Digital Culture & AudioVisual Challenges

Summary

This paper/practitioner’s presentation is a documentation of the authors’ experiences of applying cross-cultural design practices to preserve the tangible and intangible intricacies of the dance form ‘Bharathanatyam’ in an animated 3D film produced using real-time production tools. An autobiographical design approach was used to document the researcher’s first-person experiences in producing the animated film. The paper reflects significant insights, observations, research opportunities and lessons learnt through this production experience. This reflective methodology leads to a discussion on employing design research for processes using emerging animation technologies. The paper looks at how research through design methodologies and critical design approaches in cross-cultural design practices can empower practitioners to lead a research-based practice in real-time animation pipelines.

Objective

• How to use design methodologies to apply culturalization practices from an early stage of animated content development for deeper and meaningful user engagement?
• How to leverage real-time production tools and visualization techniques to enhance the cultural engagement of the animated movements in the content?
• Identify pedagogical insights through documentation of the whole process for future work in an educational environment.

Theoretical framework

This case study is motivated by current scholarly work on Research through Design (RtD), critical design and cross-cultural design practices. Zimmerman, Stolterman and Forlizzi expand and formalize Research through Design, a research method that employs methods and processes from design practices as a legitimate mode of inquiry. Researchers rely on designerly activities and RtD forces researchers to focus on design for the future. The design artifacts which are an outcome of the designerly activities are propositions for a preferred state or seen as a placeholder for opening a new design space. They emphasize the need for rigorous documentation of the whole process from the problem framing phase to the final outcome. Dalsgaard presents a research in and through design approach that denotes the study of a design process with the active involvement of the researcher in experimental design activities. Iivari and Kuutti present different perspectives of critical design that are classified into (1) socially responsible design (2) design avant-garde (3) critical empowering expert led design and (4) critical empowering participatory design. Each of these categories provide critical lenses to view the designed artifact and the process of designing them.

The Description of the Experience

This section will be further elaborated in the full paper about the application of cross-cultural design processes in the different phases of the 3D animated short film production process, created using advanced game development technologies by undergraduate students enrolled in a public university’s game design program. The main objective of the production work is to capture the cultural nuances of the Indian dance form ‘Bharathanatyam’ and introduce the dance elements through a subtle narrative. The case study documents the challenges faced in creating culturally authentic content and provides reflective guidelines for cultural validation through the various design scenarios encountered by the team through the year-long production process.

A team of thirty-five students and five faculty members worked on this animated short film over a period of one year. The overall runtime of the short film was ten minutes and six seconds including the credits. The short film explored aspects of the Indian culture like the classical dance form, music, clothing, ornaments and more. An entire semester was dedicated to research, design, and storyboarding activities to develop the necessary cultural competencies in the team. The team met every week to discuss the narrative, character design, environment, references, cultural aspects, and design approaches to the short film. This semester long endeavor helped students to be grounded in the creative vision of the project. Students from different cultures and disciplines brought in their rich perspectives to the table. All the while, the authors was creatively steering the team to culturally validate the design sketches and retain the essence and enthusiasm in the whole project.

Conclusion

This paper introduced the design process of a real-time animation production project that was driven by cross-cultural design practices to preserve the tangible and intangible intricacies of the dance form ‘Bharathanatyam’. The design process laid emphasis on research through design to build culturally authentic digital artifacts. The application of design research, documentation of the design process, problem framing and reflection over the research questions helped the researchers be more critical about their practice and identify ways to conduct research and re-iterate designs for the future phases of this work. Insights and observations from this preliminary design process will also help plan future empirical studies on the design artifact and design process evolution.