This spring Temple University Libraries commissioned a special project as part of the programming year’s theme of Games and Gaming. Nicole Restaino, Manager of Communications and Public Programming, worked with Drexel’s Entrepreneurial Game Studio as they developed a hybrid work of theatre and games – “The Diamond Eye Conspiracy.” The interactive work was enacted a Paley library this April, to great success.
EGS integrates video game design, physical theatre and dance. As they were developing the game, collaborators Daniel Park, Arianna Gass, and Joseph Ahmed collected data about how students used and perceived of the library. They conducted brief in-person interviews and surveys with students, using traditional methods of assessment but applied in a different way. Intrigued by their process, I interviewed a member of the creative team, Daniel Park.
NBT: Tell us a bit about your project, what was your intent, or your charge?
DP: Our primary charge was to create something that would help reveal the library’s resources, and make it feel like a unique and special place. Within that we were interested in creating a community, shining a light on the individual lives of the people that frequent the library, and of course, making a fun experience.
NBT: What about the data gathering process? What did you collect and how?
DP: When we were gathering data, we wanted to focus on questions that would help inspire the content of the piece. This included basic information like who uses the library and why, but also less traditional questions. We created a list of actions that might happen inside the library ranging from checking out a book and studying, to checking out a person and sleeping, and asked the people we surveyed to check out which they have done inside of Paley. We also asked people to tell us something they would want to do inside of the library, but felt like they weren’t allowed to. We thought we could use the performance as an excuse to let people break the usual rules of the space. We also performed one on one recorded interviews, as a way of collecting more stories about the library itself. One story in particular, about a student who had to live inside of the library, became the basis for the conflict of The Diamond Eye Conspiracy.
NBT: How did you use the data you collected in your production? How did it inform you work?
DP: The data became a major part of both the story of the piece, as well as informing a little bit of the content and aesthetic. Because we didn’t have a specific starting point for the piece, other than that it needed to happen inside of the library, pretty much all of our inspiration was garnered from the data we collected, and a small bit of research on the history of Temple and the library.
NBT: Did anything surprise you that you learned about students and how they viewed the library/what behaviors were expected and what wasn’t “allowed”?
DP: Sleeping in the library is really divisive. A lot of students have done it, and a lot of them want to, but about half of the group we surveyed felt that it was, “Against the rules.”
NBT: Are there differences in how you’d use what you learned as artists than if, say, you were library staff making decisions about library design or service?
DP: Yes and no. I’d striving towards the outcome of making the library a communal space, arranging it towards how people actually use it, and how people want to use it, would be a goal in common. But we had more flexibility to do something impermanent that could be a little bit more interrupting. I think more questions of sustainability and practical usage would need to come into play. But, I think keeping a value of playfulness and activating the space in unexpected ways, could result in some cool design and service projects.
Overall, a great example of how creativity and assessment work together in providing for a more user-friendly, user-aware library environment. Thanks to Nicole for getting behind this edgy, playful and ultimately very successful public program.