One page per paper. Six read in full, one in progress.
Every paper arrives as a finished object with its seams hidden — a question, a method, a finding, all presented as though they had always fitted together. Reading one properly means taking it apart: what was actually done, what was claimed, and the part that matters most, what was left undone.
What comes out of a paper
Two things, and they get filed separately:
The rule
Every page ends with the same field: what it leaves open for me. Read that field down the whole list and a line appears that no single paper states — see the matrix below.
The matrix
| Paper | Question | Method | Finding | What it leaves open for me |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shadowplay (TEI ‘24) | Shadows + AI as embodied installation | Installation + artist statement, no user study | Artwork-paper structure | Installation but no evaluation → mine needs a user study |
| Tangible Affect (DIS ‘24) | How tangible systems evoke affect | Systematic review, 49 systems | Hand-based interaction dominates; full-body largely absent | Full-body embodied × gameful is unoccupied |
| A Fair Game? (TEI ‘24) | Making unfairness felt bodily | Rope-and-horse installation + 15 interviews | Narrative sensification | How single-player interaction can be gameful |
| Thinking with Sound (CHI ‘24) | Embodied experience of an ultrasound installation | Micro-phenomenological interviews + diffractive analysis | Sound as material; entanglement | Sound is listened to, not played |
| SPLT/SCRN (NIME ‘23) | Game engine as improvisational score | Instrument → Max → OSC → Unity | Game as score; friction as feature | Performers are trained musicians → not ordinary people with a controller |
| Lüneburg / GAPPP (2018) | Engagement in gameful AV performance | Practice-based reflection + questionnaires + polar diagrams | Engagement needs a perceivable action–reaction link plus tacit knowledge | Musicians in concert halls → not game designers and ordinary audiences |
| Fused Spectatorship (CHI PLAY ‘23) in progress | Making spectators’ bodies actively involved | EMS device + 12 participants in the wild + thematic analysis | Body engagement matters more than control | The spectator’s own body is driven → mine watches someone else’s |
Reading the last column down
Installation but no evaluation → full-body gameful is unoccupied → single-player gamefulness unsolved → sound is listened to, not played → performers are professionals, not ordinary people with a controller → spectators watch their own body, not someone else’s.
Which converges on a coordinate nobody currently occupies:
An installation played by an ordinary person, through a controller and a screen, in which the audience’s body is involved.
One caveat kept deliberately visible: none of these seven papers is about multi-person collective installations. This is a gap in the single-player literature — which is precisely why the open question is still open.