1
1
Loop 1
+<<<<<<< HEAD
Working End
Why am I doing this?
+=======
+
Why am I doing this?
+<<<<<<< HEAD
+>>>>>>> 563e7d7a543dc75999f10235e940e55346a3738c
My desire to write a children’s book about grief and memory ignited
when I was studying in college and doing an internship in a publishing
house in Ankara. I was struggling to process a loss I experienced at the
@@ -2284,7 +2630,11 @@ because it always felt incomplete. In a way it will always be incomplete
because of the natural ambiguity the topic carries. Years later, grief
was back in my life with the loss of my grandfather. So therefore, the
story I wrote and abandoned changed again as I attempted to rewrite it
+<<<<<<< HEAD
as a different version of myself with a different understanding of
+=======
+as a diff erent version of myself with a diff erent understanding of
+>>>>>>> 563e7d7a543dc75999f10235e940e55346a3738c
death. And this went on… The story remained hidden and I forgot why it
ever existed in the first place. I wrote and deleted
@@ -2296,20 +2646,31 @@ strangers at the same time. I lost two dear friends, I was furious, away
from home, mostly alone and remembered vividly my failed attempt to
understand or place grief in one of the piles in my mind.
Previous months, I was working on this story (yes, again) but didn’t
+<<<<<<< HEAD
know how to tackle the text because it was so different to what I was
+=======
+know how to tackle the text because it was so diff erent to what I was
+>>>>>>> 563e7d7a543dc75999f10235e940e55346a3738c
experiencing now, when compared to the last time I rewrote it. A tutor
asked me why I wrote this story in the first place and I couldn’t
remember. I kept tracing back to 2016 and step by step, remembered why,
as told above. The consciousness that this story is actually a personal
+<<<<<<< HEAD
history of how I went through grief in different stages of my life, made
me realise
that it doesn’t have to be or even can be a perfect story.
+=======
+history of how I went through grief in diff erent stages of my life,
+made me realise that it doesn’t have to be or even can be a perfect
+story.
+>>>>>>> 563e7d7a543dc75999f10235e940e55346a3738c
In the end with the experience I had with loss, I believe the story
turned out to be an ode to remembering or might I say an ode to not
being able to forget or an ode to the fear of forgetting. 11 7
4
+<<<<<<< HEAD
Loop 2
The effect of storytelling knowledge on kids’ development and
creativity. What can we learn from open ended and multiple ending
@@ -2403,6 +2764,118 @@ for me that lead to the rest of this thesis: What is an interactive
picture book? Is it a book? Is it a game? Is it an exercise? What is it
defined as? How can we design an interactive reading environment without
confusing children?
+=======
+
Loop 2
+
The effect of storytelling knowledge on kids’ development and
+creativity. What can we learn from open ended and multiple ending
+stories?
+
ability to form basic stories or to express their emotions through
+fictional characters or events. Children are not born with a wide
+vocabulary of emotions and expressions. They learn how to read, mimic
+and express their feelings over time. The more children read, write and
+are exposed to social environments, the more they widen their sense and
+ability of expressing themselves. The language gained as kids comes in
+many forms and storytelling plays a crucial role in this development.
+The exposure to stories prepares the kids to the era of reading and
+writing. Children come to understand and value feelings through
+conversation (Dettore, 2002). When children are offered to read or share
+stories, they also learn to understand people around them better and
+gain emotional literacy.
+
Storytelling has been a means of communicating with others for many
+centuries. It is not only a way to discuss important events, but also a
+way to entertain one another (Lawrence & Paige, 2013). Stories have
+been told orally, in writing or with drawings for thousands of years and
+some of these stories are still alive. This is because language is a
+living thing that travels through time and still remains brand new. When
+necessary, it just adapts form, evolves and blends in with the changing
+world. Children comprehend the idea that they have a story to tell by
+hearing other stories and this ignites the imagination. We tend to
+forget many things but almost everyone remembers one small story they
+heard or read when they were a kid, this moment we remember is the
+moment a certain story sparked for us.
+
Nowadays storytelling takes many forms. For example, some readers’
+story might even begin from here although it isn’t the beginning.
