 This lecture is titled Student Responses Part 1 and in this lecture, we are going to again present the work that the students have done. We have ensured that there is some kind of linear structure to these reports that the students have presented, so as to maintain clarity of content and the discussion we have conducted, followed by the work undertaken by the students. So, this particular lecture deals with mime and plot, while writing a mime, the writer and the blank page have a very intense relationship with each other and the blank page offers infinite possibilities. Keeping this in mind, I had written a mime for the students, which was read earlier. I will just briefly read out the titles of this mime, mainly to draw your attention to the fact that even while performing a mime, you have to think of the script, you have to craft it in order that the ideas are fulfilled although wordlessly. This mime is titled playing by the book and the locale is any enclosed space and as you recollect, the actor enters with a chair. So, this was part 1 of that mime in which the actor picks the book and towards the end in frustration throws the book. In part 2 of the mime, you have the same actor dealing with the act of writing and all the struggles that the actor experiences and then finally the play, the mime ends with a triumphant shout. You would notice that the two students who read the mime, they presented it in two different ways, but I would like to highlight again another relationship that I like you to keep in mind while looking at that mime and listening to the report presented by the students. For the performer, it is the empty space which creates a sense of meaningful interaction. The space is filled by the imagined acts of the performers. In some ways, you can say that the page and the space or the stage coalesce during a performance. You keep this idea in mind, think about it. Now, we would have Abhishek Raj and Kavish Seth present their mime in its completeness. Earlier we had broken it into two units, now we would put the two units together and after the performance, each one will present their own approach to the performance, to the act of interpretation which led to the enactment. So here is the presentation, the performance and then the report by the two students. When I read the play, I was wondering why would one throw the books so furiously. There was this extremism in the character, he was intense. In the first act, his frustration is enormous, he is frustrated, he is not able to connect with himself, be it his own novel he wrote or someone else's novel or a book from his school or college, he throws it away. Based on those ideas, me and my partner Abhishek Raj, we discussed the possibilities of the character, what it can be, who it can be. I was the college student, who is unhappy with what is being taught, he wants to learn but not by the methods used by teachers nowadays. He doesn't want things to be imposed on him, for example, you have to read this chapter number 2, there will be an exam tomorrow, he is strongly opposed to such ideals. So as he goes about reading the book he was told to, this anger, frustration builds up. Why isn't anyone able to understand the simple fact that we are here to learn, not to be imposed upon by mere facts of nature or by some teachings. So as a consequence, he throws it away, he is so frustrated, which is why this happens. And in act 2, he is in his own space, there is a guitar there, there are books there, there is a play which he is writing and he is thinking about the play, he is writing down an act of that play, he is thinking, you can see him walking here and there and then checking out the books, checking out his surroundings, what influences him and that's how the act goes. So the way the scene starts, it actually has no beginning or an end, it just shows him in his creative process, he is writing, he is thinking and that's how it fades. So this is my report about the MIME that I performed for the course. When I first read the MIME script, I immediately related to it because I felt that it tells a very real story about the process of creative writing. It combines everything, it combines the frustration and anguish of failing initially when you try and the creative blocks that come with the process of writing and it also aptly conveys the unbridled jubilation and ecstasy of finishing a creative piece, of actually finishing something. It aptly summarizes the comfort and the deep satisfaction of finding one's own personal space and being comfortable and submitting oneself completely to the creative process and to the joy of writing. In the first part of the MIME, you see a writer, he is struggling with some kind of mental block, some kind of inability to find words to express his emotions, his emotions are true, they are deep emotions but he is unable to find the language to express them, he is unable to find his voice. The book that we see him pick up, he seems gripped by it initially but later he experiences some kind of anger, frustration and that leads to him throwing the book forcefully. This book can be thought of as any piece on good writing or the work of any famous canonized writer. His anger, I interpreted it as stemming from his frustration that he himself cannot write like that, that he himself can't express his bottled up emotions by putting words on a page the way those writers had done. In the beginning of the second part, we see that the writer is resolute, he is purposeful, he is ready to counter all the antagonistic forces that were inhibiting him previously from writing. He carries a pen and a sheaf of papers and he begins writing. Initially we see that he struggles much like he had done before, he is hesitant, he is not confident, we see him countering those internal creative demons that he had faced in the previous scene. But slowly we see that something almost transcendental is happening. He begins to let himself loose, his movements become more relaxed, he is calmer, he is more at peace with himself, he is writing with increased surety, smoothness and he begins to hum as he writes. His humming seems to energize him, he stands up and continues to hum with increasing frequency and intensity and his writing also becomes faster. And finally we see that his joy is just unbounded when he finishes his piece and he is accomplished what he set out to do, he has found his internal voice and that ecstasy is basically meant to be attribute to the process of writing and to the release of that pent up frustration and that release which came about through the