Apr 28, 3:00 PM: Pervasive Play: Make Believe as Method

In this talk, Kari Kraus explores the role and implications of metalepsis for pervasive game design and mixed-method research. Adopting a case study approach, Kraus will introduce DUST, an educational alternate reality game (ARG) for teens that ran live for 10 weeks in early 2015. A joint endeavor between Brigham Young University and the University of Maryland in partnership with NASA and Tinder Transmedia, DUST created many open channels for players to react to and experiment with metalepsis. They created social networks that included both real people and fictional characters; moved back and forth between fictional and scientific inquiry; invoked the fictional status of the game from within the game; and responded to questionnaires administered by both academic researchers and fictional characters. From the vantage point of research, this push-pull relationship between the imaginary and the real presents unique challenges and opportunities for data collection and analysis, learning assessment, and knowledge transfer. Throughout the talk, Kraus will highlight gender differences associated with how players shape, experience, and negotiate metaleptic structures. Although metalepsis is generally understood as an aesthetic phenomenon, she will conclude by briefly examining its larger social, psychological, and civic import. Kari's bio is the following: Kari Kraus is an associate professor in the College of Information Studies and the Department of English at the University of Maryland. Her research and teaching interests focus on new media and the digital humanities, digital preservation, game studies and transmedia storytelling, and speculative design. She was a local Co-PI on two grants for preserving virtual worlds; the PI on an IMLS Digital Humanities Internship grant; and, with Derek Hansen, the Co-Principal Investigator of an NSF grant to study Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) and transmedia storytelling in the service of education and design. Her latest transmedia work—in partnership with Brigham Young University, Tinder Transmedia, and the Computer History Museum--is likewise funded by the NSF. With Min Wu and Doug Oard, she Co-PIed “Exploring Invisible Traces in Historic Recordings,” a project that applied audio forensics techniques to help recover provenance information about undated recordings. Kraus has written for the New York Times and the Huffington Post, and her work has been mentioned in the Atlantic, Baltimore Public Radio, The Salt Lake Tribune, Huffington Post, Gamasutra, Wired, and the Long Now Foundation. In 2015 she entered into a Space Act Agreement with NASA. She is writing a book about how artists, designers, and humanities researchers think about, model, and design possible futures. Presented by the Alternate Realities and Virtual Worlds Project.

Date: April 28, 2017
Time: 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM

See:https://www.facebook.com/events/1135614136548377/