Seven stories: location based story-delivery system

Location aware content-based experiences have a substantial tradition in HCI, several projects over the last two decades have explored the association of digital media to specific locations or objects. However, a large portion of the literature has little focus on the creative side of designing of the experience and on the iterative process of user evaluations. In this thesis we present two iterations in the design and evaluation of a location based story delivery system (LBSDS), inspired by local folklore and oral storytelling in Madeira. We started by testing an already existing location based story platform, PlaceWear, with short multimedia clips that recounted local traditions and folktales, to this experience we called iLand. An initial evaluation of iLand, was conducted; we shadowed users during the experience and then they responded to a questionnaire. By analyzing the evaluation results we uncovered several issues that informed the redesign of the system itself as well as part of the story content. The outcome of this re design was the 7Stories experience. In the new experience we performed the integration of visual markers in the interface and the framing of the fragmented story content through the literary technique of the narrator. This was done aiming to improving the connection of the audience to the physical context where the experience is delivered. The 7Stories experience was evaluated following a similar methodology to the iLand evaluation but the user’s experience resulted considerably different; because of the same setting for the experience in both versions and the constancy of the most of the content across the two versions we were able to assess the specific effect of the new design and discuss its strengths and shortcomings. Although we did not run a formal and strict comparative test between the two evaluations, it is evident from the collected data how the specific design changes to our LBSDS influenced the user experience.

Gestão de imagens em movimento de matérias jornalísticas em banco de dados na TV Digital

Pós-graduação em Televisão Digital: Informação e Conhecimento - FAAC

BDPI: Biblioteca Digital da Produção Intelectual da USP

Biblioteca Digital da Produção Intelectual da Universidade de São Paulo Objetivo: captura, armazenamento, indexação, preservação, busca e disseminação de material digital.

Review of Women Elders' Life Stories of the Omaha Tribe: Macy, Nebraska, 2004-2005

The volume contains two analytical chapters, "Finding the Sacred" and "Language as Landscape"; a fair amount of autobiographical material describing Summers's research process; an Omaha Language Pronunciation Guide; selected historical material; and a mixture of photos, including of the author with other Omaha language students. There are a number of editorial malfunctions, including the analytical chapters' tendency to wander around various topics; moreover, the author's role as editor of the firsthand accounts is never made explicit.

Ogawa Mimei's Children's Stories: A Case Study of the Rise of Childhood in the Context of Westernization and Japanese Modernization

In this thesis, I examine the influences of westernization, the tension between Japanese modernity and tradition, and the stories of Hans Christian Andersen on Ogawa Mimei’s children’s stories. I begin the body of my thesis with a brief historical background of Japan, beginning with the start of the Meiji period in 1868. Within the historical section, I focus on societal and cultural elements and changes that pertain to my thesis. I also include the introduction of Hans Christian Andersen in Japan. I wrap up the historical section by a description of Ogawa’s involvement in the Japanese proletarian literature movement and the rise of the Japanese proletarian children’s literature movement. Then, I launch into an analysis of Ogawa’s works categorized by thematic elements. These elements include westernization, class conflict, nature and civilization, religion and morals, and children and childhood. When relevant, I also compare and contrast Ogawa’s stories with Andersen’s. In the westernization section, I show how some of Ogawa’s stories demonstrate contact between Japan and the West. In the Class Conflict section, I discuss how Ogawa views class through a socialist lens, whereas Andersen does not dispute class distinctions, but encourages his readers to attempt an upward social climb. In the nature and civilization section, I show how Ogawa and Andersen share common opinions on the impact of civilization on nature. In the religion and morals section, I show how Ogawa incorporates religion, including Christianity, into vii his works. Andersen utilizes religion in a more overt manner in order to convey morals to his audience. Both authors address religious topics like the concept of the afterlife. Finally, in children and childhood, I demonstrate how both Ogawa and Andersen treat their child protagonists and use them and their situations to instruct their readers. Through this case study, I show how westernization and the tensions between Japanese modernization and tradition led to the rise of the proletarian children’s literature movement, which is exemplified by Ogawa’s stories. The emergence of the proletarian children’s literature movement is an indication of the establishment of a new concept of childhood in Japan. Writers like Ogawa Mimei attempted to write children’s stories that represented the new Japanese culture that was a result of adapting Western ideals to fit Japanese society. Some of Ogawa’s stories are a direct commentary on his opinion of Japanese interaction with the West. By comparing Ogawa’s and Andersen’s stories, I demonstrate how Ogawa borrows certain Western elements and possibly responds directly to Andersen. Ogawa also addresses some of the same topics as Andersen, yet their reactions are not always the same. What I find in my analysis supports my thesis that Ogawa is able to maintain Japanese tradition while infusing his children’s stories with Western and modern elements. In doing so, he reflects a largely popular social and cultural practice of his time.

