[ISEA2022] Paper: Patrick Pennefather & John Desnoyers-Stewart — The Fun Palace: Designing Human Experiences at Mixed Reality Events to Increase Engagement

Abstract

Full Paper. Session: Educations and Societies / Virtual and mixed reality

Keywords: Mixed reality events, installation, virtual reality, engagement

In this paper, we develop a typology of attendee interactions aimed at encouraging engagement at mixed reality events from lessons learned during an XR exhibition, The Fun Palace: Carnival of Mixed Realities.

This article is the culmination of an intervention designed to improve active engagement with emerging technologies at a public mixed reality event. An opportunity arose to experiment with the design of interactive audience experiences at the The Fun Palace: Carnival of Mixed Realities—an event that took place in 2019 and featured 10 installations with close to 400 attendees. A number of strategies emerged to increase attendee engagement that may be useful for xR developers, museum curators, and event producers that present interactive technologies and installations publicly. http://mrcarnival.patrickpennefather.com

  • Dr. Patrick Parra Pennefather (CA) is an award-winning composer, designer of asynchronous, synchronous, blended and hybrid instruction, teacher, researcher and disruptor. He has mentored multi-disciplinary teams co-constructing scalable digital prototypes with over 50 companies and organizations in games, mobile dev, Mixed Reality, VR, AR, education and the arts. Patrick has facilitated human-centred workshops in-person and as a virtual cat for EA, Riot, Microsoft Games, and many others in the xR space. He’s published multisyllabic words in the fields of 3D, Sound Design, xR, VR, MR, Bio-Medical Visualization and Agile application development. He’s an Assistant Prof at UBC Theatre and Film, and a founding member of the Master of Digital Media (MDM) Program. http://patrickpennefather.com/?fbclid=IwAR14JjIleI7lvLSXr9DCfAYdoX0VvVLBLa7ugmpIi16lgyHSiJkYJlOEdO4
  • John Desnoyers-Stewart (CA) is an interdisciplinary artist-researcher who creates immersive installations and performance to encourage new perspectives on immersive technology and to better understand its true potential. Through his artwork and research, he hopes to encourage social connection and collaborative creativity, exploring positive social applications of abstract embodiment in virtual reality. https://fccs.ok.ubc.ca/about/contact/john-desnoyers-stewart