Navigable Spaces

1. Navigable Spaces LCC 2700: Intro to Computational Media

2. 4 properties of the digital medium • Procedural • Participatory • Spatial • Encyclopedic

3. 4 properties of the digital medium • Procedural • Participatory • Spatial • Encyclopedic

4. 4 properties of the digital medium • Procedural • Participatory • Spatial property is derived from the procedural and participatory • Encyclopedic

5. Space • With time one of the 2 prime coordinates of human cognition • Has multiple logical codes • Absolute Longitude/Latitude GPS • Relative Directionality (North, South, East, West) • Up/Down , Orbiting • Lightyears (SpaceTime)

6. Experiencing Space Codes of relationship • Left / Right • In front of / Behind • Forward / Back • Landmarking • Zones of proximity (Downtown; the South) • Pathfinding (2 stops on MARTA; Mapquest directions)

7. Representating Space: Overview

8. Overviews • Provide sense of boundaries and extent of space • Provide relationship of parts to the whole • From a god’s eye (bird’s eye) perspective • Sitemaps and good site navigation provide overview of information spaces • Establishing shots, zooms in film provide overview prelude to smaller scene; create illusion of proximities • Digital media can create overviews that can be entered and navigated

9. Myst Island Fly-over http://www.riven.com/Movies/MyFly.mov Not directly connected with navigation in Myst

10. Overview and Navigation Connected In websites that make nav bar the site map In more recent games like The Sims where you can move from the neighborhood flyover to the street to the individual house to individual rooms

11. Representing Space: Navigation • Navigation produces sense of immersion • Space seems more real because you can move through it • Space must be consistent • Logically Retraceable (up/down, left/right) • In scale (lower floors matched to upper floors) • Landmarks support orienteering

12. Coherent navigation leads to exploration and discovery • Passing a “tripwire” can set off a dramatic effect • “Room” abstraction useful even for spaces that are not rooms, such as mazes, forest, any logical space segment • Glimpsing one space from another, or hearing/smelling something just out of sight, creates anticipation • Sounds can become louder as you approach • Hidden objects can become more, or suddenly visible

13. Creating Motivation for Exploration • Placing objects in the space reinforces the illusion • Following a fleeing character (White Rabbit) can motivate navigation, discovery • Spaces and objects can be taken from familiar story genres: treasure boxes, outlaw hideout, alien space ship • Story expectations from props and characters, sound and visual style create anticipation, suspense, curiosity

14. Space as Abstract Code • Hierarchies • Things above and below: superordinate/subordinate • Upper and lower classes (people, things) • Top of the line; Bottom of the heap • Make it to the top; sink so low that you would… • Right hand man; sinister (left-hand) plot • Memory Palaces • Greek rhetorical trick of associating a list of things with a set of places, recall by mental walk-through

15. Geographical Space as Cultural Code • East Coast, West Coast • Beltway (Washington) • The South, the Midwest (other countries have similar shorthand) • Valley of the Shadow of Death • Underworld of the Dead • Mountaintop or Celestial habitation of the gods (in multiple religious traditions)

16. Space as Emotional Code • Choice as a “fork in the road” or a “crossroads” • Despair as a forest (Dante’s inferno) • Being confused as being lost “at sea” • Drowning as being overwhelmed “out of his depth” • “Walking the straight and narrow”: moral orientation for spatial orientation

17. Borges Forking Paths A book that is a labyrinth An action that is a coded message A view of human life and the meaning of our choices