INTERACTIVE NARRATIVES, NEW MEDIA & SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT
University of Toronto, October 23-25, 2014
Proceedings
Editors: Hudson Moura, Ricardo Sternberg, Regina Cunha, Cecília Queiroz, and
Martin Zeilinger
ISBN: 978-0-9939520-0-5 (Image copyright: Marina Camargo; used by permission)
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
Table of Contents – 2
Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………………………….2–3
Contributors…………………………………………………………………………………………...4–7
Essays…………………………………………………………………………………………........8–152
Abbot, Daisy, The Glasgow School of Art. “Old Plays, New Narratives: Fan Production of New
Media Texts from Broadcast Theatre”……………………………………………………………..8–18
Alzamora, Geane and Lorena Tárcia, University of Minas Gerais. “Proposed Methodology for
Transmedia New Story Analysis: A Comparative Study of The Great British Float Project and
The Great British Property Scandal: Every Empty Counts (2012) in the UK”………………..19–27
Antunes, Rafael. Universidade Lusófona. “Blue Pencil: Experiences in Transmedia”.……28–36
Ciancia, Mariana, Francesca Piredda, & Simona Venditti, Politecnico di Milano. “Shaping &
Sharing Imagination: Designers and the Transformative Power of Stories”………………….37–46
Cooley, Heidi Rae, Duncan Buell, and Richard Walker, University of South Carolina. “From
Ghosts of the Horseshoe to Ward One: Critical Interactives for Inviting Social Engagement With
Instances of Historical Erasure (Columbia, South Carolina)”…………………………………..47–53
Fallon, Kris, University of California, Davis. “Streams of the Self: the Instagram Feed as
Narrative Autobiography”…………………………………………………………………………..54–60
González-Cuesta, Begoña, IE University. “I-Docs and New Narratives: Meaning Making in
Highrise”……………………………………………………….....................................................61–69
Hadler, Florian and Daniel Irrgang, University of Arts, Berlin. “Nonlinearity, Multilinearity,
Simultaneity: Notes on Epistemological Structures”…………………………………………….70–87
Jordão, Aida, York University. “Inês de Castro on YouTube: Re-gendered Narratives”…..88–94
Lenzner, Ben, University of Waikato. “Emerging Forms of Citizen Video Activism: Challenges in
Documentary Storytelling & Sustainability”……………………………………………………..95–100
Lim, Sandra, Ryerson University. “Xapiri: at the Juncture of History, Experience, and
Technology”……………………………………………………………………………………....101–106
Paakspuu, Kalli, York University. “Off the Wall with Shchedryk”………………………….107–112
Rodrigues, Alexandre Coronato, and Roselita Lopes de Almeida Freitas, ESPM.
“Collective Authorship in Real Time”…………………………………………………………..113–121
Sweeney, David, The Glasgow School of Art. “Crossing Boundaries”……………………122–127
Trindade, Isabella. York University. “In-Between: Between the Concrete and the Virtual,
Between the Physical and the Imaginary”…………………………………………………….128–136
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
Table of Contents – 3
Wolfe, Kateland, Georgia State University. “What’s Missed When No One is Misunderstood?
Understanding Whose Agency is Increased Thanks to Interactivity”………………………137–144
Xu, Janice Hua, Holy Family University. “Telling the Stories of Left-Behind Children in China:
From Diary Collection to Digital Filmmaking”………………………….................................145–152
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
Contributors – 4
Contributors:
Daisy Abbott is an interdisciplinary researcher & research developer based in the Digital
Design Studio at Glasgow School of Art. With an MA(Hons) in Theatre, Film & Television
Studies and an MSc in Information Technology, Daisy has experience on a range of
interdisciplinary research projects combining digital technology with the arts and humanities. Her
current research focuses on interactivity, 3D visualisation methodologies, and issues
surrounding digital documentation, preservation, and interpretation in the arts and humanities, in
particular relating to interactive narratives, digital representations of ephemeral events,
performing arts, digital heritage, digital and participatory culture, and interaction design.
Geane Alzamora holds a PhD in Communication Studies and Semiotics at the Catholic
University of São Paulo (PUC, São Paulo, Brazil). She is a professor in the Graduate Program in
Social Communication/Department of Social Communication at the Federal University of Minas
Gerais (UFMG, Minas Gerais, Brazil), a researcher at the Center for Convergence of New
Media (CNPq/UFMG, National Research Council at UFMG), and collaborator in the National
Institute for Science and Technology for the Web.
Rafael Antunes. Born in 1969 in Lisbon, Rafael is currently a PhD student at Universidade
Lusófona, while maintaining a professional activity in the TV channel SIC. He has a MA in film
studies from the Universidade Lusófona. He attended the SZFE-University of theatre and film
arts, in Budapest, Hungary, where he took several specialization courses. He as directed
several short films and documentaries and transmedia projects.
Duncan A. Buell is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the
University of South Carolina. He has written three books and more than fifty research papers in
number theory, document and information retrieval, parallel algorithms, and computer
architecture. While at IDA he was project manager for the Splash 2 reconfigurable computing
project, one of the first successful ventures into the use of FPGAs as a programmable “CPU” in
what is now known as a reconfigurable computing machine. He has recently turned to research
areas in digital humanities, including critical interactives and text mining. He and Dr. Cooley
have been co-investigators on two NEH grants and one internal grant in digital humanities.
Marina Camargo’s work focuses on everyday life perception and how it can be subtly altered by
dealing with its representation. In her research process, both conceptual reference and material
research are equally important to define whether the work will become a photograph, a video,
an installation, a projection, a website, a typography, or a collaborative project. Camargo has a
Master’s Degree in Visual Arts (UFRGS, Federal University in Porto Alegre, Brazil, 2007), a
postgraduate degree in Visual Culture (UB – University of Barcelona, Spain, 2004), and lived in
Germany in 2010-2011 with a DAAD grant for visual artists, studying with Peter Kogler at ADBK
(Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Munich). In 2012, she received a grant from Fundação Iberê
Camargo for a residency at Gasworks, in London. http://www.marinacamargo.com
Mariana Ciancia is PhD Student at the Design Department, Politecnico di Milano, Italy. Her
research activity deals with new media and participatory culture, with the aim of understand how
multichannel phenomena (crossmedia and transmedia) are changing the processes of
production, distribution and consumption of narrative environments.
Heidi Rae Cooley is an Associate Professor of Media Arts in the School of Visual Arts and
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
Contributors – 5
Design at the University of South Carolina. Her book, Finding Augusta: Habits of Mobility and
Governance in the Digital Era, considers how mobile technologies both instantiate norms for the
governance of populations and constitute persons as expressive and socially connected
subjects. “AUGUSTA App,” the book’s digital supplement, will serve as a laboratory for exploring
the book’s argument. In 2010, Dr. Cooley served as Co-PI and facilitator for an NEH-funded
Humanities Gaming Institute; she subsequently served as co-PI on an NEH Level 2 Digital
Humanities Grant that funded the development of a serious game that explores early modern
social history and as co-PI on an internal grant that funded the development of “Ghosts of the
Horseshoe.”
Alexandre Coronato Rodrigues. In 1986, Alexandre Coronato performed works in computer
programming in the private sector. From the 1990s onward, he combined his knowledge of
photography, design and computer working for several multimedia producers and in 1996
formed his company, Graph 5, providing creative, print production, and photography services.
Since 2002, he teaches computer graphics and multimedia at Miami Ad School, ESPM, and in
2010 he graduated in Digital Media from the University of Southern Santa Catarina, specializing,
since in 2012 in Film, Video and Photography: multimedia production at the University Anhembi
Morumbi. Since 2011, he teaches Graphic Production and Digital Production in Social
Communication at ESPM Sao Paulo.
Kris Fallon is the Mellon Visiting Assistant Professor in Digital Culture at UC Davis. His
research focuses on non-fiction visual culture across a range of platforms, from still photography
and film to data visualization. His essays on digital technology and documentary have recently
appeared in Film Quarterly and Screen, and are forthcoming in several edited anthologies.
Begoña González-Cuesta has been working at IE University since 2000 and is currently the
Dean of IE School of Communication. Her research and teaching interests are centered on
visual narratives, storytelling and representation, focusing on the aesthetic, cultural,
anthropological and ethical dimensions of contemporary screen works, in the areas of
contemporary cinema, non-fiction film, art film, advertising, and new audiovisual formats. Her
current research is focused on images as a means of creating thought. She believes in the need
to study the ethical and aesthetic implications of audiovisual representations of marginal realities
and conflicts.
Florian Hadler (M.A.) teaches Media and Communication at the University of Arts in Berlin,
pursues his PhD at the University of Arts Berlin and the European Graduate School in Saas
Fee, and works as a Digital Strategy Consultant for different clients. Recent Publications include
G – Geheimnis. Eine Einzelstimmung, 2014, and “Der nackte Kandidat. Zur Semantik von Natur
im Dschungelcamp,” in Arkadien oder Dschungelcamp, 2014. www.flohadler.com
Daniel Irrgang (M.A.) is the scientific supervisor of the Vilém Flusser Archive, a scientific
assistant of Professor Dr Siegfried Zielinski, chair for Media Theory at Berlin University of the
Arts, and a researcher in the project Archaeology/Variantology of the Media, where he is coeditor of vol. 4 and 5 of Variantology – On Deep Time Relations of Arts, Sciences and
Technologies and of the German anthology of the series. www.flusser-archive.org,
www.gwk.udk-berlin.de/personen/irrgang
Aida Jordão is currently an instructor in the Theatre Department and the Portuguese Studies
Program of York University. She holds a PhD from the Centre for Drama, Theatre and
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
Contributors – 6
Performance Studies, University of Toronto with the thesis, “Inês de Castro in Theatre and Film:
A Feminist Exhumation of the Dead Queen,” and is also a graduate of the Acting program of the
Drama Studio, U.K. Aida’s theatre practice as an actor, director and playwright includes popular
theatre, feminist plays and Theatre of the Oppressed. Aida has worked worldwide creating
original theatre, notably in Toronto (Nightwood Theatre and the Company of Sirens), Portugal
(Teatro O Bando), and Cuba (Teatro Escambray). Publications include “(Re)Presenting Inês de
Castro: Two Audiences, Two Languages, One Feminism” in Revista de Estudos AngloPortugueses (18), and “Playwriting in Canadian Popular Theatre: Developing Plays with Actors
and Non-Actors” in Canadian Theatre Review (115).
Ben Lenzner is a photographer, filmmaker, storyteller, and educator. Born and raised in New
York City, he taught for many years at the International Center of Photography. In 2005, he was
a recipient of the AIF Clinton Fellowship for Service in India. He is a graduate of the Ryerson
University MFA program in Documentary Media. He is equally at home bicycling through the
island of Manhattan, roaming the bustling streets of New Delhi, or climbing Mt. Taranaki at
dawn. Currently, he is completing his final year as a PhD candidate in Screen and Media
Studies at the University of Waikato.
Sandra Lim research interests include the aesthetic experience and practice of documentary
films, and the potential of artists’ documentary for urban analysis and critique. Originally from
Canada, she completed a PhD in Art, Design and Moving Image in 2013, from the University of
Brighton in the UK. She currently lectures on Politics and Film at Ryerson University in Toronto.
Roselita Lopes de Almeida Freitas. As an artist, under the pseudonym ROSE FIGUEIREDO,
she is a collaborator in Museum ID+C. Laboratorio of digital culture, Museography and
Hypermedia at the Complutense University of Madrid, Spain; post doctoral student in Digital
Design Technology Intelligence and PUC of São Paulo, Brazil; Ph.D. in Media Studies and
Media Production, journalism department at ECA, USP and Master of Science in
Communication in Image and Sound at ECA/USP (2000). Extensive experience in Radio and
Television, where she work as a director. Since 2004, she teaches Image and Sound in Social
Communication at ESPM Sao Paulo.
Kalli Paakspuu earned her doctorate from the University of Toronto in Humanities, Social
Sciences and Social Justice in Education. An award winning filmmaker, theatre director, writer,
educator and new media creator, she teaches film and cultural studies at York University. Her
films have been broadcast on P.B.S, C.B.C., TVOntario, Bravo and other networks. At the
Canadian Film Centre she was a co-creator of the interactive installation, “World Without
Water”, exhibited at the Cultural Olympiad in Vancouver in 2010. Her current projects include
the documentary “1921 – The War Against Music” and the interactive documentary “Moment of
Contact” based on her doctoral research.
Francesca Piredda is assistant professor at the Design Department of Politecnico di Milano
and teaches at the School of Design. She is a member of IMAGIS research group and of DESIS
International Network. Her research deals with Communication Design, audiovisual language
and new TVs, focusing on collaborative processes and transmedia strategies for brand
communication and social innovation.
David Sweeney is a lecturer in the Glasgow School of Art's Forum for Critical Inquiry,
specialising in popular culture. Recent publications include the essays 'I Spy: Mike Leigh and
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
Contributors – 7
Britpop' in Devised and Directed by Mike Leigh (Bloomsbury, 2013) and 'From Stories to
Worlds: The Continuity of Marvel Superheroes' in the Summer 2013 issue of Intensities: The
Journal of Cult Media. He presented the paper ‘Comic Books in the Age of Digital Reproduction’
at BRAFFTV 2013. He is currently working on book chapters about the comic book writers
Warren Ellis and Mark Millar.