process of creative writing. As you notice by now, the purpose of the mime exercise which I hope you enjoyed, you can try it out on your own also because I think that is the more important part, you should experience it yourself. But at the same time let me point out what we really have considered in developing this activity. We wanted you to grasp the significance of physical presence of actors in performative empty space because there is a kind of tension between that empty space and the enactment by any individual. And each gesture, each movement finally in a micro sense also, all these activities they lead to the creation of symbolic representation. So I think this sense of detail, meticulous sense of detail that needs to be understood while looking at mimes. But also while writing plays, I think the mime example should really help you understand that verbalizations therefore in any other form of drama, these are highly crafted, carefully crafted artistic processes that build on the physicality of theatre. So this physicality of theatre, this physicality of experience of this art form is what I would really like you to understand experience and you can use that in any way you desire for any kind of writing but I think it will you know release some interesting energies in you. We wanted the future writers to explore the physicality of theatre because it also helps in understanding the relationship between concreteness of experience and the abstract implied meaning. So essentially it is a sort of desire to help you enjoy the experience of doing by also the act of performance, you can develop short units like this mime which are doable even in the chaotic you know sort of movement of a regular semester. As you saw these students were able to undertake these interpretive activities, undertake their own rehearsal discussion and perform the mime for you. So it is very, very doable. The other idea that I like to bring to your retention is the significance of reading, performance and writing. So when you write the script later on somebody is going to read it, perform it and while writing also there are multiple meanings that may emerge as I had said earlier the writer may not intend those meanings in the same way but it is up to the reader to see meaning if they find that you know that is the way the piece the writing works for them. So in that sense both for the writer and for the reader there is this openness of every literary form and in that sense when the two students offer their interpretations this was really the democratic process in action. After discussing mime and also the physicality of mime and in some ways the primordial nature of this act of representation I would now like to shift to the notion of plot because this was another important discussion that we had conducted in our elective and also with you in this course. Now so far as the notion of plot is concerned you would remember that Gardner had problematized the Aristotelian plot structure especially the notion of Energia because he felt that this particular notion has been in some ways rejected by the modernist. He had talked about Poe in particular Poe onwards Edgar Allen Poe onwards he had pointed out how many of the you know short story writers had rejected this notion of Energiic plot structure which move in a very definite way in terms of the Aristotelian plot structure in terms of a resolution and also in terms of a high point of conflict. Now on the one hand the Greek model has been rejected by some of the modernists especially those who feel that the modern character or the modern human being had undergone such a lot of change that a very unified integrated structure of the Aristotelian variety did not really hold the attention or the world view of the writer and therefore consequently the reader also. At the same time even though Aristotelian plot structure in that sense should not be followed in a very literal manner but I think you we should note that the notion of plot remains very crucial. And so far as Aristotle is concerned actually there are 20th century writers who swear by the Aristotelian plot structure. I had earlier mentioned Albert Camus who valued the sense of destiny in Greek tragedies while writing his plays although I had also pointed out that he was so experimental in terms of the new ideas and also in terms of you know creating new kind of fiction to fit his absurdist world view. But when it came to writing plays he was greatly gripped by the Greek model because he felt that Greek tragedies offered a very deep sense of the human destiny. It is very interesting to note that even postmodernist especially postmodernist experimental theatre practitioners also actually have gone back to the grand classics of the past. This again I had touched on earlier too so I won't repeat that but I thought it would be appropriate to mention that Richard Shekner for example whose environmental theatre is a very prime example of American Amagard he had pointed out while introducing the film which was made of Dionysus in 69 his very famous production. He had pointed out that he loved the Greek tragedies and I was trying to figure out the words that he had improvised in this conversation in order to explain why he loved the Greek tragedies because on the one hand he had completely dismantled the plot structure of Europides on whose play Dionysus in 69 is based but at the same time what he said was rather interesting and important he pointed out that the reason he loves the Greek tragedies is because they saw in electively irresolable human situation a problem that cannot be solved. So the tragic vision revolved around problems that cannot be solved and he added in his own very interesting style that is because the problem is existence. So in that sense again whether you look at some of the modernist or some of the experimental practitioners of the Amagard you find that the Greek model may not persist in a very literal sense but the spirit of the plot in terms of the sense of tragic magnitude that has continued to hold great attention in terms of the theatre form and it is linked to the projection of human destiny. So then Aristotelian plot structure on the one hand should not be followed in a very literal fashion but it would be naive to believe that it does not really offer some very very powerful paradigms. In fact there are other ways of approaching the Aristotelian plot structure and we thought that it is actually suitable to bring in another take on the Aristotelian plot structure which Brenda Lauerl analyzed at length in a famous classic