It feels like I'm still catching my breath, but on Thursday afternoon around 5:00pm, I finally crossed the finish line. I'm officially a doc!
Below is the pre-ceremony group portrait of all the PhD graduands from the School of the Arts, Media, Performance and Design, hoods draped over arms, and already sweltering in our robes. Respect to my lovely and talented cohort-mate Caroline Klimek (front and centre) – I'm not sure I could have made it to the other side of the stage in those heels.
My inspiring doctoral supervisor Caitlin Fisher generously shared the hooding ritual with my aunt Patricia Stamp, a retired professor of African and Development Studies at York, and a lifelong guiding light for me:
Managed to keep that extremely wide-brimmed puffy hat on my head throughout. Harder than it looks!
It was an honour to receive the Governor General’s Gold Medal from Chancellor Kathleen Taylor – one I share with all the colleagues and participants across the world who joined a strange, wonderful adventure in research-creation and artful intelligence.
Wiikwemkoong (formerly Wikwemikong) High School flies with the eagles
A dramatic entrance
Teacher Natalie Parrington's brilliant grade 12 English class welcomed Debajehmujig Storytellers directors Joahnna Berti and Bruce Naokwegijig, along with arts animators Daniel Recollet-Mejaki, Quinten Kaboni and Tyler Pangowish, all of whom have collaborated on previous Shadowpox workshops in 2018 and 2022.
With Joahnna Berti and Natalie Parrington in front of a Shadowpox vocabulary list (a good lesson for me in readability levels!)
We were piloting a new branching narrative, Shadowcasting • Mazinaateshin. "Mazinaateshin" is an Anishinaabemowin word that means both “s/he casts a shadow” and “s/he is on television or in a movie,” and echoes the traditional teachings shared by Debajehmujig Knowledge Keeper David "Sunny" Osawabine that we should have compassion for everything and everyone our shadow falls upon.
The four-scene cycle of Shadowcasting • Mazinaateshin
This new version of the participatory story framework Shadowpox: The Cytokine Storm takes the form of a choose your own adventure branching narrative, in order to foreground the theme of choice and the effects our choices can have on our own lives and the lives of those around us.
The new Shadowcasting • Mazinaateshin branching narrative
Students role-played as volunteers in a Phase 1 vaccine trial in the middle of a shadowpox pandemic (a scenario that required a lot more imaginative heavy lifting in Debaj's first workshop back in 2018!). The school's wonderful IT wizard Rudy Mandamin helped set the students up to use Microsoft Stream to record their in-character video journal entries, which would then be embedded in branching narratives using the open-source software Twine.
On screen: Natalie Parrington using Microsoft Stream
We also got to try out a new augmented reality effect I'm half-seriously thinking of calling a "projectro-glyph" (a petroglyph projected on the body). This attenuated vaccine shadowpox glyph was coded in 8th Wall by Shadowpox technical director Lalaine Ulit-Destajo, with the support of the Immersive Storytelling Lab and a Canada Council Digital Greenhouse Grant. Check it out yourself on 8th Wall!
Modeling the new augmented reality Shadowpox effect
Debaj animators Tyler Pangowish and an augmented Quinten Kaboni
Gchi miigwech, huge thanks, to our hosts at Wiky High and the directors and animators at Debajehmujig, but especially to our multi-talented student workshop participants. I can't wait to see what they do next with all their creativity, intelligence and insight!
I'm also thrilled that Joahnna Berti and I ended the week in discussions with Natalie Parrington and science and technology teacher Chris Mara around a new project for next year, using "citizen science fiction" to explore the energy transition. Stay tuned...
Baa-maa-pii to the electrifying Wikwemikong Warriors!
Once when I was in elementary school and my dad came home from parent-teacher interviews, I asked what they had discussed. "They said you're a good egg," was all he would tell me.
He passed away a few years ago, but his lesson in humility about academic accomplishments bubbled back up in my memory this week.
York University’s Faculty of Graduate Studies has awarded six graduates with 2024 Thesis and Dissertation Prizes "for outstanding contributions to the local and global community."
I'm deeply honoured to be one of them, and thrilled that a fellow member of the Cinema and Media Arts (CMA) department, Pooya Badkoobeh, also won a Thesis Prize for his MFA film “Based on a True Story.”
Congrats to all the grads, and thanks to the Faculty of Graduate Studies awards committee, my doctoral supervisor Caitlin Fisher, graduate program director Mike Zryd, and the whole department for being such a brilliant place to do research-creation.
It's more fun to be a good egg when you're in such good company. CMA FTW!
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Update, June 12
I absolutely did not expect this, given that two of the three GG’s last year went to Cinema and Media Arts grads Lawrence Garcia and Aaron Tucker, but here we are!
