Mixed Reality

Storytelling
How to engineer chaos
What is Mixed Reality?
• https://youtu.be/wkE0Rgc89HM?t=32

• Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Extended Reality

• Anything that combines a Virtual and Real aspect

• https://vimeo.com/72072441
Better Than Life
• Multiple cameras streaming live
• 5 performers (NPCs)
• 12 Physical Participants (PP)
• 30-40 Online Participants (OP)

The research question was to measure feelings of agency in Online

Participants as various means of influence are offered to them.
Baseline comparator with the Physical Participants
User Interface

Chat messages
Nicky: Don’t be sad,
Shipra…
Tim: He’s just horrible
Kittens: What can we do to
help?
Mixed Reality Interaction
Live chat to other OP and NPCs, aftershow chat with PP

Scalable Continuous Controller Interaction

Mouse Listener

Breathing Lights

Ouija Interface
Oiuja Interface
BTL Outcomes
• OP testing the Breathing Lights
• Gavin attacking the Commentator
• He’s Behind You- Gavin, PP, OP and a machete

All of these were completely unexpected and beyond the parameters of

the research. In fact, they couldn’t have been predicted.
It took weeks to tease these events, these trajectories out of the data.

Mixed Reality is too complex to predict.

Mixed Reality is too complex to
predict
Five Tensions
• Narrative Tension
• Dramatic Tension
• Spatial Tension
• Ludic Tension
• Metaleptic Tension
Narrative Tension
• What happens next?
• Am I engaged by the story?
Dramatic Tension
• What are the characters doing?
• What do I expect them to be doing?
• How do I feel about the characters?
Spatial Tension
• What’s lurking round the corner?
• What more is there to find?
• Distributed Narrative
Ludic Tension
• What are the other players doing?
• Do I help them or hinder them?
• What are the game makers up to?
Metaleptic Tension
• Is this real?
• Do I want to leave?
• How can I influence the story? MR & AR especially so
• How can I break the game? Combat Narratology
Conclusions
• Mixed Reality is a complex interplay of combinations of unknown
factors.

• The best approach is to set up a system and then see what happens.

• The exciting stuff is not curated, directed, authored or “auteur”ed.

• It can be very hard to work out what happened.

Important Works in Mixed Reality
• Performing Mixed Reality by Benford and Giannachi- Blast Theory,
Trajectories, Adjacencies
• Hamlet on the Holodeck by Janet Murray
• Google Maps, Pokemon Go
• Entangled by Chris Salter
• Stalker from fiction to game to hyperreality
• Mixed Reality and the Theatre of the Future by Joris Weijdom
https://www.ietm.org/en/system/files/publications/ietm_fp_mixed-
reality_march2017_1.pdf
Stuff to try
• Twitch to microcontroller GPIO (Raspberry Pi/Arduino etc)
• Unity to microcontroller GPIO
• Live stream drama
• LARP and Periscope – The Fated Player