RESEARCHERS

Lisa Gjedde is an associate professor of ICT, Media and Learning at the School of Education, Aarhus University, Denmark. She holds a Ph.D. in Narrative, Cognition and Communication from Roskilde University. Her research has been focused on the role of narrative in learning, the design of interactive and mobile learning environments, exploring tools for imaginative and creative learning and developing processual methods for exploring meaning making.

Bruno Ingemann is an associate professor of Communication studies at Roskilde University, Denmark and has been the head of the research group Centre for Visual Communication from 2002 to 2007. His research has been focused on three fields: Photography, focused on memory of the mirror and how readers relate to the surface of reality. Museology focusing on the reception and experience of the exhibition. Experimental reception studies focused on developing new methods of exploring the observed.

lg@dpu.dk

bruno@ruc.dk

THE VALA_PROJECT: The embodied creation in the museum: An experimental investigation of interactivity

In this very complex investigation of the processes of creating meaning in an interactive video film in a public space like the museum, the pair of users interact with the plasma screen - but most of all with each other in order to develop their narrative and associations to the content and form presented on the screen. 

The new interactive media is more challenging but also more unpredictable in their supposed use and understanding. This interactive film of the British videoartist Maureen Thomas is her work Vala's Runecast. It sees obvious that the foundation for the interactive film is the Nordic mythology and the very strong symbolic expression underlined by her use of imaginative pictures, voice and music.
As a new media with an expression and a user interface that are not immediately recognisable as a certain genre, it is a representation that cannot be placed into a certain context based on what it is about.
Cultural sociologist Celia Lury calls this form of the mental creation of context 'out-contextualisation' - a process where the context is doubled and connected by obvious choices. In the research process, we scrutinise what goes on in the digital media and we discuss how the construction of the space takes place in digital media.

THE USERS are seven pairs where half of the were rather young (24-29) and the other half were more than fifty. The experimental set up was complex. We recorded the sessions from four different camera angles creating a complicated but also rather adequate material for the analysis. The ReflexivityLab - concept were developed further to handle our two main interests namely: How can the visitor create meaning in complex artworks? What influence does the notion of the public have on the users' construction of meaning?

THE ANALYSIS of the users construction of context and narratives in new media can be read in chapter 8: The Vala_Project: The embodied creation in the museum: An experimental investigation of interactivity, p. 153-176.