Governor General Mary Simon said of her coat of arms, which is emblazoned on the current medals and is pure visual poetry: "This coat of arms is my story, my true history, and it speaks of my lifelong commitment to bridge-building and family, and of my hopes for a future where we respect and share each other's stories to help foster better relationships between peoples."
What a joy it was to visit Debajehmujig Storytellers with Asiphe Ntshongontshi for a North-South Shadowpox Summit on Manitoulin Island last week!
This “citizen science fiction” knowledge-exchange enabled Asiphe, a member of the 2019 South African lab, to meet and collaborate with young artists from northern Ontario who participated in Shadowpox labs in 2018 and 2022. We had a blast sharing experiences and discussing future applications of sci-fi world-building and role-playing to improve health in communities on opposite sides of the globe.
Our colleagues at Debaj, led by Joahnna Berti and Bruce Naokwegijig, also arranged for Asiphe to visit Wikwemikong High School with Principal Harold Fox, who took the time to give us a wide-ranging tour of his inspiring institution.
Following our wonderful whirlwind visit to Manitoulin, we drove seven hours south to Toronto where Asiphe gave a talk titled "Youth, Health & Life in Masiphumelele," hosted by the Global Strategy Lab and the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research.
Dr. Godfred Boateng’s Global Health and Humanitarianism class was fascinated to hear about her experience working as a young professional in global health, including her work with the Desmond Tutu Health Foundation in the township of Masiphumelele, Cape Town, South Africa.
It was a privilege to host Asiphe during her week in Canada, and we are hugely grateful for the EC3R Small Grant Award that made her visit possible.
It's less than two weeks till my PhD oral examination! I'm looking forward to the conversation and feel incredibly lucky to have Patrick Jagoda as external examiner, Ian Garrett as internal/external, and Sharon Hayashi as exam committee chair, along with my amazing dissertation committee, Caitlin Fisher (supervisor), Jennifer Jenson, and Graham Wakefield.
In the process of preparing for the big day, I figured I'd post the abstract for anyone who might be curious.
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The Shadowpox Storyworld as Citizen Science Fiction: Building Co-Immunity through Participatory Mixed-Reality Storytelling
Alison Humphrey
A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Graduate Program in Cinema and Media Studies
York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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Abstract
Scientific evidence can influence us in decisions like whether to get immunized, but so can storytelling, the artful show-and-tell of cause-and-effect which can convey misinformation as readily as it does fact. Building on inoculation theory and active learning, I argue in “The Shadowpox Storyworld as Citizen Science Fiction: Building Co-Immunity through Participatory Mixed-Reality Storytelling” that a new form of participatory storytelling called “citizen science fiction” can intervene in vaccine hesitancy by helping people explore what makes a story compelling, what makes science convincing, and how fear and distrust can be engineered to sway us away from action we might otherwise take. This research-creation dissertation recounts the design and testing of three multimodal experiments in a single science fiction storyworld, titled Shadowpox. The first experiment is a full-body videogame, the second is a networked narrative, and the third is a new form, a pedagogical-dramatic art hybrid I am calling a “courseplay”.
The design of the gallery-installation videogame Shadowpox: The Antibody Politic began with generative visual effects motion-tracked to the player’s body and avatar, but its procedural rhetoric came together only with the addition of 99 other avatars embodying the concept of community immunity. The vaccine-trial role-play of Shadowpox: The Cytokine Storm re-imagines immunity as an acquired superpower whose bearers are framed as villains as often as they’re hailed as heroes, inviting participants to think more deeply about the story design and real-life toll of misinformation. With the advent of Covid-19, these pre-pandemic workshops in London, Cape Town, and Manitoulin Island were joined by the online courseplay Digital Culture: Science & Fiction, where York University students in lockdown blended reading, writing and role-playing to explore the scientific and social-media dynamics around a historic rollout of new vaccines. I propose a new research-creation pedagogy, “action refraction,” to help learners reflect on the interplay between evidence, affect, fiction, and alternative-fact confection. Citizen science fiction as a broader methodology, meanwhile, has the potential to promote participants and researchers alike from storytellers into story-listeners, moving from the one-way explanation of many scientific-literacy efforts to the reciprocal empathy essential for truly healthy citizenship.
Our conversation on "the current and future uses of AI and immersive technology in theatre and performance," chaired by TORCH Director Wes Williams, will also feature the Royal Shakespeare Company's Director of Digital Development Sarah Ellis, multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker Ruthie Doyle, immersive producer & curator Dan Tucker, and David Taylor, Associate Professor of English.
I'm hugely looking forward to chairing a roundtable next weekend with good friends Asiphe Ntshongontshi (Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation Youth Centre), Joahnna Berti (Debajehmujig Storytellers), and Maurianne Reade (Northern Ontario School of Medicine University).
You can catch our conversation, titled "Shadowcasting from Manitoulin to Masiphumelele: 'Citizen Science Fiction' as Mixed-Reality Role-Play for Civic, Scientific and Media Literacy," at 1:30pm on May 28th.
