[-empyre-] methods for storytelling and feedback - from charismatic authority to narrator?

[Gabriel Menotti]

>Children stories is just a product but the general question is how
>metaphor and narrative can be used as a way of prototyping (Alexandra Antonopoulou)

Could you describe further your methodology, specially the role of
metaphor in it?  I can see that the act of narration can open up the
story, creating a feedback cycle able to reorganize it during its
'use'. If we could say that textual analysis, as a sort of reverse
engineering, get us inside the manufacturing process of these scripted
entities (the story of the story - the underlying creative process),
than narrative would be something able to enact another making (the
performance of the story?).

I just wonder how (and if) the information generated during narration
gets back into the stories-as-products. Do the children tell one
another what they have come up with, in a controlled workshop
environment (just like in a marketing meeting brainstorm)? Or is this
information expected to be incorporated into the stories during their
wider circulation, in an emulation of oral tradition?


> How sad that even children's stories must be dragged into prototyping, and
> design. have we all been taken over by robots? (Christopher Sullivan)

Hmn, I tend to look at it in the opposite way - specially considering
that the children are actively engaged in the process. From my own
experience, telling stories to children tends to be an iterative
process, full of interruptions and ('real-time') revisions. The father
stars with "Once upon a time, there was a king..." and is immediatly
corrected by the kid: "No! It was a queen/ president/ mangoose/ etc".
The following negotiation runs far from any sort of robotic automation
(and I wonder if Adrian would consider this gap between the children's
fantasy and the story's script of fulfillment as anti-ergonomic).

However, this dynamic has little to do with the form of (and the
process of reform/inform) the story as a product; it is already
present in the fairy tale /genre/ and its specific modes of
circulation (including the bedtime situation and the particular
relationship between reader/listener). Does this context deteriorates
the charismatic authority of the parent into a reminiscence of
Benjamin's narrator?

(Or is your comment referring to the scope of the discussion - i.e.
"we should not talk about children stories in terms of products/
prototypes'?)

Best!
Menotti