+Interactivity is one of the storytelling forms that can signifi- cantly
+improve children’s creativity. This is mainly because children as
+readers or listeners get to contribute and affect the story. This of
+course requires and improves creative and active thinking. Getting the
+chance to choose a path for a fictional character gives the child the
+freedom and confi dence of constructing a world, a character or an
+adventure. Although this is essentially “writing” as we know it,
+children think of this as a game, yet to discover they are actually
+becoming writers. What kind of reward can we expect from active
+participation in a story? Narrative pleasure can be generally described
+in terms of immersions (spatial, temporal, emotional, epistemic) in a
+fictional world (Ryan, 2009). When we are set to create or co-create a
+world, the narrative has effects on us such as curiosity, suspense and
+surprise. At this point, we start creatively producing ideas to keep
+these three emotions. Multiliteracy
+theory helped me ground my passion of using multimedia for children’s
+literature. Interactive storytelling reminds everyone but
+especially children that there are limitless endings to a story that is
+solely up to the maker’s creation. Learning to think this way instead of
+knowing or assuming an end to a story, I think influences the children’s
+decision making abilities and sense of responsibility towards their
+creations. It is basically the same in theatre where if an actor chooses
+to create an imaginary suitcase on stage, they can’t simply leave this
+object they created on stage and exit the scene because the audience
+will wonder why the actor didn’t take the imaginary suitcase as they
+left. In this case, when kids decide to choose a path or item or any
+attribute for a character in a story, they feel responsible and curious
+to see it through to the end or decide what to do with it. This
+interactivity therefore creates a unique bond between the reader/writer
+and the text.
+
There are many theories on how to approach interactive literature for
+children. Multi-literacy theory and digital literacies are some of the
+theories which I find relevant to my aim with Wink. Multiliteracy theory
+in a nutshell is an education oriented framework that aims to expand
+traditional reading and writing skills. This theory was developed by the
+New London Group. They were a collective of scholars and educators who
+addressed the changing nature of literacy in an increasingly globalized,
+digital world. The theory explores multiple modes of communication
+consisting The sense of storytelling settles for kids, starting from age
+three. By this time, children have the of multimodal communication,
+cultural and social contexts, critical inquiry, socio-cultural learning
+theory and pedagogical implications. Multimodal communication focuses on
+the variety of communication techniques. This was groundbreaking in the
+90s because of its acknowledgment of a diverse range of literacies and
+its departure from traditional approaches to literary texts. This theory
+includes new media and communication studies such as visual, digital,
+special and gestural literacies.
+
I kept this theory in mind as I chose the interactivity elements to
+use in the picture book. I think the usage of multiple media such as
+sound, image and games is a good way to start and diff erentiate from a
+regular interactive e-book. The fact that this theory has an educational
+perspective and is taking the rapidly changing qualities of literature
+seriously, made me consider it as a guide in designing the
+prototype.
+
Looking through the perspective of multiliteracies, questions come up
+for me that lead to the rest of this thesis: What is an interactive
+picture book? Is it a book? Is it a game? Is it an exercise?
+
What is it defined as? How can we design an interactive reading
+environment without confusing children?
+
8 9
+5
+=======
+
My desire to write a children’s book about grief and memory ignited when I was studying in college and doing an internship in a publishing house in Ankara. I was struggling to process a loss I experienced at the time and to find something to cling to on a daily basis. Then one day I started hearing a buzzing sound in my bedroom at my family’s house. I searched everywhere but couldn’t find the source for this noise. I asked my father and he started searching too. A couple of days passed and the buzzing was still there.
+
One day I found a bee on the floor in my bedroom and realized that the bees nested on the roof and were coming inside my room through a gap in the lamp. I was terrified because I have an allergy to bees and thought they might sting me in my sleep. This moment was when I realized I was so determined to find this buzzing sound for some time that I forgot about dealing with the loss I was experiencing. This made me feel very guilty and I remember thinking I betrayed the person I lost.
+
As funny as it may appear, I felt like I was sabotaged by these bees that I thought were here to hurt me but in the end they made me understand that its ok to let things go and every being does what it has to do to find its way of survival. The little habitat that they chose to create in my room seemed like a calling or a sign that I can aff ect another living being significantly without being aware of it. This goes for everything, no matter if some people leave us in this world, they have living matter in us that keeps pulsing. So then I started researching bees and their ecosystems. I read Alan Watts, Alan Lightman, Emily Dickinson, Maurice Sendak, Meghan O’Rourke, Oliver Sacks, Joanna Macy, Rilke, Montaigne and theories on order in chaos, correlative vision, harmony of contained conflicts and the mortality paradox. I wrote a lot and erased a lot and fairly figured out the wisdom of not knowing things.