This conversation on "the current and future uses of AI and immersive technology in theatre and performance" features the Royal Shakespeare Company's Director of Digital Development Sarah Ellis, multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker Ruthie Doyle, and immersive producer & curator Dan Tucker.
While I'm there, I'm also excited to talk further with Prof. Williams and his team about their upcoming project Fantasy Futures: Imagining Immersive Innovation, which will use motion capture and augmented reality to "harness the energies and enthusiasm that are generated by worlds peopled by monsters – from Ancient cultures through Tolkien’s monstrous imaginings to the Marvel universe."
"The project emerged out of a desire to reimagine for the twenty-first century the Humanities Division’s centuries-long expertise in unearthing fascinating research narratives from the worlds of Ancient and Fantasy Literature.
"By synthesizing this research excellence with the UK’s world-leading gaming sector, the project is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the opportunities afforded by the latest cutting-edge advances in immersive storytelling."
To celebrate the end of term, I'm posting a playlist of all the Media Arts Futures guest speakers I've been lucky enough to host in CMA 1123 Writing for Games and Interactive Media over the past two years.
Game Designer Abhi on Venba, a Game about Culture, Cooking and Change
Writer Evan Narcisse on Video Games Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Dot’s Home
SpookiTalk: The Natural Language Parsing Engine of Douglas Adams’s Starship Titanic, with Robbie Stamp, Emma Westecott, Neil Richards, Yoz Grahame and Jason Williams
AI as a Character and the AI-Driven ‘Play as Anyone’ Mechanic in Watch Dogs: Legion, with motion-capture author and actor Pascal Langdale
How in the World to Carmen Sandiego: Making a Netflix Interactive Special, with director Jos Humphrey
Forget ChatGPT. A quarter of a century ago, a point-and-click CD-ROM adventure game from Douglas Adams featured a groundbreaking conversation engine called "SpookiTalk", which allowed you to chat with actual robots.
To celebrate the release of Starship Titanic 25 years ago this April, here's a panel discussion with members of the dev team which I hosted as part of my York U course Writing for Games and Interactive Media this time last year.
March 2022 was the 25th anniversary of the game's original deadline whooshing by, and as I'd actually worked at The Digital Village back in the day, I figured I'd introduce my old colleagues to my first-year Media Arts students, none of whom were alive when the game was released, so we could all feel old together.
In preparation, I assigned for homework J.C. Herz's 1998 New York Times review, PushingUpRoses' 2014 YouTube review, and the following brief audio interview of Douglas Adams by Aram Sinnreich on the release of the new game:
(CC Attribution-Share Alike 3.0. Excerpt from original audio file "Aram Sinnreich interviews Douglas Adams," publication date 1998-04-21, at https://archive.org/details/ASDA042198. Photo by Robbie Stamp of Douglas Adams working on Starship Titanic in 1997 at The Digital Village, Camden, London.)
With the table set, the class welcomed our guests in from three timezones. Here are our contemporary portraits and job titles at TDV:
Clockwise from top left:
• Robbie Stamp (Chief Executive, The Digital Village)
Less than a year before the pandemic, on 12 March 2019, peer health interns Zanele Melapi and Sibulele Bontshi reflected on their participation in the "citizen science fiction" storyworld Shadowpox: The Cytokine Storm, at the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation Youth Centre, Masiphumelele, South Africa.
Media Arts Futures: In Conversation with Pascal Langdale, Actor, Teacher, and Co-Author of "Performing for Motion Capture"
Moderated by Alison Humphrey
Presented by the Department of Cinema and Media Arts, York University
March 29, 2022
About Pascal
Pascal Langdale is an actor and teacher known for his reliable versatility across multiple media. He has worked in TV, film, voice and video game, and has been described as the “Swiss Army Knife” of Mocap. Head of the Canadian branch of The Mocap Vaults, he is a movement specialist with an expertise in nonverbal behavior, bringing characters to life through voice, body and psychology.
Pascal's most recent mocap work includes Far Cry 6 as a body double, and the voice of Bagley in Watch Dogs: Legion (for which he as nominated for a Canadian Game Award), also contributing to many of the 'Play as Anyone' NPC's, as actor and movement choreographer. He has worked on numerous video games since his first role as Ethan Mars in Heavy Rain, including voice, mocap and performance capture, actor performance matching, reverse ADR, facial capture operation and demo production.
A born Londoner, Pascal is a graduate of the 3-year acting course at the UK's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and made Toronto his home in 2011. He has credits in supporting roles in more than 100 TV, film roles, in the past decade in Canada, these include Killjoys, Bitten, Suits, and the recent Randal Okita movie, See for Me.
With John Dower, Pascal co-wrote Performing for Motion Capture, the world's first in-depth resource for the education of the next generation of actors in digital production, including interviews with over twenty experts in all stages of the pipeline.
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