Narrative as a material : design framework for interactive narrative generation in immaterial cultural heritage

Narrative plays a fundamental role in immaterial cultural heritage projects and research, serving as an essential tool for developing and promoting heritage. It can generate discussions and facilitate interpretative processes that enhance the accessibility of historical and cultural heritages. However, narratives are determined by studies conducted at the top level that impose narration, not built from the communities represented and part of the heritage. This thesis investigates the impact of narratology and narrative design on cultural heritage projects. It aims to establish a methodological framework for identifying and constructing narratives in collaboration with researchers and communities. By advocating for a participatory design approach initiated at the grassroots level, this study introduces tools and methodologies to facilitate and generate reflexive methodologies discussions and collaboration through autoethnographic research, specifically Cultural Probes, re-purposed to elicit narrative from the participant’s context and point-of-view and to analyse the given data from the process with computational processors capable of analyse the data from the research, using methods such as natural language processing and large language models to elaborate the data. Develop the proposed methodology and toolkit it has been applied and iterate to the study of playing cards and card games as cultural heritage, a heritage that in its history has been considered “minor”, serving as a case study to validate the effectiveness of the framework and at the same time exploring and refining the tools. After the first phase of literature research and exploration, through iterating with participants from the study, it has become possible to validate the minimum values of the framework outcome and find opportunities to leverage and refine the system further in other processes. This thesis investigates the impact of narratology and narrative design on cultural heritage projects. It aims to establish a methodological framework for identifying and constructing narratives in collaboration with researchers and communities. By advocating for a co-design approach initiated at the grassroots level, this study introduces tools and methodologies for analyzing and interpreting data collected through ethnographic and autoethnographic research, specifically Cultural Probes, re-purposed to elicit narrative from the testers context and point-of-view, and as computational processors capable of analyse the data from the research, using methods such as natural language processing and large language models to elaborate the data. The proposed methodology and toolkit is applied to the study of playing cards and card games as cultural heritage, a heritage that in its history has been considered “minor”, serving as a case study to validate the effectiveness of the framework

Le narrazioni svolgono un ruolo fondamentale nei progetti e nella ricerca sul patrimonio culturale immateriale, fungendo da strumenti essenziali per lo sviluppo e la promozione del patrimonio. Esse possiedono la capacità di generare discussioni e facilitare processi interpretativi che migliorano l’accessibilità al patrimonio storico e culturale. Tuttavia, le narrazioni sono spesso determinate da studi condotti a livello istituzionale e impongono una narrazione predefinita, anziché essere costruite a partire dalle comunità che rappresentano e di cui fanno parte. Questa tesi indaga l’impatto della narratologia e del design narrativo nei progetti di patrimonio culturale, con l’obiettivo di stabilire un quadro metodologico per identificare e costruire narrazioni in collaborazione con ricercatori e comunità. Sostenendo un approccio di co-design avviato dal basso, lo studio introduce strumenti e metodologie per analizzare e interpretare i dati raccolti attraverso ricerche etnografiche e autoetnografiche. In particolare, viene esplorato l’uso delle Cultural Probes, riadattate per stimolare narrazioni dal contesto e dal punto di vista dei partecipanti, nonché come strumenti computazionali capaci di analizzare i dati della ricerca, impiegando metodi quali l’elaborazione del linguaggio naturale e i modelli linguistici di grandi dimensioni per la loro interpretazione. La metodologia e il toolkit proposti vengono applicati allo studio delle carte da gioco e dei giochi di carte come patrimonio culturale, un patrimonio che nella sua storia è stato considerato “minore”, servendo come caso studio per validare l’efficacia del quadro metodologico.