Empowering marginalized voices through digital storytelling with AI/AR technologies.
e [Music] good morning I'm Valentina n I'm associate professor at Institute of technico and I've been uh doing work and research in interactive storytelling for a long time and in this capacity I collaborate with the boss project and I'm Louisa I'm currently working as a project manager for the bah House of the sea sales I've joined a team from myti since February last year but my background is on contemporary history and specifically on oral history and that's why I'm also here talking to Valentina so you have a big experience working with digital storytelling uh for more than 20 years on your research and could you share a bit uh what drives you to uh research and work with storytelling yeah actually that's really my passion I started uh working in this area as part of a project my master project a long time ago uh thinking of how stories connect communities across time and across space and uh the project at the time was working with uh Community outside Dublin that worked in the same premises for a long time and then they scattered around the island and around the world and we went around uh collecting stories of how they live together and the memories of their uh life together really brought them together again many years later and we represented this digitally with uh sort of a multibranching connecting stories that showed how uh the people connected to each other and this was the start in a way of my exploration of how Technologies can help us tell stories uh nonlinearly so the nonlinearity of Storytelling was actually big component which then developed through the years but also the idea of uh giving uh communities a chance to talk about themselves from the grassroot and not having a top- down approach even a documentary filmmaker has of course a a an agenda a message and a way to portray a situation or a community and and um we were looking at giving people a chance to talk about themselves and tell their stories uh first person but that was you know the origins let's say mhm so in in the bah House of the sea sales there is this the drop that was designed to be applied in the different Pilots has this potential to bring together inclusiveness storytelling and the digital aspect from your experience what is this potential to change or have an impact a positive impact in communities from your experiences well we become uh more and more sort of Technology savy uh people are using Technologies to tell their stories in blogs and YouTubes and in in many ways and we're also seeing a lot of talent emerging although storytelling is a craft and is you know thousands of years old and there are conventions especially for Hollywood Productions still people love to tell stories and tell stories to uh understand also the world around them and to give this chance or this possibility directly to people uh it gives them an opportunity to tell a different story or certainly for others to hear different stories and in that way it can develop not only um inclusion as we are welcoming stories from other cultures and other uh environments but also and hopefully a sort of cohesion because the stories come together in somehow a storytelling uh format or a storytelling uh project and and that would make you know it's like seeing a bowl of fruits where you see different fruits Al together instead of having a a selection of only apples or only pairs if that if that makes sense and how do you design or how do you imagine that this drop that will be applied in the bah House of the sea cells how do you imagine this collaborative and and co-designed uh uh approach towards the communities and specifically also there is this dimension of included more than humans in this process and how do you see this happening in this proposal well houses has of course a huge uh impact and a lot of uh different situation in its Pilots working with Gena with Venice with Maro and and other cities and each one of the cities has some uh community on some areas that they would like to to hear or to hear from and storytelling is a way to hear from uh from people uh of course um it takes a lot of time to get in contact and find the storytellers engage them uh sometimes they need a little bit of of time of space of coaching to get the story out and that's I think where I can help and I and and and others that are involved in storytelling know that a story is not found like this you open you know you open your mouth and your story comes out but but somehow um people have stories inside them and and we can help to sort of manifest them and in the in different Pilots we have communities that uh might not have had a chance to have this opportunity this channel to express stor so we facilitate this process with uh time with skills and with technology and this is to reach the people or the communities we don't always hear about so they're more marginalized or a risk of being marginalized this is we're talking about elderly migrants some people that are differently abl communities that are living at The Fringe even of spaces that that are not in the center and then the challenge of uh of connecting with the more than human and that is really dear to me this is something that I also um engage with other projects and it's it's a big challenge because the more humans don't share our language don't share always our common spaces don't share our tools our media and so how do we hear them how do we present their stories without again presenting their point of view from the human point of view and we're still debating about these issues we think when I say we is the research Community I kind of work with which is interaction design interactive storytelling and we are looking very much at postum post anthropos philosophers like Donna harway anat Singh which advocate for uh basically a way of noticing so starting by noticing things around us noticing more than humans around us and by noticing we see uh signs that are indicating something and that's the process that we can start from to tell and to listen to them in order to be able to tell those stories um and in a world where the AI is having such a prominent role growing and growing how do you consider the digital storytelling and the storytelling itself uh to to evolve in relation to this initially for artists I guess storytellers and and maybe humans in general uh this technologies that mimic the human that kind of try to take uh the the the skills or the jobs that we we do are scary and we can remember how painters felt uh challenged by photography that was taken their job and how photography initially was