NHT'23: Narrative and Hypertext 2023

Authors: Charlie Hargood, David E. Millard

Published in HT '23: 34th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media · DOI: 10.1145/3603163.3610577 · License: © Copyright held by the owner/author(s).

Abstract

NHT is a continuing workshop series associated with the ACM Hypertext conference for over a decade. The workshop acts as forum of discussion for the narrative systems community within the wider audience of the Hypertext conference. The workshop runs both presentations from authors of accepted short research papers, and invited talks to provide a venue for important discussions of issues facing and opportunities for members of the narrative and hypertext community. This year the workshop aims to specifically target the timely issue of “Mixed Reality Narrative Hypertext” while maintaining an open venue for wider relevant work.

Ccs Concepts

• Human-centered computing →Hypertext / hypermedia.

Keywords

Narrative, Hypertext, Digital Humanities, Games, Interactive Digital Narratives, Mixed Reality

ACM Reference Format

David E. Millard and Charlie Hargood. 2023. NHT’23: Narrative and Hypertext 2023. In 34th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media (HT ’23), September 4–8, 2023, Rome, Italy. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3603163.3610577

1 Introduction

This workshop aims to provide an interdisciplinary forum to bring together individuals from the humanities and technological communities to share work and discuss state-of-the-art research on narrative from both a technical and aesthetic perspective. It is part of the longest running workshop series at ACM Hypertext – running since 2011 – and has fostered numerous collaborations which have led to work published in the main conference as well as serving as an important discussion point for important issues facing the community. NHT has also worked hard in recent years to serve as a focus point for the wider narrative and hypertext community and through NHT’s sister workshop AIS1 (Authoring Interactive Stories) at the ICIDS conference (International Conference on Interactive Digital Narrative). The intention is for this workshop to act as a bridge to increase collaboration between the interactive narrative and hypertext research communities while bringing some

1http://narrativeandplay.org/ais/

2 Motivation

Narrative is a prevalent form of information common in our entertainment and communications, and key to our understanding of the world and its events. By building better models of narrative along with methods for generation, adaption, and presentation we enable narrative systems to become more effective but also improve our understanding of narrative structures. There is a growing community of researchers working on narrative systems, hypertext narratives, interactive fiction, and machinereadable narrative models, for which this workshop seeks to act as a hub to review advances and to discuss what the field might achieve in the coming year. We are interested in contributions from researchers, developers and writers, covering all aspects of digital narrative, including experiences, reflections, and criticism. This community has particular in recent years been responding to the opportunities and issues facing the use of mixed reality technology in this space. The hypertext conference has a history of publishing work related to narrative research ranging from explorations of criticism and the creation of digital narrative to authoring hypertext fiction and semantic narrative systems. NHT therefore aims to assist in the conference’s aim to bring back diverse aspects of the historical ACM Hypertext research community. NHT is, thematically, best served to deliver this through the Narrative and Hypertext community and it has already been working towards this twinning with a sister conference in AIS at the interactive narrative conference ICIDS. Our theme of Mixed Reality continues this tradition.

3 Scope

This year’s workshop aims to continue to consolidate the community by providing an open interdisciplinary forum of discussion on key issues facing the field. Including (but not limited to):

• Authors and Processes: • Models of Narrative • Systems for the Presentation of Narratives • Adaptive and Personalised Narratives • Narrative Analysis • Narrative Generation • Narrative as a method of Knowledge Capture • Social Media as Narrative • Narrative as a lens on identity • Interactive Fiction • Authorial support systems • e-Literature • Strange Hypertext • Interdisciplinary collaboration on narrative • Interaction and Narrative • Location-based Narratives • Narrative in Games • Digital Journalism and Citizen/Collaborative News • Transmedia • Mixed Reality Storytelling • The experience of writing Hypertext • Extended Reality Hypertext

4 Workshop Format

The workshop will run for a half day, with two types of session:

• Traditional research presentation sessions where in short paper submissions to the workshop on early work, blue sky ideas, or small research projects in the area will present their work. These submissions are 2-5 pages, in ACM format, and peer reviewed by the workshop programme committee.

• Invited talks from key researchers in the area of Mixed Reality and Hypertext.

Both will have an emphasis on Q&A and debate, with a focus on new initiatives and future directions.

5 Committee Members

NHT is made up of organisers who scope and run the event and a wider programme committee who review research paper submissions and offer steerage to the workshop series. Organisers:

• Charlie Hargood (Bournemouth University, UK) • David Millard (University of Southampton, UK) Programme Committee:

• Mark Bernstein (Eastgate Systems) • Rosamund Davies (Greenwich University) • Alex Mitchell (National University of Singapore) • Dene Grigar (Washington State University) • Jack Brett (Bournemouth University) • Tom Blount (University of Southampton) • Valentina Nisi (IST, University of Lisbon) • Maria Cecilia Reyes (Universidad del Norte Colombia)

References

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