+
Years passed and I wrote and deleted and rewrote the story that I am working on to make interactive today so many times and was waiting on it because it always felt incomplete. In a way it will always be incomplete because of the natural ambiguity the topic carries. Years later, grief was back in my life with the loss of my grandfather. So therefore, the story I wrote and abandoned changed again as I attempted to rewrite it as a diff erent version of myself with a diff erent understanding of death. And this went on… The story remained hidden and I forgot why it ever existed in the first place. I wrote and deleted and rewrote the story 3 times already. Last year when two earthquakes hit Syria and Turkey, I was drowned like everyone I know, by a collective trauma and grief. Then this horrible feeling flared up by neglect and desperation. It was and still is impossible to mourn so many strangers at the same time. I lost two dear friends, I was furious, away from home, mostly alone and remembered vividly my failed attempt to understand or place grief in one of the piles in my mind.
+
Previous months, I was working on this story (yes, again) but didn’t know how to tackle the text because it was so diff erent to what I was experiencing now, when compared to the last time I rewrote it. A tutor asked me why I wrote this story in the first place and I couldn’t remember. I kept tracing back to 2016 and step by step, remembered why, as told above. The consciousness that this story is actually a personal history of how I went through grief in diff erent stages of my life, made me realise that it doesn’t have to be or even can be a perfect story.
+
In the end with the experience I had with loss, I believe the story turned out to be an ode to remembering or might I say an ode to not being able to forget or an ode to the fear of forgetting. 11 7 4
+
Loop 2
+
The effect of storytelling knowledge on kids’ development and creativity. What can we learn from open ended and multiple ending stories?
+
ability to form basic stories or to express their emotions through fictional characters or events. Children are not born with a wide vocabulary of emotions and expressions. They learn how to read, mimic and express their feelings over time. The more children read, write and are exposed to social environments, the more they widen their sense and ability of expressing themselves. The language gained as kids comes in many forms and storytelling plays a crucial role in this development. The exposure to stories prepares the kids to the era of reading and writing. Children come to understand and value feelings through conversation (Dettore, 2002). When children are offered to read or share stories, they also learn to understand people around them better and gain emotional literacy.
+
Storytelling has been a means of communicating with others for many centuries. It is not only a way to discuss important events, but also a way to entertain one another (Lawrence & Paige, 2013). Stories have been told orally, in writing or with drawings for thousands of years and some of these stories are still alive. This is because language is a living thing that travels through time and still remains brand new. When necessary, it just adapts form, evolves and blends in with the changing world. Children comprehend the idea that they have a story to tell by hearing other stories and this ignites the imagination. We tend to forget many things but almost everyone remembers one small story they heard or read when they were a kid, this moment we remember is the moment a certain story sparked for us.
+
Nowadays storytelling takes many forms. For example, some readers’ story might even begin from here although it isn’t the beginning. Interactivity is one of the storytelling forms that can signifi- cantly improve children’s creativity. This is mainly because children as readers or listeners get to contribute and aff ect the story. This of course requires and improves creative and active thinking. Getting the chance to choose a path for a fictional character gives the child the freedom and confi dence of constructing a world, a character or an adventure. Although this is essentially “writing” as we know it, children think of this as a game, yet to discover they are actually becoming writers. What kind of reward can we expect from active participation in a story? Narrative pleasure can be generally described in terms of immersions (spatial, temporal, emotional, epistemic) in a fictional world (Ryan, 2009). When we are set to create or co-create a world, the narrative has effects on us such as curiosity, suspense and surprise. At this point, we start creatively producing ideas to keep these three emotions. Multiliteracy theory helped me ground my passion of using multimedia for children’s literature. Interactive storytelling reminds everyone but especially children that there are limitless endings to a story that is solely up to the maker’s creation. Learning to think this way instead of knowing or assuming an end to a story, I think influences the children’s decision making abilities and sense of responsibility towards their creations. It is basically the same in theatre where if an actor chooses to create an imaginary suitcase on stage, they can’t simply leave this object they created on stage and exit the scene because the audience will wonder why the actor didn’t take the imaginary suitcase as they left. In this case, when kids decide to choose a path or item or any attribute for a character in a story, they feel responsible and curious to see it through to the end or decide what to do with it. This interactivity therefore creates a unique bond between the reader/writer and the text.
