Tag: storytelling

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Exploring Children’s Interaction with Robotic Installations: Reflections on Placement with Makers of Imaginary Worlds

post by Victor Ngo (2022 cohort)

My placement ran from July to September 2023, with Makers of Imaginary Worlds (MOIW), and involved planning and running a two-part study that would help inform my PhD research on ‘Artificial Intelligence and Robotics in Live Creative Installations’. More specifically, how children interact and form relationships with the robotic installation, how children understand and shape their interaction in this context, what meaning children attribute to the robot and their interaction, how curious children are during the interaction and what motivates their curiosity.

NED (The Never-Ending Dancer)

To add some background to my placement partner, MOIW are a Nottingham-based art company, who aim to create interactive and sensory experiences where children can play, engage and explore. MOIW’s first live robotics project, Thingamabobas, is aimed at younger audiences and involves the use of a computer vision-equipped robot arm, called NED (The Never-Ending Dancer), which can detect audience members and interact with them autonomously. This installation also includes a series of mechanical circus-like creations that are designed to enable children to interact with them as imaginative, dynamic sculptures that provide novel, enjoyable, and empowering experiences.

Unlike social robots, industrial robot arms typically have a functional design, void of humanoid features or facial expressions. MOIW aims to transform the industrial robot arm into a playful kinetic sculpture that defies expectations, offering an inventive interpretation. By introducing variables such as costume design, musical accompaniment, and contextual storytelling, the artists aim to redefine the perception of the robotic arm. Demonstrating how fiction can facilitate a willing suspension of disbelief among audiences, allowing viewers to trust and immerse themselves in reimagining a new reality.

The Study:

The first half of the study, part 1, was completed at the National Festival of Making, Blackburn, with a tremendous number of people attending and in general a great event! This half of the study explored the audience’s understanding of the initial robotic system, with no changes to the system’s capabilities or functionality. This allowed for a base understanding of its performance, capabilities, and limitations in the wild for a researcher new to the system, this proved extremely useful and provided me with the knowledge necessary to complete part 2. The second half of the study, part 2, was completed at the Mansfield Museum, Mansfield, exploring the same audience understanding, however, the system was altered to allow for 360-degree motion around the robot’s base as well as a different method of detecting the audience, moving to body pose detection from facial recognition. Although a direct comparison between the two studies is not possible, insights into audience responsiveness, engagement, and enjoyment are all possible and valuable to the discussion, and future development of this system or similar systems.

Reflections:

Over the course of three months, this placement has provided me with the opportunity to develop key interpersonal and professional skills, as well as improve my technical aptitude.

My initial discussions with MOIW for the placement were straight away met with enthusiasm and sometimes whimsical imagination from Roma Patel and Rachel Ramchurn, the artists of MOIW. Despite MOIW being a relatively small company, I was fortunate enough to learn the ins and outs of art installation production and how artists like Roma and Rachel turn ideas and imagination into professional productions, and how they deal with issues, changes and unexpected setbacks. Shadowing them allowed me to observe how they manage large-scale projects and interact with professional organisations. This has enabled me to further develop and improve my own understanding of professional engagement and project management.

Throughout all stages of the placement, the artists from MOIW frequently discussed possible alterations and upgrades with me to improve the interaction capabilities of the robot. Here I was able to apply and improve my technical experience, developing solutions to enhance the robot’s interaction capabilities or increase the system’s audience detection accuracy and reliability. Despite the technical success of some of the solutions developed, it is important to highlight that not all of the artist’s ideas were technically feasible or within the scope of the project. Communicating this effectively and managing the artist’s expectations was key to ensuring that both the robot was functional and ready for the study, and the professional relationship with MOIW was maintained, without either party being let down or led to believe the system was any greater or less than what was agreed on.

During the study, I was not only the lead researcher on site but also a range of other roles that sometimes required me to step out of my comfort zone. These included in no particular order of social or imaginative intensity; Thingamabobas Wrangler, Storyteller, Imagination Guide, The Researcher from Nottingham University, Technical Support.

As part 1 of the study at the National Festival of Making was a two-day event over the weekend during the height of the UK summer holiday, I was left with little choice but to quickly adapt to these new roles or suffer being swarmed by the thousands of curious and enthusiastic visitors that attended the event. To my surprise, and with a little help from Roma and Rachel, I was able to help children and adults alike be transported into the whimsical world of the Thingamabobas, for about 20 minutes at a time.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and opportunity to work with MOIW to not only develop an art installation, but to also help run it was a great privilege. The skills I have learned and applied in both professional engagements as well as in the wild will be beneficial to my PhD research and to myself as an individual.