by now titled computers as theatre. The reason I wanted the students specially some of the selected students you know and I will explain what that means in a minute but I wanted them to have a look at this study because we are actually committed to this interface between art and science, literature and science, literature and technology. Some of the students had verbalized the need to take home ideas from this course for their own research work in technology areas. So I think I will just stop here for a minute before talking about the book. Let me just point out why this book was chosen and therefore I would really like to read a statement that was made by Kishore you know towards the beginning of this course. I have this practice of giving a sort of sheet with a couple of questions that I pose for the students which includes ideas like expectations from the course, their reading habits, their favorite writers, their writing habits and many other issues are evoked in the process or discussed in the process but this is the sort of beginning meeting point for me with the new group. And while I gave this exercise to the present group, Kishore wrote some very interesting things and I am just reading this paragraph to enable you to see how many of these issues of interface now have begun to loom large in the consciousness of the students. I won't read everything that he wrote but this particular paragraph I cannot really resist the temptation of sharing it with you. I pursue writing as a hobby but I have sometimes had difficulty in getting to that creative space. At the end of this course I hope to become a better writer after having understood the creative process. It would also help tremendously with my research at IITB. I am developing a lot of cutting edge new technologies. The process is very similar to writing. One needs to enter a creative space, let the mind wander and come up with creative solutions. This course would definitely help me become a more innovative designer and researcher. So this is what Kishore had mentioned and I was constantly trying to figure out how to really reach out to Kishore and to every other student who had certain expectation from this course and so I asked Kishore and Ravi Kiran who was also equally interested in similar ideas to examine the book on their own. I did not give them too much of a backdrop in terms of the book except to point out to them that there are these highlights that they could look at in terms of her statement and let me read that statement for you. Brenda Laurel says that when we look toward what is known about the nature of interaction why not turn to those who manage it best to those from the world of drama of stage of the theatre. And she had gone on to discuss Aristotelian plot structure and also the Freytag's triangle which was developed by Freytag in order to diagrammatically represent the you know highs and lows of the Aristotelian plot structure. We have shared that earlier with you but this is the other diagram that we ourselves had prepared in terms of beginning middle ends and the starting point being an exposition then rising action then climax falling action resolution around the protagonist conflicts which are selected by great playwrights in order to show the you know twist of human beings with their own destiny. So then you know both Kishore and Ravi Kiran spent a lot of time reading the book talking to me and we also recognize that actually Laurel is really not using the Aristotelian structure you know in a very limited way she is also aware of the fact that contemporary versions of the Freytag's triangle are more irregular and jagged reflecting the differing patterns of complication and resolution. But the book was meant for designing video games and there and also to understand at that time this growing medium the computer as a kind of new medium. So you know we decided that it is much better if they examine it because they are steeped in new technologies they are also researchers in these technologies so it is best if they give their own critical view of this very famous study. I also felt that you know what perhaps they would realize very soon is that the metaphor or the analogy of the page and the stage which I had earlier pointed out that in performance it coalesces. But on the computer screen I think it has a very different feeling because it is embedded within an operational system and also the player or the user or the actor using the computer is very different from an actor or a writer in the sense that when you are performing a sort of specific piece then you are already in an imagined world and that is fairly well worked out whereas each time you engage with the computer I think there is something akin to the Brechtian sense of estrangement with which the operator or the actor you know functions and in that sense there is never a pre-given calculated state of mind. So I sort of these were thoughts that I had in my mind and I was hoping that Kishore and Ravi Kiran would also touch on these. You will have to decide as to which of these ideas they touched on but I certainly found that they spent a lot of time trying to understand the book and I also feel that even if let us say you are into video game design I think a question that you may have to ask despite the proximity of this paradigm design paradigm of interactive drama for computer video games storytelling or narrative paradigm in other words whether it has any artistic value or whether it has any critical value what is it that it is trying to do. I think that may be a question that is worth examining also and there are many more questions that can be raised. So now let us listen to Kishore and Ravi Kiran and see how they examine this book. Computer as theater by Brenda Laurel a critical review by Kishore Nair and Ravi Kiran now an introduction to completely appreciate what Brenda Laurel has to say in her book computer as theater. One must understand that the book was written and published in 1993 before the age of the internet and iPads in the book she amalgamates the theory of drama particularly Aristotle's Poetics, Cognitive Sciences, Communication Theory, Psychology and the thoughts of countless other authors and thinkers to effectively give a framework for designing human computer interfaces as a little background Brenda Laurel was one of the pioneers in the field of human computer interaction studied theater in her college and then worked as a game programmer for a few years applying her knowledge to theater to the then up and coming field of video games. After her stint as a