Alternative Reality Gaming

In this interview with Wu Ming 1, a member of the mysterious but well-known and widely-translated novel-writing Wu Ming Collective, we discuss his new book, La Q di Qomplotto (The Q in Qonspiracy: How Conspiracy Fantasies Defend the System). In the interview, Wu Ming 1 unravels the power of narrative and games in driving conspiracy fantasies and fuelling new forms of activism that have risen to confront a system that gives rise to them.

Juegos de realidad alternativa (ARG) e implicación del fandom en el universo narrativo de Taylor Swift Alternate reality games (ARG) and fandom involvement in Taylor Swift's narrative universe ARTICLE Universidad Abat Oliba CEU Lucía Garrido is a graduate in Advertising and Public Relations from Abat Oliba CEU University. She holds a certificate as an expert in Communication Management and Event Planning from the International School of Protocol and has studied Communication as part of the Exchange Program at Florida International University. She has the distinction of having organized and presented the XVII edition of the GoliADs UAO CEU Awards and of having obtained the CEU Mérit100 scholarship for academic merit. She has worked as an Account Management Trainee at Havas Media and in Production at the agency La Diferencia.

In recent years, a number of studies have explored the ways in which alternate reality gameplay supports children's learning in classroom settings (Carroll and Cameron, 2003; Niemeyer et al., 2009; Connolly et al., 2011). However, there has been little investigation into the educational benefits of engaging students in alternate reality game design (Chess and Booth, 2014), and pupils designing ARGs in mainstream school settings appears to be a rare occurrence (Colvert, 2009; 2015). If pupils are supported to become ARG designers what will they learn? What will we learn from them? How might ARG design and play shape and transform pedagogical approaches in formal education? This chapter will present a design-based account of the planning, making, and playing

In this paper, we discuss how a cognitive concept, causality, can be used for the conceptual underpinning of Virtual Reality Art installations. Causality plays an important role in our construction of reality and, as such, it makes sense to use it as a principle to define VR experiences. We have developed a VR platform using cognitive data on causal perception to create artificial event co-occurrences in virtual worlds, which can be perceived as possible outcomes for user actions. After a preliminary validation of this technology by user experiments, it has been used to implement prototypes of artistic installations by two different artists. We describe the technical approach behind the elicitation of causal perception in virtual reality, and illustrate its use through the two artistic installations being developed with this new VR platform.

Interconnections is a volume of essays that undertakes an interdisciplinary exploration of the intersections of race and gender as key constituents of American identity and American history. Part of the book series Gender and Race in American History, issued by the University of Rochester Press, this collection aims, in the words of editors Carol Faulkner and Alison M. Parker, to "bridge the gap between well-developed theories of race, gender, and power and the practice of historical research." To begin with, the volume focuses on race and gender identities as simultaneously and mutually constructed and confluent; for this reason, it deliberately "blurs the artificial boundaries between the scholarship of race, gender, and American politics and between the fields of African American history, women's history, and mainstream American history." Secondly, it brings into the study of race and gender empirical historical research, thus moving away from the field of abstract theorizing into study of specific historical contexts that both shape and are shaped by actual gender/race experiences of individuals and groups (from 19 th and 20 th-century historical events such as the westward expansion and the Great Depression, to transgenerational responses to citizenship, marriage, motherhood, and sexuality).

Virtual Reality Art involves the design of artificial worlds that offer new experiences to spectators. An important aspect for the development of VR Art installations is the principled definition of behaviour for the environment as a whole, which would facilitate experiments with alternative laws of physics, time, and causality. We describe the first results of an ongoing project dedicated to the development of software tools for the use of Intelligent Virtual Environments in VR Art. Using the architecture of a state-of-theart game engine, we have developed Artificial Intelligence techniques that support the definition of alternative laws of physics. After discussing the principles behind alternative reality we describe two complementary modes of description for alternative behaviour: qualitative physics and causal simulation. This is illustrated by examples integrated into the virtual environment.

We introduce a novel approach to the creation of Virtual Reality Art installations, which supports the design of alternative worlds, in which laws of Physics can be redefined to induce new user experiences. To implement this concept of "Alternative Reality", we have used Artificial Intelligence techniques to support the definition of the virtual environment behaviour, an approach inspired by Qualitative Reasoning systems. Besides the redefinition of physical laws, we have developed mechanisms for eliciting causal relations between events, as causality plays an important part in users' perception of virtual worlds. Our pilot installation is a CAVE TM-like system incorporating a state-of-theart computer game engine as visualisation software, which hasbeen ported to this immersive display. The event-based system underlying the game engine is used to bypass the native Physics engine and replace it with our Alternative Reality software. A first prototype has been fully implemented, the Alternative Reality modules totaling over 100,000 lines of C++ code. We present early results obtained with this approach, illustrated with examples taken from two artistic briefs, developed by digital artists associated to this research.

