Drama’s transdisciplinary potential

Two Kinase Family Dramas

In this issue, Lietha and colleagues (2007) report the structure of focal adhesion kinase (FAK) and reveal how FAK maintains an autoinhibited state. Together with the structure of another tyrosine kinase, ZAP-70 (Deindl et al., 2007), this work highlights the diversity of mechanisms that nature has evolved within the kinase superfamily to regulate their activity through autoinhibition.

Experiences authoring interactive pedagogical dramas

The focus of this article is the design of Interactive Pedagogical Dramas (IPD). An IPD is a computer-generated environment that immerses the learner as an active participant in an engaging, evocative story, populated with animated characters. The story unfolds based on the learner’s decisions. The various design issues that are faced in crafting IPDs will be covered. In particular, how pedagog...

Transdisciplinary and Integrative Sciences: Humanity’s Mind and Potential

Building Synthetic Actors for Interactive Dramas

We discuss the extension of an emotionally-driven agent architecture already applied to the creation of emergent narratives. Synthetic characters are enhanced to perform as actors by carrying out a second cognitive appraisal, based on the OCC model, of the emotional impact of their projected actions before execution. We present the evaluation of this approach and some initial results on whether...

Simulating emotional reactions in medical dramas.

Presenting information on emotionally charged topics is a delicate task: if bare facts alone are conveyed, there is a risk of boring the audience, or coming across as cold and unfeeling; on the other hand, emotional presentation can be appropriate when carefully handled, but when overdone or mishandled risks being perceived as patronising or in poor taste. When Natural Language Generation (NLG)...