game designer she did a PhD in computer based interactive fiction. The book computers as theater is a result of the ideas she developed over a 20 year period. The work was part breaking at the time something inferred by the fact that the work has been cited 2198 times as per Google scholar. Many of the ideas that she presented 20 years ago became widely accepted principles holding immense relevance to the internet and mobile era. Although Laurel's intended audience are game designers and programmers. Some of our observations hold relevance to anyone involved with design or technology. The book tends to get quite technical in its analysis of the theory of drama and its application in software design. In fact, a significant proportion of the book is devoted to definitions and explanations of fundamental concepts. In simple words, the work is like a textbook meant for a true seeker and not for the casual reader. The book introduces the reader first to arrest totally in drama theory and all its nuances such as the need for a plot or a game to have a beginning, middle and an end. The flying wedge model where the object of a play or a game is to narrow down the possibilities to probabilities and then to necessities. She also talked about the importance of the play or any software being a single complete action and about the use of agents in both plays and software. She introduces the concepts of reversals, memesis and catharsis and the free tax triangle and how it could be applied in software design. The explanations are effectively given so that even novice readers can easily learn about the basic theory of drama and drug comparisons with software design. Most of the examples cited by Laurel are archaic with most of them having died most of the games having died out even before many of us were born. This results in a loss of perspective many a time but one can get a feel of what Laurel is trying to say by looking at modern day games and software that are not mentioned in the book but then you generally know anybody who's played games. For example, the world of Warcraft, the world's largest multiplayer online game with 10 million subscribed users regularly employs this technique of reversal with expansion packs coming out every two years that completely alters the plot and the experience of the user and retains interest of the user. Now Laurel also gets across several other interesting thoughts to the readers as well some very interesting things. For example, the notion of how action must be constrained to result in creative output in both plays and softwares. Computer users must be engaged in the same way a performance engages the audience's attention through directed flow of information instead of intimidating them with loads of data. She also talks about the needs for designers to see the computer as a medium and not as a tool. And for the need to create sensory immersion into the software through multiple modes of interactions such as kinesthetic, visual and auditory. She also talks about how, about the history of interaction, about interactive plays, about interactive movies and how video and computer games came about and the next part of her discussion is about virtual reality. She also goes on to make many very interesting observations. For example, and I quote, gestures can be used as a principle or even the only component of language in a human computer activity. This was said in 1993 and we see this in action today in our mobiles. The technology called swipe where we use just gestures to interface with the mobile. Many of the things that she's talked about are relevant to non-programmers also. This part comes up more towards the end of the book. They include firstly the concept of art in technology. Laurel brings it out properly through the line. Movies did not achieve wide popular success until artists replaced engineers as their primary creator. And this she goes on to say is true for computers and game design as well. She highlighted the importance of art in technology much before Apple took over the world through the symbiosis of art and technology in its landmark products such as the iPod, iPhone, iPad and iTunes. She also talks interestingly about new technologies and management. How management is essential is essential. Laurel through the description of the disaster of virtual reality describes how path breaking technology generates a spurt of new ideas in the first few years. However, success is achievable achieved only if the technology has been managed effectively, that is creativity, expectations, cultural issues and deliverables has to be managed effectively through the initial hype. 20 years back, people had envisioned and built virtual reality systems, smart houses, etc. But even now they haven't gained widespread acceptance due to their poor management. She sums the whole concept in one line. Again, the worst thing that you can do is fire up public expectations when you can't deliver the product by Christmas. She also goes on to talk about some intriguing aspects. For example, the spiritual aspects and the needs of passion in technology. Laurel's thorough research is seen when she remarks how originally actors in the Greek theater were the priests of Dionysus who felt that the performance was not for themselves, but an act of God. The performance is not for themselves alone. It is an act of God that they are doing. It is beyond themselves. She further goes on to highlight the importance of passion in developing technology and how technology itself changes the consciousness of the people. Brenda Laurel's explanation of these ideas is remarkable. The very same view on passion and technology later went on to be immortalized by Steve Jobs. Now a conclusion. The fact that the book was written for an audience for the 90s with technical references from the 80s and the technical nature of the manuscript is the only difficult part of the book. Laurel clearly saw and defined the future accurately. This work impacted the thought process of several designers post the 90s and impacted how technology is seen now. The irony is that what Laurel said in 1993 was made famous by others like Steve Jobs and Apple. Furthermore, technology has developed to such an extent that many of the things Laurel talked about are now very intuitive, intuitive. This further increases the disconnect with young readers. However, the book does justice to the true seekers by establishing the fundamental principles effectively. Thank you. I would have to end this session at this point because it deals with the student responses. Thank you.