Poster Statement

poster session Art and Narrative

This paper describes a prototype environment designed to explore possibilities of interactive storytelling.

Intro

Children’s play is fuelled by stories of all kinds, grounded both in fiction and personal experience. Prolonging episodes drawn from school or home life, books, movies, television, the Internet, they act them out, adapting characters and situations to their own unfolding narrative-in-process. Stories determine to a large extent the way we all live. They allow us to step into other lives or try out new roles; they offer insights, points of view, alternative solutions to the problems life always provides in abundance.

For adults and children alike listening is the continuation of the story by the listener as witness and interpreter, but also as potential storyteller. Each listener builds her own version of the narrative, appropriating what is useful, making associations and drawing connections in order to move the story further, elsewhere. In this larger perspective, listening, telling and enacting stories are all part of the same basic activity. Authors, storytellers, actors, audience members, goal-based behavior, unforeseen events, reactive environments and computer programs may all participate to one degree or another.

• Karen O’Rourke, Université Paris 1 , France

Full text (PDF) p. 194