Day: January 19, 2020

Database and Interactive Narratives

Storytelling is a very essential aspect of bringing concepts to people without losing their interest, and this is all the more relevant in the art scene, where artists input storytelling to their artworks to enhance a serious concept and increase understanding within the audience. This post explores a few examples of projects that address the notion of interactive and database narratives in an interesting and thought-provoking way.

Games are a prominent example of interactive narratives. Whether it is computer games or simple board games, people are hooked to playing them because of the interesting plot that each game holds. The desire to find out more at each stage allows the player to spend more time and attention to think about the game. Both physical and emotional interaction is attained when players interact with these games, especially now when devices have advanced to provide a more immersive experience to the players (with the creation of Kinect, Oculus, AR, etc.).  Indie game developer Rusty Lake created a series of interactive narrative games, called Cube Escape, which instructs the players to navigate themselves around a trapped space and solve mysteries which contribute to the overall storyline. I played one of their episodes – Cube Escape: Paradox, and I found the gameplay and storyline very interesting. The game uses simple visuals that are flat, and the player has to fully explore the space by clicking on items and using them to unlock other items in other rooms. Sound also plays an important part in the game. The main soundtrack gives an eerie atmosphere to the game, and there are some clues that were said verbally. These qualities allowed me to be fully immersed in the game, and eager to find more clues to contribute to the full story.

Interactive narratives also include documentaries and movies, such as Terminal Time. Terminal Time is an interactive documentary generator first shown in 1999, and it asks the audience several questions about their views of historical issues. Based on the responses (measured as the volume of clapping for each choice), it custom creates a story of the last millennium that matches and increasingly exaggerates, those particular ideas. This is extremely thought-provoking as this documentary involves both interactivity and database narratives, as different reactions from different audience groups lead to different types of historical events related to the topic. It also shows a combination of deep technical knowledge with clear artistic goals and an understanding of the ways events are selected, connected and portrayed in ideologically biased documentaries.

All in all, these two examples show how narratives can be portrayed in different platforms, but are very effective in conveying information to the audience. They allow us to reflect and think about the artist’s message in a different perspective and thus leaves a stronger impression in the audience.

Sources

http://theconversation.com/the-future-is-in-interactive-storytelling-76772

https://medium.com/@chelseacariota/3-interactive-story-games-that-will-change-how-you-think-about-storytelling-fb4530feaec7

http://www.cubeescape.com/

 

Marsha Kinder, “Designing a Database Cinema”: Thoughts

In Marsha Kinder’s “Designing a Database Cinema”, the use of database narratives was explained through the analysis of The Labyrinth Project. Database narratives are very essential in providing accurate knowledge of historical events through storytelling. The Labyrinth Project combines new technologies with old events and concepts, such as Tracing the Decay of Fiction, where an interactive game is created to explore Hotel Ambassador and the assassination of Robert Kennedy. Viewers can navigate the space and click hotspots within the hotel to reveal videos and newspaper articles regarding the history and incident.

I feel that database narratives are a very effective way of getting people to learn about the histories of certain sites through the use of storytelling. People love stories, and interesting ways of telling a certain story will maintain the attention spans of the audience. Putting it into a historical context makes information that was initially boring when said in a very factual way, to something interesting, that has a start and an end. Thus database narratives serve as an important tool for educating the masses about their history, their culture, or of about certain monumental events.

In addition, the advancement of technology in present-day paved the way for interactivity to be incorporated within these data narratives. Adding interactivity within a database narrative can allow for a better understanding of the storyline and historic information, by activating the other senses of the audience, rather than just viewing the narrative. By building the storyline through personal effort, the audience is able to see that in a much broader cognitive and ideological sense narrative is also a means of patterning and interpreting the meaning of all sensory input and objects of knowledge.

In a nutshell, database narratives help to boost interest in historical information and also acts as a modern archive, which allows people to learn through storytelling and be able to convey the information in a more efficient way.