mimicking uh landscape painting Etc and then that freed up art to be more than a portrait of reality and it freed up to be more interpretive to be more emotional to be deeper and and get to the core of things which are not always what it seems what is on the surface and I think AI is going to be initially scary thing that can paint like an artist that can cons in a way that we you know we're it's hard to to understand or to spot so it's going to feel like it's robbing us of some skills but in the end it's going to free us when we are able to uh ask an AI to to do something for us the skill will be in the in the way we formulate the question and this is uh this is I think starting to be a very interesting area for Arts as well yeah yeah I totally uh agree also I have a background in in in the Arts and um well I believe and some philosophers also are advocate for this about the the creative potential of Storytelling and and the creative potential of of humans right so uh hardly a machine will since it is created by humans will take that that role but uh you've mentioned something which I think is very interesting and important when dealing with storytelling which is the emotional intake that it brings um and you've mentioned inclusion of specific communities and some of them with traumatic pasts or even traumatic presents would you like to share a bit your experience about it because you've worked with specific communities how do you think that this more difficult emotions and difficult pasts come through or can be um worked through via the storytelling when the last project that actually is connected and somehow mentioned also in boss which is mic we were working exactly with the Italian Institute of Technology on how to include uh marginalized Community migrants in Sharing their stories and then through technology representing the stories out you know in the in the in the open to people that were walking in the streets or that were not naturally in contact with these communities and that is certainly you know uh something that can be EXP exploited and continued in a way sort of this reaching out uh to communities that are at the margins and involving them in a process of Storytelling and as artists and technologists we will then capture this and sort of present it to the public said this is very Nuance process to work with these communities because we have to uh approach them in a very uh caring way putting ourselves in the shoes giving them time to to uh feel safe we have to guarantee that they feel that they can share some of them we have to bear in mind traumatic experiences behind them or experiences of difference of exclusion and these are not you know we can't just ask them to give us their stories for our purposes whether it's a project or you know it's a it's an art piece they need to be first of all welcomed and felt seen and second um there needs to be an exchange so they need we need to make sure that they're getting something in return from this exchange and that their stories is the story that they want to tell we need to be very careful with this uh honesty and transparency and that they don't feel judged not when they tell the stories and not after so there's a lot of care also in presenting their stories so there is never going to be a feeling that the story is going to be better or worse or not the story we wanted to hear MH so it's it's um it's a complex and very very rewarding process because after you could see and you can hear them that they if if everything went well they felt valued by being seen and and ask to share the story so it is something that can Empower them but it needs to have a lot of care in the in the sort of packaging of this of this activity that's that's a very powerful message I think that the storytelling is also an act of caring um and that everything that involves the process means that you're um addressing these people in their full potential uh but also with a strong emotional uh and and and charismatic and and it calls for empathy my next questions would be related to those experiences in uh in in a more concrete way what are the intakes that the communities take home from participating in such a project uh yeah of course depends on the community what are their maybe their issues and their their their stakes in the in the process there are communities that um I worked with some uh with with a variety of of the these communities and um in Lisbon for example with the refugees Community from the um CPR Association uh they were very interested for example in if the sharing of the stories would put them in contact with other people with the same experience because they would feel less displaced and alone in the journey so that was that was something that they manifested they said and we built a tool that when displaying the stories would show the connection through um the ability of the authors to invite others to their stories so they would be seen and others and and annotate the stories with keywords so they could somehow uh form a network and this would Empower them and strengthen them even if just in this uh small project we saw that can have an impact other groups um we had uh also contact with long-term migrants again uh in in Lisbon that didn't have such a refugee such a traumatic past but still really enjoyed the opportunity to share at the same time we noticed that there was really a sort of um a tension between being long-term migrants between the the desire to integrate which seems to be you know the natural and the desired outcome of of migration and the fear of losing their roots and their cultural belonging to their home so while this one is never acknowledged and integration seems the thing that all the migrants want actually it was clear through their stories that the fear of losing the roots and and the Nostalgia and the Saad was was really h a strong and undervalued uh component in their in their migrant in the in the labor of the in their emotional Journey that was really much more painful than not being integrated and these are some yeah so they they might get through the storytelling and sharing of memories a validation of of their previous culture and where they come from so so that there can be different different and the best thing would be to check with the communities through in check is is is a it's a weird word but through through communication through dialogues what is it that they're looking for if there is anything that you know that that we understand from them then we could try and steer the process in that direction um also something that you've mentioned about how people specifically you've mentioned the