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Module 6
Cross-Platform Stories |
Activities/Assignments
● Add a comment to Module 6’s
blog post with your reaction to the transmedia story examples. Have you ever
read anything like these works before? How can you be sure you have read the
whole narrative? Jill Walker suggests that the disunity that arises from
reading such works highlights a different kind of unity – that the work
unfolds at the same time as our reading. What do you think?
● Assignment C – Animoto
Video Review due at end of day June 20
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Sunday 1 June 2014
Module 6: Cross-Platform Stories
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In answer to the proposed questions:
ReplyDeleteHave you ever read anything like these works before?
No and yes. I have followed many episodic web blogs similar to the “Lizzie Bennet Diaries” but had not experienced an interactive narrative such as “ Inside Disaster.” In reading these works of cross-media story telling, I am struck by the multitude of storylines and the ability of this medium to contort to almost any subject matter.
How can you be sure you have read the whole narrative?
I think there is much more to read into each of these pieces than meets the eye and for that reason, I am not sure one can ever have “read” the whole narrative. The inter connectivity each of these stories has with other narratives can be endless. Jill Walker states “how can we define and categorize a phenomenon that consists of connections rather than discrete objects? How do we tell and read stories that consist of fragments without explicit links?” As there is no end “page” or beginning “page” are we ever are able to read the whole narrative?
What do you think of Jill Walker's work Distributed Narrative:Telling Stories Across Networks?
I do agree with Jill Walker’s piece on unity and how narratives are still unified despite the lack of traditional dramatic unifiers. Our way of reading and devouring knowledge has changed to suit small amounts of text, and large quantities of images. Our “attention span” for the written word online is limited. By creating episodic narratives that are well worded yet allow for participation or some input from the viewer- click here, make the next choice, select the next episode- we are breaking the stream of thinking and engaging other forms of interaction within the narrative. The pro-active role of the audience in many of these narratives allows the reader to have more of an influence on the potential result. The ability of the user to interact and participate in “Inside Disaster” creates not only an enthralling and interesting narrative work, the images, video and sound delve the reader deeper into the immediate story and perhaps allow for the reader to become the woman or the aid worker. As Jill Walker suggests, “the disunity that arises from reading such works highlights a different kind of unity – that the work unfolds at the same time as our reading.”
I thought I had never read anything like this before but on further reflection I'm not sure that I realized that I was reading such a narrative. Much of what I have read in this class has required me to reflect and change my perspective in what I am seeing and reading.
ReplyDeleteAs an active participant in the reading it seems impossible to know if you have read the whole narrative. It is constantly being built by different authors or yourself and the medium can be adapted as well.
I'm not sure I completely understand the concept that Walker is getting at but I think she means that the new narrative reflects the 21st century and how we access literature and information. While previously that disjointed real time edit might not have worked today it is demanded.
I have not read anything like the narratives in Module 6. I have completely settled for being passively entertained by TV. I thought the Experience the Haiti Earthquake was a great way to illustrate the devastation and emotion that occurred in the tragedy. It evoked emotion by watching it. I am not convinced that I experienced it in its entirety.
ReplyDeleteI was pleasantly surprised with GOA Hippy Tribe and would view something like that again.
I think these types of narratives feel more familiar for me because for the past five years or so I have been watching television entirely online. I have often discovered shows online through links on a blog or a youtube clip of someone's particular favorite bits from a program and have gone on to watch the program or sometimes not and just take the clips I've seen as my entire experience of the show.
ReplyDeleteAs an example, I recently watched the entire new version of Doctor Who, years after it was aired on television and became an internet phenomenon. Because it was and is such a phenomenon, I was aware of many of the storylines, characters and their fanbases through blogs, internet memes and forums. I was already familiar with the world when I finally got around to watching it. And also because if it's online existence, I am familiar with the classic Doctor Who world and it's relationship to the current series despite not having watched those either. This is not the only example, I tune into many shows long after the fact while others I watch in 'real time' with the rest of the world.
I tend to disagree though, with Walker's claim that stories unfold as the reader reads them. At least I disagree this is anything new or particular to transmedia narratives. If you pick up a book that was written by someone long dead, the story is still unfolding for you as you read it. It doesn't matter that the characters are from the past or in some cases from another world entirely. The story begins when the reader begins experiencing it and pauses and waits when they stop.
I don't feel too concerned with whether or not I missed the entire narrative of these pieces because I feel I got enough of the story out of them. I suppose if you felt like you were missing something vital to the story it would be like reading a book with missing pages or having a TV show cancelled after a cliff-hanger ending. But as an active participant, you chose how far you are willing to interact to get the story. If you are satisfied, you leave, if you are not, you keep exploring. And if after exploring you still haven't experienced as much as you want, you can always make up the rest in your head as fan fiction writers do online.
I am not sure what Walker is getting at saying that the story unfolds as the reader reads it. Unless the story is only happening in real time, the reader is aware that the story was written and existed before they are experiencing it, this doesn't make it any less a new experience for them.