Lorena Tárcia is a former journalist at Globo TV, professor of Online Journalism at the
University Center of Belo Horizonte (Brazil), PHD student in Social Communication at the
Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG, Minas Gerais, Brazil), with doctoral internship at the
Pompeu Fabra University, in Barcelona. Researcher at the Center for Convergence of New
Media (CNPq/UFMG, National Research Council at UFMG) and collaborator in the Era
Transmedia Group in Brazil.
Isabella Trindade is a PhD Architect with professional experience in Brazil, France and Spain.
She is a Professor and a researcher at Catholic University of Pernambuco in Brazil (on leave),
and currently she is teaching at Ryerson’s Faculty of Communication & Design (FCAD) in
Toronto. Her main research focus is based on the architecture and urban space as an extension
of the importing and exporting of models and cultural exchanges in an interdisciplinary analysis.
Author of several articles, including some about the interfaces between movies and architecture.
Simona Venditti is currently PhD student in Communication Design at Politecnico di Milano.
Her research activity deals with Digital Storytelling, audiovisual language and participatory
processes and practices for the engagement and empowerment of local communities.
Kateland Wolfe is a second-year PhD student in rhetoric and composition in the English
department at Georgia State University. She has been teaching composition classes for the last
three years, and has given several presentations on interactive fiction and gamification in the
classroom. She has a short piece published in Communication Research Trends on interactive
fiction and its intersection with Walter Ong scholarship. She is interested in understanding how
the compulsory need to understand each other in communication limits and strengthens agency
in particular situations.
Janice Hua Xu (Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) is Assistant Professor of
Communication at Holy Family University, Pennsylvania. Her research interests include cultural
studies, media globalization, and television studies. She has published in Journalism Studies,
Media, Culture, & Society, Telematics and Informatics, and contributed chapters to several
books on Chinese mass media.
INTERACTIVE NARRATIVES
NEW MEDIA &
SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT
October 23‐25, 2014 | University of Toronto |ISBN: 978‐0‐9939520‐0‐5
OLD PLAYS, NEW NARRATIVES: FAN PRODUCTION OF NEW
MEDIA TEXTS FROM BROADCAST THEATRE
Daisy Abbott, Digital Design Studio, The Glasgow School of Art, The Hub, Pacific
Quay, Glasgow
d.abbott@gsa.ac.uk
Suggested citation: Abbott, Daisy (2014). “Old plays, new narratives: fan production of new
media texts from broadcast theatre.” In Proceedings of the Interactive Narratives, New Media &
Social Engagement International Conference. Eds. Hudson Moura, Ricardo Sternberg, Regina
Cunha, Cecília Queiroz, and Martin Zeilinger. ISBN: 978-0-9939520-0-5
This article is released under a Creative Commons license (CC-BY-NC-ND).
Abstract: When a theatrical performance is digitally broadcast live to cinemas, the limitations of
temporal and spatial specificity are removed and the theatrical experience is simultaneously
opened up to a wider audience and inherently altered. One such production, Coriolanus
(Donmar Warehouse, 2013-14), starring an actor with a particularly enthusiastic online fan
community, was broadcast to cinemas by National Theatre Live, where fans recorded it on digital devices, extracted clips and produced animated gifs, which they captioned to reinterpret the
play, sharing them online, removed from their original context. The transformation of theatre
texts to cinemas to social media platforms raises exciting questions related to how fans interact
with culture both as consumers and as producers of new media texts. How do the different
transformations (technical and actively fan-produced) affect both the narrative and the cultural
experience? How do new texts function as surrogates for, and extensions of, the ‘official’ narrative, as well as new interactive narratives in their own right? This paper addresses these
questions in the context of a specific theatrical event as it crossed the boundary from a live, colocated experience first into cinema, and then into interactive hypertexts and memes. Drawing
on theories of fandom and participatory culture, as well as post-Web 2.0 analyses of Internet
behaviours, the paper examines fan production of new media texts and how they both transmit
and transform the source narrative via interpretation, re-interpretation, and misinterpretation.
Broadcast theatre as a transmedia
narrative
When a live event is filmed and broadcast to
remote audiences, the very nature of the cultural experience is changed. In the case of
National Theatre Live (NT Live), the process
of filming a play and its transmission via
satellite to multiple cinemas is sometimes de-
scribed in terms of a ‘stage to screen’ transformation, or as a conversion from a theatrical
form to a cinematic one. However, whilst the
technology of delivery of any cultural product
most certainly affects the content, it is
problematic to consider live broadcasts within
a cinematic framework. With their live broadcasts, NT Live aims to emulate the ephemeral,
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
communal experience of theatre in the
cinema, however it is acknowledged that the
cultural experience is not a simulacrum of
theatre, but an experience that is enhanced in
some ways and inferior in others (NESTA,
2011). These broadcasts are neither theatrical
nor cinematic, and instead fit closely into the
post-cinematic framework outlined by Steven
Shaviro in his 2010 book, Post-Cinematic
Affect. Shaviro notes the radical difference
between indexical cinematic space that seeks
to simply document a live event, and a highly
constructed “post-cinematic mediasphere” of a
cultural product that spans several forms of
delivery (p.67). NT Live events are widely
advertised before the screening, through a
combination of print and digital media
comprising posters, flyers, trailers, interviews,
production photos, rehearsal photos, and behind-the-scenes
articles.
This
publicity
(intended to build an audience for the remote
screening, which takes place towards the end
of the theatrical run) sits alongside the play’s
epitext, that is, the usual apparatus of the
theatre industry including publicity and reviews
from the performances that have already
taken place. The live screenings contain a
mixture of advertising, still images of the play
the audience is about to see, textual information about the play and the cast, live
footage of the audience in the actual theatre
space, pre-recorded documentary, live interviews, and, of course, the play itself. The
advertising varies from screening to screening
and is typically focused on future NT Live
broadcasts, or plays by the same theatre company which are not being broadcast, however,
screenings can also include advertising for live
broadcasts from museums (e.g., British
Museum, 2014) and a combined screen advert/mobile app which encourages users to
“play along with the big screen” on their
phones to earn rewards (CineMe, 2014).
Like
live
broadcasts
from
the
Metropolitan Opera (2014) before it, an NT
Live screening (see Figure 1) conforms
closely with the ‘Super Bowl Dramaturgy’
Abbott – 9
framework identified by Paterson and Stevens
(2013), which compares the strategies of televised live sports events to the live broadcast
of theatre. This model is inherently hypermedial,
post-cinematic,
and
self-reflexive.
Audience is used to convey a sense of place
and liveness whilst liveness and authenticity
are themselves complicated by attempts to
capture them, and the live event is itself
shaped by the process of broadcasting it. The
remediation of theatrical events into a
contemporary “media ecology” (Shaviro, 2010,
p.7) creates a new cultural product with a new
narrative, without any sense of hierarchy between the different sources of the content (for
example, pre-recorded documentary and live
interviews placed alongside the onstage content). Furthermore, the surrounding context of
the live screenings (with all the extra material
screened alongside the play) and the epitext
(for example pre-show teasers and discussions amongst communities) adds to the
extension of this narrative far beyond the original play. Therefore, to consider NT Live
broadcasts as theatrical, cinematic, or even
televisual would be to misunderstand the ways
in which these structures create an extended
narrative across many media, platforms, and
communities.
The contemporary masters of the transmedia narrative are Marvel. The Marvel
multiverse is a shared fiction comprising the
mainstream Marvel universe alongside all its
variations and parallels from Marvel media,
most significantly comics and films, but also
including
toys,
videogames,
television,
roleplaying games and more. Each new
official narrative from Marvel is designed to
take its place within the Marvel multiverse and
contribute towards the overall transmedia
narrative. Three films from the Marvel cinematic universe were instrumental in the
growing celebrity of actor Tom Hiddleston,
who played Loki in Thor (2011), The Avengers
(2012), and Thor: The Dark World (2013).
Hiddleston quickly became a firm fan favourite
and examples of fan production featuring Loki
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
(including fan fiction, artwork, memes, and remixed content from the films) are common in
Marvel fan communities. When Hiddleston
was cast as the title character in the Donmar
Warehouse production of Shakespeare’s
Coriolanus in 2013 (which was to be broadcast by NT Live) it was in the context of a
large number of big-name stars playing
Shakespearean characters on stage in
London (cf. Madison, 2014) and the Donmar
producers were keen to emphasise his
(considerable) Shakespearean credentials,
presumably to dissuade accusations of ‘star
casting.’ Nevertheless, a large number of
Hiddleston-as-Loki fans were attracted to
Coriolanus precisely because of the actor’s
involvement, and this community of audience
members are not only enthusiastic and social
media savvy, but also active consumers and
producers of cultural content related to their
favourite actors – no matter what the role.
Marvel fans tend to be expert readers of transmedia narratives and, as stated by Jenkins,
“Fans have always been early adopters of
new media technologies: their fascination with
fictional universes often inspires new forms of
cultural production […] Fans are the most
active segment of the media audience, one
that refuses to accept simply what they are
given, but rather insists on the right to become
full participants” (2006, p.135). Fan production
related to Coriolanus began before the play
opened, sharing and remixing official publicity
which continued throughout December 2014
and January 2015, whilst the performances of
the play in London inspired reviews and commentary (from fans who could attend) and
jealousy (from those who could not). During
this time, buoyed by both official publicity and
fan engagement, anticipation of the NT Live
broadcast grew. Notably, this play conformed
to the pattern of televised sporting events in
that, despite widening access to the mediatised version to a much greater audience, this
created a heightened sense of prestige and
exclusivity for tickets to the ‘in the flesh’ event
(cf. Paterson & Stevens, 2013, p.158).
Abbott – 10
Immediately following the NT Live
broadcast on 30th January 2014, fan production focused on reactions and reviews of the
play itself, alongside (and relatively swiftly
subsumed by) remixes of images and clips
from the high quality live stream which had
been shared illegally online. Active reading of
a transmedia narrative “sustains a depth of
experience that motivates more consumption”
(Jenkins, 2006, p.98) and teasers from both
fans and NT Live were instrumental in driving
up demand for access to Coriolanus in any
(and all) forms. The level of demand is
demonstrated by the insistence of fan requests for a DVD of the play to be released
(not a product which currently forms part of
the NT Live distribution model), and the
largely unapologetic sharing of illegal copies
of the live stream. The transmedia nature of
this text itself contributes to the sense of fan
entitlement to access and participation, ironically reflecting the theme present in Shakespeare’s text (and explicitly mentioned in the
pre-play documentary which formed part of
the screening) that Coriolanus, by engaging
with the people, becomes himself public property.
New narratives
Whilst some fan sharing of content from the
live stream of Coriolanus appears to serve as
a relatively simple surrogate for attending an
official (but ephemeral) screening in a cinema
(clips and links to the full live stream are
prevalent on various social media sites, despite evidence of the removal of some due to
copyright claims by NT Live), the majority of
examples move beyond simple sharing into
the realm of creative production, using the live
stream as the basis of content. Fan production
can be considered in three main categories:
summarising and interpreting the narrative;
sampling the original and separating elements
of content into standalone cultural objects; and
using the live broadcast as inspiration for
wholly original content.
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
Summarizing and re-interpreting
Coriolanus
A summary of the play is provided by Tumblr
user Daasgrrl (2014); it distills the narrative
down to a concise but very accurate 23 lines
of dialogue whilst also wryly commenting on
the fan complaints that many reviews posted
online were giving away the play’s ending –
her summary begins with a warning: “Contains
spoilers for a 400-year-old play.” Numerous
other fans post pseudo-reviews with very personal
interpretations,
often
explicitly
acknowledging and linking different fandoms
(in addition to Hiddleston, the play also starred
Mark Gatiss and Alfred Enoch, familiar to
many viewers from Sherlock and Harry Potter,
respectively, each of which has its own extremely active fandom [Fauchelevant, 2014]).
Reinterpretations of the narrative also
appear in non-textual forms, for example
YouTube videos comprising re-edits of the
Coriolanus live stream that focus on one aspect of the story with a complementary pop
song soundtrack (e.g., Broadwayluver222,
2014) – a form popular with Loki fans. Fan
remix videos typically aim to use music to
heighten the emotional (or comedic) impact of
a re-edited sequence of visuals, which emphasises or comments on a particular aspect of
the narrative (cf. Russo & Coppa, 2012). However, by far the most popular format for fan
production from Coriolanus is the animated
gif. This format has been a mainstay of social
media for some time, but only recently has it
become the subject of serious study. A MIT
Media Lab research project called Mapping
the Emotional Language of gifs provides the
following definition: “An animated gif is a magical thing. It contains the power to convey
emotion, empathy, and context in a subtle way
that text or emoticons simply can't” (Rich &
Hu, 2014). One re-interpretation uses a series
of gifs from single scene within the play to
represent the overall theme of Coriolanus’
relationship with his mother, Volumnia (see
Figure 2).
Abbott – 11
This playful series combines still images
subtitled with direct quotes from the text of the
play with animated gifs that reinterpret a central conflict into the language of social media –
in the third panel, Volumnia throws up her
arms in anger and the caption spells out
“ASFGHJKL!!!” As a representative of both the
scene and a major overall theme of the narrative, this sequence is extremely effective in its
translation of both narrative and emotional
meaning across media platforms.
Creating standalone cultural objects
Other forms of fan production eschew the
translation of meaning from the original narrative in favour of a fragmentation of the live
stream into separate, standalone cultural objects. These can take the form of single
moments, sampled and edited from the live
stream, or a collection of different gifs, related
not to the meaning of the narrative but to the
curatorial preferences of the poster (for one
example, see hard-on-for-hiddleston, 2014a).
