Lizbeth Goodman

The Multimedia Bard: Plugged and Unplugged

The relationship between live theatre and the rapidly developing multimedia technologies has been ambiguous and uneasy, both in the practical and the academic arena. Many have argued that such technologies put the theatre and other live arts at risk, while others have seen them as a means of preserving the elusive traces of live performance, making current work accessible to future generations of artists and scholars. A few performance and production teams have entered the fray, deliberately pushing the technology to its limits to see how useful it may (or may not) be in dealing with the theatre. One such team – comprising Lizbeth Goodman, Tony Coe, and Huw Williams – forms the Open University BBCs Multimedia Shakespeare Research Project, and on 4 September 1997 they presented their work as the annual BFI Lecture at the Museum of the Moving Image on Londons South Bank. What follows is an edited and updated transcript of the lecture – which was itself a ‘multimedia performance’ – intended to spark debate about the possibilities and limitations of using multimedia in creating and preserving ‘live’ theatre. Lizbeth Goodman is Lecturer in Literature at the Open University, where she chairs both the Shakespeare Multimedia Research Project and the new ‘Shakespeare: Text and Performance’ course. Tony Coe is Senior Producer at the OU/BBC, where Huw Williams was formerly attached to the Interactive Media Centre, before becoming Director of Createc for the National Film School, and subsequently Director of Broadcast Solutions, London. Together the team has created a range of multimedia CD-ROMs designed to test the limits and possibilities of new technologies for theatre and other live art forms – beginning with Shakespeare

Playing 3D: Digital technologies and novel 3d virtual environments to support the needs of Chinese learners in western education: Cross-cultural collaboration, gamification, well-being and social inclusion

Universities around the world are increasingly under pressure to ‘internationalise’ and to support and embrace multicultural student bodies and learning environments. At the same time, ‘internationalisation’ is often associated with issues that complicate and pressurise the experiences of ‘international students’ as they attempt to identify and acculturate in their new settings, both socially and educationally, such as blockages in cultural understanding, language barriers and complexities of cross-cultural collaboration. This paper sets out a novel approach to solving these issues for a particular set of students (the large proportion of Chinese studying in Ireland, and specifically in Dublin) by creating original cross-cultural collaborative games (coded by Python) and using gamification based on a new bespoke technology system. This design aims to bridge the gaps in understanding between cultures and to provide an enhanced experience which may even be seen to exceed the levels of engagement of students collaborating in ‘live’ environments. The gamification provides a fun and safe way for Chinese and Irish students to share their culture and language, through unique cross-cultural collaborative games set in a customised bilingually-designed virtual world on a new 3D virtual cloud platform. SMARTlab is developing this unique platform with Hao2 and 3DICCs Terf (an immersive 3D unified collaboration platform integrating game dynamics and adjustable features) and OpenSIM. Our novel collaborative platform further integrates the unique ‘Virtual World in A Backpack’ with a bespoke personalised learning platform in development (Sensei). We show that virtual exposure to Ireland and ‘Irishness’ and the chance to collaborate over time with Irish students can lessen the impact of cultural change and reduce the symptoms of isolation, leading to a more empower and enjoyable learning experience.

Supporting Open Access to Teaching and Learning of People with Disabilities

Over the past years, several frameworks have been developed aiming to support inclusive learning by the provision of flexible or individualized learning experiences. These frameworks recognize the broad diversity of learners and they provide specific learning design principles to ensure accessibility of all learner types to the learning environment or education delivery. In the field of technology-enhanced learning (TeL), accessibility has been recognized as a key design consideration for TeL systems, ensuring that learners with diverse needs and preferences (such as learners with disabilities) can access technology-supported resources, services, and experiences, in general. Within this context, several initiatives have emerged, such as the Inclusive Learning project, which aims to promote an inclusive learning culture and support teachers in designing, sharing and delivering accessible educational resources in the form of learning objects (LOs). To this end, the scope of this book chapter is to present an online educational portal, namely the Inclusive Learning Portal, which aims to support open access to teaching and learning of people with disabilities. More specifically, the Inclusive Learning Portal architecture is presented, which contains a repository of accessible LOs, complementary services that enable easy development and delivery of accessible LOs, as well as teacher training opportunities in the use of these services.

