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

[Alexandra Antonopoulou]

Dear Gabriel,


Thank for giving me the chance to go into more detail. I have made a sort presentation defining my terms my literature review, the way I collect the data and a synopsis of the activity.

the story of the story

In the beginning we co-narrated the Beauty and the Beast story. Children came up with different versions of the story and we talked about how the story can change from time to time and how therefore children can make their own versions. Then children had to write and illustrate their own version of the Beauty and the Beast story on a card created by them and then post it back to the original heroes of the story, informing them how their story could be nowadays. This explored how the reader-author relationship can be reversed by letting the children become authors and propose their own version to the initial author. The characters (Beauty and Beast) sent back answers and children replied back as well as illustrating and writing their final versions of their stories. This enabled children to discuss and challenge their ethics, talk about the fairy-tales as a form of play, acquire confidence in their writing and drawing and learn about the different
 versions of the fairy-tales. For example we had versions that children interpreted the story as a health and safety story, other stories that the beast was a female, or stories that the story was set in the space. The children should think what the morals of the story is and then write a story keeping the same ethical meaning.

Then they had to think the medium that their future story would be in and use the story-making tool for design to model it. This medium might be an existing one, like a book for example, or it might be a completely different and non-existing object. Children are being asked to explain why this object is appropriate for their stories. They can think without technological and rational limitations, creating a fantasy scenario. They write a story about how they fantasize the object they want to design; They treat it as a living character, talking about its lifestyle, its clothes etc. At the same time, they can draw small sketches of it.  In the end they design the object itself. For example a Beauty and Beast version was set in the fun fair. The girl decided that the medium of her story would be a candyfloss. So for that stage she wrote a story about a candyfloss having a popcorn as a best friend, wearing pink and telling the story. The candyfloss would
 hold a microphone and it will ask you questions about the story as well as telling you the story. The candyfloss will hear your own story and then it will have a new version of the story to tell to someone else.

The whole process was a play between fantasy and reality something that children do in their play anyways. At the same time children knew that they are researchers and collect data to make the future fairy-tales based on their ideas. We had discussions of what researcher and designer is. For the collection of data and structure of the activity, I used a set of pda’s and a software that enables children to record their process by taking pictures, videos and voice recordings. Children could gather their own data and simultaneously record their process.The pda’s were wirelesses connected to a computer and a portfolio of each child’s data was produced in real -time. The data collection was structured as a game connected to the activity. The children created imaginary personas in their fingers and interacted with the little computers giving their views. The little computer was the mediator between the children and the characters.


Best,
Alexandra




--- On Wed, 24/3/10, Gabriel Menotti <gabriel.menotti at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Gabriel Menotti <gabriel.menotti at gmail.com>
Subject: [-empyre-] methods for storytelling and feedback - from charismatic authority to narrator?
To: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Date: Wednesday, 24 March, 2010, 14:03

>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
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