In this paper, we discuss how a cognitive concept, causality, can be used for the conceptual underpinning of Virtual Reality Art installations. Causality plays an important role in our construction of reality and, as such, it makes sense to use it as a principle to define VR experiences. We have developed a VR platform using cognitive data on causal perception to create artificial event co-occurrences in virtual worlds, which can be perceived as possible outcomes for user actions. After a preliminary validation of this technology by user experiments, it has been used to implement prototypes of artistic installations by two different artists. We describe the technical approach behind the elicitation of causal perception in virtual reality, and illustrate its use through the two artistic installations being developed with this new VR platform.

3D graphics systems increasingly rely on sophisticated event systems derived from collision detection mechanisms, which support the discretisation of Physics as well as high-level programming and scripting. By contrast, Augmented Reality systems have not yet adopted this approach. We describe the development of a high-level event system on top of the ARToolkit environment incorporating the ODE Physics engine. We first define a typology of events encompassing interactions between virtual objects as well as interactions involving markers. We then describe how these events can be recognised in real-time from elementary collisions detected by the ODE Physics engine. We conclude by discussing examples of high-level event recognitions and how they can support the development of applications.

Causality is an important aspect of how we construct reality. Yet, while many psychological phenomena have been studied in their relation to virtual reality (VR), very little work has been dedicated specifically to causal perception, despite its potential relevance for user interaction and presence. In this paper, we describe the development of a virtual environment supporting experiments with causal perception. The system, inspired from psychological data, operates by intercepting events in the virtual world, so as to create artificial co-occurrences between events and their subsequent effects. After recognizing high-level events and formalizing them with a symbolic representation inspired from robotics planning, it modifies the events' effects using knowledge-based operators. The re-activation of the modified events creates co-occurrences inducing causal impressions in the user. We conducted experiments with fifty-three subjects who had to interact with virtual world objects a...

In this paper, we describe our approach to the visualisation of qualitative physics, which uses a 3D graphical engine to present the results of a qualitative simulation. The qualitative formalism we use for the simulation is Qualitative Process Theory. The choice of this qualitative reasoning formalism was due to the representation that exists within the formalism, which enables us to add interactions via the process' preconditions. The visualization system we describe is developed using a game engine and takes advantage ...

Los ARG (Juegos de Realidad Alternativa) son producciones audiovisuales que invitan a la conformación de comunidades virtuales, con contenido sugerente; no son nuevos, pero su poco conocimiento en la sociedad hace más fácil la introducción inconsciente en este tipo de producciones, cuyo objetivo principal es crear una narrativa que sea extención de la vida real, el gran problema aquí es que las comunidades que se crean entorno a estas narrativas no suelen tomar el juego como algo bueno, y que, en este caso de estudio, develan que es mejor el contenido ominoso que el contenido apócrifo.
Particularmente, los ARG tipo contenido snuff son la evolución del contenido transmediático, falso documental y found footage, en una sola producción. Son un reflejo de las relaciones sociales sin consecuencias inmediatas, respondiendo al morbo y la necesidad humana de supervivencia.
Esta investigación reconoce que los ARG son más que juegos, son una extensión de la vida real, y teniendo en cuenta su regla más importante “esto no es un juego” es necesario mencionar que estos tiene consecuencias en la realidad de cada jugador y en la sociedad misma.
El consumo de contenido apócrifo en internet es común, y la forma en la que estos materiales se distribuyen con tanta facilidad deja mucho que pensar, lo más impactante de este tipo de producciones es que son diseñadas para engañar a los consumidores, y lo logran al punto crear interacción a tiempo real en la historia, en el juego, y por ende este se vuelve parte del sujeto y el sujeto se vuelve parte del juego.
Es importante mencionar que el conocimiento de este tipo de contenidos no hace mayor consciencia en el consumo, sino que por el contrario, crea mayor insensibilidad a los temas relacionados con el juego.
La investigación que aquí se desarrolla sobre los ARG es de carácter exploratoria y descriptiva, con enfoque mixto, cuyo énfasis está en lo cualitativo para la comprensión del discurso y de las prácticas de las comunidades.
Asimismo, recupera los conceptos de yo virtual, comunidades digitales, ecosistema virtuales, cultura participativa y experiencia, los cuales son útiles para el abordaje teórico de los ARG.

