February 2017 – ◢ ◤

Interactive Narrative Inspiration

With our project on the topic of mental health, I found an narrative game that also seeks to raise awareness on this illness. A feature of this game that caught my attention were the kinds of metaphors is uses to illustrate depression – it’s not direct which leaves room for interpretation.

The game has its high and low points where at certain parts, the character drifts and breezes through a canopy and the music gets cheery and faster. The mood gradually changes where falling leaves start to get fewer and backdrop gets gloomier – a great play of metaphorical emotional landscape. Essentially, the player is going on a search on their passion.

For our project, perhaps we could adopt the idea of contrasting moods of what a person with depression might go through. Also, the play of character choices where the outcome of the character might not exactly correspond with what the player chose.

Interactive Narrative Sharing

Cronulla Riots – It was described as a day that shocked the nation. In December 2005, a nasty racial riot broke out Down Under triggered by Lebanese Muslims insulting the Australians. The violent mob that had 26 injured is now documented into an interactive website where an experience is introduced to the viewer. We get explore themes and navigate around the issue literally, allowing us to delve deeper into the riots. An interactive website is a brilliant as riots are caused by social, economic or political factors, no matter which would domino into emotional strain and tension within the rioting parties. With an immersive experience, people are able to relate to it and reflect on the aftermath.

Visit the website here! http://www.sbs.com.au/cronullariots/documentary

Twerk Tracker

The Twerk Tracker

Users move their heads from left to right to control the rate of twerking

Glitches

I wonder if anyone else also faced this issue but the lighting of the face tracker video glitches harder in certain lightings.

Previously after tweaking the values in scale, the video was able to run smoothly. But after setting up my laptop in a different setting, the twerking video looks like the frames are staggering

Improvements

It is better you use a video with linear movement. I’ll definitely keep that in mind for the final project and experiment more with the mechanics to minimize glitches for our final project.

M I R R O R – Documentation

Reflection: garden of forking paths

This non-linear narrative is mind-blowing and non-understandable at its first read.

Yet the enigma compels you to read on at the same time. It goes on to intrigue you with his style of writing and decipher the paragraphs by piecing one information with another.

A feature of this literature i’d like to point out and commend is its genre. It interestingly fits into several categories. You could call it mystery, detective, or psychological thriller.

Have your pick, but I’ll classify this as magical realism. With its reality context, we are able to relate to it yet things get slightly peculiar when a tinge of magical realism is injected into the narrative.

Ultimately, I was immensely fascinated by the allegory of the ‘garden of forking paths’ which was actually came in both physical and symbolic forms. I am impressed as they were well blended into the plot. The labyrinth was a physical setting, seen as Ts’ui Pen’s Pavilion of the Limpid Sun.

Also, I saw it as setting of non-linear branches of its plot, which encompasses many levels. Last but not least, Ts’ui Pen’s novel is also a labyrinth, consisting of countless endings.

All in all, this was in fact a good read as the author did a fairly good job with this genre of magical realism. If not done well, it would turn out cheap but this one was applaudable.

Although I woudn’t be exploring in this direction for this semester’s project, I actually do look forward to reading more mind-blowing narratives like these.