Navigable Spaces

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Navigable Spaces

• LCC 2700 Intro to Computational Media

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4 properties of the digital medium

• Procedural
• Participatory
• Spatial
• Encyclopedic

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4 properties of the digital medium

• Procedural
• Participatory
• Spatial
• Encyclopedic

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4 properties of the digital medium

• Procedural
• Participatory
• Spatial property is derived from the procedural
  and participatory
• Encyclopedic

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Space

• With time one of the 2 prime coordinates of human
  cognition
• Has multiple logical codes
• Absolute Longitude/Latitude GPS
• Relative Directionality (North, South, East,
  West)
• Up/Down , Orbiting
• Lightyears (SpaceTime)

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Experiencing Space

• Codes of relationship
• Left / Right
• In front of / Behind
• Forward / Back
• Landmarking
• Zones of proximity (Downtown the South)
• Pathfinding (2 stops on MARTA Mapquest
  directions)

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Representating Space Overview
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Overviews

• Provide sense of boundaries and extent of space
• Provide relationship of parts to the whole
• From a gods eye (birds eye) perspective
• Sitemaps and good site navigation provide
  overview of information spaces
• Establishing shots, zooms in film provide
  overview prelude to smaller scene create
  illusion of proximities
• Digital media can create overviews that can be
  entered and navigated

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Myst Island Fly-over

• http//www.riven.com/Movies/MyFly.mov
• Not directly connected with navigation in Myst

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Overview and Navigation Connected

• In websites that make nav bar the site map
• In more recent games like The Sims where you can
  move from the neighborhood flyover to the street
  to the individual house to individual rooms

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Representing Space Navigation

• Navigation produces sense of immersion
• Space seems more real because you can move
  through it
• Space must be consistent
• Logically Retraceable (up/down, left/right)
• In scale (lower floors matched to upper floors)
• Landmarks support orienteering

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Coherent navigation leads to exploration and
discovery

• Passing a tripwire can set off a dramatic
  effect
• Room abstraction useful even for spaces that
  are not rooms, such as mazes, forest, any logical
  space segment
• Glimpsing one space from another, or
  hearing/smelling something just out of sight,
  creates anticipation
• Sounds can become louder as you approach
• Hidden objects can become more, or suddenly
  visible

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Creating Motivation for Exploration

• Placing objects in the space reinforces the
  illusion
• Following a fleeing character (White Rabbit) can
  motivate navigation, discovery
• Spaces and objects can be taken from familiar
  story genres treasure boxes, outlaw hideout,
  alien space ship
• Story expectations from props and characters,
  sound and visual style create anticipation,
  suspense, curiosity

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Space as Abstract Code

• Hierarchies
• Things above and below superordinate/subordinate
• Upper and lower classes (people, things)
• Top of the line Bottom of the heap
• Make it to the top sink so low that you would
• Right hand man sinister (left-hand) plot
• Memory Palaces
• Greek rhetorical trick of associating a list of
  things with a set of places, recall by mental
  walk-through

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Geographical Space as Cultural Code

• East Coast, West Coast
• Beltway (Washington)
• The South, the Midwest
• (other countries have similar shorthand)
• Valley of the Shadow of Death
• Underworld of the Dead
• Mountaintop or Celestial habitation of the gods
• (in multiple religious traditions)

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Space as Emotional Code

• Choice as a fork in the road or a crossroads
• Despair as a forest (Dantes inferno)
• Being confused as being lost at sea
• Drowning as being overwhelmed out of his depth
• Walking the straight and narrow moral
  orientation for spatial orientation

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Borges Forking Paths

• A book that is a labyrinth
• An action that is a coded message
• A view of human life and the meaning of our
  choices

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Adventure / Zork

• Assignment for this week
• Play Zork and/or Myst for at least 2 hours. What
  legacy and computational effects make these
  virtual space feel real? How do you know where
  you are? How do you know the relationship of your
  current location to your previous location? What
  objects and possible events do you expect to find
  in these spaces? What produces these
  expectations? How well do the programs reward
  them?

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Project ICreate a Navigable Space

• clear navigational cues to script the
  interactor
• consistent, logical space
• a reason to move through it
• at least 5 separate segments or rooms
• at least 3 objects with behavior within the
  space