Interconnections is a volume of essays that undertakes an interdisciplinary exploration of the intersections of race and gender as key constituents of American identity and American history.  Part of the book series Gender and Race in American History, issued by the University of Rochester Press, this collection aims, in the words of editors Carol Faulkner and Alison M. Parker, to “bridge the gap between well-developed theories of race, gender, and power and the practice of historical researc...

One of WPI's long term goals is to increase the enrollment rate of accepted students. The goal of this project is to continue the work of a previous IQP to investigate the viability of alternate reality games as a marketing tool for university enrollment at WPI. The project team designed and ran an alternate reality game targeted to potential and admitted pre-freshmen to WPI, and kept track of several demographic statistics. This information will be used by the Admissions Office to adjust their advertising focus for interested students looking at WPI. In addition, the team deviated from alternate reality game norms and explored different genres of storytelling within this field.

Este artigo busca refletir acerca da experiência urbana nas cidades contemporâneas a partir da mediação do jogo móvel locativo para smartphones e tablets Ingress. Partindo de uma perspectiva teórico-metodológica que considera a multiplicidade de apropriações e usos possíveis do espaço urbano e admite o uso da cidade com propósitos lúdicos, apresentamos como objeto o augmented reality game (jogo de realidade aumentada, ou ARG) em questão. Para isso, utilizaremos a antropologia urbana conforme proposta por Rocha e Eckert (2013a;2013c) , voltada a uma etnografia de rua como viés metodológico para a captura das possibilidades lúdicas de experiência citadina por parte dos sujeitos, em um contexto de artefatos digitais conectados em redes informacionais que se relacionam com objetos, o próprio espaço físico e suas camadas materiais e simbólicas.Palavras-chave: Antropologia Urbana. Jogos digitais. Jogos de realidade aumentada. Tecnologias móveis de comunicação e informação.The urban experi...

This article explores some experiential implications of Laszlo’s Akashic field hypothesis as well as similar information-rich field models such as those suggested by Bohm and Sheldrake. It examines the implications of such models for both ordinary and anomalous human experience, and proposes the idea that these models allow for the possibility of alternative experiential worlds as real as ordinary “material” reality. Such alternative realities are posited by many, if not all, major mythic and religious systems, and are said to be directly experienced in certain contemplative and shamanic traditions as well as during postmortem and near-death experiences. We note that information-rich holographic fields may be able to store concentrated non-overlapping quantities of information that can be selectively activated by distinct eliciting stimuli. Individual human consciousness itself might constitute just such a stimulus, thus accounting for the individual and cultural variations on commonly shared motifs in shamanic, near death, and other experiences of alternative realities.

The development of virtual reality (VR) art installations is faced with considerable difficulties, especially when one wishes to explore complex notions related to user interaction. We describe the development of a VR platform, which supports the development of such installations, from an art+ science perspective. The system is based on a CAVE™-like immersive display using a game engine to support visualisation and interaction, which has been adapted for stereoscopic visualisation and real-time tracking. In addition, some ...

Este artigo busca refletir acerca da experiência urbana nas cidades contemporâneas a partir da mediação do jogo móvel locativo para smartphones e tablets Ingress. Partindo de uma perspectiva teórico-metodológica que considera a multiplicidade de apropriações e usos possíveis do espaço urbano e admite o uso da cidade com propósitos lúdicos, apresentamos como objeto o augmented reality game (jogo de realidade aumentada, ou ARG) em questão. Para isso, utilizaremos a antropologia urbana conforme proposta por Rocha e Eckert (2013a;2013c) , voltada a uma etnografia de rua como viés metodológico para a captura das possibilidades lúdicas de experiência citadina por parte dos sujeitos, em um contexto de artefatos digitais conectados em redes informacionais que se relacionam com objetos, o próprio espaço físico e suas camadas materiais e simbólicas.