The technological characteristics of animated
gifs create a particular aesthetic. Firstly, they
are silent, separating visuals from the
meaningful dialogue of the play. This, in itself,
invites creative captioning to reinvent meaning
(although some examples are sampled from a
captioned version of the live stream, with the
subtitles preserved by the fans). Secondly,
animated gifs are limited by the technological
apparatus used to create and display them.
Some graphics programs have a limit on the
number of frames that can be included, and
even where this limit does not exist, the size of
a file intended for online delivery via blog
posts creates a functional limit for the number
of frames that can be included for a reasonable download rate. Furthermore, it is extremely
rare for browsers to display the frames of an
animated gif at a rate that matches the original
video. The dimensions of an animated gif are
also limited by considerations of file size and
the width of the content pane in the intended
delivery platform. A common result of these
technological characteristics is the creation
and sharing of animated gifs, which tend to be
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
small-sized images with under thirty frames,
which typically play slower than the original
frame rate, on an infinite loop. Furthermore,
fan production on blog sites such as Tumblr
tends to include multiple animated gifs within
one post, arranged in sequence like the
frames of a comic book (see Figure 3).
This fragments the live stream at a
micro level, presenting a series of slow motion
elements that demand close attention and emphasise the visual aesthetic of the scene. Sequences of this form are typically focused on
Hiddleston’s face or body, emphasising visual
pleasure over narrative meaning. Sequences
of a scene where Coriolanus washes his
wounds are particularly common as derivative
works sampled from the live stream of the
broadcast. Interestingly, this comic book aesthetic (frames separated by white space, as
demanded by the technological characteristics
of sequential animated gifs) is sometimes
incorporated into a single image itself (e.g.,
compare hard-on-for-hiddleston, 2014b &
2014c) (see Figure 4).
It is not unusual for fandoms to focus on
gay relationships (‘slash’) in creative production as the treatment of the kiss between
Coriolanus and his enemy Aufidius at the
beginning of the second half of the broadcast
demonstrates. Captioned images and uncaptioned animated gifs of this moment were
widely circulated on various social media platforms. Separated from its narrative context
and used as a stand-alone cultural product,
“The Kiss” (as it quickly became known across
the fandom) was often misunderstood. The
scene in the play showed a wary Coriolanus
slightly disbelieving of events and his
awkwardness provokes humour from the audience. As a separate, fan-produced artifact, the
kiss is generally presented and read in a much
more ‘slashy’ context. Examples show the live
stream cut down to a clip that does not show
Coriolanus’ reaction but includes the audience
laughing (I_am_tony_stark 2014), cropped
and edited to remove part of the body language context, without sound (Queen-and-
Abbott – 12
colfer 2014), and posted with explicit titillated
reaction gifs (Tom-nippleston 2014). New
meanings are derived from these works that
were not present in the scene and a more
overtly slash interpretation is deliberately promoted (even where other posts demonstrate
that the producers are well aware of the original context for the kiss).
Original cultural content inspired by
Coriolanus
Coriolanus also inspires original content, often
emphasising and developing the slash
relationship between Coriolanus and Aufidius
or mixing the fiction of the play with ficitonalised reality. A popular fan fiction site,
http://archiveofourown.org/, shows nearly 400
fanfics about Coriolanus, of which over half
were written or updated since the Donmar
Warehouse production opened in December
2013; Hiddleston’s Coriolanus is also heavily
featured
in
original
art
posted
on
http://www.deviantart.com/, the majority of
which is clearly created from official publicity
photographs from the Donmar production, or
from still images from the NT Live live stream.
Original art posted within the Hiddleston fandom on Tumblr focuses on the slash relationship.
Tumblr and spreadability
A large feature of fan production is the way it
is shared and curated across social media.
Tumblr is home to a particularly active
Hiddleston fandom, amongst a variety of other
media fan communities and their creative
activity. Rather than a blogging platform,
Tumblr focuses on short-form ‘microblogging,’
and as such the technological framework foregrounds sharing (reblogging) and annotation
over long-form original content (cf. Fink &
Miller, 2013). Tumblr mechanisms for approval
and sharing also appear more similar to fanfic
sites such as http://archiveofourown.org/
(featuring Notes; Likes/Kudos; Reblog/Share),
rather than to long-form blogging platforms or
other popular social media. This focus on
sharing and curation is apparent in many of
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
the accounts that explicitly display their fandoms in their usernames and descriptions,
with users acting as collectors and redistributors of fan-produced works, as well as
participating in creative production themselves. Henry Jenkins refers to this type of
content as ‘spreadable.’
“Spreadability” refers to the technical
resources that make it easier to circulate some kinds of content than
others, the economic structures that
support or restrict circulation, the
attributes of a media text that might
appeal to a community’s motivation
for sharing material, and the social
networks that link people through the
exchange of meaningful bytes.”
(Jenkins, 2013, p.4)
The concepts of spreadability and ‘stickiness’
can be usefully applied to fan production of
cultural products derived from unauthorised
sharing of a live theatre broadcast. A theatre
play is ‘sticky’ content in that it, by necessity,
co-locates its audience in one time and place
to consume that content. Whilst NT Live
broadcasts remove the necessity for the audience to be co-located in just one particular
venue, they emulate the scarcity model of
theatre and strongly retain an appointmentbased broadcast distribution method. Fan produced content, on the other hand, is driven by
strong engagement with the media text, widely
distributed within a sense of shared fandom,
and
enhanced
by
the
technological
characteristics of its delivery platform. It is
easily discovered, available for free and ondemand, shared and collected with trivial effort, and evocative of the wider social
structures that make production and sharing
pleasurable. The tension between the authorised ‘sticky’ model of Coriolanus and the
unofficial ‘spreadable’ content is keenly felt in
both the fan activities that wish for further access to high quality cultural products, and NT
Live itself, which resists the free, on-demand
model in favour of an ephemeral, communal
cultural experience.
Abbott – 13
As Jenkins notes (2013, p.27), spreading material literally and figuratively remakes
it, creating new narratives for new purposes,
and this process changes the perceptions of
media consumption and production. As the
above examples demonstrate, fan-produced
works interpret, develop, misrepresent, and
re-create
the
authorised
narrative
of
Coriolanus. However, whilst fan remixing of
cultural content existed long before the digital
age, it is also clear that the very mechanisms
of distribution also contribute to the
reconstruction of narratives, and that this is
not only the domain of fan producers.
Microblogging, animated gifs, and social media apparatus all affect the cultural products
that they deliver, but the reframing of
Coriolanus as a transmedia narrative began
long before its appropriation by fans. NT Live’s
process of conversion of a theatre text into a
hypermedial form, and its delivery within a
highly constructed surrounding context, creates a cultural experience that resists
stickiness and contributes to demand for both
spreadable content and the right to participate
in the production of new narratives. The tensions between these models of distribution go
far beyond issues of economics and piracy,
they are embedded within the media form
itself.
Figures
Figure 1: Simplified structure of NT Live broadcast of Corolanus, 30th January 2014.
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
Fig. 2: series of edited images from Coriolanus (animated versions
available from hiddleslokid, 2014)
Abbott – 15
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
Abbott – 16
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
Abbott – 17
Fig. 3: animated sequence showing fragmenting the live stream at micro-level (live stream by
NT LIVE (2014), image sequence by fromhiddleswithlove (2014))
Fig. 4: single animated gif showing added frames (hard-on-for-hiddleston, 2014c)
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
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INTERACTIVE NARRATIVES
NEW MEDIA &
SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT
October 23‐25, 2014 | University of Toronto |ISBN: 978‐0‐9939520‐0‐5
PROPOSED METHODOLOY FOR TRANSMEDIA NEWS STORY
ANALYSIS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE GREAT BRITISH
FLOAT PROJECT AND THE GREAT BRITISH PROPERTY SCANDAL:
EVERY EMPTY COUNTS (2012) IN THE UK
Geane Alzamora, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil
geanealzamora@gmail.com
Lorena Tárcia, University Center of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil
lorenatarcia2@gmail.com
Suggested citation: Alzamora, Geane and Lorena Tárcia (2014). “Proposed methodology for
transmedia news stories analysis: a comparative study of The Float Project (2009/10), in Brazil
and The Great British Property Scandal: Every Empty Counts (2012).” In Proceedings of the
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement International Conference. Eds. Hudson
Moura, Ricardo Sternberg, Regina Cunha, Cecília Queiroz, and Martin Zeilinger. ISBN: 978-09939520-0-5
This article is released under a Creative Commons license (CC-BY-NC-ND).
Abstract: The study of transmedia in journalism is still evolving. Although news organizations
around the world have been spreading stories through different and complementary platforms
and screens, this does not necessarily constitute use of transmedia concepts. Usually, the same
story is simply distributed across multiple screens. Transmedia news reporting, in our view,
would involve expansion of content and engagement of the audience, instead of repetition and
propagation. This article studies examples of possible applications of the transmedia concept to
news report, by examining The Float Project (Flutuador), in Brazil and comparing it to a potential
model of engagement, The Great British Property Scandal: Every Empty Counts (2012) in the
UK. The theoretical framework is provided by Henry Jenkins (2006), Carlos Scolari (2009),
Kevin Moloney (2011), Renira Gambaratto (2013) Alzamora and Tárcia (2012) and proposes an
evolving analytical model as a methodology for understanding transmedia applied to news features. The study points to major investments in building potential transmedia news reports by
Globo Networks and suggests the necessary involvement of other departments and institutions
to achieve full engagement and social relevance, as occurred in the UK project.
From a monomediatic practice to a plurimediatic perspective
Until the 1980s, all different media were
constituted as independent production units.
Journalists were trained to work in print, television, or radio media. Newsrooms of media
conglomerates such as Globo Networks, for
example, were physically separated, with their
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
own teams, equipment and routines. The reports were produced independently in each
medium, i.e., each one had their agendas,
routines, languages and modes of production
and distribution. The monomediatic practice
was anchored in the transmissive logic that
outlined the mass media at that time. Each
vehicle was seen as a privileged center, which
operated autonomously from the point of view
of production, circulation and storage of information produced on behalf of the media
corporation.
From the 1980s, and more specifically
the mid-1990s, this picture began to change.
New technologies and communication policies
contributed to the foundations of what we now
know as media convergence, which configures other communicational logic. This logic
seeks to integrate the production and circulation of information of media corporations in a
plurimediatic perspective, incorporating them
to a new communication environment that includes new forms of circulation and the social
media universe.
It is not possible to clearly identify who
first connected the word convergence to the
communication technologies (Gordon, 2003),
but the researcher Ithiel de Sola Pool contributed to its popularization by launching, in
1983, the book The Technologies of Freedom,
which describes the convergence of modes.
“Conversation, theatre, news, and text are all
increasingly delivered electronically. […]
These mergers of electronic technology are
bringing all modes of communications into one
grand system” (Pool, 1983, pp. 27-28).
However, even earlier, in 1979, Nicholas
Negroponte of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT), already referred to the
overlapping of circles labeled as "Broadcast
and Film Industry," "Computer Industry" and
"Printing and Publishing Industry," scheduled
to occur in 2000. With his speech, he toured
the United States and raised millions of dollars
in financial support for construction of the MIT
Media Lab in 1985.
Alzamora and Tárcia – 20
The popularization occurred with the
arrival of the World Wide Web in the mid1990s, and became common sense after the
merger of AOL and Time Warner, announced
in 2000 (Gordon, 2003; Fidler, 1997). Finally,
remember Gordon (2003), companies started
to practice the convergence of content between TV and newspaper, which was initially
called the cross-promotion or cross-media.
The beginnings were sheepishly called programming or integration of weather tips from
the TV in the newspapers. In this period, however, the term most commonly used for this
connection
between
companies
was
"synergy."
In 2003, Henry Jenkins launched the
book Convergence Culture in the United
States, in which he connected several parallel
and interconnected phenomena, constituent of
a new economic, industrial, cultural and
behavioural functioning model of society and
media companies, understanding Convergence as
[…] a word that describes technological, industrial, cultural and social
changes in the ways media circulates
within our culture. Some common
ideas referenced by the term include
the flow of content across multiple platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, the search for
new structures of media financing that
fall at the interstices between old and
new media, and the migratory behaviour of media audiences who would go
almost anywhere in search of the kind
of entertainment experiences they
want. […] media convergence refers to
a situation in which multiple media systems coexist and where media content
flows fluidly across them. Convergence
is understood here as an ongoing process or series of intersections between
different media systems, not a fixed
relationship. (Jenkins, 2006, p. 282)
For Bauer (2005), although there is no
consensus on its meaning, convergence re-
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
fers to "a mix of barriers and/or reduction of
differences between firms or industries. This
mix can occur at many levels, from a partial
intersection to the complete elimination of
differences, and consequently the fusion of
formerly separate sectors" (BAUER, 2005, p.
62). This author defends the possibility of a
loose convergence or a deep convergence.
Jambeiro et al (2011) consider that in both
cases, it is a process linked to capitalist practice that turns out to be in many cases “an opportunity to maximize the accumulation of
capital" (p.53).
We believe that market and technologies
are linked, and work in line with the expectation of establishing and attending a dynamic
flow of consumption of cultural products. The
creation of new devices is constant, and the
same works for the search of new business
and monetization models. Nevertheless, the
attempts to capture the scattered attention of
the so-called prosumers are bringing important and effective changes in the media
and journalistic environment that deserve
attention.
In the world of entertainment and
journalism, these changes vary in time and
space. Kolodzy (2006) considers that the concept carries the proposal to join forces for a
better quality journalism, which is not always
consistent with the actions of the companies
when they use the convergence label.
