Interactive Storytelling with Virtual Identities

Stories form an integral part of our lives. Interactive storytelling enables the participant to actively explore the story world. However, interactive storytelling has problems such as the problem of narrative flow, the character s knowledge of the world, internal consistency, time and ease of creation. We introduce the concept of using virtual identities for interactive storytelling in virtual environments and discuss how this approach solves some of the problems that are encountered with interactive storytelling. We discuss authoring tools and how we used the AVANGO framework to develop our application and the results that were achieved when the application was tested on the monitor and in Cyberstage

An interactive installation of African music and the Trans-Atlantic slave trade

This paper introduces Afrobits, an interactive installation about African music and the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Its main aim is to bring to light invisible stories hidden behind geographic epistemologies. The installation highlights the contribution that African cultures had on the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of the world, such as popular music. Although it covers diverse countries, we focused on the Americas, placing emphasis on Latin-America as the biopolitical space that enabled the integration of native cultures with African peoples. As this project involved web scientists, graphic designers, historians, digital humanists and artists, we also discuss the benefits of interdisciplinary research; contributions from University researchers for the development of storytelling projects for the Cultural Heritage sector; and the implementation of complex technologies and research methods