Where Stories Collide : Montage and the Short Story Cycle

This thesis uses Sergei Eisenstein’s filmic theories of montage to examine the modernist American short story cycle, a genre of independent short stories that work together to create a larger and interrelated whole. Similar to the shot-by-shot editing process of montage, the story cycle builds its intertextual meaning story-by-story from an aggregate of abrupt narrative transitions and juxtapositions. Eisenstein famously felt that montage, the editing together of film fragments, was not a process of linkage, but of collision –each radically different shot in a film should crash into the next shot, until audience members were intellectually provoked into synthesizing these collisions through dialectical processes. I offer montage as an interpretive strategy for negotiating the narrative collisions in story cycles such as Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, William Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses, and Eudora Welty’s The Golden Apples. For Go Down, Moses, I argue that Eisenstein’s politically rendered “montage of attractions” provides a template for investigating the shock tactics behind Faulkner’s chronologically and racially entangled stories of whites and African Americans. For The Golden Apples, I consider the opposites and doubles in Welty’s fiction with Eisenstein’s similar belief in the “opposing passions” of the world. Not only, then, do I suggest that the modernist story cycle bears a cinematic influence, but I also offer Eisenstein’s theories of montage and collision as a heuristic for formal, thematic, and even political patterns in a genre infamous for its resistance to definition and classification.

Performing ‘Readings’: The Interplay of Theatre And Digital Comics In Tezuka

The article investigates the intriguing interplay of digital comics and live-action elements in a detailed performance analysis of TeZukA (2011) by choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. This dance theatre production enacts the life story of Osamu Tezuka and some of his famous manga characters, interweaving performers and musicians with large-scale projections of the mangaka’s digitised comics. During the show, the dancers perform different ‘readings’ of the projected manga imagery: e.g. they swipe panels as if using portable touchscreen displays, move synchronously to animated speed lines, and create the illusion of being drawn into the stories depicted on the screen. The main argument is that TeZukA makes visible, demonstrates and reflects upon different ways of delivering, reading and interacting with digital comics. In order to verify this argument, the paper uses ideas developed in comics and theatre studies to draw more specifically on the use of digital comics in this particular performance.

Digital Curation Program of the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is a digital library that strives to serve the public through digital collections accumulated from a wide variety of partners. Our chosen topic for the DPLA exhibit project is Perspectives on the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War remains a controversial topic of national interest, making it a topic of depth and of many perspectives. Our goals with this exhibit were to gather different perspectives of the war through personal stories, the media, presidential administrations of the war, military personnel, and the general public, including famous figures. We strove to demonstrate the variety of perspectives on the Vietnam War through a variation of digital objects and content that will be engaging for users: both black and white and color photos, videos, and audio files. Furthermore, we wanted to ensure that our digital materials are of high quality, properly documented, and easy to search and find thus all of our objects are from DPLA and are from usable original sources. This poster will describe our processes for organizational, object selection, building our exhibit, attainment of our goals, and detailed steps of our overall operation. The poster will also include details about the minor issues and bumps that occurred while reaching our final product as well as the team members’ perspectives on the project as a whole including: problems, words to for the wise, and triumphs.

Grand Theft Auto & Other Stories

Grand Theft Auto & Other Stories is a collection of six linked vignettes and four short stories. The overall theme of the work revolves around the concept of doubt as a destructive force, be it self-doubt or doubt toward others. This work is also about transformation that comes as a result of battling and overcoming doubt. This creative work is introduced by a reflective paper which highlights the writing process, discusses literary influences, and explores the idea of writing as a craft and an art. In its entirety, this project is the culmination of coursework for an advanced degree in liberal studies. This manuscript is a work in progress.