Research Colloquium at SFU’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology in Surrey presents

Krystina Madej

Wednesday Jan 23th, 2008 at 2:30 - 4.00 pm

SFU Surrey Campus, Room 5380 (5th Floor Galleria)

Krystina Madej

Simon Fraser University, School of Interactive Art and Technology, PhD Graduate

Title: Early Narrative Experience: Social and Multimodal Interactions Inherent in Interactive Digital Environments

Abstract:

Through my explorations of narrative and of children’s experience of narrative, I show that traditional narrative with its climactic structure, a structure that has been a limiting factor in the exploration of narrative in digital environments, is a fairly recent upstart and other structures such as epic have adapted and endured for significantly longer and better reflect the process of life. Imposed on children through a rigorous English Arts curriculum and reified by literary criticism its adoption as a norm continues to diminish the importance of all other narrative structures.

Though games have the same potential as books to bring world experience to children, acceptance of traditional narrative as a norm by the games industry is one of the reasons why the breadth of stories games currently provide is small. To encourage the development of a breadth of narrative in games, I examine the narrative perception children bring with them to gameplay, and identify similarities between early print narrative and game narrative experience.

Young children's earliest encounters with print narrative are based in a multimodality that includes orality, visual literacy, performance, and interactivity, and embrace a range of experiences that are socially constructed. The perception young children construct of narrative privileges these rich experiences, rather than the conventional forms of narrative they are introduced to formally only when they enter school, but which adults consider the norm. This perception forms the gestalt children bring with them to gameplay.

Narrative in games encompasses the multimodal and interactive nature of digital media. The result falls outside traditional narrative forms but shares characteristics with early print narrative experience. Both experiences are social, interactive, engaging, multimodal, and spatial. They also provide for agency and transformation. This similarity allows children to embrace the new digital medium readily.

Bio:

Krystina Madej began a twenty-five year career in design and communication with an undergraduate degree in fine arts from Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec. She worked in Toronto, Edmonton, and Calgary as a designer and corporate communications planner with business, industry and government. In the mid 1980's together with Jim Budd she established the first industrial design and communications company in western Canada to use computer technologies for the design and production of graphics, products and exhibits with clients such as AMC, Telus, the Glenbow Museum, and ITT Barton.

Dr. Madej returned to graduate school at Kennesaw State University, Atlanta in 1999 and began her research into the use of narrative in digital environments. While obtaining her Masters in Professional Writing (2001) she established an ePublishing conference that targeted authors, publishers and libraries. She began her PhD work at TechBC/SFU in 2002 where her primary focus was in providing new information on how narrative is viewed by children and demonstrating the parallel characteristics of early children’s narrative experience and digital narrative experience. She received a two-year SSHRC doctoral fellowship to conduct her research. Her other interests include the use of multimodality as an expansive environment for writers to explore narrative, conceptual frameworks for the rhetorical process of writing for the web, and interface design as the culture factor in hypermediated narratives. She has spoken at international conferences on author-audience dialogue, immersive and engaging narrative environments, the direction of narrative for authors in digital environments, as well as the evolution of children's narrative and the process of making meaning through narrative.

Her PhD research provides a practical understanding of the social and multimodal interactions inherent in interactive digital environments. It is the theoretical support for Page:Craft ¬– a collaborative project with Carleton University which she presented this past June at IDC (International Conference for Interaction Design and Children) in Aalborg, Denmark. Page:Craft is a tangible interactive storytelling platform based on sensor technology that lets children interact physically with texts and visuals.