The Media Innovation Circle#5 took place on October 29 with a talk by Hartmut Koenitz, Södertörn University (Sweden),  followed by a participated discussion on the topic “Thoughts on a discipline of interactive narrative study and design”, moderated by Luis Frias, UBI / ICNOVA.

The video is already available on DigiMedia YouTube channel. Watch HERE. We invite you to subscribe the channel.

Hartmut Koenitz is an Associate Professor at Södertörn University in Sweden, a visiting researcher at the University of Amsterdam, and a visiting research fellow at Trinity College Dublin. He is currently writing a book on “Understanding Interactive Digital Narratives” to be published by Routledge. His research is concerned with the theory, practice, education and societal impact of interactive narratives and games. He has published over 60 scholarly publications including the co-edited volume Interactive Digital Narrative – history, theory and practice(Routledge 2015). Koenitz is the chair of the EU COST Action 18230 INDCOR (Interactive Narrative Design for Complexity Representations) and one of the editors of the upcoming Routledge Encyclopedia of Interactive Digital Narrative. He is also the president of ARDIN, the Association for Research in Digital Interactive Narratives. Koenitz holds a PhD from the Georgia Institute of Technology on the theory and practice of Interactive Digital Narrative. Koenitz is the creator of the ASAPS authoring tool, which has been used to create more than 150 works. He is also a visual artist, and his works have been shown in Atlanta, Paris, Istanbul, Seoul, Copenhagen and Porto. His latest artwork, The Multiple Lives of Walter B. is a physical installation that explores virtual biographies of Walter Benjamin.

Abstract

So far, interactive digital narratives have not yet gained full recognition as both a field of scholarly inquiry and a developed professional practice. After more than five decades of practice as well as a history of scholarly enquiry that can be traced back to at least 1985, this is a perplexing situation. In my talk, I will consider reasons for the status quo, consider current initiatives including ARDIN and INDCOR and propose avenues for future work.