Syftet med denna forskning genom design och kvalitativa undersökning är att skapa en audiovisuell installation vilket mäts av en fokusgrupp för att se om fenomenet Immersion uppnås hos informanterna. Det är informanternas kollektiva och subjektiva upplevelse av installationen som ligger till grund för studiens resultat och berör frågor inom det audiovisuella området. Installationen undersöks i förhållande till rummet den tar plats i som en viktigt påverkande aspekt. Studien ska ses på som ett förslag för hur fenomenet Immersion kan uppnås genom audiovisuella verktyg. Alltså är detta en studie som inte försöker nå en absolut sanning genom undersökningen utan olika resultat kan nås även om genomförandet av installationen skulle försökas återskapas. Resultaten tyder på att Installationen kändes Immersiv och nåddes genom projektionskonstformen och spatialt 3D ljud. Samt att andra aspekter och egenskaper som att installationens fysiska form, vilket bestod av genomskinligt tyg som omringade informanterna, påverkade deras Immersion positivt genom att avskärma deras perception. Det presenteras även andra aspekter och egenskaper som påverkade informanternas upplevelse av Immersion positivt men även resultat som påverkade upplevelsen negativt, vilket är lika viktigt för vidare forskning och som bidrag till det kunskapsområdet. Styrkan i undersökningen är presentationen av installationens genomförande men framförallt resultatet som bidrar med förståelse och perspektiv till ett svårformulerat intresseområde. Svagheten ligger i och med att fokusgruppdiskussioner och kvalitativa underökningar inte går att generaliseras, samt så är validiteten svår att styrka. Ytterligare en svaghet är att bara en fokusgrupp användes för studiens undersökning vilket gör det svårt att säkerställa resultatets giltighet.

Dentro do contexto das tecnologias digitais, desenvolve-se um novo tipo de narrativa, com características híbridas e interativas, apontando para um campo a ser explorado, o que abre espaço para análises mais específicas deste gênero no meio digital. O uso de diferentes linguagens, graus de interatividade e de imersão favorecem modos de leitura que vão configurando diferentes formas. Esta tese pretende investigar como as especificidades das mídias digitais possibilitam a construção de sentido narrativo a partir da interação e sinalizam caminhos críticos que sejam próprios para este universo. A tese usa como bases principais teóricas as discussões de Ryan (2001; 2002; 2004; 2006; 2011) sobre os graus de narratividade e as características de imersão e interatividade das narrativas em meio digital. As discussões de Murray (1999; 2013), Laurel (1991), Hayles (2009) e Ryan (2001; 2006) sinalizam as preocupações que se deve ter com as narrativas neste meio e sua preservação de coerência. As caracterizações da materialidade da escrita, as caracterizações de um processo de semiose que constitui sentido no ato de leitura, tomam por base as considerações de Hayles (2002) e de Santaella (2001), levando também em conta o que se discute já desde a poesia concreta, através de Pignatari (1977; 1987). Por meio da pesquisa e leitura das obras em hipermídia, a partir das características de criação, que permitem diferentes modos de interação, buscamos averiguar como este processo interativo revela diferentes tipos de narrativas / In the context of digital technologies, a new type of narrative is developed, with hybrid and interactive characteristics, pointing to a new field to be explored, what gives room for more specific analysis of this genre in the digital media. The use of different languages, degrees of interactivity and immersion promote ways of reading that shape different forms. This thesis intends to investigate how the specificities of digital media allow the construction of narrative meaning through interaction and how they indicate critical paths that are appropriate for this universe. The thesis uses as its main theoretical basis the discussions of Ryan (2001; 2002; 2004; 2006) about the degrees of narrativity and the characteristics of immersion and interactivity of narratives in digital media. The discussions of Murray (1999), Laurel (1991), Hayles (2009) and Ryan (2001; 2006) point to the concerns that one must have with narratives in this medium and its preservation of coherence. The characterization of the materiality of writing, the characterization of a process of semiosis that composes meaning in the act of reading, take as a reference the considerations of Hayles (20002) and Santaella (2001), also taking into account what has been discussed since the concret poetry, through Pignatari (1977; 1987). Through the research and the reading of the hypermedia texts, considering the strategies of their creation, which allow different ways of interaction, we tried to verify how this interactive process reveals different types of narratives.

