[-empyre-] space, time and narrative

[Tamiko Thiel <tamiko@alum.mit.edu>]

Hi Y'all -

In answer to Roya's question "How can digital artists tell stories 
without words? Should they? Is it possible?" I agree with Steve: we 
control space and use it to negotiate time with the user. The user in 
turn has the responsibility of actively investing their time in 
negotiating the space that we have provided for them. In doing so they 
(oh god! not that term again!!!) "create" their own narrative - because 
narrative is basically events happening in time.

I like to think of what we do in terms of "choreographing" the user's 
experience: we set up structures of space and embellish them with 
constraints (no you can't walk through the walls; try the door instead, 
etc.) and lures (if you've already seen everything in here, how about 
checking out this new little thing I make appear outside? etc.) in order 
to shape the possible experience that the user can have in that virtual 
space. The user still has to execute the movements themselves, but with 
the "physical" and dramatic structure that we have created in order to 
SHAPE their experience.

So unlike in classical music we are not controlling time - in an 
interactive work we actually do NOT usually want to force the user to 
proceed at a certain rate, because when we remove their ability to 
actively shape their own experience we remove a large part of their 
engagement with the piece.

But we ARE setting up structures that form a framework in which the 
user's own engagement should produce a dramatic experience. No user 
engagement: no experience. No framework: no drama.

I get the sense that many media critics confuse the concept of "creating 
your own narrative" with "create your own artwork." The two are not 
necessarily the same. Creating an interactive artwork means creating a 
framework. Creating a narrative in this context means starting 
somewhere, ending somewhere and arranging the events that happen in 
between. We can perceive events out of time but to "make sense" of them 
we seem to be hard-wired to create narratives, i.e. descriptions of 
events in time with the implication - not necessarily desired, but hard 
to avoid - of cause and effect.

- tamiko


roya wrote:
>
> - How can digital artists tell stories without words? Should they? Is 
> it possible?

steve guynup wrote:
>
> I've always thought that moving through space created
> a narrative. (the term narrative is used loosely)
> ...
> So what about us - do we control time and space? Well,
> space I do believe we as builders completely control.
> Nothing is there or does anything that we didn't (even
> accidentally) program.
>
> Time on the other hand we don't control. The user
> moves through the space at their own pace and in their
> own directions. They create their own linear
> narrative, their own timeline of events.
>
> In the end, we negotiate time with the user. We do
> this by creating pathways in which we hope/have to
> follow our timeline ...Much of what we do to define
> space is really to affect time.

--
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 Tamiko Thiel       Media Artist

 tamiko@alum.mit.edu
 http://mission.base.com/tamiko/

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