Este artigo busca refletir acerca da experiência urbana nas cidades contemporâneas a partir da mediação do jogo móvel locativo para smartphones e tablets Ingress. Partindo de uma perspectiva teórico-metodológica que considera a multiplicidade de apropriações e usos possíveis do espaço urbano e admite o uso da cidade com propósitos lúdicos, apresentamos como objeto o augmented reality game (jogo de realidade aumentada, ou ARG) em questão. Para isso, utilizaremos a antropologia urbana conforme proposta por Rocha e Eckert (2013a;2013c) , voltada a uma etnografia de rua como viés metodológico para a captura das possibilidades lúdicas de experiência citadina por parte dos sujeitos, em um contexto de artefatos digitais conectados em redes informacionais que se relacionam com objetos, o próprio espaço físico e suas camadas materiais e simbólicas.

Crossword puzzles, badminton, ping-pong, chin-ups, guessing games: all these play activities are part of the world of Paul Chowder, the narrator of Nicholson Baker's eighth novel, The Anthologist. But the diegetic impulse of the narrative is a creative stasis. A published poet and belletrist, Paul has been unable to pen a good poem for months and struggles to write the introduction to his forthcoming poetry anthology. It should come as no surprise to Baker's readers that a case of writer's block generates two-hundred-and-forty pages of richly textured prose, including graphs, poetry quotes, musical scores, singing, onomatopoeic sounds, and many puns, all of those delivered by a first-person narrator eager to share his rhyme fetishism and groundbreaking theory on iambic pentameter. 2 Baker's prose works, although all topically distinct, can be divided into three sets: sex fantasies (Vox; The Fermata; House of Holes, a Book of Raunch), polemical nonfiction (Double Fold, Human Smoke) and highly self-conscious first-person narrated novels (The Mezzanine; Room Temperature; A Box of Matches). The Anthologist ranks in the latter category. 1 Its exploration of literary culture and intense reflexivity brings it close in tone to U and I, the author's self-conscious narrative on his obsession with the works of John Updike. But The Anthologist is pure fiction. Like Nabokov's Pale Fire, it sets a critical discourse on poetry within a novelistic framework. In both novels, self-conscious narrators transgress the rules of critical discourse to offer a personal view on poetry. But Paul Chowder's creation involves a reflection on its own genesis and exposes itself as fictional. Indeed, the writer overcomes the block only after he has turned the task into a game of pretense: "What I thought was that I could practice talking through the introduction as if I were teaching a class" (28). This narrative posture, which relies on the creation of an alternative reality, is typical of the way metafiction foregrounds the potential for make-believe in fiction. As Patricia Waugh argues, "the metacommentary provided by self-conscious fiction carries the more or less explicit message: 'this is make-believe' or 'this is play'." (35) Chowder's manuscript uses the resources of fiction

Este artigo desenvolve teoricamente sobre o potencial imaginário da cidade, e finda por evidenciar os espaços poéticos memoriais, pequenos e cotidianos do espaço urbano. Dividimos o texto em duas partes: primeiro debater cidade imaginária como um espaço macrossocial de investigação da cidade e, segundo, espaços poéticos memoriais como espaço microssocial de práticas cotidianas. Da problematização dos estudos urbanos indicamos uma etnografia de rua comprometida com as práticas urbanas cotidianas e os modos de viver na cidade. Etnografia de rua na cidade imaginária Queremos demonstrar como a cidade atua no lugar do olhar e caminhar, perceber o cotidiano como expressa Certeau (2014). Daremos vazão aos sentidos minúsculos, as experiências visuais e sonoras, estéticas e afetivas, simbólicas e políticas nas ruas visitadas e nos trajetos vividos no interior de histórias urbanas. Cremos que mais do que pessoas e grupos, os prédios, edifícios, parques, shoppings, ruelas, becos, pontes, portões e travessas se configuram como cenários potentes para descobrir evidências de enredos etnográficos (Costa, 2020). Conceitos diferentes, cenários goffmanianos (Goffman, 1985) são admitidos na pesquisa de etnografia de rua como "conjunto de ações, objetos e significações unidos e simultâneos em um mesmo espaço", e as cenas urbanas, que descreveremos por imagens urbanas, "são antes de tudo imagens em movimento, experiências físicas, experiências visuais de um espaço, em um espaço" (Gomes, 2013: 189-201). Do ponto de vista geográfico, cenas e cenários são situações e espaços culturalmente basilares para o que Santos (2014) chamou de a cidade-revolucionária o ambiente do acontecimento e do acontecido, no tempo globalizante do sistema capitalista moderno. As cenas são as situações de interação social, os cenários são os espaços onde as situações se desenrolam.