Hur fångar en som artist publiken under en hel kväll och hur viktig är låtordningen och låtarnas karaktär för lyssnarens upplevelse? Med musik i datorspel och musik till bild som utgångspunkt reflekterar jag över det i den här uppsatsen. Jag har sedan 2016 skrivit musik i genren modern classical med ambitionen att flytta lyssnaren till en annan värld och tappa sin uppfattning om tid och rum. Syftet med den här undersökningen är att ge lyssnarna en samstämd upplevelse i en konsertkontext som när de lyssnar på de inspelade verken. Alla konserter har sina utmaningar. Till exempel i vilken lokal konserten framförs. Vad är det för publik? Har de hört musiken innan? har musiken egenskaper som en bör anpassa sig efter. Är den hög intensiv eller lågmäld och intim? Jag har genomfört en konsert med ambient pianomusik. Den är naturligt avskalad och lågmäld. Konserten framfördes i en konsertmiljö som lämpar sig mer för musik som tar större plats. Med de förutsättningarna och en målsättning av att fånga publiken förflytta dom till en annan värld skrev jag fem låtar med en tydlig bild av vilken intensitetskurva de olika verken skulle ha. Konserten var lyckad och min slutsats är att valet av låtar bidrog till publikens upplevelse.

This essay is a look into the future of games with new technology at hand, it serves as acloser look at new challenges and ways to overcome those challenges in VR game design.What new untapped way of acting on immersive storytelling can we convey with thisinteractive medium and how can we treat our players sense of agency within a VR world withthe necessary respect it deserves. This paper will dive into the idea of walking a mile insomeone else’s shoes and how to create a believable, narrative driven, non-restrictive gameexperience using aesthetic choices, world interactions and environmental storytelling as ourdesign tools. Aesthetic choices aren’t just a matter of achieving the highest realism thoughgraphical fidelity, instead it requires us to go deeper and look at a more traditional way ofdesigning our games art, to deeper convey immersion through minimalism and environmentaldesign to name a few. The goal is to understand how a world’s environments and the gameart in that environment could affect agency, all to support a more deeply focused, curious andin the end more immersive session of play.A virtual reality game called Norn have been produced alongside this paper to showcasethese features come into play. Norn is a narrative driven experience set in a stylistic old norsesetting where you play as a 18 year old girl named Thora and her sister Eira in a coming ofage story told in a different way.We have concluded that methods like the “Weenie”-method help to produce ways to guideplayers subconsciously but need carefully iterative improvements to work. We have also useddesign methods such as Bartle’s (1996) taxonomy of player types and Schell’s´(2008)“Pleasures” to build an inviting game environment and gameplay around to achieve personalagency. All while streamlining the games art both to overcome technical challenges but alsoto show how stylized environments can help accentuate the intended experiences compared toa realistic one.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-29T14:22:52Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Ana Paula Narciso Severo.pdf: 41116757 bytes, checksum: 03aa3830fc6c5a0aceda938219ba0012 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-05-11 / Fundação de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo / The customization has been presented in several kinds of games, pleasing players with distinct profiles and showing its potential as a feature that may bring huge inovations to these virtual environments. Realizing that such feature may bring a deeper overlay between the player and its representative character, this paperwork has as purpose, investigate the avatar and its customizable process in order to identify the main elements that act on the avatars' construction and edition in games. For this, theoretical surveys have been made concerning the character in the general narrative and in digital environments, more specifically in the games. Then, we have performed a study of the avatar as the interactor's participation tool in the cyberspace and in the games, followed by an analysis concerning the avatar's customization tool under an aesthetic view and finally, it has been made a description of the games to be analysed, followed by a comparison and interpretation based on the dissertation's content as a whole and some authors that can make interesting contributions to the viewpoint of the avatar's customization in the game. However, we realized that the customization in the games may engage the player beyond the necessity of just accomplish the main goal of the game, creating an extra motivation and increasing the player's involvement not only with the avatar, but with the game as a whole / A personalização tem se apresentado em diversos gêneros dos games, agradando a jogadores de perfis distintos e demonstrando seu potencial como uma característica que pode trazer grandes inovações para estes ambientes virtuais. Percebendo que tal característica pode trazer um maior envolvimento do jogador com sua personagem representativa, este trabalho tem como objetivo investigar o avatar e seu processo customizável a fim de identificar os elementos fundamentais que atuam na construção e edição do avatares nos games. Para isso foram feitos levantamentos teóricos a respeito da personagem na narrativa geral e nos ambientes digitais, mais especificamente nos games; em seguida foi realizado um estudo do avatar como ferramenta de participação do interator no ciberespaço e nos games, seguido de uma análise da ferramenta de customização do avatar sob um olhar estético e por último, foi feita uma descrição dos games a serem analisados seguido de uma comparação e interpretação baseada no conteúdo da dissertação como um todo e em alguns autores que podem trazer contribuições interessantes para o ponto de vista da personalização do avatar no game. Percebemos, contudo, que a personalizaçãoo nos games pode empenhar o jogador para além da necessidade de apenas realizar o objetivo principal no game, constituindo uma motivação a mais e aumentando o envolvimento do jogador não só com o avatar, mas com o game como um todo

