Aristotle

The forced confinement due to the Covid-19 pandemic has been framed as a condition from which to reassess modern life's habits and values, and build upon such reassessment in order to reimagine a more sustainable and equitable future. A ubiquitous feature of such confinement has been the transition from physical/presential modes of expression and interaction to virtual ones, typically supported through electronic platforms. In the current conditions of physical distancing and confinement, electronic-platform culture presents a tension between two opposite but coexisting aspects – isolation and connectedness – both of which it seems to amplify: the former through its implication of physical distance, the latter through its global reach. My poster will offer a reflection on today's recourse to electronic platforms under conditions of physical confinement in light of physiological evidence and philosophical ideas, in particular the work of ancient Chinese thinker Zhuang Zhou's (369-286 BC) emphasis on contemplation as vehicle for the achievement of virtue and wisdom.

Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin introduce Cyberdrama, the first section of First Person.

The builder of Façade, an “interactive story world,” Michael Mateas offers both a poetics and a neo-Aristotelian project (for interactive drama and games).

Interactive drama has been discussed for a number of years as a new AI-based interactive experience (Laurel 1986; Bates 1992). While there has been substantial technical progress in building believable agents (Bates, Loyall, and Reilly 1992; Blumberg 1996, Hayes-Roth, van Gent, and Huber 1996), and some technical progress in interactive plot (Weyhrauch 1997), no work has yet been completed that combines plot and character into a full-fledged dramatic experience. The game industry has been producing plot-based interactive experiences (adventure games) since the beginning of the industry, but only a few of them (such as The Last Express) begin to approach the status of interactive drama. Part of the difficulty in achieving interactive drama is due to the lack of a theoretical framework guiding the exploration of the technological and design issues surrounding interactive drama. This paper proposes a theory of interactive drama based on Aristotle's dramatic theory, but modified to address the interactivity added by player agency. This theory both provides design guidance for interactive dramatic experiences that attempt to maximize player agency (answering the question "What should I build?") and technical direction for the AI work necessary to build the system (answering the question "How should I build it?"). In addition to clarifying notions of interactive drama, the model developed in this essay also provides a general framework for analyzing player agency in any interactive experience (e.g., interactive games).

This neo-Aristotelian theory integrates Murray's (1998) proposed aesthetic categories for interactive stories and Aristotle's structural categories for drama. The theory borrows from Laurel's treatment of Aristotle in an interactive context (Laurel 1986, 1991) but extends it by situating Murray's category of agency within the model; the new model provides specific design guidelines for maximizing user agency. First, I present the definition of interactive drama motivating this theory and situate this definition with respect to other notions of interactive story. Next, I present Murray's three categories of immersion, agency, and transformation. Then, I present a model of Aristotle's categories relating them in terms of formal and material causation. Within this model, agency will be situated as two new causal chains inserted at the level of character. Finally, I use the resulting model to clarify conceptual and technical issues involved in building interactive dramatic worlds, and briefly describe a current project informed by this model.

(Source: Author's abstract on ebr)

The most talked-about, and potentially the most significant consequence of recent advances in electronic technology for the practive and theory of literature is the promise of interactivity. The idea of interactivity is traditionally associated with hypertext. But compared to Interactive Drama, a genre existing mainly in the conceptual stage, hypertext involves a relatively low grade of interactivity: the freedom to select an itinerary on a network of author-defined pathways. In Interactive Drama, ideally, "the interactor is choosing what to do, say, and think at all times" (Kelso, Bates and Weyhrauch); "the users of such a system are like audience members who can march up onto the stage and become various characters, altering the action by what they say and do in their roles" (Laurel). This essay investigates the basic dilemma encountered by Interactive Drama, a dilemma reminiscent of a familiar theological problem: how can the system grant users some freedom of action, and yet enact an aesthetically satisfying narrative scheme ? The predominantly epic structure of Brenda Laurel's VR installation Placeholder is contrasted to the Aristotelian design philosophy of Joseph Bates' Oz. In spite of these structural differences, both works uphold the ideal of a system designed in such a way that every traversal of the virtual world will provide a rewarding experience. This concern for the "safety of a controlled situation" suggests that in contrast to most forms of hypertext, interactive drama owes more to the spirit of classicism than to postmodern aesthetics.

(Source: Author's website)