Sherwood Rise, Augmented Reality transmedia book

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description

Sherwood Rise is an Augmented transmedia Book, a research collaboration between Dave Miller and Dave Moorhead, under the leadership of Professor Alexis Weedon, University of Bedfordshire, UK. The project is part of the UNESCO 'Crossing Media Boundaries: Adaptations and New Media Forms of the Book', which networks 6 institutions internationally. The first version of the project is now live. Please begin here: http://itsthetruth.org Sherwood Rise is an Augmented Reality transmedia story experience, told through a range of media and formats - printed newspapers, smartphones, emails, hacker websites, blogs, sound, music, graphic novels and augmented reality. This is a durational fiction, told over 4 days. Inspired by the current financial crisis, and the Occupy movement, the story is based on the traditional tale of Robin Hood. The traditional tale of peasant revolt and dissent is brought up to date, and been adapted for augmented reality and transmedia. In this adaptation, austerity is imposed on the poor by a privileged elite, while a gang of hacker outlaw terrorists called the ‘Merry Men’ fight back. The project explores the future of the book and transmedia storytelling: - It's a story told in a range of media on multiple platforms - It expands a traditional printed story, adds additional layers of story through augmented reality - It adds augmented digital artefacts onto a printed story - It's a study of the processes of adaptation in creating augmented books. The objectives of the project are: (1) To add virtual elements to the real world page by combining mobile device/ new media technology and the book (2) To use mobile device based augmented reality and Transmedia, in novel and innovative ways to expand a narrative (3) In creative and artistic ways to raise awareness and stimulate thought about financial fraud, corruption, austerity (4) To adapt a story that works across many cultures, particularly UK, India, China (the Robin Hood tale is common to many cultures) (5) To produce a book which is part static and part dynamic, and altered by the reader's behaviour. (6) To challenge power relations of news using augmented reality My research interests for this project include: - Augmented reality activism, challenging authority, privilege and power - The politics of augmented reality and storytelling/ news, contested content. - Aesthetic, artistic, cultural and sociopolitical uses of AR and Transmedia stories - Revealing hidden stories within a fiction - Many voices in a story - simultaneous multiple viewpoints - The experience of designing, adapting and building a Transmedia book experience from the ground up - The reader experience - reading an augmented reality book, moving from paper to screen, the disjointed reading experience - The aesthetics of augmented reality on mobile devices For further information, please visit the project blog: http://augmentedwonder.blogspot.co.uk

Transcript of Sherwood Rise, Augmented Reality transmedia book

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Sherwood Rise

• International UNESCO project ‘Crossing Media Boundaries: Adaptations and New Media Forms of the Book’

• "Sherwood Rise” - is an Augmented Reality (AR) transmedia story "experience" involving smart phones and traditional printed physical books

• Study of the processes of adaptation in creating augmented books.

Augmented Reality book

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• "AR allows the user to see the real world, with virtual objects superimposed upon or composited with the real world. Therefore, AR supplements reality, rather than completely replacing it. Ideally, it would appear to the user that the virtual and real objects coexisted in the same space.”

(Ronald Azuma, A Survey of Augmented Reality, 1997)

Augmented Reality – a definition

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• Google Glasses likely here by 2014

• Users to be always connected to the internet through a headset

• Superimposes digital data on what wearers look at

• The information can correspond with the view, e.g. giving directions or information about tourist sites.

Augmented Reality - coming soon

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The Politics of AR and place:

Augmented reality in urban places: contested content and the duplicity of code - Mark Graham, Matthew Zook and Andrew Boulton, 2012:

“Given the important role that digital discourses (in the form of geographically referenced content) play in co-constituting place, we call for redoubled attention to both the layerings of content and the duplicity and ephemerality of code in shaping the uneven and power-laden practices of representation and experience of augmented urban places.”

Augmented Reality and Politics

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Artists using AR to contest power structures involving space:

Tamiko Thiel & the artist group "ManifestAR" - political AR Provocations:

"With AR we install, revise, permeate, simulate, expose, decorate, crack, infest and unmask Public Institutions, Identities and Objects previously held by Elite Purveyors of Public and Artistic Policy in the so-called Physical Real."

(http://manifestarblog.wordpress.com)

Augmented Reality and Politics

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The Augmented Book:

Concerned with the politics of Augmented Reality and stories.

Augmented Reality and Politics

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• The Augmented Book uses AR to contest the news told in a newspaper

• The AR tells the news from other perspectives, what is the truth?

• Different version of news is told in the augmented content

Augmented Reality and Politics

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• Cross-media, Transmedia, stories across multiple platforms

• Expanding a traditional printed story, new forms of the book, possible futures of the book

• Telling stories using a Smartphone (e.g. iPhone or Android)

This project is about new forms of storytelling ...

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• Use AR to expand a printed story• AR is digital "artefacts" - text, graphics,

animations, video, sound, live data, connected to databases

• AR is digital, it can be dynamic, whereas a physical real book is static.

• How to handle the static versus dynamic aspects?

• How can a printed story change through interaction with AR?

• We decided a newspaper format is one way to solve this problem, instead of a traditional book or novel format.

Narrative Challenges

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• Financial crisis• Robin Hood• Relevant to the current situation• Robin Hood story - a good guy, hero

or villain - even gangster? • Many possible perspectives• AR telling other perspectives.

The Story

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• Dave Moorhead - short story, adapted from the original (English) Robin Hood

• The traditional folk story of peasant revolt and dissent brought up to date

• In this adaptation, austerity is imposed on the poor by a privileged elite, while a gang of hackers called the ‘Merry Men’ fight back.

Adaptation - Dave Moorhead

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• Range of media• Newspaper - over four days• Subscribe to the newspaper• Arrives as a PDF via email, each

morning• Your actions update a database• This dictates which version of the

newspaper you receive• Dave had to adapt his story to

work in multiple format/ platforms.

Adaptation for AR & Transmedia

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Sherwood RiseThe Transmedia structure

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Sherwood RiseScreenshots - 2D Images mapped onto 3D planes

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Sherwood RiseScreenshots - 2D Images mapped onto 3D planes

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Sherwood RiseScreenshots - 2D Images mapped onto 3D planes

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Sherwood RiseScreenshots – 2D Images mapped onto 3D planes

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Sherwood RiseScreenshots – animated sequences

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The project blog:http://augmentedwonder.blogspot.co.uk

Twitter: @augmentedbook

• Dave Miller, RIMAD Post Doctoral Research Fellow at UoB• [email protected]

• Dave Moorhead, PhD student and screenwriter, UoB• [email protected]