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There are many theories on how to approach interactive literature for children. Multi-literacy theory and digital literacies are some of the theories which I find relevant to my aim with Wink. Multiliteracy theory in a nutshell is an education oriented framework that aims to expand traditional reading and writing skills. This theory was developed by the New London Group. They were a collective of scholars and educators who addressed the changing nature of literacy in an increasingly globalized, digital world. The theory explores multiple modes of communication consisting The sense of storytelling settles for kids, starting from age three. By this time, children have the of multimodal communication, cultural and social contexts, critical inquiry, socio-cultural learning theory and pedagogical implications. Multimodal communication focuses on the variety of communication techniques. This was groundbreaking in the 90s because of its acknowledgment of a diverse range of literacies and its departure from traditional approaches to literary texts. This theory includes new media and communication studies such as visual, digital, special and gestural literacies.
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I kept this theory in mind as I chose the interactivity elements to use in the picture book. I think the usage of multiple media such as sound, image and games is a good way to start and diff erentiate from a regular interactive e-book. The fact that this theory has an educational perspective and is taking the rapidly changing qualities of literature seriously, made me consider it as a guide in designing the prototype.
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Looking through the perspective of multiliteracies, questions come up for me that lead to the rest of this thesis: What is an interactive picture book? Is it a book? Is it a game? Is it an exercise?
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What is it defined as? How can we design an interactive reading environment without confusing children?
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5 Differences and similarities
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Loop 4
Ways of using interactivity in digital platforms
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CASA theory, also known as the Cognitive-Affective-Social Theory of
Learning and Development, is a framework used in educational psychology
to understand how learning occurs within the context of cognitive,
@@ -2468,12 +2945,21 @@ the best easy interaction is the tap or click for children. It is easy
to do, instinctive and common. So I decided to base the interactive
elements on click animations. CCI was a theory
+<<<<<<< HEAD
that helped me decide on the interactive elements.
There are multiple ways to use digital gestures in storytelling to
make the experience more intriguing. These are usually elements such as
sound, animations, voice-overs that are ignited with a click or tap by
the reader. For children younger than 5, its usually just tapping over
the page and experiencing an action-reaction. For older kids between the
+=======
+that helped me decide on the interactive elements. There
+are multiple ways to use digital gestures in storytelling to make the
+experience more intriguing. These are usually elements such as sound,
+animations, voice-overs that are ignited with a click or tap by the
+reader. For children younger than 5, its usually just tapping over the
+page and experiencing an action-reaction. For older kids between the
+>>>>>>> 563e7d7a543dc75999f10235e940e55346a3738c
ages 6-8, I made some workshops to figure out which types of interactive
elements are most useful in engaging them in the reading process.
It is true that sound and animations are very inclusive and it is
@@ -2483,6 +2969,16 @@ part of the story. For the prototype of Bee Within (the story I am using
to test interactivity also can be read in the appendix) I will focus on
color, sound and click based animations according to the results of my
research.
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CASA theory, also known as the Cognitive-Aff ective-Social Theory of Learning and Development, is a framework used in educational psychology to understand how learning occurs within the context of cognitive, aff ective, and social factors. Research on cognitive learning with keeping in mind the limited attention span and memory factors. For children in specific, I think these are very important factors to keep in mind when trying to design an interactive experience. This is because children get bored very easily and can be disengaged because of failure of solving/understanding something in a story. This is something I kept in mind as I wrote for children and chose the interactive elements in the story. CASA framework helped me understand the key elements in designing for children.
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Finding the balance between making the interactive element surprising and making it easy to interact with is the key to designing for kids in this scenario. We don’t want to make them struggle and use the limited attention span in a non-engaging way but we want to keep the reading interesting enough so they want to continue.
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Digging deeper into how to do this, I found Children Computer Interaction (CCI) study very useful. This study examines how children of different ages and developmental stages interact with digital devices and how these interactions can support their growth. This made me think about digital gestures; how they change through generations and how to use these to design a platform where children can navigate easily and freely. CCI suggests that when introducing a new media to children its better to start easy and clear when they try it. Through this I think the best easy interaction is the tap or click for children. It is easy to do, instinctive and common. So I decided to base the interactive elements on click animations. CCI was a theory that helped me decide on the interactive elements. There are multiple ways to use digital gestures in storytelling to make the experience more intriguing. These are usually elements such as sound, animations, voice-overs that are ignited with a click or tap by the reader. For children younger than 5, its usually just tapping over the page and experiencing an action-reaction. For older kids between the ages 6-8, I made some workshops to figure out which types of interactive elements are most useful in engaging them in the reading process.
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It is true that sound and animations are very inclusive and it is engaging for kids to find out which part of a page is interactive by clicking on images. Another thing I found out is that kids enjoy being a part of the story. For the prototype of Bee Within (the story I am using to test interactivity also can be read in the appendix) I will focus on color, sound and click based animations according to the results of my research.