 

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VRtefacts Outreach at Derby Museum & Art Gallery

Post by Joseph Hubbard-Bailey (2016 Cohort)

The VRtefVRacts project provides museum and gallery visitors with the opportunity to hold and explore exhibit objects which they would otherwise just look at behind a literal or figurative red rope. Throughout the day, visitors from around the museum were invited to come and put on a VR headset, interact with some 3D-printed VR-augmented models of artefacts, and share their own story or commentary about the objects as they handled them. They then moved into another room for a short interview about the experience, allowing for the next participant to get started with the VR. While previous outreach events I’ve done have felt engaging and productive, none have been as interactive as this VRtefacts trial; others mostly involved having conversations across tables, and the distance and dynamic between researcher and participant felt similar to a campus-based study scenario. Due to the nature of this event, with participants engaging physically and narratively during the session, members of the public seemed much more a part of what was going on, as opposed to passive spectators.

For the visitors who chose to participate in the VRtefacts project, the experience served as both a novel sort of ‘exhibit’ in itself and a novel way to access preexisting materials in the museum’s collection. The latter seemed of particular value in the case of visitors who lived locally and so visited the museum often, offering an unexpected new level of access to familiar objects. The opportunity to contribute or “donate” a story as part of the VRtefacts experience may also have been particularly appealing to those who visit regularly and were keen to ‘give back’ to the museum. Several visitors did fall into this category of ‘regulars’, but there were also plenty of people who were passing through and popped in to pass the time. Visitors across both of these groups commented about how the decision to work with VRtefacts reflected well on Derby Museum, showing its openness to new ideas and resistance to stagnate. For those who were visiting the museum in groups, engaging with the VRtefacts exhibit seemed to provide a great source of interest and conversation, as they emerged and compared experiences. The fact that the corresponding artefacts themselves were available in the museum’s collection also meant that there was a comfortable transition back into the rest of the exhibit, as people could go and find the ‘real thing’ they had just encountered virtually.

Before I left the museum for the day, I sat down on the duct-taped-still chair and had my hairdo sabotaged by the VR headset so that I could have a go at the VRtefacts experience myself. I chose and inspected a small intricate model of a giant jet engine, turning it over and fumbling around the prickly detail of the gaskets while I tried to think of something clever to say for the camera. It reminded me of a frighteningly massive aircraft housed at the RAF Museum in Hendon, where I’d been for relentless school trips as a child due to its proximity to school grounds. I remember cowering through the awful hangar where the scary plane’s wings were so expansive that you had no option but to walk underneath them if you wanted to get out. While this wasn’t a pleasant experience, I think the physicality of being below the Vulcan — which I now know was not just a war plane, but a strategic nuclear bomber — came to mind during VRtefacts because it was a similar example of the power of perspective.

Image credit: Kenneth Griffiths (Ascension Island, 1982)

When an object is in a glass case or on a screen or behind a rope, I think we often instinctively revert to what I can only describe as a ‘flat’ perspective on it. We might press our noses to the glass as children to try and get a closer look, but the glass fogs up and we get told off, so eventually our curiosity wanes and we take a respectful cursory look instead. What this tired perspective gives us is often limited to two-dimensional factual information about the object of interest, without the weight and contour  and color of the object’s life. I’m very glad I decided to have a go with the VRtefacts pilot myself before I left the event, because it made me aware of how cowering under the expanse of the Vulcan’s wings taught me more about the gravity of war than any of my history lessons had. There is a narrative power in an artefact’s physicality which cannot be accessed by simply looking at it — the VRtefacts project has the potential to provide that physicality in a way that protects the original object, which needn’t even be on the same continent as it’s VR counterpart.

Beyond the benefit this technology could offer in enhancing the habitual gallery-goer’s usual experience, there is also potential benefit to those who aren’t so familiar and comfortable with these venues. Having come from a family who didn’t really go to museums or galleries, I still feel quite awkward and out of place in these spaces at times. I don’t think it’s much of a leap to suggest that projects like VRtefacts — which offer more diverse ways of accessing meaning in historical and art objects — have the potential to make galleries and museums not only more engaging for visitors, but more accessible to a diverse range of visitors.

Thanks to Jocelyn Spence and the rest of the VRtefacts team for letting me join in for the day!

VRtefacts is a pilot project developed within the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 727040, GIFT: Meaningful Personalization of Hybrid Virtual Museum Experiences Through Gifting and Appropriation.

–originally posted on Joe’s blog