In this article I will analyze and discuss how Tracking Ida, an educational Alternative Reality Game (ARG) inspired by pioneering journalism of Ida B. Wells and piloted in King Drew High School in Watts, LA in April 2017 taps on the Civic Imagination for black and brown students to learn about Wells’ crusade against lynching by unlocking her archives and solving puzzles.  Connecting history to the present, participants also investigated police killings today and learned media making skills to spread awareness in their own community.

Griefing is a term frequently used to derisively characterize a wide set of activities on digital platforms that yield atypical or undesirable outcomes. This article offers a fresh perspective on the phenomenon of griefing by resituating it as a form of cultural production derived from a transgressive and often agonistic approach to spatial storytelling. Considering griefing as an expressive performative activity along these lines allows us to better understand its repercussions across digital platforms and increasingly in the real world. It promises to shed light on the process through which subversive meanings take hold as game lore in a true folkloric sense despite the best efforts of game companies and other controlling interests. As such, griefing activities typically point to and reveal an underlying story problem around which power is negotiated by different virtual communities or stakeholders. Using two cases studies drawn from Second Life, I illustrate how contested meanings develop into full-fledged game lore through the innovative mash-up language of spatial storytelling. Such stories leverage an alternative model of narrativity and open up immersive worlds to a plethora of generative meanings that are full of magic, intrigue and irony.

A dinâmica na rede urbana brasileira atual e a capilarização da informação pelo smartphone no território Mait Bertollo Universidade de São Paulo-Brasil p. 262-284 Como citar este artigo: BERTOLLO, M. A dinâmica na rede urbana brasileira atual e a capilarização da informação pelo smartphone no território.

This article explores the role of writing about popular culture in politically motivated alternative media. In our study, we engaged in different forms of textual analysis in order to investigate three kinds of articles about Star Wars: The Force Awakens in conservative and liberal alternative media. Specifically, we conducted a close reading of reviews of the film, opinion articles about the film and 'fluff' articles about the film. Essentially, we found that the three types of popular culture articles were necessary for the establishment of strong transformative bridges that allowed for intersections between activist alternative media and mainstream media. In addition, we also found the ideological assumptions embedded within the fluff articles to be the most important aspect of this bridge; these ideologies about culture and consumerism allowed for the strongest intersections to emerge.

I n entertainment applications, artificial intelligence techniques have most often been used to implement embodied agents or to automatically generate artistic content. A more recent development concerns using AI to support the user experience through new AI-based interactivity techniques. This is especially of interest for the development of artistic installations based on interactive 3D worlds. 1-4 A major difficulty in developing such installations is to properly translate the artistic intention into actual elements of interactivity, which in turn determine the user experience.

In entertainment applications, artificial intelligence techniques have most often been used to implement embodied agents or to automatically generate artistic content. A more recent development concerns using AI to support the user experience through new AI-based interactivity techniques. This is especially of interest for the development of artistic installations based on interactive 3D worlds. A major difficulty in developing such

The following essay sketches varieties of imagination operative in the best architectural work. It was published in Warehouse Journal, a student-edited journal produced annually by the Faculty of Architecture, University of Manitoba. Student editors for Warehouse 25 were, Alena Rieger and Ally Pereira-Edwards.

In this paper, we report work in progress in the development of a novel platform for Virtual Reality Art installations. We first introduce the notion of Alternative Reality that extends traditional VR to support the more radical experiments required by artistic productions. We subsequently introduce several technical approaches through which traditional laws of physics or more fundamental laws such as causality can be redefined within a virtual environment. We use a game engine as a development environment, which supports the redefinition of low-level physical behaviours. Changing physical or causal laws however requires the development of an explicit representation of high-level behaviour. Working with causality in particular calls for the use of representations developed for instance in qualitative physics. We illustrate the work in progress with early results from small-scale examples and finally describe the target platform onto which final installations will be developed.

Este artigo busca refletir acerca da experiência urbana nas cidades contemporâneas a partir da mediação do jogo móvel locativo para smartphones e tablets Ingress. Partindo de uma perspectiva teórico-metodológica que considera a multiplicidade de apropriações e usos possíveis do espaço urbano e admite o uso da cidade com propósitos lúdicos, apresentamos como objeto o augmented reality game (jogo de realidade aumentada, ou ARG) em questão. Para isso, utilizaremos a antropologia urbana conforme proposta por Rocha e Eckert (2013a;2013c) , voltada a uma etnografia de rua como viés metodológico para a captura das possibilidades lúdicas de experiência citadina por parte dos sujeitos, em um contexto de artefatos digitais conectados em redes informacionais que se relacionam com objetos, o próprio espaço físico e suas camadas materiais e simbólicas.