Like Jenkins (2006), Kolodzy points to
reception as a determining factor in the
convergence process. The increasingly frequent habit of consuming several screens
simultaneously, or not, would lead to the
expansion of options for those seeking news.
We must highlight the fact that varied forms of
access to information through multiple media
is not something new. What is presented as
differential is the need for the journalists and
the productive system to seek the best ways
to tell a story considering the characteristics of
each media surpassing what we are calling
monomedia practice.
Alzamora and Tárcia – 21
Convergence, says Kolodzy (2006), requires flexibility and adaptability on the part of
journalists. It also requires thinking like the
audience already thinks, in multiple media and
platforms. It means to understand and experiment with new ways of production, distribution
and circulation of news. Based on the logic of
convergence, the plurimediatic perspective
that we call transmedia journalism emerges.
Transmedia Journalism
There is growing conceptual confusion around
the media and journalistic universes when we
talk about media convergence. Terms like
Multimedia Journalism, Crossmedia, Intermedia, Transmedia are aggregated to form this
semantic galaxy.
Transmedia storytelling is relatively recent and was used by Henry Jenkins (2003),
for the first time in the journal Technology Review in 2003, when he stated that “Each
particular product is an access point to the
franchise as a whole" (p. 135). Access to a
movie and its derivatives should be autonomous, i.e., it is not necessary to consume all
the products like games and comics, to understand the context of the work.
In relation to journalism, the confusion is
even bigger. Domínguez (2012) warns of the
risk of putting new labels on old practices. It is,
according to this author, an elastic term with a
wide variety of theoretical proposals.
Scolari (2013), for example, argues that
all journalism is transmedia. In his words, journalism "was born transmedia." He justifies it
by the fact of an event to be first reported by
radio [and today, internet], then by television,
followed the next day by the newspaper and
weekly magazine. The engagement, he says,
would be in phone calls and in letters sent to
the newsrooms. If all journalism is transmedia,
we must question the necessity and validity of
the adjective. Wouldn’t be enough to talk
about journalism?
In an attempt to organize their use,
Alzamora and Tárcia (2012) depart from
epistemological discussions about the defini-
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
tions
of
discipline,
multidisciplinary,
interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary to rethink the relationship between media, multimedia, intermedia and transmedia universe of
news. Thus, for these authors
The intermediatic prospect [...] must
refer to forms of production and
circulation of information that are
established at the intersection and
complementarity of different media
environments. In this case, there is
no shift or change in the media
framework. That is, the information
content is presented in a complementary way, for example, in the context
of television, radio and newspaper
printed in an integrated process in
which each medium contributes to
their specific production of combined
information. (Alzamora and Tárcia,
2012, p. 31)
In the same perspective, the concept of transmedia presupposes
[...] not just media complementarity,
although this is an important feature
of the process, but mainly displacement of the characteristics traditionally marked by media environments.
Thus they constitute reticular areas of
miscegenation between genres and
formats of digital media connections.
The transmedia journalism constitute
the interstices of the intermedia network, it is not possible to characterize
it as specific to any environment
alone. (Alzamora and Tárcia, 2012, p.
31)
Moloney (2011) emphasizes the application of the Fundamental Principles of Transmedia Narrative named by Jenkins (2009) to
journalism. For this author, the news would
have the characteristic of transmedia expansion, i.e., a story can become viral to be
shared by users or be explored in detail, officially or through social networks. It also allows
for the possibility of the continuity or seriality
to explore the characteristics of each medium
Alzamora and Tárcia – 22
and keep the audience's attention for a longer
period. The diversity of views, represented in
fiction by different characters and other angles
of a history, would be innate to the principles
of journalism and include, increasingly, the
point of view of the public. Immersion in news
would be provided through alternative forms of
narration. Extrability, real world and inspiration
to action are consistent with a public service
journalism, which invests in real actions for
troubleshooting.
Journalist Margaret Looney (2012) proposes five tips for transmedia stories.
1. Keep content unique: rather than repeating
the information on different platforms, use
different parts of a story to match a platform’s
strength and maximize user experience;
2. Provide a seamless point of entry: make
sure whichever platform you’re using gets
readers to interact in a very simple way;
3. Partner up: projects are often complex and
require the involvement of other companies,
producers or professionals;
4. Keep it cost-effective: there are expensive
projects, but it is possible to make transmedia
cheaply, for example by introducing social media to extend the story;
5. The story is no. 1: many creative tools may
do more harm than help. Always put the story
first.
Thus, we agree with Porto and Flores
(2012), for whom "the essence of transmedia
storytelling is in the field of longer news features, thus to its wealth of content and narrative construction, as well as the time of
production of this genre, which allows a better
textual architecture" (p.12).
These guiding principles of transmedia
journalism evoke the perspective of media
convergence. From these assumptions, we
will seek to analyse the series of articles
called Float Project, produced by Globo
Television Network in 2009/2010 and The
Great British Property Scandal project: Every
Empty Counts (2012) by Channel 4.
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
Proposed methodology for transmedia
news stories analysis
As previously proposed, our goal in this article
is to outline an analytical model to be applied
to potential transmedia news features, seeking
to methodologically contribute to the understanding of the concept of transmedia applied
to journalism. We present an initial model.
Other issues and layers of understanding can
and should be included in this proposal,
adapting it where necessary, as proposed by
Gambarato (2013).
We depart from previous contributions
made by Moloney (2011), Jenkins (2009),
Looney (2012) and Scolari (2012), plus the
proposed structures analysis transmedia proposed by Gambarato (2013).
In her paper, Gambarato (2013) aims to
outline ”essential features of the design process behind transmedia projects in order to
support the analytic needs of transmedia
designers and the applied research in the
interest of the media industry, considering
analysis as a crucial aspect of the design process” (p.89). This is made by posing a series
of questions divided into ten topics. We make
an adaptation of this methodology to analyse
our two cases.
1.Premises and purposes
a. What is the project about? What is the central theme?
b. What is the main journalistic genre? What is
the editorship?
c. What is the principal media? Print, radio,
television, web ?
d. What is the ultimate goal of the project? To
inform, engage, entertain, educate?
2. Audiences
a. What are the audiences for the story? Who
are the viewers / users / readers?
b. What kind of story attracts this public?
c. What are the screens and devices used by
the target audience?
d. What draws the audience to the project?
Alzamora and Tárcia – 23
e. Are there other similar projects? What results were obtained by them?
3. Sustainability and Marketing
a. What is the business model? (open platforms, freemium, premium mix?)
b. Who are the sponsors? What is the budget?
c. Does project have a brand? Is it commercially exploited?
4. Media platforms and languages
a. What languages are involved? (Audio,
video, text, photography, computer graphics,
newsgame, website, application)
b. What technological devices are needed for
the project? (TV, radio, consoles, tablet,
smartphone, newspaper, book, website)
c. How does each device contribute to the project? What is its function?
d. What distinguishes each platform?
e. What are their limitations?
f. Are all platforms needed?
5. Sources and characters
a. Who are the primary and secondary
sources? What are the approaches used with
these sources?
b. Does the story have characters? How
many? Are all present in the main story? Are
they added later?
c. What other points of view can be aggregated to reach new audiences that otherwise
would not be achieved?
6. Extensions and developments
a. Does the story continue? In the same media?
b. How is public curiosity activated to desire
more detailed information?
c. What kind of additional content can be
generated?
d. Does the story extend into further actions?
e. As the story expands through the media,
how does it maintain its continuity?
f. How to keep the audience's attention for a
longer period?
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
7. Engagement
a. What makes the story to spread virally?
b. How does it motivate users to share the
news features on their networks, reaching bigger audience?
c. What can be gained by engaging the audience into the journalistic production process?
d. Does it generate alternative forms of
storytelling? Which ones?
f. What are the mechanisms of interaction?
g. Does the process include conversation with
the audience? Are users answered?
h. Does the project seek engagement of other
institutions?
i. Is there any form of immersion in the project? Are commercial products and actions
connected to it?
j. Can viewers/users/readers incorporate elements of the news features in their lives?
k. Is there an ultimate goal for the project?
How to measure it?
l. Is there the use of social networks? Is there
a strategy for it?
m. Is the remix by the audience officially
incorporated into the project?
n. Is there a reward system for participation?
The Float Project
In 2009, Globo television channel, based in
the city of São Paulo, Brazil, launched a series
of news features entitled The Rivers of São
Paulo to study the general conditions of the
rivers and their environment. Soon the Tietê
River became central theme due to its bad
conditions and importance. The editor had the
idea to throw into the river one PET bottle with
a GPS inside, allowing the audience to see on
a map where the bottle would be retained. The
feasibility of this experiment was dropped after
the first test. The Department of Journalism
and the team from the Research and Development Engineering Department at Globo TV
then teamed up to improve the original idea.
They decided to build The Float device from
scratch.
Alzamora and Tárcia – 24
The equipment was developed in
partnership with the Institute for Technological
Research of São Paulo. The process of development involved operating systems and naval
robotics components capable of ensuring
security during filming and to send remote
data collected from the river. They also decided to send with the device a “guardian” to
take care of the equipment and to monitor
daily rates of oxygen in the water. The chosen
professional was Dan Robson, a well-known
adventurer who accompanied The Float for
500 km using a kayak (see Figure 1).
In 2010, the Float Project was turned
into a franchise, deployed in São Paulo, Rio
de Janeiro and Brasilia, three major Brazilian
cities. The project received an award by the
International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) in
the special award category, as recognition of
its social relevance and technological innovation.
1. Premises and purposes
The project dealt with the investigation of rivers in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia.
The central theme was the pollution of rivers.
The journalistic genre was the news feature
and the editorship was City/Environment. Although the TV was the main media, internet,
radio and the newspaper of Globo network
also reported about the project, albeit in a disjointed manner and without prior planning. The
purpose of the TV station, with the series of
reports, was to inform, educate and engage
people in the recovery of rivers.
2. Audiences
In São Paulo, the focus of our analysis, audience of the local channel SPTV is formed
mostly by people aged 18-49 years (46%),
followed by 36 % of people over 50 years. The
program has been losing audience in recent
years. The newscast ended 2012 with an
average of 23.3 points (each point equals
60,000 households in Greater São Paulo). On
the web, most of the public is also aged between 18 and 49 years of age (76%). The
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
Float Project added readers from newspapers
and radio.
However, it is necessary to consider the
lack of a measurement to so-called social TV
and the impact of the project on the various
media involved. The traditional way of
measuring audience by points cannot cover
the entire spectrum of a transmedia story. For
this reason, we cannot estimate the total audience reached by The Float Project.
3. Sustainability and Marketing
The expedition lasted 32 days. It was released
on 1 September 2009 and crossed more than
30
cities.
More
than
one
hundred
professionals were involved, including safety
technicians, film reporters, rescue teams, helicopters and engineers. The initial budget was
25,000 dollars, but the final cost was about
125,000. Altogether, 150 news features were
produced during two months of the project in
São Paulo waters. The whole project was
open to viewers for free on commercial television. In terms of marketing, Globo Television
turned it into a franchise and the eco-athlete
Dan Robson even launched his own glass
brand based on his visibility during the project.
4. Media platforms and languages
The news features about the float widely used
videos, photos, infographics and web sites.
There were no applications or newsgames
related to it, in spite of the great potential. It is
necessary to consider that in 2009 there were
not as many applications widely used in Brazil
as there are today. To learn about the project,
possible technological devices were broadcast
TV, radio, tablets, computers, newspapers,
and smartphones and yet there has not been
a distinct language for mobile media. In
production, however, the GPS was highlighted
because it allowed the real-time geolocation
float all the way. It was not possible to see a
clear transmedia strategy from the initial planning, but the transmediality occurred naturally
with the use of Twitter mainly by reporters and
staff involved. On Twitter, the hashtag used
was #flutuador.
Alzamora and Tárcia – 25
5. Sources and characters
There were multiple primary and secondary
sources, since the number of news features
was very large. Engineers, sanitarians, politicians, environmentalists, population living by
the river and students were among the
sources. External characters were also aggregated, like the paddlers who joined Dan
Robson during the journey and people waiting
along the river to see the float. As a curiosity
about the expansion of the project in Brasilia,
Globo has promoted shows with singers and a
special appearance of Globo reporters in the
closure of the project in 2012.
6. Extensions and developments
The project had broad ramifications and
eventually became a sort of franchise. It has
already been implemented in Rio de Janeiro,
Distrito Federal and returned to São Paulo for
another edition. However, the station in the
new editions, did not change the hedging
strategies. Instead, they increasingly restricted
the news features to TV and website. An interesting strategy to turn the public's curiosity
and get them to delve into the information
were the lectures held in schools by Dan
Robson and reporters. However, as stated
earlier in this article, other additional content
could have been generated with the use of
social media, mobile applications and newsgames.
7. Engagement
There was no viral dissemination of The Float
Project, although several news features can
be found on the internet in blogs and other
online sites even in the traditional competing
media such as the newspaper Folha de S.
Paulo. People posted photos on social networks, but the range of spontaneous release
did not reach significant levels and was not
encouraged by Globo. Maybe if Globo had
invested in this aspect, the results had appeared. The station staff, however, was limited
to interview the people who waited for the float
by the river in several cities.
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
The engagement with students who visited the reporters during their work in the river
and the visits to schools were an important
way of involving the audience.
However, it was possible to find negative
reactions on the social network Orkut, the
most accessed by Brazilians at the time. This
was a result of the overexposure and excessive stories on the same theme, about 150 in
2009.
