Computing and Information Systems - Research Publications
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ItemRepresenting alkaline hydrolysis: a material-semiotic analysis of an alternative to burial and cremation(Taylor and Francis Group, 2024)Alkaline hydrolysis can lay claim to being a resource-efficient, effective, economical and environmentally sound method of final body disposition, relative to burial and cremation. On technical grounds it may have much to recommend it, however, like many other technical innovations, its take-up is hindered by the fact that it lacks a clear position in the public imagination. For this position to take shape, an understanding of just what it is and what it offers is required by proponents in the funeral industry who advise the bereaved, as well as by the material representations of the alkaline hydrolysis technologies themselves. In this article, we describe and analyse four extant alternative material and discursive forms of alkaline hydrolysis and how they variously occupy the fraught space where morality, death and marketing converge. Currently, each of the four forms of alkaline hydrolysis struggle to represent themselves in a public narrative that conveys their different ontologies and their competitive advantage, relative to burial and cremation, and this paper describes some key rhetorical and technical aspects of these struggles.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableReimagining memorial spaces through digital technologies: A typology of CemTech(ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2023-11-01)Digital technologies are creating new ways for visitors to engage with cemeteries. This article presents research into the development of digital cemetery technologies, or cemtech, to understand how they are reimagining memorial spaces. Through a systematic review of examples of cemtech in online records, academic literature, patents, and trade publications, we developed a typology of cemtech according to four characteristics: application type, technical components, target users, and development status. Analysis of the application types resulted in five higher-level themes of functionality or operation-Wayfinding, Narrativizing, Presencing, Emplacing, and Repurposing-which we discuss. This typology and thematic analysis help to identify and understand the development of cemetery technology design trajectories and how they reimagine possibilities for cemetery use and experience.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableBones of Contention: Social Acceptance of Digital Cemetery Technologies(ASSOC COMPUTING MACHINERY, 2023)
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ItemCybernetic Funeral Systems(IEEE, 2021)Using Postphenomenology (one of many methods informed by Wiener's cybernetics) as an analytical approach, this paper examines three examples of robot participation in, and mediation of, funerals. The analysis of robot mediation of funerals challenges the idea that death rituals are exclusively human performances and experiences, and instead repositions them as cybernetic systems of entanglement and impact. The paper begins with an introduction to the relevance of postphenomenological theory, then moves to the case of CARL, a robot that enables remote participation in funeral ceremonies. We argue that the [Human-Robot-Funeral] relation and its variants are both engaging and alienating, through revealing-concealing, magnification-reduction and a more generalised enabling-constraining. Technological mediation is also evident in the case of Pepper, a robot that has officiated at funerals as a Buddhist monk. We describe similarities and differences in the way CARL and Pepper manifest the [Human-Robot-Funeral] relation. The final example is AIBO, a companion robot that becomes the locus of a funeral ritual. This offers a radical case that directly challenges humans' self-proclaimed exceptional ontology.
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ItemFrame analysis of voice interaction gameplay(ACM, 2019-05-02)Voice control is an increasingly common feature of digital games, but the experience of playing with voice control is often hampered by feelings of embarrassment and dissonance. Past research has recognised these tensions, but has not offered a general model of how they arise and how players respond to them. In this study, we use Erving Goffman’s frame analysis [16], as adapted to the study of games by Conway and Trevillian [9], to understand the social experience of playing games by voice. Based on 24 interviews with participants who played voice-controlled games in a social setting, we put forward a frame analytic model of gameplay as a social event, along with seven themes that describe how voice interaction enhances or disrupts the player experience. Our results demonstrate the utility of frame analysis for understanding social dissonance in voice interaction gameplay, and point to practical considerations for designers to improve engagement with voice-controlled games.
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ItemGuilt in DayZ(MIT Press, 2019-01-11)Death in most games is simply a metaphor for failure (Bartle 2010). Killing another player in a first-person shooter (FPS) game such as Call of Duty (Infinity Ward 2003) is generally considered to be as transgressive as taking an opponent’s pawn in chess. In an early exploratory study of players’ experiences and processing of violence in digital videogames, Christoph Klimmt and his colleagues concluded that “moral management does not apply to multiplayer combat games”(2006, 325). In other words, player killing is not a violation of moral codes or a source of moral concern for players. Subsequent studies of player experiences of guilt and moral concern in violent videogames (Hartmann, Toz, and Brandon 2010; Hartmann and Vorderer 2010; Gollwitzer and Melzer 2012) have consequently focused on the moral experiences associated with single-player games and the engagement with transgressive fictional, virtual narrative content.
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ItemHow Players Speak to an Intelligent Game Character Using Natural Language Messages(Digital Games Research Association, 2018-12-12)AI-driven characters that learn directly from human input are rare in digital games, but recent advances in several fields of machine learning suggests that they may soon be much more feasible to create. This study explores the design space for interacting with such a character through natural language text dialogue. We conducted an observational study with 18 high school students, who played Minecraft alongside a Wizard of Oz prototype of a companion AI character that learned from their actions and inputs. In this paper, we report on an analysis of the 186 natural language messages that players sent to the character, and review key variations in syntax, function and writing style. We find that players’ behaviour and language was differentiated by the extent to which they expressed an anthropomorphic view of the AI character and the level of interest that they showed in interacting with it.
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ItemDesign Patterns for Voice Interaction in Games(ASSOC COMPUTING MACHINERY, 2018)Voice interaction is increasingly common in digital games, but it remains a notoriously difficult modality to design a satisfying experience for. This is partly due to limitations of speech recognition technology, and partly due to the inherent awkwardness we feel when performing some voice actions. We present a pattern language for voice interaction elements in games, to help game makers explore and describe common approaches to this design challenge. We define 25 design patterns, based on a survey of 449 videogames and 22 audiogames that use the player’s voice as an input to affect the game state. The patterns express how games frame and structure voice input, and how voice input is used for selection, navigation, control and performance actions. Finally, we argue that academic research has been overly concentrated on a single one of these design patterns, due to an instrumental research focus and a lack of interest in the fictive dimension of videogames.
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ItemFear, loss and meaningful play: Permadeath in DayZ(INTELLECT LTD, 2017-06-01)Abstract This article interrogates player experiences with permadeath in the massively multiplayer online first-person shooter (MMOFPS) DayZ. We analyse the differences between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ instances of permadeath and argue that meaningfulness – in accordance with Salen and Zimmerman’s concept of meaningful play – is a critical requirement for positive experiences with permadeath. In doing so, this article suggests new ontologies for meaningfulness in play, and demonstrates how meaningfulness can be a useful lens through which to understand player experiences with negatively valenced play. We conclude by relating the appeal of permadeath to the excitation transfer effect, drawing parallels between the appeal of DayZ and fear-inducing horror games such as Silent Hill 2 and gratuitously violent and gory games such as Mortal Kombat.
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ItemSpontaneous interactions with a virtually embodied intelligent assistant in Minecraft(Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), 2017-05-06)An increasing number of our technological interactions are mediated through virtually embodied characters and software agents powered by machine learning. To understand how users relate to and evaluate these types of interfaces, we designed a Wizard of Oz prototype of an embodied agent in Minecraft that learns from users' actions, and conducted a user study with 18 school-aged Minecraft players. We categorised nine main ways users spontaneously attempted to interact with and teach the agent: four using game controls, and five using natural language text input. This study lays groundwork for a better understanding of human interaction with learning agents in virtual worlds.