Introduction Part 2: First, second and third spaces: Digital narratives and the spaces of performance

In this second section of issue 3.2/3.3, the focus of the work shifts from ‘real’ bodies in space and time – as viewed through a variety of lenses and screens – to virtual bodies and imagined or invented bodies as rendered across a range of disciplinary spaces. This is a cartography of virtual performers and their journeys. Here, the questions addressed range from spatial mathematics and the notion of the copy, to the mapping of the artefacts of real people who have imagined better spaces in performance and cultural art forms, through to the interwoven narratives of avatars in their invented spaces, to the ‘warfare of imagination’ in second life, and finally to the construction of art-based games based on solid design principles. In each discipline, in each paper, the solid outline of the human body dissolves a bit further into the mediated frame of technologised states and depictions of being. David Fenton’s paper opens this section. His study of ‘Hotel Pro Forma’ considers some of the same questions about authenticity and the role of the ‘copy’ addressed in the opening paper on replay culture. But just as that piece framed each section with arguments regarding the body in space and time (as represented by words on paper and images on screen), so this paper is framed through the addressing of the role of the original and the copy in the domain of intermedial performance. In terms of ‘The algebra of place’, the author positions the subject of performance in relation to the relatively stable frame of the stage as compared to the destabilising frames of complex multimedia formats. In the next paper, by Deborah Barkun and Jools Gilson-Ellis, the mapping of cultural impact is given a new frame altogether, in the context of a folk art/craft project of major proportions. The Knitting Map was made not only by performance company half/angel but also by scores of volunteer knitters in the city of Cork: women who wove the stories of their lives into a woollen design symbolising and encapsulating the pulses and flows of each day of the weather and movements of real bodies in the real spaces and weather patterns of the city. This paper raises questions about art and craft, creation and design, collaboration and direction, and also about the

Representing Gender/Representing Self: A Reflection on Role Playing in Performance Theory and Practice

Waiting on the queue (or in my own lingo, ‘on line’) at the book-shop of the National Theatre in one of the first weeks of the new year 1996, I glanced up and caught the eye of the man in front of me. It was a familiar face: Tom Stoppard’s. The visage was immediately recognizable, and the associated impulse to act was unconscious and instantaneous. I smiled and opened my mouth, about to say Hello (or in my lingo, ‘Hi’). By the strange split-second timing that separates the role-playing of everyday life from that of theatre, something stopped me from speaking (or reacting), just in time. It wasn’t that I wanted to be unfriendly; it was, rather, the sudden realization that he did not know me, would not recognize my face as I did his. So, I met Tom Stoppard, but he did not meet me. We both went off to see some ‘real’ theatre.

Visualisation meets assistive tech: VR, AR, digital materialisation and the tools for imagining and supporting the full potential of human communication

This Keynote Paper provides overview of recent work in the areas of Augmented Cognition, Inclusive Design and Creative Technology Innovation conducted by SMARTlab and the Inclusive Design Research Centres of Ireland and Canada. Projects underway, including several Marie Curie Post-Doctoral projects in the area of Assistive Technologies for People with Intellectual Disabilities-Autism, have applied novel uses of Virtual Worlds, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Future Foresighting Models and tools, and Drones in interdisciplinary research to enhance and extend the human potential of ALL people, regardless of intellectual, cognitive, physical or other abilities.). The Keynote Presentation for VSMM included sections on Augmented Reality, The Ethics of Virtual Worlds and Assistive Technology Tools, Avatars, Drones and Health Visualisation projects, which are discussed in other papers published in these proceedings. This paper focuses on the span of visualisation and virtual worlds projects conducted by SMARTlab and the IDRC in recent years, including some novel applications created by as well as for communities of people with Autism and other medical conditions, and on the potential of 3d printing and digital materialization using novel materials to push forward the boundaries and to reframe the field of VSMM.

