Autoethnographic Research Through Storytelling in Animation and Video Games
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Autoethnographic Research through Storytelling in Animation and Video Games Thesis Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Fine Arts in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Renee Chia-Lei Chen B.S. Graduate Program in Design The Ohio State University 2016 Master’s Examination Committee: Susan Melsop, Advisor Linda Mizejewski Alan Price Copyright by Renee Chia-Lei Chen 2016 Abstract This thesis serves as a deep exploration of myself through my storytelling work in animation and video games. In this thesis study, I seek to build a philosophy that explains my value about what storytelling can do. The objective is threefold. I aim to use storytelling to reveal a deep sense of myself, unpack social and cultural biases to express my values within my design work, and affect the viewers by fostering empathy. By adapting my attitude and my values to visual components, I seek to find ways to use storytelling as a voice for social-justice purposes. The reflective process of this thesis provides me a way to see a holistic picture of the relationship between society and me, and how my pessimistic worldview may have been formed. Storytelling, in my philosophy, can serve as an acceptable reprisal to seek social justice. For this reason, I choose to use storytelling as a social experiment. I see the viewers’ responses as an acknowledgement of my emotional pain, and as an attack to the offenders in society. I use storytelling as a cathartic method to tell society that it has wronged me. I see this process as a coping mechanism for artists who are as hopeless about changing society as I am. Each of my animation and video game processes is led by storytelling. Each one is a micro-lens focused on a particular personal crisis that connects to a larger cultural and/or social issue. ii In this study, I use autoethnography as the research method to discuss my work and how it relates to my pessimistic attitude towards society. Autoethnography is a method to describe personal experiences in connection with cultural contexts (Ellis 2004, 37). It acknowledges the state of multiple truths, such as the truth I believe and the different truths that exist in different people’s minds. Instead of looking for a universal truth, my thesis explores my values and my beliefs expressed through storytelling. Autoethnographic research often results in written texts only. However, my approach to research is first initiated through making animation and video games, then analyzing the storytelling content and identifying themes inherent to them. The autoethnographic research method then serves as a self-reflective process, and promotes awareness of the relationship between self and other, self and society. The reflective nature of this thesis study enables me to become critically aware of my values and my own deep-seated feelings and enables me to contextualize my storytelling work into broader socio-cultural phenomena. I have been labeled as a person with special conditions including MDD (Major Depressive Disorder) and PTSD (Post- traumatic Stress Disorder). Through a new lens of personal development, my research process itself has helped me explain my psychological wounds developed during my socialization process in childhood and early adulthood. With a new understanding of the socio-cultural causes of my discomforts, I can gain more control over my anger and anxiety towards society. With an elevated knowledge base of my cognitive process, I can understand myself beyond any label. iii Dedication This thesis is dedicated to my dog Emma for her unconditional acceptance. iv Acknowledgments There are many people I would like to announce my gratitude towards including Maria Palazzi for pushing me in media production and guiding me to learn theories in feminism, Linda Mizejewski for introducing theories about horror genre, Kim Lopez for helping me build my knowledge base in social psychology, and Alan Price for his knowledge in the video game area which helped me in my video game production. I am especially thankful to my advisor Susan Melsop for taking the responsibility of becoming my advisor when I and my study were in a miserable state and for her open mind about my way of thinking and conducting research. I would like to thank my supervisor Don Stredney in The Ohio Supercomputer Center for giving me the opportunity to make video games and thank my fellow colleagues Bradly Hittle, Jessica Kasson and Hector Medina- Fetterman for their generosity in guiding me to practice object-oriented programming. I appreciate my writing instructor Candace Stout’s help in introducing me a new form of research that fits my needs so well that I could legitimize my graduate study and describe it in depth. I also acknowledge Malory Spicer for publishing her thesis Animation as a Method of Inquiry (2005), which gave me courage and made me feel secure when conducting my research. I owe my gratitude to Dr. LaRae Copley for always being there throughout the four years of my graduate study, and to my counselors Jennifer Taylor and Sandra Facemire for discussing my personal crises with me. v Vita 1989................................................................Born—Taipei, Taiwan 2007................................................................Blessed Imelda’s School 2011................................................................B.S. Multimedia and Game Science, Minor in Applied Foreign Languages, Lunghwa University of Science and Technology 2011 to 2012...................................................Administrative Assistant, Happy Marian, Mingde Branch 2013................................................................Graduate Research Associate, Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD), The Ohio State University 2014 to 2016...................................................Graduate Research Associate, Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) Fields of Study Major Field: Design Specialization: Digital Animation and Interactive Media vi Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................... ii Dedication .......................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgments............................................................................................................... v Vita ..................................................................................................................................... vi List of Figures .................................................................................................................... ix Chapter 1: Introduction ....................................................................................................... 1 General Description ........................................................................................................ 1 Points of Entry ................................................................................................................ 5 Questions for Discussion .............................................................................................. 10 Statement of Purpose .................................................................................................... 11 Significance of the Study .............................................................................................. 14 Definition of Audience ................................................................................................. 17 Scope and Limitation of the Study................................................................................ 19 Chapter 2: Background ..................................................................................................... 20 Common Issues ............................................................................................................. 20 Method .......................................................................................................................... 27 Media ............................................................................................................................ 38 vii Chapter 3: Concept Development ..................................................................................... 46 Coming to Storytelling .................................................................................................. 46 Coming to Autoethnography......................................................................................... 56 Chapter 4: Practice ............................................................................................................ 65 Preliminary Practice ...................................................................................................... 66 Current Design Choices ................................................................................................ 73 Recent Practice.............................................................................................................. 81 Chapter 5: Evaluation ..................................................................................................... 103 My Storytelling Philosophy ........................................................................................ 103 My Existential Crisis of Research ............................................................................... 106 Future Research .........................................................................................................