the the migrants but how um they relate to the new place where they're coming to um how do you think that the digital dimension that you've just uh uh referred to helps us also to understand the layers of the narratives that are within a territory yeah this is where I think uh technology can come in in a way the linear medium I think it was um different not not less not uh not less powerful even I would say we have movies and documentaries that are very very moving because linearly you can trace an emotional Journey much more carefully through you know thousands of years of refining this art we have learned how to steer emotions and and bring katarsis but with with the digital medium we can layer things we can have um multiple branching so we can have the same story from different point of view that have the equal weight so they are not uh stringed in one after the other but they are options for the participants or the audience you can have layers that go through um from two Dimension to three dimension to augmented reality with mixed realities projects you can have a story that surrounds you and you're in the in the middle of it and you can have multiple voice and uh there are journalists that are already embracing this in VR non delapena for example example portraying situations in VR where the audience has a sense and potential for agency there so there are all of these Technologies is helping us to tell uh more and more complex stories that are closer to life experiences and at the same time we have to learn how they are still different from life because storytelling is not life but somehow it's a lens that kind of amplifies some of the aspects of life right yes um so would you say that we are now facing new paradigms on digital on storytelling that come from the digital yeah the big word now is metaverse so uh if you look at uh actually all of the EU calls and uh and Technology challenging storytelling there's a lot of uh talking about VR and XR and the metaverse how are we going to be uh virtually living a a life that is it going to mimic the real life is it going to be different is it going to be a dream and we do have movies that that are telling us a little bit the story but the while the big challenge is you know looking at technology as the as the novelty or the the challenge I actually think that the challenge is to think of stories and story structures that are meaningful in this format yeah and in a way the Aesthetics of Storytelling needs to evolve in order to give us pleasure and emotions in a different way so we will not be sitting there reading or watching a film we will need to be telling stories and living stories in a in a world or in a story world and and I think the challenge for storytellers and screenwriter is huge there so would you say that it becomes more interactive uh in a way this new way of dealing with the storytelling that it convokes more of the The Spectator of the reader than following from what you said watching a film or reading a book is a more passive way of uh I wouldn't use uh passive or active because even reading some argue that it's very active because actually is more active than being in a VR game because you have to make up the whole reality in your head and in the VR game you are given a lot of the sensory stimuli so it's more uh I think it's it's really a difference that is not going to be the finest more or less is going going to be different different because you can also be in a reality in a virtual reality environment and the story happens all around you and you will see you know if we think about fiction a character uh running stopping in front of you meeting someone else and you could still not have a lot of agency there yeah but you are immersed so immersion is going to be uh given to you and that will be interesting say because they will rely Less on your experiences past experiences and more on what the artist and the director and the story teller will immerse you in so in a way it might have um there is going to be more um input maybe directed input uh if we think about VR if we think about others we know there there could be ways also to augment books or to augment films we know that there are some rides you know where the film is one part and then you have smells and movement and sensory other sensory so it will be more involving more more senses actively I would say yeah exciting an exciting feater could you describe a bit better the digital dimensions of of this uh inclusive digital storytelling specifically because that's the drop how do the communities and people who participate in this type of project engage with the digital Dimension it's important to differentiate there there are people that will participate by telling stories and there are people that participate by hearing and and viewing and and sort of uh understanding and embracing the stories so the the way that these two uh layers you know of the same coin will interact with Technologies is slightly different uh one on one side those who will provide stories or whose stories we're looking for can be fully engaged in uh telling the stories making the stories maybe with some help like here we know with with the team that helps them film and script and or photograph or they could be more independent providing their own um photos and and and descriptions and then we stitch together in a meaningful uh SE sequence uh or they could just be giving us permission to tell their stories in a very uh artistic cinematic interpreted way so I think it's a it's a Continuum uh that that we can sort of use to engage communities to provide stories to be told the way we tell the stories to the community to the let's say the public that also has a range of Technologies in at play starting from obviously websites to mobile phones to retrieve stories when you're in a special location and the story has a special meaning for that location or it happened there to having a completely rebuilt VR environment or uh augmented realities sort of Renditions of of the stories and every technology has his pros and cons as his Aesthetics and I think that we are those who will be uh crafting these weaving this is like a chef that brings all of the ingredients together and um the the outcome of this has to be something that our publics both are public like the storytellers and the viewers the audience both so it's big challenge I don't know if you want to add anything else to as a closing well I would like to thank this opportunity and thank Louisa and all of the boss team for opportunity to talk about what I love most so uh it was really nice thank you thank you so much [Music]
2024-05-17 03:13
