Minecraft Day 2018, Lancaster Uni – 09 July 2018
July 11, 2018 | james
After months of intense planning, Lancaster University’s inaugural Minecraft Day event ran on Monday – to resounding success. Sally and James led a funding bid for the idea of bringing together research from around the university that uses Minecraft in some capacity, and bringing in pupils from a wide range of schools in the area, in order to demonstrate how fun and creative our resources can be. Also to make local schools aware of the support and projects we would like to provide them – the communication of which is always a tricky aspect. 4 separate project sessions, 80 children, and representatives from several potential partners… so much could have gone arwy, but the day ran smoothly, to everyone’s delight.
We provided a great range of projects, from Science Hunters exploring geothermal physics (and how they correspond to their in-game counterparts), Sarah Twiggs running narrative coding around stories using MC elements, Chris Dixon running a range of things around the measuring and design of the buildings and space ISS’s scaled campus map , and – of course – our very own Litcraft. Several iterations of Minecraft featured, including Education Edition and the Oculus Rift version, providing new experiences aplenty for everyone involved.
Feedback was resoundingly positive across the board (the teachers were as fascinated with the ideas as much as the children), and many schools are now interested in working with us all further. Exactly the intent of the HEIF funding that allowed us to run the event – this would not have been possible without their support.
Likewise, the day wouldn’t have run anywhere near as smoothly without the tireless support of Dawn Stobbart and all the assistants involved, on both the individual projects and the English student helpers attached to each grouping. And no-one ended up in the moat with the ducks! (well, James very almost did when taking down the banners, but that’s par for the course really…)
Continue, British Library – 03 July 2018
July 6, 2018 | james
The team’s latest showing was once again wrangled through our Co-I Stella Wisdom who graciusly allowed us a portion of time for her discussion of how her role enables her to encourage the use of videogames in exploring cultural themes. The event was an intimate gathering, organised by Alice Roberts, and held at our ‘home away from home’.
Unfortunately, train timetables and a hotel mix-up meant we missed the morning session which was an analogue gamejam – extremely disaapointing, as this is exactly James’ forte. But we got to sample some of the designs over lunch (we suspect this wasn’t many participants’ first rodeo!)
Although the crowd was small, interest in Litcraft was extremely high, and we made a number of contacts who were interested in the dataset and schema from the project proper – and it hasn’t even been shown at a DH-dedicated event yet!
Here’s hoping for an even bigger and better still event next year!
Video Games and Literature, St. Andrews – 20-21 June 2018
June 27, 2018 | james
Half-way through an event-filled few weeks, the entire team was fortunate enough to be invited to speak at an event hosted by the University of St. Andrews (in collaboration with Abertay University and the University of Glasgow).
For an event that was only 2-days, the organisers managed to pack it full with fun talks, a special conversation with noted games writer Rhianna Pratchett, and a game jam event. This was Sally’s first encounter with the latter – and she embraced it fully! The speakers ranged from postgrads through game designers (introducing the fascinating Austen-centric MMORPG Ever Jane http://everjane.com/), providing a wide array of perspectives and thoughts on the subject matter.
The game jam at St Andrews Uni has introduced me to a new circle of hell, level design performed entirely in Maya.. #vglit #abertay #gamejam pic.twitter.com/ySJySlhtA5
— Ian Morrison (@mr_imorrison) June 21, 2018
Check out #vglit to see plenty of photos and thoughts from the event
James and Becca presented on their side-projects incorporating literature into interactive visualisations, whilst Sally presented on the project proper. We made several new contacts, and swapped ideas, concepts, and thoughts… and sincerely hope some further collaborative opportunites may arise from the event.
The message emphasised throughout the event (and jam) was the broad – mistaken – assumptions throughout the industry that anyone who could write could create, and that narrative and mechanics were disparate parts of the gaming experience that could be entirely separated.
It was fascinating to see other researchers’ thoughts on walking sims (amongst many other game formats), and has certainly inspired us to delve into exploring new ideas for our own visualisations.
Team photo, on a lovely Scottish summer’s day.
Our thanks, once again, to Prof. Margaret Anne Hutton and Dr Matthew Barr for organising such a fascinating conference – we hope it will be the first on many for our fledgling field.
Narrative Data, University of Sussex – 12-13 June 2018
June 14, 2018 | james
James was fortunate enough to be invited to an annual two-day event hosted by the Humanities Lab at the University of Sussex – which this year was organised and run by our superb Co-I, Alex Butterworth. The name of the event itself provides so much scope for considering the simple premise of data use that is so easy to accidentally overlook – covering researchers with all manner of thoughts, practices, fields, and approaches – and the days did not diasappoint in the slightest!
Openly billed as a ‘sandbox forum’, the days were filled with lightning talks (kept firmly in line with a boating horn *honk*), provocation talks, working practice rundowns, and group work to practically design a means of examining how data can be used to present narratives. Or vice-versa.
The cohort was incredibly diverse, covering journalism (The Times), performance design (the RSC), mixed and virtual reality art, and experimental poetry (although the artist may shoot me a wither glare for classing it as such, sorry JR!) and all manner of projects that categorise, tag, and re-shape information into new forms. Audio, visual, tactile, and experimental text formats – all of which fed into our team project design. It was a pleasure getting to work with materials in ways we had never considered before – and really opened our eyes to new approaches to re-presenting materials within the digital humanities.
The team would like to thank our gracious hosts – Alex and everyone else from the labs that worked to keep things running smoothly – at the Humanities Lab once more for inviting us down. We made a number of valuable new contacts from the event, that we hope may lead to some interesting developments in the near future…
Vacancy on the team
May 29, 2018 | james
Some exciting news – we are pleased to be able to offer an exciting full-time postdoc for 2 years with the rest of the team here at Lancaster. More information on the RA post can be found on the LU Vacancies page, and is still open to applications for a few weeks yet.
We are looking for someone who can form interesting visualisations using our coding schema and gaming-based adaptations of any type (we love being surprised by creative engine use!).
It is a great opportunity to join @lancaster_words and work at the forefront of digital literacy innovation – please do not hesitate to get in touch with us if you have any queries or interest in applying.