Cavazza, M. O. et. al. (2003) 'Alternative reality: a new platform for virtual reality art', ACM symposium on virtual reality software and technology, Osaka, Japan, October 1 -3, 2003 in Proceedings of the ACM symposium on virtual reality software and technology. New York: ACM, pp.100-107. "© ACM, 2003. This is the author's version of the work. It is [posted] included here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in the Proceedings of the ACM symposium on virtual reality software and technology, 2003 http://dx.

We describe a new approach to the behaviour of 3D environments that supports the definition of physical processes and interactive phenomena. The work takes as a starting point the traditional event-based architecture that underlies most game engines. These systems discretise the environments' Physics by separating the objects' kinematics from the physical processes corresponding to objects interactions. This property has been used to insert a new behavioural layer, which implements AI-based simulation techniques. We introduce the rationale behind AI-based simulation and the techniques we use for qualitative Physics, as well as a new approach to world behaviour based on the induction of causal impressions. This is illustrated through several examples on a test environment. This approach has implications for the definition of complex world behaviour or non-standard physics, as required in creative applications.

We introduce a novel approach to the creation of Virtual Reality Art installations, which supports the design of alternative worlds, in which laws of Physics can be redefined to induce new user experiences. To implement this concept of "Alternative Reality", we have used Artificial Intelligence techniques to support the definition of the virtual environment behaviour, an approach inspired by Qualitative Reasoning systems. Besides the redefinition of physical laws, we have developed mechanisms for eliciting causal relations between events, as causality plays an important part in users' perception of virtual worlds. Our pilot installation is a CAVE TM -like system incorporating a state-of-theart computer game engine as visualisation software, which hasbeen ported to this immersive display. The event-based system underlying the game engine is used to bypass the native Physics engine and replace it with our Alternative Reality software. A first prototype has been fully implemented, the Alternative Reality modules totaling over 100,000 lines of C++ code. We present early results obtained with this approach, illustrated with examples taken from two artistic briefs, developed by digital artists associated to this research.

The development of virtual reality (VR) art installations is faced with considerable difficulties, especially when one wishes to explore complex notions related to user interaction. We describe the development of a VR platform, which supports the development of such installations, from an art+science perspective. The system is based on a CAVE TMlike immersive display using a game engine to support visualisation and interaction, which has been adapted for stereoscopic visualisation and real-time tracking. In addition, some architectural elements of game engines, such as their reliance on event-based systems have been used to support the principled definition of alternative laws of Physics. We illustrate this research through the development of a fully implemented artistic brief that explores the notion of causality in a virtual environment. After describing the hardware architecture supporting immersive visualisation we show how causality can be redefined using artificial intelligence technologies inspired from action representation in planning and how this symbolic definition of behaviour can support new forms of user experience in VR. r

We describe recent developments in the CaveUT software, which supports immersive virtual reality installations based on the Unreal Tournament game engine. CaveUT implements several high-end VR features such as real-time stereoscopy with head and hand tracking. We demonstrate the use of CaveUT in the SAS Cube™, a PC-based CAVE™-like immersive four-screen display. One of the main advantages of the system is to support fully immersive VR while retaining the game engine's advanced features for ...

In this chapter, I frame ARGs (Alternate Reality Games) as conducive to trangressive play because these games themselves are trangressive in nature in a number of ways. ARGs' seemingly open-ended nature characterized by an absence of a predefined rule set and a distinct game space, encourages rule-breaking mindset in players leading to all manner of emergent gameplay enriching the experience. In what follows, however, I examine a case in which this almost backfired. I focus on a live event that occurred in Art of the H3ist  at the Coachella Music Festival whereby transgressive play, in conjunction with the failure of technologies implemented in the gameplay, threatened to end the game prematurely. To integrate the emergent gameplay and make amends with the community at large, the game architects invited one of the players who took part in the Coachella incident to become a fictional character in the story, thereby violating one of the sacrosanct rules of ARGs: the curtain that ensures that no out-of-game interactions occur between players and designers. This principle also ensures that players do not cross into the designer's realm. This bold move (in some respects itself transgressive) accounted for player creativity in an unanticipated way and intensified the game for players by giving the story a more dangerous and immediate feel. Ultimately, the Coachella event demonstrates how transgressive play can be innovatively integrated into design, opening doors to new avenues in participation that produce more effective storytelling as well as more compelling gaming.

