Chiara Rossitto

Understanding audience participation in an interactive theater performance

This article presents an empirical study investigating audience participation in an interactive theater performance. During the performance, audience members were enticed to act upon and contribute to the performance by sharing their opinions, emotions, values and other thoughts, by means of text messages that were integrated into the performance itself. The study aimed at understanding the main characteristics of audience participation in the interactive performance, as well as the role of communication technology as a medium enabling social participation. The results draw attention to the immediate and reflective facets of audience participation, both unfolding at two different but interrelated levels of interactions: an individual and collective one.

Managing work at several places: a case of project work in a nomadic group of students

Motivation -- This paper explores the collaborative and spatial practices of university students engaged in project work. Regarding students as nomadic workers, we attempt to elucidate how their activities are shaped by the lack of a stable and fixed location where work can be carried out. Research approach -- The data presented in this paper were collected by means of ethnographically-informed methods. Findings/Design -- The results elucidate how students manage their collaborative activities at different locations and how they use artifacts and technology in order to do so. Research limitations/Implications -- Only Swedish students participated in the field study discussed in this paper. Cultural attributes, related to privacy for instance, might contribute to the distinction between private and public places. Originality/Value -- This work highlights the relationships between group activities and the places they are bound to, with a main focus on how these relationships are mediated by technological artifacts. Take away message -- The nomadic work described suggests that design efforts should be oriented towards an integration of different applications and/or technological devices.

Acting with Technology: Rehearsing for Mixed-Media Live Performances

Digital technologies provide theater with new possibilities for combining traditional stage-based performances with interactive artifacts, for streaming remote parallel performances and for other device facilitated audience interaction. Compared to traditional theater, mixed-media performances require a different type of engagement from the actors and rehearsing is challenging, as it can be impossible to rehearse with all the functional technology and interaction. Here, we report experiences from a case study of two mixed-media performances; we studied the rehearsal practices of two actors who were performing in two different plays. We describe how the actors practiced presence during rehearsal in a play where they would be geographically remote, and we describe the challenges of rehearsing with several remote and interactive elements. Our study informs the broader aims of interactive and mixed media performances through addressing critical factors of implementing technology into rehearsal practices.

Interweaving place and story in a location-based audio drama

This paper presents a qualitative study of an interactive audio drama facilitated by a location-based application. The investigation focuses on an accessible experience, a play in which the audience members simply trigger new scenes of the audio drama as they walk to predefined city areas. The findings draw attention to the role of the mobile technology in facilitating this particular artistic experience. Furthermore, they illustrate the various levels at which creative imagination and open interpretation emerge as audience members seek to make sense of the interrelations between the locative media experienced and elements of the places inhabited during the audio narrative. In concluding the article, designing for loose coupling between mobile media and physical places is suggested as a strategy to enable people’s engagement in meaningful experience through the use of various location-based services.

Towards a places and spaces based city-wide mobile learning through multi-agent support

This paper illustrates how the conceptualization of Places can be used to inform the technical design of mobile learning system. We apply the concept of Place in a multi-agent framework for supporting informal city-wide mobile learning activities. By taking input from the theoretical framework for analysing collaborative learning activities, we adopt the structure and organization of multi-gent framework. The functionality and components of the system are defined in light of the theoretical work. This work bridges the gap between theory and its application in technology for mobile learning in our project.

HCI at the boundary of work and life

The idea behind this Special Issue originates in a workshop on HCI and CSCW research related to work and non-work-life balance organized in conjunction with the ECSCW 2013 conference by the issue co-editors. Fifteen papers were originally submitted for possible inclusion in this Special Issue, and four papers were finally accepted for publication after two rounds of rigorous peer review. The four accepted papers explore, in different ways, HCI at the boundary of work and life. In this editorial, we offer a description of the overall theme and rationale for the Special Issue, including an introduction on the topic relevance and background, and a reflection on how the four accepted papers further current research and debate on the topic.

Glimpses of the future: designing fictions for mixed-reality performances

Mixed Reality Performances straddle technological and performative innovation, providing a site for collaboration between artists, performers, HCI scholars and designers. While interdisciplinarity provides opportunities for innovation, it also poses challenges for the underlying creative processes and their outcomes. To explore the role Design Fiction can play in addressing these challenges we organized a workshop at CHI 2017 [1], to use Design Fiction to generate visions of future Mixed Reality Performances (MRP).

COOP 2014 - Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on the Design of Cooperative Systems, 27-30 May 2014, NIce (France)

COOP 2014 - Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on the Design of Cooperative Systems, 27-30 May 2014, Nice (France)

Co-Creating the Workplace: Participatory Efforts to Enable Individual Work at the Hoffice

This paper analyzes the self-organizing network Hoffice – a merger between the words home and office – that brings together people who wish to co-create temporary workplaces. The Hoffice concept entails a co-working methodology, and a set of practices inherent in opening up one’s home as a temporary, shared workplace, with the help of existing social media platforms, particularly Facebook. We discuss both the practices of co-creating temporary workplaces, particularly for workers who lack a stable office and orchestrate flexible work arrangements, and the values and rhetoric enshrined in Hoffice. We collected our research materials through interviews, participant observation, and workshops. Our findings draw attention to i) the practical arrangement of Hoffice events, ii) the participatory efforts to get individual work done, and 3) the co-creation of an alternative social model that encourages trust, self-actualization, and openness. To conclude, we discuss how Hoffice is already making change for its members, and how this is indicative of a politics of care. We contribute to research on computer-supported collaborative work (CSCW) by highlighting grassroots efforts to create alternative ways of organizing nomadic work and navigating non-traditional employment arrangements.