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-29T14:23:07Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Natalia Aly Menezes.pdf: 1707912 bytes, checksum: 24de256a5a3ae501e05d097a51eca3da (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-05-15 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / It is known that film, like all other arts, is influenced by technological advances. These influences inevitably modify film language. Today, the most obvious and visible interference of digital media on film lies in the possibilities of special effects that these new "tools" bring to the seventh art. However, my object of research has not turned towards that direction, but instead it was directed towards questions concerning the future of cinema, the possibilities of its language introduced by digital media, and especially for the creation of new forms of perception proper to interactive immersive environments. Although this question corresponds to a contemporary state of the art due to the explosion, followed by the consolidation of digital devices in the XXI century, in fact, it has already been studied and experimented since the 1970s and 1980s in the theoretical work of researchers such as Lev Manovich, Bill Seaman, Arlindo Machado, Peter Weibel, Peter Lunenfeld, Jeffrey Shaw, among others. They were all taken as the main sources for my discussions. The trends, which are many, and have received various designations in the direction of a possible future cinema, were discussed in chapter 2. Among them, the one that was studied more closely, that is, the conditions of immersion and the new narrative forms that they introduced, was the object of study of chapter 3. As a basis for these two chapters, chapter 1 discussed the roots of these present trends. These are to be found in experimental cinema and its enfolding along time whose consequences culminated in what, among other names, is being called future cinema / Sabe-se que o cinema, como todas as demais artes, sofreu e sofre influência dos avanços tecnológicos, influências estas que inevitavelmente modificam sua linguagem. Hoje, a interferência mais óbvia e visível que se tem das mídias digitais para/com o cinema encontra-se nas possibilidades de efeitos especiais que essas ferramentas trazem à sétima arte. No entanto, meu objeto de pesquisa não seguiu em tal direção, mas voltou-se para questões relativas ao futuro do cinema, às possibilidades de linguagem introduzidas pelas mídias digitais e, principalmente, para as novas criações perceptivas em ambientes imersivos interativos. Esta questão, apesar de corresponder a um estado da cinematografia atual e de ter sido conceituada a partir da explosão, seguida da consolidação dos aparatos digitais no século XXI, na realidade, já vem sendo estudada e experimentada desde a década de 1970/80, nos trabalhos teóricos de pesquisadores como Lev Manovich, Bill Seaman, Arlindo Machado, Peter Weibel, Peter Lunenfeld, Jeffrey Shaw, entre outros que serviram de base para as discussões realizadas. As tendências, que não são poucas, daquilo que vem recebendo várias designações na direção de um possível cinema do futuro, foram discutidas no capítulo 2. Entre elas, aquela que estudei mais de perto foi a da imersão e das novas condições narrativas por ela introduzida, objeto de estudo do capítulo 3. Como base para esses dois capítulos, o capítulo 1 discorreu sobre as raízes das tendências presentes. Estas se encontram no cinema experimental e seus desdobramentos que vieram desembocar na contemporaneidade naquilo que, entre outros nomes, está sendo chamado de cinema do futuro

While foreign language immersion programs have been increasing in number and popularity throughout the United States, their growth in the state of Utah has been particularly dramatic. Utah contains more foreign language immersion programs than any other state and is home to one-fourth of the nation's elementary school Chinese immersion programs. This descriptive study explored the reasons why parents of children enrolled in Utah's Long Hill Elementary School Chinese Immersion program chose to enroll their child. Long Hill Elementary's Chinese Immersion program is 4 years old, with over 200 children enrolled across 4 grade levels. A household survey was developed, distributed, and collected to gather data on parents' demographic and background characteristics, reasons for enrollment, and attitudes towards several statements about language learning. The survey had a 45% return rate, and more mothers than fathers filled out the survey. Survey responses revealed that the parents of children in Long Hill's Chinese program are pre-dominantly Caucasian, bilingual, holders of undergraduate or advanced university degrees, and have high incomes. When asked to explain their reasons for enrollment, parents listed factors that were Chinese-specific, including future career and educational opportunities, the growing importance of China, and the desire to preserve a heritage language. They also expressed many non-Chinese specific factors, such as the cognitive benefits of learning a second language, the desire for a challenging academic experience, as well as the belief that learning a second language would make their child more multicultural. A closer look at the differences between parents of different ethnicities, income levels, and language backgrounds suggests that this Chinese immersion program serves different purposes to different subgroups of parents. It acts as a magnet to parents outside of the school boundaries who have a specific interest in the Chinese language. However, parents inside the school boundaries more frequently (p ≤ .05) cited non-Chinese specific factors, viewing immersion as providing a more rigorous academic experience and cognitive benefits that would transfer to other school subjects. Findings from this study can inform efforts to establish successful immersion programs around the country.

