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Someone Else’s Story: An Ethical Approach to Interactive Narrative Design for Cultural Heritage

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Interactive Storytelling (ICIDS 2019)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 11869))

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Abstract

This paper outlines an approach to community based co-design of interactive narrative (IN) cultural heritage experiences, based on the author’s development of an advanced-level project course on the topic over the past six years. Several projects are discussed as case studies, including projects that address the history of Irish immigrants working as domestic laborers in Troy NY in the 1850s; urban renewal in Albany NY and Troy NY in the 1960s and 1970s; the Native American nations’ Iroquois Confederacy in present-day Cohoes NY; and the upstate New York history of Harriet Tubman, the legendary African American liberator of hundreds of enslaved people during the 1850s and 1860s. Issues highlighted include the ethics of telling other people’s stories in the IN medium, the myth of the designer as impartial facilitator, the power structures of different types of design processes, and complexities of large scale projects that incorporate emergent technology, contested histories, and a wide range of stakeholders and participants. Lessons learned are shared in the form of a set of guidelines to help shape design and development of interactive narrative projects in educational, museum, and heritage settings.

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Acknowledgements

Some of the activities described in this paper were supported by an NEH Humanities Connections Grant. The author also wishes to acknowledge and thank the many community organizations and individuals who welcomed her and her students into collaboration with incredible grace and generosity: The Rensselaer County Historical Society, Ilene Frank, Stacey Pomeroy Draper, Kathy Sheehan, The New York State Office of Historic Preservation, Mary Paley, Tony Opalka, Jenifer Monger, Tammy Gobert, Andrew White, Erica Wagner, The Rapp Road Historical Association, Stephanie Woodard, Beverly Bardequez, Todd Ferguson, The City of Cohoes, Ken Ragsdale, Melissa Cherubino, Michael Jacobson, Kay Olan (Ionetaiwas), Cohoes Middle School, Judith Pingelski, Jennifer Sangiacomo, Steve Lackmann, Mickey Smith, MiSci Museum of Science and Innovation, Janell Hobson, Marc Destefano, Megan Norris, Troy Middle School, Kathy Fuller, Girls Who Code, Chris Sohn, and all the wonderful students of the AR Design for Cultural Heritage course.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, 12180, USA

    Rebecca Rouse

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  1. Rebecca Rouse
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Correspondence to Rebecca Rouse .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA

    Rogelio E. Cardona-Rivera

  2. Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Anne Sullivan

  3. University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA

    R. Michael Young

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Rouse, R. (2019). Someone Else’s Story: An Ethical Approach to Interactive Narrative Design for Cultural Heritage. In: Cardona-Rivera, R., Sullivan, A., Young, R. (eds) Interactive Storytelling. ICIDS 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11869. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33894-7_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33894-7_6

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-33893-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-33894-7

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