Stories from Cyberspace: Non linear narrative

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Stories from Cyberspace Non linear narrative
Technology is the campfire around which we tell
our stories, Laurie Anderson Must reading The
Electronic Labyrinth.. http//www.iath.virginia.ed
u/elab/elab.html
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Conventions of a narrative

• Event sequence
• Beginnings / Middles / Endings
• Closure

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Subverting linearity
Already a sub convention in literature and film
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Non-Linear Narrative

• Frequently consists of hyperlinks
• Forking Paths
• Doesnt necessarily have multiple endings

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Michael Joyce

• Most famous for Afternoon, 1987
• Visithttp//www.eastgate.com/LastingImage/

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Challenges to Closure

• Closure is, in any fiction, a suspect quality,
  although here it is made manifest. When the story
  no longer progresses, or when it cycles or when
  you tire of the paths, the experience of reading
  it ends Michael Joyce

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Cognition rather than Satisfaction

• The closure involves a cognitive activity at one
  removed from the usual pleasures of hearing a
  story Janet Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck.
• http//nowtv.com/mystery/dead.htm

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The Death of the Author? Roland Barthes

• Readerly Text Conventional, one interpretation
• Writerly text - 'multiple entrances', 'reader'
  is a more active producer of the text.
• "the goal of literary work (of literature as
  work) is to make the reader no longer a consumer,
  but a producer of the text, Roland Barthes

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Lev Manovich

• .challenges the value of interactive narrative
  without serious intervention of the author

the author also has to control the semantics of
the elements and the logic of their
connectiveness The Language of New Media
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Hidden narratives

• We can use interactivity to reveal otherwise
  unseen stories due to issues of scale or location
  of communities
• http//www.thevirtualwall.org/
• True Stories a memory storage space.

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Immersion

• The experience of being transported to an
  elaborately simulated place is pleasurable in
  itself, regardless of the fantasy content
  Janet Murray

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Involving the Reader

• Blending of fictional and real world location /
  physicality

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Involving the Reader

• Blending of fictional and real world - presence
  or activity

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Involving the user

• Blending the real and virtual screen
  surface/presence

Little Computer People, 1985
Half Life, 1998
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Constraints in Immersion

• The visit metaphor is particular appropriate
  for establishing a border between the virtual
  world and ordinary life because a visit involves
  explicit limits on both time and spaceJanet
  Murray

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Ceremony of Innocence

• Not strictly a non-linear narrative as such.
• Events take place in text.
• Interactivity as Narrative.
• The User feels their way.

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Summary

• Non-Linearity is not a new phenomenon
• Need to consider the loss of closure
• What makes a piece immersive?

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Arrays!

• Arrays are useful for storing stories or
  anything.
• Myarrayplot1,plot2,plot3
• We can access any item in an array
  byMyitemMyarray2, would give us plot3

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