On YouTube, a conducive environment
for posting videos and comments, the bulk of
publications were made by Dan Robson. The
news feature published had an average of a
thousand views and rare comments. However,
it is necessary to consider the restrictive copyright policy by Globo Network, which determines the exclusion of their videos from that
channel when posted by the audience.
The project generated practical actions
such as the removal of carcasses of cars that
were floating in the river and which were
discovered during the expedition. Furthermore, Globo won the international International Broadcasting Convention Award in
recognition of social relevance and technological innovation of the Project.
The Great British Property Scandal: Every
Empty Counts
In 2011, Channel 4, in the United Kingdom,
launched a series of special programs to
investigate the British housing crisis and discuss alternative solutions, encouraging audience participation via mobile application. The
goal was to engage people to report empty
properties they knew of, and lobby government and local councils to have a low-cost
loan fund for the owners of empty homes who
were struggling to refurbish their properties.
The response to the campaign by the
TV station was staggering:
• 100,000 petition signatures within a week
of launching The Great British Property
Scandal campaign
• Over 118,200 supporters in total
Alzamora and Tárcia – 26
• Over 7,900 empty homes reported - many
of which have been brought back into use
• £17 million allocated for new national lowcost loan funds
• George Clarke, who had the original idea
and hosted the show, was appointed
Independent Empty Homes Advisor to the
Government
More information about the whole project can be found in their website. What we
want to point out in this article is the capacity
of Channel 4 to engage the audience in its
project using the Internet and mobile phones.
This is something that Globo Television was
not able to do, keeping its project restricted to
a transmissive perspective.
Final considerations
We are still far from a definitive conceptualization of Transmedia Storytelling and even more
distant from its setting and significance in the
journalistic universe. In Brazil, we live through
a dramatic period of layoffs in newsrooms,
which will affect further trials and innovations
in this field. A transmedia story does not need
to answer all the questions suggested in this
methodological outline. Those are merely suggestive paths. Not all projects involving multiple platforms will have the backing of big
companies like Globo Television and Channel
4. What counts is the determination to try new
ways of telling stories and, above all, engaging audiences. It is not about financial support,
but the freedom to create and experience.
Eleven years after Jenkins (2003) forged
the concept, academics and the market have
embraced it and turned it into a buzzword.
Projects multiply and show new creative
possibilities for journalistic production, as
exemplified by Localore, Economics Personified, and History's Next Draft. Those are important examples for further analysis and to
continue expanding and testing this proposed
methodology for analysis of transmedia news
features.
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
Alzamora and Tárcia – 27
Figures
Figure 1: The Float device and its guardian Dan Robson. Source: Globo TV
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Belo Horizonte.
INTERACTIVE NARRATIVES
NEW MEDIA &
SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT
October 23‐25, 2014 | University of Toronto |ISBN: 978‐0‐9939520‐0‐5
BLUE PENCIL: EXPERIENCES IN TRANSMEDIA
Rafael Antunes, Universidade Lusófona, Lisbon, Portugal
rafacine7@gmail.com
Suggested citation: Antunes, Rafael (2014). “Blue pencil: Experiences in Transmedia.” In
Proceedings of the Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement International
Conference. Eds. Hudson Moura, Ricardo Sternberg, Regina Cunha, Cecília Queiroz, and
Martin Zeilinger. ISBN: 978-0-9939520-0-5
This article is released under a Creative Commons license (CC-BY-NC-ND).
Abstract: This article aims at analyzing and discussing the proposed objectives and outcomes of
a transmedia project that was run in partnership with CICANT/Universidade Lusófona, in Lisbon,
Portugal, and the Portuguese media group Impresa, as part of an European Commissionfunded project named CIAKL – Cinema and Industry Alliance for Knowledge and Learning. The
Blue Pencil project had as its main objective the development of a transmedia narrative that
grouped different platforms and technologies, which included intersections inside the narrative
within the genres of entertainment and education. Taking as its central theme the censorship in
Portugal during the Estado Novo, the narrative extends into a short fiction film, a documentary, a
site with archive material, an online game that challenges writing on freedom of the press, an
online store, and a school program, in partnership with the network of school libraries, to launch
the debate of censorship in schools.
Introduction
Technological developments brought about
several transformations in the ways we communicate and tell stories. In this context, challenges to the production of narratives vary,
one of them being how can we fulfill audiences expectations in an ever more screenfragmented environment.
We tell stories across multiple media because no single media satisfies our
curiosity or our lifestyle.
We are surrounded by an unprecedented ocean of content, products and
leisure opportunities. The people to
whom we wish to tell our stories have
the technology to navigate the ocean
and can choose to sail on by or stop and
listen. Technology and free markets
have allowed unprecedented levels of
customization,
personalization
and
responsiveness such that a policy of
“one size fits all” is no longer expected
or acceptable. Telling stories across
multiple media – transmedia storytelling
– allows content that’s right-sized, righttimed and right-placed to form a larger,
more profitable, cohesive and rewarding
experience. (Pratten, 2011)
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
In this context, it puts up the challenge
for the production of narratives that could
meet the expectations and lifestyle of the audience, and asks how well are media corporations prepared to respond to sophistication of
narratives and changes of the behaviours of
the audience. What new kinds of narratives
are emerging to meet the expectations and
lifestyles of the audience?
The transmedia approach is such a
powerful storytelling technique because
it enables the user to became involve in
the material in a extremely deep way
and sometimes in a manner that eerily
simulates a real - life experience ...By
spanning a number of media, a project
can became far richer, more detail, and
multifaceted. (Miller 2008)
The Blue Pencil project took place between October 2011 and December 2012. The
project aimed to develop not just a transmedia
strategy, but also a historical approach to censorship in Portugal and aesthetic, artistic and
commercial concepts. For the development of
the Blue Pencil project, a study was made for
a transmedia narrative that had censorship as
the central theme. The premise was to create
an object of entertainment with educational
crossings to make a historical contextualization of censorship during the Estado Novo in
Portugal. We don’t want to leave this work on
a theoretical analysis of the possibilities of
transmedia narratives, but to implement a project that would meet the initial premise, for
which a protocol between the Universidade
Lusófona and Impresa group was established
for the concretization of the project. The proposal develops a transmedia narrative that
adds different platforms and technologies that
have narrative and dramatic crossings.
Transmedia storytelling represents a
process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across
multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and
coordinated entertainment experience.
Ideally, each medium makes it own
Antunes – 29
unique contribution to the unfolding of
the story. (Jenkins 2007)
From a central core consisting of a short
fiction film based on real facts, the narrative
spans to a documentary with personalities that
were pursued by censorship, and to a website
with archive material, a selection of books with
the respective censorship and connection to
the Universidade Lusófona online store, and
an online game that challenges the writing on
sensitive issues related to censorship. The
process of creating and producing the project
began with the planning and organization of
information to build a coherent universe that
creates streams of consumption across the
various platforms of the project. The
screenplay of the film and the documentary
were worked to create classical narratives, but
at the same time they contained elements that
made narrative bridges with other platforms.
Based on the book O Que a Censura Cortou,
by José Pedro Castanheira, edited by
Expresso, we worked on the screenplay of the
film and the documentary in a way that retained a connection between them. The objective was to create two scripts, in which censorship that was included in a fiction film was related to the documentary through the stories
of the interveners. This process proved to be
very productive in introducing new fictional
elements as they related to the script of the
documentary, and vice versa, making the
narratives stronger and more coherent. The
necessity of having scripted narratives that
contribute to the whole while being more than
the sum of their parts opened doors for the
audience to get involved in the project. Another of the requirements was to create separate narratives that could be consumed
individually without affecting the consistency
and integrity of the narrative. The website was
another of the platforms used to provide a
context through documents and biographies,
to complete the information conveyed in the
movies. The material that could not be included in the movies even though it was related to the events narrated in the film and
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
documentary went onto the website, to allow
the audience to find out more information
about the events. The site also has links to the
online store, where all the books discussed in
the film, together with censorship of them, are
available. With the aim of developing convergence between media and in order to propose
a business model that creates synergies between businesses by attracting new investors
and financiers for the project to enable the
participation of the audience in the text, we
developed a game that allowed the audience
to write text on the topic of media and censorship, trying to overcome an algorithm that censors certain keywords. The game provides the
player the perception and requirement to write
in a censorship regime. To attract participation
in the game, we developed a contest where
the best texts were selected and published in
an eBook. This also resulted in a project with
the school library network that took the theme
of censorship to schools, encouraging students to reflect on censorship. The project
reached more than 600 schools and has received 104 works about censorship from
various schools. In a transmedia project, the
narratives are autonomous, but refer to the
same universe, all narrative and dramatic
bridges need to be considered before execution of the project, so that it maintains its
coherence and can create flows between platforms. Table 1 presents some of the narratives bridges designed to make the connection
between platforms.
•
Display of teasers to promote television project (SIC , SIC Noticias).
•
Launch of the Facebook page. During
execution, photographic material was
collected from the various phases of
the project for this purpose.
•
Launch of the site.
•
Release of books in the Online Store of
Universidade Lusófona.
•
Launch of José Pedro Castanheira’s
text Confidential Mario Bento in the
digital version of Express magazine.
•
Launch of the game and contest.
•
Presentation of the project group
Impresa and Universidade Lusósfona
for the school libraries.
•
Releaseof the fiction movie on television (SIC).
•
Launch of puzzles on the Facebook
page.
•
Screening of the documentary on a cable channel (SIC Noticias).
•
Debate on freedom of the press (Turin
theatre).
•
Best submitted articles published in
Express magazine.
•
Launch of Kobo eBook
•
Project entered into festival circuit.
•
Theatre opening.
•
DVD,
Express,
Online
Universdade Lusófona;
Implementation
The project is based on an exhibition agreement between the Universidade Lusófona and
the Impresa group. In transmedia storytelling,
planning release dates is essential to the
coherence of the project, and necessary to get
the audience to follow the narrative through
the various platforms. Each platform has its
own release, with narrative hooks and links to
lead consumers to the next contents on the
same platform or on alternative platforms.
Antunes – 30
Store
Objectives of the project
•
Stimulate a consumer base that
follows the narrative through the various platforms.
•
Reach a committed, active, and participatory audience.
•
Encourage participation and content
creation.
•
Reach a wider audience that
disseminated by various platforms.
•
Prolong the life of the content.
is
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
•
Increase the audience on platforms
that have been losing competitiveness.
•
Distribution of effort and cost for
several platforms.
•
Finding new financing and business
models.
•
Create an experience that can be rewarding for advertisers, partners,
producers and consumers.
Conclusion
Among the key concepts for the realization of
the Blue Pencil were the convergences that
the project had established, serving as a working model and study for future projects of this
nature. The project made synergies between
companies, where economic convergence
was established, benefiting both the project
design phase as well as the promotion and
display.
Transmedia storytelling reflects the
economics of media consolidation or
what industry observers call “synergy.”
Modern media companies are horizontally integrated – that is, they hold interests across a range of what were once
distinct media industries. A media conglomerate has an incentive to spread its
brand or expand its franchises across as
many different media platforms as possible. (Jenkins 2007)
The project emphasized the synergy
achieved with the Impresa Group for consulting the files of Expresso magazine, which
served as the foundations for both narrative
fiction and documentary to, providing documents that have been integrated in all extensions of the project. The project was designed
to be viewed on multiple platforms, leaving the
university with their implementation for various
platforms and Impresa with the display and
promotion. Collaboration with ZON was also
essential, through initiatives for the promotion
and development of new multimedia content,
helping with funding and providing a theatre
for the premiere of the project on April 23rd.
Antunes – 31
The premiere was thought to be not only an
event to present the project, but at the same
time to mark the April 25th revolution of the
carnations. The event achieved all the
project’s goals, having been attended by 350
people, and having been reported on in various organs of national press. As established
during the planning of the project, it was
launched across multiple channels, with teasers that promoted all extensions of the Blue
Pencil (film, documentary, website and game)
universe with presented on various platforms.
The project has grown organically, to be
distributed across multiple platforms, where
each narrative was autonomous while contributing to the same universe. The film was
exhibited on the open channel SIC on April
24th, making a bridge for the documentary,
which aired on April 25th in SIC Notícias. For
analysis of hearings, annexed, we note that
the movie displayed in SIC achieved a 15.9
share, surpassing the share of RTP with 3.7,
behind TVI with a 21.2 share, demonstrating
that a product of fiction can compete with reality shows and talk shows that were displayed
at the same time. More significant was the result achieved by SIC Noticias, with the screening of the documentary, which managed 1.2
percentage points more than usual for the
same time display. These results prove the
convergence between the two platforms, with
and increasing audience reached by the
migration of the public, who followed the
narrative to another platform. There was also
a significant increase in participation in the
game on the website, proving further convergence results. The project will also fulfil your
educational goal, with a debate organized following the screening, featuring Professor José
Bragança de Miranda and Dr. José Pacheco
Pereira on censorship and its mechanisms in
Turin theatre. The school project with SIC
Esperança, for presentation of the documentary in various schools, aimed to introduce the
theme of freedom of press, and reached 600
schools, drawing 104 participations of the
schools. The Blue Pencil project demon-
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
strated, through its practical results, that transmedia narratives in different technologies and
platforms do not compete with each other, and
that all media are present and well established
in society. Technologies and traditional platforms can coexist with new platforms. In these
narratives, the relationship between platforms
and technologies is intensified through adding
and creating a more rewarding experience for
consumers. The Blue Pencil project is an academic, non-commercial purpose, but aimed to
show that we can find new ways of funding
and business models with content available on
greater number of platforms and with longer
exposure to advertisers, attracting new audiences for platforms that have been losing
competitiveness. The Blue Pencil project also
succeeded in proving the importance of
collaboration between businesses and the
University, through the agreement signed between the University and the Impresa group.
