Weird (Re)View : Informing qualitative HCI methods?

Jo Briggs
School of Design, Northumbria University
jo.briggs@northumbria.ac.uk
www.jobriggs.info/projects2.html
Weird (Re)View : Informing qualitative HCI methods?
Reflections on a personal participatory arts project
Weird View (2000) was an interactive video installation constituting the practical component of the MSc Multimedia Systems programme at Trinity College
Dublin (TCD). Institutional rubrics determined that projects built on course content, were collaboratively developed between postgraduates, and materially realised within a gallery group exhibition: otherwise, the brief was open. Prior to
studying I had taught graphic art and media in a fine art context while maintaining a creative practice increasingly employing digital tools. While not consciously
aware of becoming more ‘engaged’ or ‘relational,’ institutional, techno-cultural and personal issues converged to inform the project’s participatory methods.
Institutional and techno-cultural
A dominant discourse on the MSc concerned ‘non-linear’ digital cultural forms. I perceived some ‘interactive narratives’ as dry remediations of literary works; however,
Geoff Ryman’s 253 (1996/1998) — based on multivocality of passengers sharing a
Tube journey — used a story-container metaphor subsequently adopted by Valentina Nisi and I in a preliminary artefact.
Personal
In 1999 my partner’s siblings from Ireland, Australia and Canada reunited in Lucan,
County Dublin, for a family funeral. Reminiscing among extended family, friends
and neighbours at the wake constituted a particularly rich source of stories. These
informed printed media produced in the context of the MSc course (maps, bookworks etc) exploring notions of time, place and family ties. In this context, Valentina
and I devised a ‘real world’ strategy for generating ‘digital content’ for an interactive
narrative-based final project, focusing on the siblings’ childhood home and neighbourhood.
Technological
Increasing discourse on networked communities informed the synthesis of technology and ‘physical’ — as opposed to virtual — community, while increased availability
and portability of digital devices enabled in situ recording.
Motivation for Participants
Our ‘storytellers’ were not formally interviewed about their experiences of participation. However, my partner’s siblings were very supportive of ‘the project’ and this
fostered wider interest; there was enthusiasm generally about being part of TCD-associated activity; and some people were interested in learning more about emerging
digital technologies: practical help was offered to them — setting up email accounts
etc — albeit partly as a ploy to further participation.
Primarily, this was a social process, galvanised by a death and subsequent familyand-friends reunion. As the project evolved into more of a social history people
arguably wanted to be included in, rather than excluded from, the developing ‘grand
Lucan narrative.’
Transformational moments
During documentation of the street — using a Kaidan head and high resolution
camera — one participant’s extremely primitive back-kitchen made fantastic source
material. However, this combined use of recording technologies and participatory
‘methods’ raised salient issues of aesthetics, ethics and ‘sample selection.’
A certain ‘tipping point’ was reached when locals offered stories or other help voluntarily.
The social science and historiography aspects were outside our experience. Consequently, we adopted a ‘light touch’ to the stories used, effectively self-censoring less
benign material.
It became apparent that the work, alongside the show at the Douglas Hyde Gallery,
should be exhibited in the context of its production in Lucan.
Measures of success?
The exhibitions generated positive feedback. Academically, Weird View was successful in that it won that year’s TCD course prize, judged by computer arts people from
Brown University, MIT and TCD. The Lucan Muintir Na Tíre exhibition was very well
attended by all participants and their families.
On reflection Weird View seems very much ‘of its time,’ as contemporary to loosely
associated projects such as Tenantspin (www.tenantspin.org).