Performing self beyond the body: Replay culture replayed

Abstract This paper re-views the field of performance studies through the lens of a large body of the practical work in new media performance and technology tools creation. It thus engages critically with the authors own earlier ideas about play, replay and the performance of self: taking a new position informed by an altered view of performance that has developed in recent years with benefit of both hindsight and the applied method of multimodal vision. Working live as a mover and director who has taken a visible physical place in mixed ability performance work, the author argues that the framing of self in performance which is personal, is complicated not only by theories of agency and the frames in which performance and performance theory are both viewed and reviewed, but also by the shifting nature of ‘self’ as the body and ones ways of engaging through the body both age and change. The paper has been written specially to set the scene for and raise key issues discussed elsewhere in this double issue of IJPDM. It shares the body of a decades research (1987–1997) and another decades further research and reworking of ideas around the omni-presence of media and the performance of text and other forms of representation in the digital age (work conducted since 1997, but focussing on original practice-based research performance experiments and shows staged for these purposes between 2000 and 2005). The paper takes its own media, for example the paper on which it is to be printed — as one of the subjects of study — exploring key theories of representation and gendered performance re-viewed from the lens of the new media age of the early years of the 21st century, as they are now ‘replayed’ here, but for the first time in print, on paper.

Theatres of Choice and the Case of ‘He's Having Her Baby’

By way of introduction to the interview which follows with Joan Lipkin, director and playwright of That Uppity Theatre in St Louis, Missouri, Lizbeth Goodman here provides a context for the discussion of what she calls ‘theatres of choice’ – plays, feminist or otherwise, which deal with the issue of reproductive rights, now being actively challenged in the United States and under threat elsewhere. She looks at the history of legislative change and reaction in the United States, and in particular at the Supreme Court decision in the ‘Webster case’, which represented a victory for the neo-conservative movement. Among theatrical responses to this were Lipkins ‘pro-choice musical comedy’, Hes Having Her Baby , in which gender role-reversal and comic stereotypes were employed in an attempt to reach audiences in St Louis – the city at the centre of the Webster controversy. Lizbeth Goodman, who lectures in literature for the Open University, has published a sequence of feminist theatre interviews in New Theatre Quarterly , and her ‘Feminst Theatre in Britain: a Survey and a Prospect’ appeared in NTQ33 (February 1993). She is the author of Contemporary Feminist Theatres (Routledge, 1993).

Race and the Cinema: An Interview with Stuart Hall and Paul Gilroy

Direct correspondence to Lizbeth Goodman, Department of Literature, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, England MK7 6AA. The interview was taped on March 5, 1993, and broadcast on BBC Radio as part of the Open University-BBC Art Works Series. Producer of the 1993 Art Works Series is Angela Jamieson. Production Assistant is Judy Collins. The transcript was typed by Trish Lawrence. In this interview, Stuart Hall and Paul Gilroy are questioned by Lizbeth Goodman about the immediate and projected long-term impact of Spike Lee’s film Malcolm X. Stuart Hall is Professor of Sociology at the Open University and the well-known author of many articles on culture and society, including The Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left (Verso, 1988). He is the former Director of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University and is also known as an expert on black cinema and as the presenter of the recent acclaimed television series on Caribbean culture.

Emerging Educational Technologies for Cross-Cultural Collaboration: Current Perspectives and Future Directions

Emerging technologies, such as virtual worlds, virtual reality, and augmented reality, may have the potential to facilitate cross-cultural collaboration between students from schools and universities in different countries and cultures. Due to the increase in internationalization in education, the development and implementation of such technologies is now required. However, as yet, the particular challenges and future opportunities associated with the use of such technologies has not been fully investigated. We have conducted interviews with teachers in Ireland and China, to establish their perspectives on the use of of emerging technologies, their current practice, and their future needs and hopes. We found that both teachers had experience with the use of emerging technologies, but only the teacher in China was based in a school which implemented such technologies formally, and this was only in recent years. Novelty was identified as a major reason why students would be expected to embrace emerging technologies in the future. The teacher in China also pointed out potential challenges relating to the availability of high-speed internet in parts of China. We suggest that future research should investigate the perspectives of teachers in Ireland, China, and other countries, on the use of emerging technologies for cross-cultural collaboration, in order to develop a more detailed understanding of the specific needs and challenges such international digital collaboration will bring about.