Antunes – 32
The University can develop proposals for contents that are then tested in various media,
contributing to the study and research of new
content that may offer solutions for media
companies. The power of transmedia storytelling lies in its cohesion, and integration
between various platforms. The characters
portrayed, as well as parts of their history, reemerge on multiple platforms. On each platform, the narrative benefits from what the platform does best in terms of expression and
communication. Thus, the transmedia narrative is focused on linking complementary elements, each of which is conveyed by the complementary platform that best enhances their
expressive features, opening pathways to a
shared universe.
Tables
Letter with a
questionnaire
for
the
Express
newspaper
about
May
28, 1926
Film
Documentary
Site
Re-enactement
of the seizure
of the letter by
Colonel
Saraiva.
Mário Soares and
Francisco
Balsemão speak
about the episode
of the letter that
was lost for 39
years
The letter of Mário
Soares and the
reply of Balsemão
Francisco,
39
years after, can be
consulted
Can be consulted
the news that
came out in the
newspapers
in
1926 with the
implementation of
the new regime
and censorship
Censorship
of the raid
the house of
José
Pacheco
Re-enactement
censorship
news of the
raid
on
Expresso
José
Pacheco
Pereira
talks
about the episode
of the raid on his
home by PIDE
Online Store
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
Antunes – 33
Pereira
Books
"Madam Me"
and
"New
Portuguese
Letters"
Colonel Barros
Lopes
finds
that his wife
read forbidden
books in his
absence.
Maria
Teresa
Horta
speaks
about the process
of
seizure
of
books
Considerations of Livro “Novas
the Censors about Cartas
the books can be Portuguesas”
consulted
Punishment
proof of page
of
the
newspaper
Expresso
Re-enactement
of
the
telephone
conversation
between
Marcelo
Rebelo
de
Sousa and the
director of the
previous
examination,
Mario
Bento,
imposing
the
punishment
Marcelo Rebelo
de
Sousa
describes
the
episode
that
made the regime
punish
the
newspaper
Expresso
“Confidências de Book
"New
Mário
Bento” Portuguese
Interview of Mário Letters”
Bento to José
Pedro
Castanheira from
Expresso
Table.1. Narrative bridges between platforms
SIC - Lápis Azul (Filme)
Média
Audiência
Total
Total TV
RTP 1
RTP 2
5 Para a Meia-Noite
24-Abr-13
3,1
24:51 - 25:32
304,500
Fonte: GfK
6,6
19,8
1915,900
5,3
SHARE
SIC
TVI
Subscrição TV
Outros
ChampionsLeague:Resumo(fim24:53) Holly(9,8)Fox(3,6)SICNot(3,3)
3,7
15,9
21,2
40,4
13,5
BBVip-Extra(25:03) SICMul(3,3)FoxCrime(2,2)
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
Antunes – 34
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
Antunes – 35
SIC Notícias - Universo - Audipanel
Descrição
Lápis Azul
(Documentário)
(5ª Feira)
Lápis Azul
(Documentário)
(R)
(6ª Feira)
Data
Hora
Início
Hora Fim
Share
(%)
Aud.Média
(%)
Aud.Média
(000
telespect.)
Aud.Total
(000
telespect.)
25-Abr-13
20:00:00
20:56:48
0,6
0,3
30,1
144,8
Média PH DU (01 a 23 Abr-13)
0,5
0,2
24,1
148,7
Diferenças Média Programa para PH
0,1
0,1
6
-3,9
3,6
0,2
16
39,8
Média PH DU (01 a 23 Abr-13)
2,4
0,1
11,7
31,6
Diferenças Média Programa para PH
1,2
0,1
4,3
8,2
26-Abr-13
3:00:03
3:56:52
Fonte:'GfK
Additional Tables. Audiometric data acquired from GFK on the dates of the Blue Pencil project
screening on the TV channels SIC and SIC Notícias
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
References
Jenkins, Henry.
http://henryjenkins.org/2007/03/transmedia_stor
ytelling_101.html. March 22, 2007.
http://henryjenkins.org.
Miller, Carolyn Handler. Digital Storytelling: A
creator's guide to interactive entertainment.
2008.
Pratten, Robert. Getting started in a transmedia
storytelling. 2011.
Antunes – 36
INTERACTIVE NARRATIVES
NEW MEDIA &
SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT
October 23‐25, 2014 | University of Toronto |ISBN: 978‐0‐9939520‐0‐5
SHAPING AND SHARING IMAGINATION: DESIGNERS AND THE
TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF STORIES
Mariana Ciancia, Francesca Piredda, and Simona Venditti
Design Department, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
mariana.ciancia@polimi.it, francesca.piredda@polimi.it,
simona.venditti@polimi.it
Suggested citation: Ciancia, Mariana, Piredda, Francesca, and Simona Venditti (2014).
“Shaping and Sharing Imagination: Designers and the Transformative Power of Stories.” In
Proceedings of the Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement International
Conference. Eds. Hudson Moura, Ricardo Sternberg, Regina Cunha, Cecília Queiroz, and
Martin Zeilinger. ISBN: 978-0-9939520-0-5
This article is released under a Creative Commons license (CC-BY-NC-ND).
Abstract: Changes in business and social environments have led society towards a complex
landscape in which the relationship between mainstream media and participatory culture is completely changed, with a consequential blurring of boundaries between public and virtual space.
As audience media habits are changing, a digital vision of reality is rising and engagement
practices are evolving. As a consequence, there is the need for a new design methodology
based on different skills working together. It is then necessary to adopt a disruptive approach to
overcome the contemporary complexity, assuming storytelling activities, narrative practice and
relationships among people as driving force for innovation.
The paper describes the cases of Imagine Milan (2009-2012) and Plug Social TV (2013ongoing), in which we tested listening and expressive tools, and communication strategies in
order to activate a dialogue among communities. On the one hand, there is the aim of
experiencing audiovisual languages through different narrative formats. On the other hand, we
explored the use of stories in a collaborative process, spreading the narrative worlds across
different channels.
The aim of this paper is to describe our design approach, merging together tools and skills
from different areas: communication design strategies as participative methods are linked to codesign actions; branding strategies, coming from the advertising field, as tools for identity
development; audiovisual language considered as a cultural interface for listening to reality;
transmedia practice as cultural paradigm able to involve audience into meaning-making processes; ultimately, social media advocacy is used to build relationships between virtual and real
communities.
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
Introduction
The contemporary mediascape (Appadurai,
1990) is witnessing the emergence of
phenomena that foster the sharing of
meaning-making processes between producers and audiences, shaping society and influencing media habits. Due to the evolution of
social
interconnections
through
digital
technologies, with a consequential blurring of
boundaries between public and virtual space,
it is necessary to encourage processes of mutual
understanding
among
widespread
communities of interest and practice, in order
“to spark the imagination of many” (Reboot
Stories, 2014).
Nowadays communicative environments
surround us and we can experience the breakage of the “fourth wall,” the metaphorical barrier between audience and the action that
unfolds on stage (or on screen), keeping reality separate from the fictional world. This dramatic convention is allowing the viewers to
enjoy those narrative universes even though
they don’t correspond to reality’s logic
(suspension of disbelief). A disruption of the
fourth wall, used to allow the audience to develop metafiction reflections in the theatrical
and cinematographic fields, has become one
of the key features of multichannel phenomena: crossmedia and transmedia systems
break the fourth wall in order to make the
audience entering the stage and take an
active role in the story.
Therefore, we have been witnessing a
paradigm shift toward a networked culture
(Jenkins, Ford & Green, 2013) in which media
and languages that have broken their historical isolation, allow a more dynamic use of
stories.
This context is making audiences more
and more knowledgeable as well as eager for
information, which is spread across several
devices and channels. Thanks also to technological innovation, which has become an important feature for how we envisage our
future, people are putting together different
Ciancia et al – 38
messages, which stem from everyday life, in
order to shape the collective imagination.
In this scenario, people are dealing with
an interconnected social sphere in which they
are “no longer dependent upon the particular
forms of dialogue to which we have grown accustomed and new forms will have to be
developed” (Burnett, 2011). More than ever,
the audience now has become aware of its
key role in the contemporary mediascape both
as consumer and producer. Paul Saffo (2010,
pp. 25-26) refers to members of the audience
as creators, “[...] ordinary, anonymous
individuals with a new role in this economy.
[...] an economic actor who in one and the
same act both creates and consumes.” As a
development in the communication field, the
conveying of stories across multiple media
and the spreading of engagement practices
are leading to a scenario in which “consumption becomes production; reading becomes
writing; spectator culture becomes participatory culture” (Jenkins, 2006a, p. 60).
These groups of people not only make
use of static content, but also take possession
and transform information through the negotiation of meanings. The main consequence of
this is the spread of new content and the
activation of new knowledge: “Content does
not remain in fixed borders but rather it circulates in unpredicted and often unpredictable
directions, not the product of top–down design
but rather of a multitude of local decisions
made by autonomous agents negotiating their
way through diverse cultural spaces” (Jenkins,
Li, Krauskopf & Green, 2008, p. 42).
Within the design community (both researchers and practitioners) the topic of storytelling in the realm of social innovation
represents a hot debate: the DESIS
Philosophy
Talks
(www.desisphilosophytalks.org), an initiative aimed at enhancing the dialogue between practice and
theory, between design and philosophy, is
dedicating a series of seminars to this topic
and a publication collecting those reflections is
forthcoming. The main questions raised are
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
about making the best use of storytelling
within the context of design for social innovation: can storytelling lead to the construction of
a higher quality public domain? How can we
exclude a manipulative character in the way
we make use of storytelling? How can we, as
designers, tell the stories from the margins of
the mainstream of society and help its
potentialities to be fully expressed? Now more
than ever, we believe that communication designers have a key role in leading the linking
of actions and relationships, able to support
the audiences in the creation of new content
and knowledge and in the construction of
meanings through the practice of storytelling.
The transformative power of stories
Since the dawn of mankind, stories allowed
people to build and share the meaning of their
common experiences, to communicate and to
structure the surrounding reality. Nowadays,
the way the audience can tell stories is changing thanks to developments in technology and
media, so the transformative power of stories
in shaping and sharing the imagination of
many can be as powerful as possible.
Evolution and remediation (Bolter &
Grusin, 1999) are creating new possibilities in
media consumption, allowing the audience to
experience new forms of storytelling and languages, modifying the relationship between
mainstream media (top-down) and participatory culture (bottom-up or grassroots). The
main consequence is the spread of
communication environments characterized by
story worlds in which the collaboration of
producers and audience is leading to a “social
construction of reality” (Berger & Luckman,
1966). In this reality, the circulation of stories
and narratives through several channels and
devices is engaging more people than ever,
affecting audience’s identity, aesthetic and
behaviour (Ryan & Thon, 2014). In accordance with Ahmad & Thompson (2009, p. 1) we
think of “storytelling as a means to sharing
knowledge, building trust, and cultivating iden-
Ciancia et al – 39
tity”: we believe in stories as agency for
change.
According to Davenport (2005, p. 2),
“Storytelling relies on the combined
human
strengths
of
memory,
imagination, and communication. The
forms and methodologies of storytelling allow us to sift through and make
sense of happenings in our own lives
and in the lives of others. Whether
drawn from representations of reality
or shaped as fantasy worlds, stories
tap into and represent the collective
psyche of our culture. For the human
being, story-making and storylistening are both a pleasure and a
privilege”.
Designers have a double role: as
storylisteners they collect potential stories
from testimonials and repertoires, as
storytellers they organize information into an
experience by providing a point of view. Each
designer, of course, has his particular background, works in a particular context and
brings his particular culture. He should look at
stories that are on the margins of the mainstream, bringing them to take part to the social
discourse. Design is an intrinsically futureoriented practice (Koskinen, Zimmerman,
Binder, Redström, Wensveen, 2011) as it has
the role to move from the existing situation to
a preferred one (Simon, 1969). Thanks to digital technologies that have enabled new ways
of communicating and building relationships
among people, memories and willingness, design could claim the role of a “futural
epistemology” (Willis, 2013) based on innovative dynamics of storytelling: real time versus
past time versus future foresight. Stories
through time have always unlocked the potential to create communities of shared interests,
to aggregate common beliefs, to explore contexts and places. Stories have allowed us to
travel both back in time and in the future. By
creating a story with all its components
(actors, context, plot, script, etc.), we can envision how the things are or the way things
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
could be, and allow others to take part in our
own vision.
Designers take charge of the role of
configuring forecast making them actually
arguable and ready to be put in practice. To
prefigure brand new facts, making them visible
and highly imaginative at the same time,
means to translate them into project proposals. To shape possible worlds is essential
in order to manifest them and trigger imagination: it is a process of continuous interaction
between images and their manifold interpretations that starts off a dialogue among
stakeholders within the collaboration process.
Only imagination can activate new knowledge.
On one hand, then, imagery as a catalogue
and as a cultural and trans-cultural archive of
themes, figures and common habits, feeds
scenarios and future insights; on the other
hand, scenarios regenerate imagery, orient
the design culture and configure its dynamic
character and its transformative power
(Piredda, 2008).
As tools that designers have to collaborate with communities and among peers to
establish pathways of change, stories set a
common ground for discussion, engage and
move people. They allow people to make
tangible the way they experience the world.