The introduction of digital media into the working practice of artists has produced challenges previously unknown to the field of art. This inquiry follows an atypical model of artist-driven research derived from disciplines such as social science and education. Here, an artwork functions as a model that is self-reflective, integrating methodologies in a form that benefits art and science. Using Naturalistic Inquiry, including semi-structured interviews of fifteen participants, the work illustrates a process of creation, analysis and evaluation that places the values of the artist on equal footing with the needs of science. Recently, artists have begun using video game engines as a tool to produce 3D navigable spaces. Using the hybrid video game/installation Playas: Homeland Mirage as a case study, this research examines the impact of technology on the artwork and identifies a number of key issues related to the function of critical reflection in this environment. Rules-of-play were a fundamental pre-requisite to the stimulation of critically reflective experience. The human interface with software and hardware was also a primary factor in reflective experience. Based on participant evaluation and observation, the interface was altered in response to its effect on critical reflection, illustrating how choices in this area impact aesthetic experience. Those with experience in visual art were more likely to engage the work in a critically reflective manner than seasoned video game players who tended to be more interested in scoring and winning. These findings and others inform our understanding of the stimulation of critical reflection in immersive environments and show how we can sensitively integrate technology with meaningful evaluative methods. By repurposing a video game in this manner, we learn about the nature of the video game and the nature of art. This research enables artists to gain a better understanding of the medium to more fully integrate technology within a meaningful practice. Conversely, other fields will benefit from a better understanding of the stimulation of meaning in immersive spaces and gain a comprehensive view of a work that strives to contribute to our culture on a deeper level than as simple entertainment. Ultimately, more fully understanding critical reflection in virtual environments will enable us to create enriched experiences that transcend space to create “real” or “virtual” place.

This study explores how U.S. college students experience integrative and instrumental motivation and how their sociolinguistic identity is understood, represented and constructed through their multiple experiences learning French as a Foreign Language (FFL) in an intensive Summer French Language Immersion Programs (SFLIPs). The results of the study demonstrate that participants who exhibited the most characteristics in connection to integrative motivation were the ones who took full advantage of the opportunities of being immersed in an environment in which exposure and production of the target language were maximized. The study demonstrates how participants’ lived experiences affect the way they construct their identity, how integrative motivation plays a key role in this construction and addresses a gap in literature by specifically adressing the themes of motivation and identity in the context of intensive French immersion in the U.S.

Through this study I have provided an understanding of what French immersion was like for children who left the program. I have considered an important aspect of the French immersion program that has been neglected in the research literature. My main research question was: What were the experiences of French immersion students who withdrew from their program during the elementary years? Subsequent questions included: How did they deal with repeated failure? How did they cope with the frustration? How did these failures and frustrations change after they left the French immersion program? How do they make sense of their experiences?<p>In this study, I listened to students voices to gain insights that lead to an understanding of how they make sense of what school was like for them during their years in French immersion. Using narrative inquiry, I focused on the lived, storied experiences of students who have not succeeded in a French immersion program. By listening to the students storied conversations, I have developed a deeper understanding of failed immersion experiences than that which is currently provided in the literature.<p>The six students in this study were aware of their lack of progress in the French immersion program and were unable to become active participants in the classroom community. The inability to become engaged further marginalized them as learners and led to the development of school stories about them. These school stories soon became designated identities with which the children had to cope. <p>By honoring the experiences of the students and including their voices, I have outlined information to aid educators to make decisions for more appropriate programming choices. This information demonstrates the need for timely intervention for some students to improve their school experience. Parents, teachers, and policy makers can then make decisions with the added knowledge provided by the students stories.