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March 12, 2008, 04:11 PM ET
Putting Humanity Back Into Technology
With e-mail, cellphones, and online social networking, it often seems like the last thing technology does is induce face-to-face conversations.
With that in mind, the University of Central Florida’s digital-media department has a research lab that examines how live interaction, along with (not in spite of) digital media, can be used for both education and training. The new field of study is called interactive performance.
This weekend the department will play host to the Interactive Performance Conference to show what this new discipline is about.
Jeff Wirth, director of the Interactive Performance Lab, says much of the research works in an “emotion-based framework.”
For example, while traditional video games are goal oriented (“get to the next level”), research in interactive performance focuses on creating games where the success is in human interaction.
“When you go to see a movie, and you see a character evolve in an understanding of his or herself, or a relationship to their world, it’s not about if the character survives,” he says. “It’s about whether the evolution during the course of interactions in that character is engaging. Now translate that into a game.”
And the Interactive Performance Lab has done just that. One of the exhibitions at the conference will be an unscripted role-playing session that simulates a prison. A player will assume a role (a priest, another inmate), enter a prison cell, and interact with a person acting as a prisoner.
A group outside the room monitors the action via camera and can give instructions to the prisoner through an earpiece.
The whole affair sounds a bit strange, but Mr. Wirth says it creates a satisfying experience and has practical applications in the classroom. For example, a class could re-enact parts of World War II.
“It has applications anywhere people deal with people, be it virtual worlds, real worlds, classrooms, or board rooms,” he says.
We’ll see if this kind of thing ever catches on. —Hurley Goodall
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