A Transdisciplinary Framework to Analyze Interactive and Participatory Experiences in Public Settings
Letícia Ferreira, An Imagined Memorial for Unrecorded People, UT Dallas, December 2023.
This dissertation presents a transdisciplinary framework to analyze interactive and participatory experiences in public settings. This type of experience is constructed through the use of different media and technological devices and installed in spaces designed for collective or communal use.
This work draws on the fields of Public Interactives and Art as Social Practice, and uses methods of field research, design research, creative practice, and reflective practice to create a framework of analysis. Four different types of cultural institutions and two specific interactive or participatory experiences of each are explored in four case studies. The framework of analysis addresses research questions concerning Space, Publics, and Experience. Specifically, the analyses presented explore the entangled infrastructures of each institution and how they influence the interactive experience. Each chapter also examines how each of the studied institutions form and communicate their preferred publics, and how the experiences offered through interactive installations are used to engage visitors as the preferred publics of the institution.
To analyze matters of experience, the framework presents the concept of the mediated experience, as the experience that is on offer in a space as a visitor encounters it, and of scripting, as the linear timeline or storyboard of each moment of the experience as it is offered to participants. The research findings of this transdisciplinary study provide a new perspective to the analysis of interactive and participatory experiences in public settings, particularly in cultural institutions. The research also contributes insights to designers and creative practitioners of interactive and participatory experiences in public settings, as it offers new layers of understanding towards a more intentional practice.
Committee Members:
Dr. Anne Balsamo, Chair
xtine burrough
Dr. Hong An Wu
Dr. Charissa N. Terranova
ABOUT
Letícia Ferreira is an experiential storyteller who wears many hats: art director, designer, producer, artist, teacher, and scholar.
Letícia has been creating worlds and stories and collaboratively bringing them into the world as space-based experiences for 10 years. Her extensive repertoire of multicultural references and formal training contribute to her unusual and engaging concepts, which she excels at communicating in visual forms. Letícia’s deep knowledge of the experiential creative process, combined with 15 years of production experience and a PhD in space-based experiences allows her to lead projects within the constraints of deadlines and budgets while respecting the creative vision. Her approach is always to think about which media and tech will better serve the experience, which has led her to learn and develop a large range of technical skills, including coding, image and motion editing, 3D modelling, physical computing. From concept, sketch and model, to production, prototype, fabrication, installation, to observation, documentation and iteration: She can do it all!
Graduated Fall 2022
LabSynthE Projects
2023
An Imagined Memorial for Unrecorded People. Creative Lead, UT Dallas, December.
2022
xtine burrough, Sabrina Starnaman, Letícia Ferreira, Fiona Haborak, and Cynthia O’Neill for LabSynthE. “One Breath Poem: A Telematic Revolution.” In Art as Social Practice: Technologies for Change, edited by xtine burrough and Judy Walgren. Routledge, 2022.
2020-2021
An Imagined Genealogy of Michel Foucault. Letícia Ferreira with master quilter Alyssa Yates and the full lab as back-up stitching and support. Exhibited in xtine burrough and Sabrina Starnaman, Ceremonial Techne, NYU Mamdouha Bobst Atrium Gallery, October 2021-May 2022.
2018-2020
Surprise! It’s a One Breath Poem!
Since July 2020: call 1 (205) 551-8577 to listen & participate.
August 2020 One Breath Poem: A Needful Message. School of Arts and Humanities Teach-In, UT Dallas, Dallas, TX.
August 2019 One Breath Poem: Telephone Edition, RE:SOUND Media Arts Histories (MAH), Aalborg, Denmark.
May 2019 One Breath Poem: Telephone Edition, BEST Symposium, Frisco, TX.
January 2019 One Breath Poem: Telephone Edition, Grey Matter, A Ship in the Woods, Escondido, CA.
October 2018 One Breath Poem: Telephone Edition, ATEC Celebration, Dallas, TX.
May 2018 One Breath Poem: Sea Shanties Edition, Plano Art Fest, Plano, TX.
May 2018 One Breath Poem: Holocaust Remembrance Day Edition School of Arts, Technology and Emerging Communication at UT Dallas, Dallas, TX.
2019
The Radium Girls Make Their Exit. xtine burrough and Letícia Ferreira, What Is Technology Symposium and Portland Design Week. Portland, Oregon. April.
Syntonic Refuge. LabSynthE. Holocaust Remembrance Day, 2019. Also exhibited at Digital Frontiers, UT Austin, 2019, and The Other Art Fair, Dallas, 2024.
Contest Spaces: How We Made an Audio Quilt of One Thousand Names. xtine burrough and Letícia Ferreira. Trace Journal of Writing, Media, and Ecology. September 18, 2019.
2017-18
The Radium Girls: A Radically Advancing Tour of Exit Signs. xtine burrough and Letícia Ferreira, HASTAC Media Arts Exhibition. Orlando, Florida. November, 2017.
The Radium Girls: A Radically Advancing Tour of Exit Signs. xtine burrough and Letícia Ferreira, xCoAx Media Arts Exhibition. Madrid, Spain. July, 2018. [PDF]Conference Proceedings.
2017
An Audio Quilt of One Thousand Names. LabSynthE. 2017.
A Final’s Knitting Week. Pop-up Locker Exhibition. April.