Abstract
Uncle Roy All Around You is an exploration of the boundaries of public interaction that deliberately blurs the distinction between the real and the fictional to a great extent. Reflecting upon the nature of the players’ various experiences and the activities of artists and technical crew running the game, this chapter further widens the observations of previous study chapters, the main new contribution to which is Goffman’s notion of the frame and the work involved in establishing and maintaining the ‘game world’ of Uncle Roy All Around You. Actors and orchestrators running the game construct the frame by induction routines and ambiguous clues, whereas participants (players) interpret the frame. The boundaries of the frame are configured in such a way so as to implicate people and objects through the use of purposeful ambiguity which then came to be interpreted by participants within the context of their local environment. Placing roles—that of actors, participants, orchestrators and so on—within the context of the frame leads to the addition of the role of the bystander—the role that is outside of the frame but may nevertheless be engaged unwittingly through the ambiguity of frame boundaries. Subdivisions of the frame are also examined, building upon settings discussed previously—i.e., behind-the-scenes and centre-stage settings—to include front-of-house areas through which participants in the game are inducted. Finally, Uncle Roy All Around You also presents a further example of the concept of transition introduced in previous chapters, examining transitions between orchestrator and actor through interventions by orchestrators on city streets.
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Notes
- 1.
The use of the concept of ‘wittingness’ in performance frameworks was jointly developed with Jenn Sheridan, see [6].
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Reeves, S. (2011). Frames and Bystanders: Uncle Roy All Around You. In: Designing Interfaces in Public Settings. Human-Computer Interaction Series. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-85729-265-0_7
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