What is it A BASIC Blurb version TRY AND EXPLAIN (Lesia might need to help me)
EXPLORE / REVEAL / EXPERIMENT with CORPUS
The original version of this idea come out from my own PhD and the rough draft can be read on Manifold followed by the funded application too Manifold. The pilot funding came from the Web Science Institute (WSI) to support creating a Sleeper proof of concept. I then have to look to apply for external funding when I report back on the pilot to the WSI in the summer of 2023.
So, I have assembled a small team of interested and useful individuals, Lesia Tkacz, Ash Ravi and Maddie Dwyter, who are helping to make and test this proof of concept.
Our roles are;
Adam Procter: Project Lead, this means I am responsible for the project and leading the ideas and also working directly with students/staff in nodenogg.in
Lesia Tkacz: Product Manager, EXPLAIN
Ash Ravi : NLP Research Engineer, EXPLAIN
Maddie Dwyer : Human Interface Designer, EXPLAIN
The project team are using internal Slack and not our discord for now as we are all in this tool more often daily, but the broader discussion and output will be published and made open via this series of blogs, the report and likely some things into discord alongside my Obsidian notes on Gitlab.
The code is also all being published openly on GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 3 alongside all my Obsidian notes that I am taking randomly as the project progresses. Gitlab Group.
Package 1
In the first week, Lesia helped to extract the selected texts we had gathered to support the TOY project as a mini reading list into readable txt files, we could use as our CORPUS. We also agreed some internal terms to help organise ourselves.
CORPUS = texts, journals, and books from the “reading list”
DOCUMENT = the selected text from the CORPUS
KEYWORDS = words extracted from the JSON file from each team’s microcosm nodes
EXTRACT= span of text in the document that contains the keywords
For our first CORPUS we brought in these initial set
- Excerpt from Roland Barthes from Mythologies on Toys
- Reay, E. (2022) ‘Immateriality and Immortality: Digital Toys in Videogames’, Playful Materialities
- Giddings, Seth (2019) ‘Toying with the singularity: AI, automata and imagination in play with robots and virtual pets’, in Giovanna Mascheroni & Donell Holloway (eds) The Internet of Toys: practices, affordances and the political economy of children’s smart play. Palgrave Macmillan.
- Heljakka, K. (2017) ‘Toy fandom, adulthood, and the ludic age: creative material culture as play’, Fandom, Second Edition: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World, edited by Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss and C. Lee Harrington, New York, USA: New York University Press, 2017, pp. 91-106.
- Blasdel, A. (Nov. 2022), ‘They want toys to get their children in to Harvard’: have we been getting playthings all wrong?’, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/nov/24/have-toys-got-too-brainy-how-playthings-became-teaching-aids-young-children
Lesia then used an existing programme called AntConc to test some ideas on how we might take keywords and do a compare with the CORPUS. The overall suggestion was to start simple and start with TF-IDF (term frequency-inverse document frequency)
Package 2
Now I was set to gather some real keyword data. So, in the studio, I explained the project of nodenogg.in to year 1 Games Design & Art students and the concept that SleepeR would recommend readings from the CORPUS. Each student was then placed in their teams after a field trip to Legoland, to work collectively on idea gathering, using nodenogg.in and its Collect view. I ran three sessions in one day.
These exercises using nodenogg.in included;
Exercise 1: create single nodes with keywords, as many keywords they could each think of per team specifically on the Legoland field trip.
Exercise 2: write together in nodenogg.in nodes thoughts and ideas on the 5 emotions chosen for the thematic under pinning of TOY. EMOTIONS HERE
Exercise 3: use nodenogg.in to think out loud and gather general ideas and visuals related to Toys, Craft and Textiles, one member of the team had to visit the library and bring back physical items.
While this was underway, Ash was making the concept as outlined by Lesia into a small Python programme. The programme would take the keywords (JSON) from exercise 1 i the studios within nodenogg.in, and use the CORPUS to do a TF-IDF lookup and provide each team with the “top” DOCUMENT.
toy9.json
scores
storytelling 0.415010
combining 0.415010
land 0.207505
inside 0.207505
message 0.207505
'guardian_article_they_want_toys_to_get_their_children_into_harvard.txt'
toy10.json
scores
welcome 0.367053
dreamer 0.367053
audience 0.367053
player 0.296136
education 0.296136
'Reay Digital Toys.txt'
toy11.json
scores
welcome 0.311668
themed 0.311668
curiosity 0.311668
whimsical 0.311668
dreamer 0.311668
‘Reay Digital Toys.txt’
toy12.json
scores
welcome 0.562550
system 0.376746
created 0.376746
color 0.281275
creepy 0.281275
'giddings_Toying-with-the-Singularity.txt'
toy13.json
scores
shopping 0.368065
welcome 0.368065
realworld 0.368065
educational 0.296953
holiday 0.296953
‘guardianarticletheywanttoystogettheirchildrenintoharvard.txt’
toy15.json
scores
stimulation 0.369146
welcome 0.369146
dragon 0.297824
build 0.297824
lego 0.247221
'giddings_Toying-with-the-Singularity.txt'
toy16.json
scores
welcome 0.396977
unique 0.396977
target 0.396977
audience 0.396977
big 0.396977
‘heljakka toy fandom.txt’
scores
lego 0.596953
shop 0.297119
creativity 0.198984
park 0.148560
rest 0.148560
'guardian_article_they_want_toys_to_get_their_children_into_harvard.txt'
After the teams had all had their top DOCUMENTS returned, we did a small survey and of all students that responded they said most had not read any of the DOCUMENTS in the CORPUS and that all were now more likely to read the DOCUMENT than before.
Package 3
Next we discussed what make this more useful, and to perhaps provide a view into the CORPUS maybe taking the “top” DOCUMENT and providing detail such as an EXTRACT.
We also added to our CORPUS two more DOCUMENTS from out broader reading list.
- Rules of play: game design fundamentals
- The art of game design: a book of lenses