arXiv subjects

Laurence Cliffe

Publications and source records attributed to Laurence Cliffe.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Creating a Mixed-Reality Installation with Families through Theatrical Co-Design

Co-designing with families for environmental sustainability relies on participatory imagination, yet habitual family roles and uneven participation, especially between adults and young children, often constrain it. A second challenge is continuity: workshop relationships and embodied ways of working do not easily survive into the final design, where artefacts travel more readily than roles or interactional dynamics. We report on a nationally toured mixed-reality installation developed through applied-theatre-led co-design with families. Across three workshops and user testing, applied theatre methods supported families to co-create narratives, artefacts, and interactional roles that shaped the public event. We show how theatrical co-design can rebalance child-adult participation through playful status shifts, and how selected workshop dynamics can be re-staged within a public mixed-reality installation. We contribute a theatrical account of participatory design in which designers work not only with artefacts and ideas, but with roles, rhythms, authority, and the social conditions that support collective imagination.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2024

Materialising contexts: virtual soundscapes for real-world exploration

This article presents the results of a study based on a group of participants' interactions with an experimental sound installation at the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford, UK. The installation used audio augmented reality to attach virtual sound sources to a vintage radio receiver from the museum's collection, with a view to understanding the potentials of this technology for promoting exploration and engagement within museums and galleries. We employ a practice-based design ethnography, including a thematic analysis of our participants' interactions with spatialised interactive audio, and present an identified sequence of interactional phases. We discuss how audio augmented artefacts can communicate and engage visitors beyond their traditional confines of line-of-sight, and how visitors can be drawn to engage further, beyond the realm of their original encounter. Finally, we provide evidence of how contextualised and embodied interactions, along with authentic audio reproduction, evoked personal memories associated with our museum artefact, and how this can promote interest in the acquisition of declarative knowledge. Additionally, through the adoption of a functional and theoretical aura-based model, we present ways in which this could be achieved, and, overall, we demonstrate a material object's potential role as an interface for engaging users with, and contextualising, immaterial digital audio archival content.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2024

The Audible Artefact: Promoting Cultural Exploration and Engagement with Audio Augmented Reality

This paper introduces two ongoing projects where audio augmented reality is implemented as a means of engaging museum and gallery visitors with audio archive material and associated objects, artworks and artefacts. It outlines some of the issues surrounding the presentation and engagement with sound based material within the context of the cultural institution, discusses some previous and related work on approaches to the cultural application of audio augmented reality, and describes the research approach and methodology currently engaged with in developing an increased understanding in this area. Additionally, it discusses the project within the context of related cultural and sound studies literature, presents some initial conclusions as a result of a practice-based approach, and outlines the next steps for the project.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2024

Interfacing with history: Curating with audio augmented objects

This article presents and discusses the results from visitors' interactions with two audio augmented reality experiences containing audio augmented objects; physical, real-world objects to which virtual audio sources have been attached. It then proceeds to discusses the commonly identified themes arising from the observation of visitors' behaviour within these experiences and the analysis of their verbal and written feedback. The curatorial potential of audio augmented objects is discussed and, by way of conclusion, their functionality as interfaces to digital audio archival content is proposed, along with their ability to reframe, re-contextualise and create renewed experiences with existing collections of silenced museum exhibits.

cs.HC↗