Interactive Digital Environment Research Articles

Multimodal analysis within an interactive software environment: critical discourse perspectives

Critical discourse analysts are increasingly required to account for multimodal phenomena constructed through language and other resources (e.g. images, sound and music) and to relate high-level critical insights on the social motivations of these texts to their realizations in low-level expressive phenomena, and vice versa. In this paper, we use interactive software resources for critical multimodal discourse analysis (O'Halloran, K.L. (2011b). Multimodal analysis and digital technology. In A. Baldry & E. Montagna (Eds.), Interdisciplinary approaches to multimodality: Theory and practice. Readings in intersemiosis and multimedia (pp. 21–34). Campobasso: Palladino; O'Halloran, K. L., Tan, S., Smith, B. A., & Podlasov, A. (2010). Challenges in designing digital interfaces for the study of multimodal phenomena. Information Design Journal, 18(1), 2–12; Smith, B. A., Tan, S., Podlasov, A., & O'Halloran, K.L. (in press). Analyzing multimodality in an interactive digital environment: Software as metasemiotic tool. Social Semiotics) to help in achieving these aims. The field of critical discourse studies, itself being interdisciplinary, along with its holistic approach, is well placed to take advantage of interactive software, as these resources encourage the application, exploration and correlation of various analytical perspectives at different levels of description. Drawing on the analysis of a short video advertisement, we demonstrate how the interactive (multimodal) digital environment is one in which the discourse analyst can effectively draw upon different traditions of analysis, including ‘mainstream’ and social semiotic traditions, as well as other traditions such as media studies, to interpret dynamic audiovisual media texts in a critically self-reflexive manner.

Patterning reconfigurable narrative: interactive cinema as architectural elevation within 3D interactive digital environments

This paper addresses the process of patterning reconfigurable video narrative using architectural theory, through a case-study of practice-based research on the interactive, reconfigurable small-screen movie Gormenghast Explore. It focuses on the topography of cinematic narrative as architectural construction, refashioning Kevin Lynch's urban categories and Christian Norberg-Schulz's concept of place to support a design ontology for dramatic fictive narrativity. This architectural framework provides an effective representation for both navigable narrative content and 3D environment and interface.

A methodology and implementation for annotating digital images for context-appropriate use in an academic health care environment

Use of digital medical images has become common over the last several years, coincident with the release of inexpensive, mega-pixel quality digital cameras and the transition to digital radiology operation by hospitals. One problem that clinicians, medical educators, and basic scientists encounter when handling images is the difficulty of using business and graphic arts commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software in multicontext authoring and interactive teaching environments. The authors investigated and developed software-supported methodologies to help clinicians, medical educators, and basic scientists become more efficient and effective in their digital imaging environments. The software that the authors developed provides the ability to annotate images based on a multispecialty methodology for annotation and visual knowledge representation. This annotation methodology is designed by consensus, with contributions from the authors and physicians, medical educators, and basic scientists in the Departments of Radiology, Neurobiology and Anatomy, Dermatology, and Ophthalmology at the University of Utah. The annotation methodology functions as a foundation for creating, using, reusing, and extending dynamic annotations in a context-appropriate, interactive digital environment. The annotation methodology supports the authoring process as well as output and presentation mechanisms. The annotation methodology is the foundation for a Windows implementation that allows annotated elements to be represented as structured eXtensible Markup Language and stored separate from the image(s).

Performing space

This article discusses how the notion of performance provides impetus for the design of interactive digital environments. These environments can ultimately be regarded as user-spaces; a condition which replaces the ‘fixed’ art-object with a configuration of interactions. Our understanding of space, as suggested by Lefevbre (2001), defines the ‘inhabitant’ as a full participant, a user, a performer of space. What is at play when the installation artist designs environments that invite performative exploration? The issue of improvised performance in the inhabiting of installation spaces is exposed. Two interactive installations by the author and works by others in the field provide a context for discussion and analysis.