The more designers represent ideas and proposals as rough and kaleidoscopic, the more
they invite people to use their own imagination
in order to position themselves and to plot
their own way to action.
We have put into effect the idea of storytelling as a social experience (Bernardo,
2014), since 2009, involving young designers
(students) of the School of Design (Politecnico
di Milano) and citizens of Milan city area. Below we are presenting the cases of Imagine
Milan (2009-2012) and Plug Social TV (2013ongoing). The main idea is on the one hand to
experiment the power of audiovisual storytelling (languages, genres and formats) as tools
for shaping imagination; on the other hand, to
dive into the potentialities of transmedia systems, investigating the use of stories in a
Ciancia et al – 40
collaborative process, spreading the narrative
worlds across different channels and sharing
imagination. We have been designing “experiences that are socially inclusive and which
have the power to bring people together
through common interests and goals”
(Bernardo, 2014, pp. 116-117).
Shaping imagination: Imagine Milan
youtube.com/user/imagislab,
facebook.com/imagislabpolimi
;
Imagine Milan is an educational and research project started in 2009, which involves
professors, researchers and students of the
School of Design of Politecnico di Milano. The
aim of this research is to experience audiovisual formats to promote dialogue and social
innovation, focusing on the potentialities of
audiovisual storytelling and its tools.
The experience so far conducted was located in different areas of the city of Milan,
having ten groups of young designers exploring one neighbourhood each, meeting people
and places. Over the years we have been
dealing with different topics (from sustainable
mobility to social issues) and areas obtaining
a kaleidoscopic portrait of the city as it is and
envisioning how it could be if some good practices would become leaders of a sustainable
transformation. Imagine Milan represents an
experiment
of
the
contribution
that
communication design can give to the dialogue about possible worlds and sustainable
innovation. In particular, audiovisual formats
are proving to be complex artifacts both as
expressive languages and, from the production processes point of view, as products,
which can trigger networks of expertise and
knowledge towards representation and mediation.
The first phase – Listening – has the aim
of exploring the urban area. Young designers
collected and documented case studies and
best practices through video interviews with
citizens, city users, associations, craftsmen
and companies; through editing historical and
contemporary iconographic repertoires, useful
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
Ciancia et al – 41
to reconstruct the memory and social imagery
of the place. Output of this phase is the
miniDOC: a brief audiovisual format (five
minutes) able to tell the most important aspects emerging from the previous research
and analysis work.
We should, then, go beyond the use of
video as a mirror of the community itself that
provides testimonials: we should translate its
imagery into a powerful and effective narrative
world that comes from the local but claims to
fit into a mainstream (White, 2003).
The second phase – Envisioning – provides an epistemological and aesthetic
contribution to envisioning a sustainable
future. Output is the Scenario that visualizes
and enacts abstract concepts for activating
negotiation tables and conversations among
stakeholders. In fact, researchers, young
designers and stakeholders were involved in
public presentations and workshops at the
Urban Center in Milan for discussing topics
and pathways of collaboration towards possible solutions.
Sharing imagination: Plug Social TV
The third phase – Promoting – promotes
a sustainable city life, its values and benefits
through a typical advertising output: an
audiovisual
short
format
–
advertising/commercials – (thirty seconds). The promos were distributed on urban screens (outdoor, on metro and buses), on line (YouTube),
podcasting and broadcasting on local television channels.
The communicative effectiveness of the
videos, designed and produced for Imagine
Milan, works on the synergy among different
formats and genres, each of them is consistent with specific strategic goals.
By acquiring and recombining this catalogue of images, values and lifestyles, design
is able to define expectations and needs and
to orient the individual choices. Audiovisual
genres, as realistic and fantastic registers of
representation, refer to the “archaic universe
of doubles” (Morin, 1982): they contribute to
an accurate portrait of reality or to a fictional
construction of the world, according to an
epistemological model of sense making, which
has its own technical, aesthetic and linguistic
tools for translating and making knowledge
explicit.
www.facebook.com/plugsocialtv
The project Plug Social TV started with
the purpose of integrating audiovisual tools,
practices and artifacts in a participatory
communication system, using new media and
narratives as parts of a transmedia strategy
for identity building and community engagement, considering stories as the driving force
to support and amplify active communities'
initiatives.
Plug Social TV is the result of a
participatory design process in which citizens
and students worked collaboratively to tell
different stories of the same neighbourhood,
located in a suburban area of the city of Milan.
We considered the urban context as a
general topic, focusing on people's needs, in
order to build more liveable neighbourhoods.
The project's participants were students of the
School of Design of Politecnico di Milano and
groups of people of a local community, as well
as citizens’ associations and other local actors, which were involved in participatory
activities and workshops. Considering the
whole process, we worked with about fifty students and thirty members of the local community.
Nine teams of students and citizens
worked on the definition of different story universes (plots, characters, locations, actions).
These were conceived during a first phase of
exploration of the local context and analysis of
its inhabitants' perception; then, the narrative
universes were further developed in workshops and collaborative in field activities, set
up by the students themselves, and amplified
by the transmedial world (contests, games,
events, exhibitions, etc.). Each story universe
was then re-elaborated and rearranged in
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
order to create episodes for a web series,
which represents the centre of the expanded
experience.
Using a transmedia system, we were
able to integrate audiovisual storytelling with
user engagement through Social Networks,
including partnerships with local actors and
retailers, in order to create a story world,
which is both product and creator of community identity.
In this context, Social Media have ‘the
potential to transform the methods of dialoguing, decision-making, information sharing, and
relationship building in the community building
[process]’ (Lachapelle, 2011, p. 2). This
potentiality is bound to the effective participation of citizens in the discussion: ‘social media
platforms enable organizations to connect with
people, share intimate stories, create
conversations [...] and build ever-expanding
communities of people who share common
interests’ (Geneske, 2014). Therefore, the
more people are effectively joined by common
interests, the more they are actively participating in the discussion: we are dealing with a
reiterative process in which technology does
not create participation but it is able to support
and amplify what is already present.
As final artifacts of the design process,
web series have their own plot, characters and
genre (noir, reality, mystery, talk shows – we
can consider them as formats), but they are all
connected to the local identity: there are formats which have real people as main
characters and tell stories that are directly
connected to their personal experiences; other
formats are more fictional and it is necessary
to have a deeper knowledge of the historical
background of the local context, in order to get
the connection between fiction and reality.
The nine web series are collected on
Plug Social TV, a web TV based on digital
channel and social media, which uses Facebook as the main platform for sharing and
spreading audiovisual contents and that
constitutes a place of dialogue and interaction
Ciancia et al – 42
between students, citizens and the community
itself.
The use of social media, specifically
Facebook as the main channel, gives users
the possibility to interact not only with textbased information, but also with visual information, audio and video content (Zaglia,
2013).
Through this kind of interaction we are
able to get qualitative information about the
engagement, along with quantitative data
coming from the insights: in their comments,
users highlight the most meaningful matters,
giving feedbacks about the social experience
of seeing themselves as the main characters
of a common story and sharing it with their
personal audiences on social media.
Through the use of narratives it is possible to highlight issues and opportunities of a
community which recognizes itself in the story
universe: students and citizens are both
characters and producers, storylisteners and
storytellers, who work collaboratively to turn
into fiction their own personal experiences.
Social dialogue among different actors it is
then activated by self--recognition processes
in which the audience become the character
of a story which contributes to build a mythology of everyday life: a narrative world that reifies the values of the community and
simultaneously sets them as universal.
A summary and a proposal
We are activating projects at a hyperlocal level
and we are collaborating with local communities, with the aim of exploring the potentialities
of transmedia systems beyond entertainment
industry and mainstream productions. This
makes us able to speak directly to local stakeholders and evaluate the impact of transmedia
practices in the medium-and-long term. What
kind of impact do these practices have from a
social point of view? Does engagement bring
changes in community’s perceptions and
behaviours? Which stories and story-worlds
work better to mirror local identity? How can
stories lead to changes and transformations?
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
How do narratives interact with everyday life
of individuals and communities?
Narrative practices, as collaborative
actions between designers and communities,
are based on the act of listening. Referring to
Imagine Milan project, the audiovisual artifacts
for the Listening phase represent the very
basic and fundamental act that designers
practice in order to collect stories, expectations and wishes from the community as tiny
tales from everyday life. They are capable of
stimulating social conversation and horizontal
feedback loops within the community itself: a
self-reflective discourse that is based on visual
translation and envisioning.
The Imagine Milan project has started a
process of exploration of tools and audiovisual
expressive forms, able to integrate the cultural
humus and the personal experiences into
interpretation paths that are addressing restricted and close communities of users:
“Even the most robust visual language is useless without the ability to engage it in a living
context” (Lupton & Cole Phillips, 2008, p. 10).
Hence, communication design can provide an
epistemological and aesthetic contribution to
envision our future. We are seeking semifinished artifacts and systemic formats for
translating complex insights and tales, towards an “audiovisual design thinking.”
In the case of Plug Social TV, web
series, as audiovisual products, are addressing the neighbourhood and city institutions as
focus targets, but processes and practices
that generated those stories can be considered as the most meaningful aspects for people outside the community.
As a cultural activator (Jenkins, 2006b),
Plug Social TV is able to set up the conditions
for people engagement in meaningful experiences; as a transmedia system, we can consider this project as a format made of practices and partnerships whose scalability at a
higher level can put together social and economic values.
Ciancia et al – 43
So, on the one hand, the use of local resources as partnerships, product placement,
sponsorships, service providing, stakeholders’
engagement,
crowdfunding
and
crowdsourcing initiatives, can be considered
as a model for managing activities and
producing contents. In fact, putting the project
into practice requires a large productive effort
that is possible to face thanks to the collaboration between design students and citizens. On
the other hand, this collaboration could lead to
a low quality aesthetical standard of the final
result: it is then necessary to support the
audiovisual product with the documentation of
the process, which can communicate and
value the social context in which the project
takes place. This documentation is intended
as a meta-tale, a story within a story, which is
itself part of the transmedia system.
Furthermore, we should analyse the
points of view through which the narrative
world is developed, and the perspectives
through which people experience this world
(Rampazzo Gambarato, 2012, p. 75). The way
the community understands its role in the
narrative world differs from the strategic positioning: how do people relate to that world and
its representation? Which fictional and social
role do people interpret?
The main consequence is that there are
no single disciplines able to comprehend the
complex nature of societies (Burnett, 2011):
the contemporary mediascape needs new
approaches capable of facing changes in
media habits.
More than ever, the shift toward the
multichannel paradigm is establishing itself in
the intersection between digital technologies
and new production and distribution processes. In this scenario, the concept of
engagement has become the battlefield between mainstream media and participatory
culture. Therefore, it is possible to recognize
two opposing forces: the corporations that
imagine participation as something they can
control, and the audience that claim the right
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
to participate in the meaning-making processes of culture (Jenkins, 2006b, p. 169).
The contemporary society finds itself at
a very important turning point. On one hand
there are tools, digital technologies and networks that broaden audience participation; on
the other hand, media companies restrain this
widespread creativity because they don't know
how to engage with this new type of audience
(Jenkins, 2006b, p. 138).
Both the Imagine Milan and the Plug
Social TV projects are facing the developments related to audience, technologies and
engagement processes within a complex social sphere where “[...] the social and cultural
conditions for the creation and communication
of ideas, artifacts, knowledge and information
have been transformed” (Burnett, 2011). For
this reason, we adopt a disruptive approach,
assuming storytelling activities, narrative practices and audience engagement as key elements, fudging the boundaries of four different
fields: Branding and Communication Strategies, Audiovisual Storytelling, Transmedia
Practice and Social Media Advocacy.
Both the research experiences were
characterized by the use of Brand and
Communication Strategies, coming from the
advertising field, as tools for identity development. We take professional roles, skills,
responsibilities and tools from marketing and
advertising domains and we use them to
analyse the social environment with an actionresearch approach. We develop in field activities and ask the students to work in teams
made of five key roles. The Project manager is
in charge of the management of the design
process, and project leader has a general
strategic overview of the entire project,
according to the concept of director-designer
(Anceschi, 2001; Bollini, 2004). The Creative
director and content strategist represent the
contemporary creative duo in which the first is
leader of the visual design, and the second is
a new kind of copywriter able to shape and
deliver content through a multichannel
environment. The movie specialist uses audio-
Ciancia et al – 44
visual language to create compelling stories
and develops empathic relations with the audience.
Audiovisual language is considered as
a cultural interface (Manovich, 2001) for listening to reality. Thanks to the Imagine Milan research project, we explored the use of formats
and media and we identified three audiovisual
outputs that allow designers to observe and to
listen to their surrounding reality, to envision
new possible futures, and to promote stories,
by engaging with the audience in all the different steps of the design process.
Due to the rising number of multi-modal
devices and the high number of messages
conveyed across media channels, people are
facing a lack of mutual understanding. This is
why we understand that putting an audiovisual
artifact online is not enough, and it is necessary to find forms of communication able to
catch the attention of the audience by directly
engage with people. We identified Transmedia Practice (Dena, 2009) as a possible
approach able to support the construction of a
human landscape, allowing audiences to access content in a different way, and leading
meaning-making
towards
becoming
a
collaborative
and
participatory
process
(Bakioğlu 2009, p. 319). Within Plug Social TV
experience, transmedia practice is used to
construct narrative worlds, spread through
different media channels (analogical and/or
digital), and to encourage citizens to take
action and develop activities for their community (Jenkins et al., 2013) in. In synthesis,
working within the realm of transmedia allows
us to concentrate on the three key features
that structure this phenomenon: storytelling,
new media structures and audience (social)
engagement. In the end, Social Media
Advocacy is able to build relationships between virtual and real communities: we set up
a system made of different web channels and
social media in order to reinforce the online
community, giving people of the neighbourhood a digital place where they can have
discussions and give feedback.
