In 2009 – 2010 Media Factory had two research tracks.
<h3>Track 1: Enactive Social Media and Gaming</h3>
Social media can be described as media created and used by many, and that allows people to experience and interact with others. On the other hand social media is a process where technology, content and social interaction are integrated. With social media people can share and create together texts, pictures, videos and audio. While people are sharing and creating media they are participating in complex social networks and systems. This way social media can be defined also as a process, rather than only a technology or tool.
Enactive social media is media where meaning comes through the actual social action. The action is often manipulation of objects in a social context. Playing and games are examples of enactive media. When people create media together it is always a social play or game. People agree on the rules while working with it or are following the rules of the game. The level of freedom in terms of rules and a way of creating them can vary depending on the social media.
From a technological point of view media technology provides ways to 1) augment physical reality as opposed to merely connecting remote participants, making social media important in collocated (shoulder-to-shoulder) interaction; 2) artificial sensing and processing can provide new cues for social media that are not present in face-to-face.
For these reasons we propose to research social media stressing three aspects:
Active perspective on social media users for better understanding how media is and can be tied to action;
Multidisciplinary approach to the “social” drawing from anthropology and design, supported by studies of cognition and emotion of people managing their everyday lives;
Consideration of latest advances in technology, in particular multiuser mixed reality, multiuser tangible media, and multiuser sensing solutions.
To do this we draw inspiration from the concept of enaction. The first definition of enaction has been introduced by Bruner (1966, 1968). He defines three overlapping forms of knowing: enactive (knowledge based on action or knowing how to do things), iconic (knowledge based on representations through visual imagery), and symbolic (knowledge based on language and transmitted through culture). Focus on enaction stresses interaction with the world, multimodality, the knowledge that comes through action and information gained through perception-action with the environment. Enactive Social Media stresses beyond the mediating capacity how applications affect our doings in non divisible perception-action processes.
Objectives of this track of research are:
identify new cues and affordances for “sociality”
devise new techniques for realising cues and enactive loops
demonstrate the benefits of enactive loops and of the active users paradigm
develop a new generation (and formats) of social media and gaming applications that support active users
In all of these areas the Media Factory already has state-of-the-art ongoing research often already including cooperation across the university departments (TKK, HIIT, CKIR, TAIK). The aim of the research initiative is to bring together the expertise of different researchers of the Aalto University to enrich basic research, applied research and experimental product design.
The aim of the research project is to strengthen research collaboration and cross-laboratory work among the existing departments of the Aalto Unviersity, faculty, researchers and students. The project will act as a forum and platform to create foundation for an international Media Factory Doctoral School.
<h3>➜ <a href=”https://www.taik.fi/onni_new/index.php?page=group&groupid=21370″>Enactive Social Media and Gaming – Onni group</a></h3>