This assignment was designed as a final project for a class entitled “Storytelling in Interactive Media and Games.”  In order to focus on the collaborative nature of a shared story between game creators and players, we sought a more low-tech form of game, namely the alternate reality game.  The paper outlines both the theory behind the assignment and initial steps in guiding the students through it.  We focus on assigning roles to game creators to organize a large team, and the “Achievement” sheet which both suggests media for the students to use and point values for the use of those media.

The development of virtual reality (VR) art installations is faced with considerable difficulties, especially when one wishes to explore complex notions related to user interaction. We describe the development of a VR platform, which supports the development of such installations, from an art+science perspective. The system is based on a CAVE TMlike immersive display using a game engine to support visualisation and interaction, which has been adapted for stereoscopic visualisation and real-time tracking. In addition, some architectural elements of game engines, such as their reliance on event-based systems have been used to support the principled definition of alternative laws of Physics. We illustrate this research through the development of a fully implemented artistic brief that explores the notion of causality in a virtual environment. After describing the hardware architecture supporting immersive visualisation we show how causality can be redefined using artificial intelligence technologies inspired from action representation in planning and how this symbolic definition of behaviour can support new forms of user experience in VR. r

Virtual Reality Artworks provide sophisticated user experiences but their development is a complex process. We describe the use of Intelligent Virtual Environments for VR Art. In this approach, virtual world behaviour is governed by a symbolic system. This supports news forms of experimentation with physical laws or with causality that we have termed Alternative Reality. In addition, basing world behaviour on a symbolic representation can facilitate collaboration between artists and scientists. We introduce the techniques behind Alternative Reality and illustrate these with examples from the prototype. We conclude by an outline of artistic work in progress using these techniques.

We introduce a novel approach to the creation of Virtual Reality Art installations, which supports the design of alternative worlds, in which laws of Physics can be redefined to induce new user experiences. To implement this concept of "Alternative Reality", we have used Artificial Intelligence techniques to support the definition of the virtual environment behaviour, an approach inspired by Qualitative Reasoning systems. Besides the redefinition of physical laws, we have developed mechanisms for eliciting causal relations between events, as causality plays an important part in users' perception of virtual worlds. Our pilot installation is a CAVE TM -like system incorporating a state-of-theart computer game engine as visualisation software, which hasbeen ported to this immersive display. The event-based system underlying the game engine is used to bypass the native Physics engine and replace it with our Alternative Reality software. A first prototype has been fully implemented, the Alternative Reality modules totaling over 100,000 lines of C++ code. We present early results obtained with this approach, illustrated with examples taken from two artistic briefs, developed by digital artists associated to this research.

Abstract In entertainment applications, artificial intelligence techniques have most often been used to implement embodied agents or to automatically generate artistic content. A more recent development concerns using AI to support the user experience through new AI-based interactivity techniques. This is especially of interest for the development of artistic installations based on interactive 3D worlds.

Abstract Causality is an important aspect of how we construct reality. Yet, while many psychological phenomena have been studied in their relation to virtual reality (VR), very little work has been dedicated specifically to causal perception, despite its potential relevance for user interaction and presence. In this paper, we describe the development of a virtual environment supporting experiments with causal perception.

Abstract In this paper, we describe a new approach to the creation of virtual environments, which uses qualitative physics to implement object behaviour. We adopted Qualitative Process Theory as a qualitative reasoning formalism, due to its representational properties (eg, its orientation towards process ontologies and its explicit formulation of process' pre-conditions).

Abstract We introduce a novel approach to the creation of Virtual Reality Art installations, which supports the design of alternative worlds, in which laws of Physics can be redefined to induce new user experiences. To implement this concept of" Alternative Reality", we have used Artificial Intelligence techniques to support the definition of the virtual environment behaviour, an approach inspired by Qualitative Reasoning systems.

Abstract In this paper, we discuss how a cognitive concept, causality, can be used for the conceptual underpinning of Virtual Reality Art installations. Causality plays an important role in our construction of reality and, as such, it makes sense to use it as a principle to define VR experiences. We have developed a VR platform using cognitive data on causal perception to create artificial event co-occurrences in virtual worlds, which can be perceived as possible outcomes for user actions.