Support SIU MFA Students Present their Research

Four MFA graduate students are raising funds for the opportunity to present their research and work at two international events: The Storytelling Conference happening at the University of Suffolk and the international Electronic Visualisation and the Arts Conference taking place in London. Between their efforts and the efforts of the SIUC community, they hope to be able to achieve their goals of attending these events and inspiring other SIUC students to pursue international opportunities. Having SIUC students at these events also broadcasts the important message that SIUC is at the forefront of applying cutting edge emergent technologies in the humanities, as well as earning SIUC’s MFA program a seat at the table of discussions about the new era in storytelling modalities. In addition, having these four women present on interdisciplinary topics in STEM fields is a unique opportunity to inspire SIUC women and for recruiting future generations of students with interests in these technologies. 

Dajonea Robinson and Lindsay Pierce will be representing their author team at the Electronic Visualisation and the Arts Conference taking place this July in London. The EVA conference’s purpose explores how visualization technologies can be used in various domains such as art, music, dance, theatre, and the sciences to further advance respective fields. Lindsay and Dajonea will be presenting on the paper that has also been accepted for publication by EVA: "Social Memberships and Identity Representation in “Text-to-Image” Artificial Intelligence Programs." This paper explored how intersectional identity and representation is appearing in AI-generated art. The findings of their research will help create conversations to further refine the artificial intelligence field.  

The University of Suffolk have accepted three abstracts for presentation at their 2023 Storytelling Conference. The Conference was seeking papers that “theoretically and/or empirically engage with a broad range of disciplines, reflecting the diverse nature of storytelling and stories substantively and methodologically.” Alexis Barrett, Margaret Ruswick, and Lindsay Pierce will be presenting “Students as Storytellers: The Future Landscape of Education.” Lindsay Pierce has also had two additional individual abstracts accepted for presentation at the Storytelling Conference: “Existential Hope: Combatting Despair with Speculative and Dystopian Stories” and “Multimodal Storytelling as a Therapeutic Modality in VR.” 

These conference presenter teams are ready to represent SIUC and showcase the innovative work happening in the School of Literature, Writing, and Digital Humanities. However, they need your help to make this a reality. As graduate students who work on campus and receive a fixed stipend, they are in need of funds for the cost of travel, accommodation, registration, and publication. Financial support is crucial to ensure they can attend these events and they are exploring ways to reduce costs as much as possible, such as sharing rooms and choosing a rental where they can also prepare their own meals at reduced costs. 

More information about the conferences can be found here: 

http://www.eva-london.org/eva-london-2023/ 

https://www.uos.ac.uk/storytelling-conference-2023 

The accepted abstracts are as follows: 

Social Memberships and Identity Representation in “Text-to-Image” Artificial Intelligence Programs 

Lindsay Pierce, Dajonea Robinson, Tracy Tran, Whitney Graham 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) programs are subject to the same biases and prejudices as their human engineers – the surface of a problem we are just beginning to scratch. The intersectional reality of how oppression pervasively advantages some and disadvantages others, persists even in the innovative spaces made possible by collaboration with AI programs. But we cannot address what we cannot yet see. Here, we describe comparative analysis and art projects that explore how narrative designers, writers, and artists are using the text-to-image programs NightCafe and Midjourney, and their observations on how different social memberships are represented on these platforms. 

Students as Storytellers: The Future Landscape of Education 

Lindsay Pierce, Maggie Ruswick, Alexis Barrett 

Future education will no longer resemble the institutions of today—and with the incorporation of technology and AI, the way students learn will undergo a paradigm shift. As a method of inquiry, we created an example, Nova High School, to explore the ways technology and storytelling will come to redefine learning.  

Here at Nova High School, we cherish curiosity, independence, and multimodal literacy. We celebrate the synergistic opportunities presented by early adoption of technology—specifically in increased equity, reduced cognitive load on developing brains, and career skills, making our students among the most desirable candidates graduating into the workforce. We emphasize Project Based Learning (Almulla 2020), where students participate in personally meaningful projects. During a typical school day, students begin with a free forum period, where discussion and interdisciplinary presentations (by faculty and students) occur using a variety of technologies, including narrative gamification and XR experiences. The latter part of the day includes mentoring (where students meet for individualized advisement and discussion of their projects), internships or community projects, and personal development courses. There are no math classes, no English classes, and no science classes—all subjects are learned through interdisciplinary application with the guidance of exemplary educators passionate about learning. We focus on supporting students in creating their own story of self through the stance of curiosity valued in our institution. 

References: 

Almulla, M. A. (2020). The Effectiveness of the Project-Based Learning (PBL) Approach as a Way to Engage Students in Learning. SAGE Open, 10(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244020938702 

Existential Hope: Combatting Despair with Speculative and Dystopian Stories 

Lindsay Pierce 

What is the meaning of life? One of the existential quandaries of human existence is how to make meaning out of finite mortality. For as long as we have struggled to answer this question, there has also existed existential depression and anxiety. Psychoanalysts, religion, philosophers, writers, and creatives have historically braved these frightening waters, each offering their own respective gifts to the conversation. However, rapidly changing climate and the implication this has for humankind, means more people than ever (at younger and younger ages) find themselves mired in the depths of a crisis with no precedent: that humans and capitalism are rendering the planet inhospitable to current forms of civilization. The effect can be paralysis, self-protective nihilism, and all-consuming panic and anxiety. Worse still, it can lead to an apathy that disempowers individuals and invites a hopeless “business as usual” stance that furthers the environmental crisis we all now face together. 

But there is still hope. Even without a “real-world” precedent, we can turn to the potentiality found in speculative, dystopian, and post-apocalyptic stories. This presentation focuses on the power of externalization through story, the prosocial benefit in creating alternatives when there seems to be none, and the opportunities to learn empowerment and resilience from engaging with (or in creating) active protagonists. 

We are not beyond benefiting from the installation of hope (Yalom 1995)—we only need reimagine how. 

References:

Yalom, I. D. (1995). The theory and practice of group psychotherapy (4th ed.). Basic Books 

Multimodal Storytelling as a Therapeutic Modality in VR 

Lindsay Pierce 

The detrimental effects of trauma impact millions of people across the globe and with a background in mental health and as an author, I intimately know that the expressive arts are inherently therapeutic for many of them (Hu et al., 2021). In the United States, VR is already used to treat phobias and PTSD symptoms in veterans (Vianez et al., 2022) and new AI platforms make it possible to concretize concepts and experiences that can be difficult to explain in words. These multimodal options exist in the intersection of technology, mental health and storytelling and could provide methods of vital expression in healing from trauma. Coupled with the reality that mental health systems remain exceedingly overwhelmed, access to these technologies seems more relevant than ever. 

As a method of inquiry, I designed my own VR gallery to communicate the journey my own life has taken in healing through stories. Together we will explore how these technologies, using principles of narrative and expressive arts, can help individuals tell one of the most important stories of all: their own (Kwak, 2022). 

Fig. 1. A screen capture looking down at the ArtSteps VR gallery (not in VR mode). 

References: 

Hu J, Zhang J, Hu L, Yu H and Xu J (2021) Art Therapy: A Complementary Treatment for Mental Disorders. Front. Psychol. 12:686005. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.686005 

Kwak, Seo Yeon (2021) Digital Narratives for Self-Therapy. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Architecture. 2022 Jan 14. https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/139093 

Vianez A, Marques A, Simões de Almeida R. Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy for Armed Forces Veterans with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: A Systematic Review and Focus Group. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Jan 1;19(1):464. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19010464. PMID: 35010723; PMCID: PMC8744859.