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2 What is the target age group
@@ -2936,11 +3432,50 @@ me in my studies and encouraged me to do better, always…
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Wink!
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do you ever dream about
+work?
+
stephen kerr, 2024
+
Reading an email in a dream and you can hear the voices of every word
+you read. Or the one where you’re on a computer working, frantically
+typing, late, stressed, rushed. What about that dream where you had no
+idea how to do your job, everyone is going to know you’re a fake. In
+this project I have made spaces for us to share our dreams about labour,
+and through that allow conversations about our work, our working
+conditions, and the feelings we’re left with when we fall asleep each
+night.
+
For the past year I have spoken with designers, artists and makers
+finding out how they spend their time in everyday life, what they
+believe and how they feel. In our dreams we feel the weird bits the
+most: hmm a bit uncomfortable, ooh that gave me a fright, aah so, so
+sad. Through performances, online tools and storytelling, I want to hold
+these dreams together, to unite our experiences. Online I have made tools to gather
+stories and tools to tell them. I have facilitated group dream re-enactments (a few times), using felt dolls to share our night time
+theatre.
+
stephen kerr is a graphic designer or a musician or a very weird
+and long dream.
+
+
+
+<<<<<<< HEAD
A Prototype
for Interactive Children’s Literature
Wink is a prototype for an interactive picture book platform. This
@@ -2951,38 +3486,92 @@ consumerism and low attention span is a rising issue especially amongst
young readers, this was an important task to tackle. The thought of Wink
emerged to find a more sustainable and creative way of reading for
elementary school children.
+=======
+<<<<<<< HEAD
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-The twine map of text based story,
-reachable from Bee Within.
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Working as a children’s literature editor for years, I came to a
-realisation that picture books were turning into another object that
-kids read and consume on daily basis.
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-Click game story of the Queen
-Bee.
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+Keyboard of things designers have said.
+Our feelings about work.
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Teachers and parents were finding it difficult to find new books
-constantly or were tired of rereading the same book.
-
-Example page from the print version of
-the picture book.
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+The messages on the keys were gathered
+using experimental interview methods and questions.
-
-Example page from the print version of
-the picture book.
+
+Except “it’s ok”: my brother said that to
+me on the phone one day.
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+
+
+Web page to share and read labour dreams. Scroll down for more.
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+Interactive dream telling. Click then type your story.
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+Re-enacting dreams about work at Piet
+Zwart Institute, Rotterdam.
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+Collective dream re-enactment at Art
+Meets Radical Openness, Linz.
+
+
+
+Where do dreams come from?
+=======
+
A Prototype for Interactive Children’s Literature
+
Wink is a prototype for an interactive picture book platform. This platform aims to make reading into a mindfull and thought provoking process by using interactive and playful elements, multiple stories within one narrative and sound elements. Especially today where consumerism and low attention span is a rising issue especially amongst young readers, this was an important task to tackle. The thought of Wink emerged to find a more sustainable and creative way of reading for elementary school children.
+>>>>>>> 563e7d7a543dc75999f10235e940e55346a3738c
+
+
+The twine map of text based story,
+reachable from Bee Within.
+
+
Working as a children’s literature editor for years, I came to a
+realisation that picture books were turning into another object that
+kids read and consume on daily basis.
+
+
+Click game story of the Queen
+Bee.
+
+
Teachers and parents were finding it difficult to find new books
+constantly or were tired of rereading the same book.
+
+
+Example page from the print version of
+the picture book.
+
+
+
+Example page from the print version of
+the picture book.
+
+
+.
@@ -3057,17 +3646,428 @@ alt="A small sequence of onclick animation for Bee Within." />
Bee Within.
+<<<<<<< HEAD
A screenshot from Wink!
+=======
+A screenshot from Wink!
+>>>>>>> 5264c0f25c152d3370ff159766536dec0e9fc515
+>>>>>>> 563e7d7a543dc75999f10235e940e55346a3738c
+
do you ever dream about
@@ -4566,6 +5568,7 @@ I made this to explore why designers make design, based on Clifford Geertz's ide
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I wrote and deleted
@@ -2296,20 +2646,31 @@ strangers at the same time. I lost two dear friends, I was furious, away
from home, mostly alone and remembered vividly my failed attempt to
understand or place grief in one of the piles in my mind.
Multiliteracy
+theory helped me ground my passion of using multimedia for children’s
+literature.
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