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
This complex system of communication
artifacts, tools and practices is based on
stories and venues, exactly the humancentred activities in which design can make a
decisive difference, bridging the past and the
future, triggering imagination, envisioning and
re-framing values. In other words, designers
apply for playing the role of directors of
participation.
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INTERACTIVE NARRATIVES
NEW MEDIA &
SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT
October 23‐25, 2014 | University of Toronto |ISBN: 978‐0‐9939520‐0‐5
FROM GHOSTS OF THE HORSESHOE TO WARD ONE: CRITICAL
INTERACTIVES FOR INVITING SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT WITH
INSTANCES OF HISTORICAL ERASURE (COLUMBIA, SOUTH
CAROLINA)
Heidi Rae Cooley, School of Visual Arts and Design, University of South Carolina
cooleyh@mailbox.sc.edu
Duncan Buell, Computer Science and Engineering, University of South Carolina
duncan.buell@gmail.com
Richard Walker, Computer Science and Engineering, University of South Carolina
Suggested citation: Cooley, H. R., Buell D., and R. Walker (2014). “From Ghosts of the
Horseshoe to Ward One: Critical Interactives for Inviting Social Engagement with Instances of
Historical Erasure (Columbia, South Carolina).” In Proceedings of the Interactive Narratives,
New Media & Social Engagement International Conference. Eds. Hudson Moura, Ricardo
Sternberg, Regina Cunha, Cecília Queiroz, and Martin Zeilinger. ISBN: 978-0-9939520-0-5
This article is released under a Creative Commons license (CC-BY-NC-ND).
A plaque stands at the front gates of the
University of South Carolina’s historic Horseshoe in Columbia, South Carolina. It has enjoyed that location since being placed there by
the Columbia Sesquicentennial Commission of
1938. The plaque reads:
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA
CHARTERED 1801 AS THE S. C. COLLEGE.
OPENED JANUARY 10, 1805. ENTIRE STUDENT BODY VOLUNTEERED FOR
CONFEDERATE SERVICE 1881. SOLDIERS’
HOSPITAL 1862-65. CHARTERED AS U. OF
S. C. 1865. RADICAL CONTROL 1873-77.
CLOSED 1877-80. COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE AND MECHANIC ARTS 1880-82. S. C.
COLLEGE 1882-87. U. OF S. C. 1887-90. S.
C. COLLEGE 1890-1905. U. OF S. C. 1906.
FAITHFUL INDEX TO THE AMBITIONS AND
FORTUNES OF THE STATE.
Commemorating the “ambitions and
fortunes of the state [of South Carolina],” the
plaque serves as a reminder of the legacy of
the collegiate institution and its connections to
a larger history of nation and Southern values.
Reading closely, one might notice the institution’s not surprising antebellum political leanings: “Entire student body volunteered for
confederate service 1881.” Likewise, one
might consider the changes in the institution’s
name: South Carolina College, University of
South Carolina, College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, with an eventual return to
University of South Carolina. But what one
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
might gloss over – perhaps because of its
ambiguity – is the mention of “Radical control
1873-77,” and the immediately following statement, “Closed 1877-80.” To what does “radical
control” refer? Who or what would have been
considered “radical” – under what circumstances? And why the subsequent closure of
the university?
Of course, one might draw the conclusion
that there is a causal relation between the two
events: that which was “radical” led to, or even
necessitated that the university close for three
years. And one might even pause to consider
possible reasons for such events. But arriving
at any conclusion or simply positing hypotheses requires that one take the time to read the
plaque’s text, and most visitors to campus do
not take the time to do so. In fact, students
and faculty – for the most part – have no
knowledge of the plaque’s contents and
meaning; they may not even “see” it. Consequently, they neither formulate hypotheses nor
draw conclusions. The challenge for those
who would present the entire history of the
university becomes this: how to draw attention
to the ghosts whose reference lurks in the text
of the sesquicentennial plaque? How best to
make visible the unacknowledged history of
enslaved labor that made possible the site
now known as the historic Horseshoe? What
other instances of historic erasure give
foundation to the university landscape?
Ghosts of the Horseshoe and Ward One
are critical interactive applications that offer
two distinct yet complementary examples for
how questions such as the ones just posed
might be addressed on site and in real time. In
what follows, we offer an account of each
application and its context. Subsequently, we
provide a theoretically informed discussion of
how these projects elicit “empathic awareness” and, by extension, inspire a sense of
responsibility for a past that remains
unacknowledged – one that has ensured the
existence and expansion of the physical campus of the University of South Carolina–
Columbia.
Cooley et al – 48
Historic Erasure I: Slavery and the Historic
Horseshoe
Ghosts of the Horseshoe (Ghosts) is a mobile
interactive application that endeavors to bring
into view on mobile networked touchscreens
(iPad in the first versions) the largely unknown
history of slavery that made materially possible the physical site that is the “heart” of the
University of South Carolina: the historic
Horseshoe. Ghosts deploys game mechanics
(i.e., ludic methods), as well as Augmented
Reality and GPS functionality, in order to
generate awareness of and questioning about
what otherwise seems ordinary: a grassy
space at the center of a university campus.
Ghosts organizes content into three distinct
but overlapping themes: (1) architectural
ghosts (e.g., razed outbuildings); (2) human
ghosts (e.g., un/named enslaved persons);
and (3) the historic wall that delimits the
Horseshoe grounds. Content pertaining to
these three threads is called-up according to
four
time
periods:
1801-1820
(early
institution); 1821-1840 (institutional growth
and the building of the wall); 1841-1860 (late
antebellum institution); and 1861-1880 (the
institution during the Civil War and through the
Reconstruction period).
Ghosts’ root screen interface is an 1884
Sanborn Fire Insurance map of the South
Carolina College campus. A compass rose
appears atop this map and indicates in real
time the geo-locative position of the participant
(or “interactant” hereafter). As the interactant
traverses the Horseshoe grounds, previously
faint fingerprint icons populating the map interface grow increasingly more visible, indicating
that the interactant is near a content point.
Content points open onto audio, textual, and
visual information pertinent to a particular
building or, in the case of the historic wall, an
architecturally significant feature. In some instances, interactants listen to, for example, the
voice of “Henry” (a real figure, whose history is
partly known) as he details his existence as a
slave at South Carolina College – his purchase, his escape, his capture, and his subse-
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
quent sale. In other instances, interactants
confront digitized historical documents indicating the cost of “hiring” an enslaved person,
whose identity might be indicated by a name
(e.g., “Anna”) or by category (e.g., “washerwoman,” “boy”). And in other instances, an
historic photograph of an outbuilding (i.e.,
slave quarters) appears in the landscape
where it would have existed (had it not been
torn down) overtop the device’s real time camera view. (Of course, it is worth noting that the
sibling outbuilding still stands –unidentified –
at the left flank of what is now the President’s
House.)
Should an interactant venture beyond
the Horseshoe campus proper, she will
encounter opportunities to learn about historic
preservation. The wall (ca. 1835-36) that encloses the historic Horseshoe is suffering from
general deterioration and weathering, disrepair, and defacement. University Archivist
Elizabeth West and University Architect Derek
Gruner together have secured funds to preserve the historic wall – which was originally
built to confine students to the campus
grounds. Ghosts features a Citizen Archeology function that allows interactants to document instances of deterioration, damage, etc.,
in order to support the preservation efforts of
West and Gruner. As an interactant moves
along the Horseshoe perimeter, she is invited
to focus more concertedly on minute details of
the wall’s structural status: crumbling mortar,
splintering bricks, poor repointing, invasive
foliage, eye-screws, etc. In keeping with the
Ghosts logic, fingerprint icons direct interactants to points of concern. Now such icons,
when activated, inform the interactant of kinds
of deterioration. Moreover, she is invited to
take photos of instances of deterioration, etc.,
and contribute those images to a backend
database that will parse all incoming images
for easy assessment by West and Gruner.
Ghosts of the Horseshoe endeavors to
encourage a shift in attitude with respect to
the historic Horseshoe, its relation to the
University of South Carolina, and the institu-
Cooley et al – 49
tional and socio-cultural politics that are
responsible for what exists as a surprisingly
intact “landscape of slavery.” We acknowledge
that its approach is subtle; we avoid direct
accusation. That is, Ghosts is not interested in
leveraging claims against the past or the current institution that enjoys what the past has
made possible. Instead, it uses juxtaposition
to underscore convenient omissions or
revisionist interpretations of a history that remains unfamiliar, unacknowledged. For example, as one nears the sesquicentennial plaque
(discussed above), Ghosts signals that new
content is available via the Augmented Reality
functionality.
When
one
raises
the
touchscreen device and focuses the camera
on the physical plaque, an overlay appears
onscreen and supplants the plaque in real
time. Now the interactant reads:
UNIVERSITY
OF
SOUTH
CAROLINA
CHARTERED 1801 AS THE S. C. COLLEGE.
ENSLAVED LABOR RESPONSIBLE FOR
CONSTRUCTION ON AND MAINTENANCE
OF CAMPUS 1801-1965. OPENED JANUARY 10, 1805. FIRST MAJORITY AFRICANAMERICAN PUBLIC COLLEGE 1873-77.
CLOSED 1877-80.
COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE AND MECHANIC ARTS 1880-82. S. C. COLLEGE
1882-87. U. OF S. C. 1887-90. S. C. COLLEGE 1890-1905. U. OF S. C. 1906.
FAITHFUL INDEX TO THE AMBITIONS
AND FORTUNES OF THE STATE.
Now modified, the text states: “Enslaved
labor,” “First majority African-American public
college,” and “Closed.” The enumeration of
historical occurrences works suggestively. The
site being commemorated is the result of enslaved labor; it became the first majority African-American public college in the US during
Reconstruction; it was closed and reopened
as a completely different institution, and remained resegregated until 1963. There is no
mention of the institution’s confederate affiliations or that it reopened in 1880 as an all
white agricultural college. While these exclusions might very well be interpreted as in-
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
stances of counter-erasure, they serve to emphasize the ways in which race and racial politics are fundamental – indeed, foundational –
to USC’s identity as a public institution.
Historic Erasure 2: Urban Renewal and
Ward One
The University of South Carolina did not
reintegrate until 1963. The university’s website
describes this moment of political significance
in the following way: “On Sept. 11, 1963
Henrie D. Monteith, Robert Anderson and
James Solomon became the first AfricanAmerican students to enroll at the university in
the 20th century; in 1965, Monteith became
the first African-American graduate, earning a
B.S.
in
biochemistry”
A
(http://www.sc.edu/about/our_history/).
single compound sentence celebrates the fact
of integration and the successful completion of
a degree by an African American student: a
tidy but perfunctory account that glosses over
an eighty-six year history of prohibited access
based on race. And perhaps not drawing
attention to this history of exclusion seems
somehow reasonable. But the very same
years of segregation saw African Americans
employed by the university. They maintained
the facilities and grounds; they worked as
custodial staff, emptying trash and sweeping
floors; they prepared and served meals to students and faculty. And a majority of these employees lived in neighborhoods around the
campus. Collectively, these neighborhoods
comprised a voting district known as Ward
One.
Ward One emerged in the late nineteenth century. Situated between the boundaries of present-day Pickens, Huger, Heyward,
and Gervais streets, about one square mile in
area, Ward One grew into a bustling, predominantly African American business and residential area. By the early twentieth century, Ward
One residents had developed their own culture and built their own institutions. Having
faced the daunting challenges of racial
segregation, two world wars, and the Great
Cooley et al – 50
Depression,
the
downtown
community
boasted churches, schools, businesses, and
civic organizations. African American residents owned property and held prominent
positions in the community. But established
Ward One families began to relocate to more
upscale areas of town and the state – even
the country; they sold their homes. Incoming
inhabitants could not afford to own, so they
rented. New property owners – in most cases,
well-established white citizens – proved
disinclined to maintain their rentals. And in the
late 1950s, The Columbia Housing Authority,
under the direction of housing commissioner
Joseph E. Winter, officially designated Ward
One to be a “blighted” area.
Ward One is not the only community to
suffer the consequences of policies that resulted in the eviction and displacement of
African American families. Across the United
States mid-century (ca. late 1940s-1970s),
cities pursued projects of urban renewal and
revitalization. These initiatives functioned to
identify areas of impoverishment for subsequent demolition and rebuilding. In Columbia,
SC, this meant a drastic overhaul of the area
around USC: alleys and streets disappeared;
homes were bulldozed; churches – like Union
Baptist and Jones Memorial – relocated
across town; and schools and businesses
closed down. In the wake of demolition, USC
expanded its campus, purchasing the newly
available land – a practice that has analogs
nationwide, including, for example, Indiana
University – Purdue University, Indianapolis;
University of Chicago; University of Michigan –
East Lansing; Stanford; and University of
North Carolina – Chapel Hill. Where once
homes, a baseball field, businesses, schools,
and churches stood, one now sees USC’s
Koger Center, Strom Thurmond Fitness and
Wellness Center, and Greek Village. And
while plaques mark where, for example, the
Celia Dial Saxon School used to stand, few
passersby pause long enough to read about
the historical relevance of the sites so-marked.
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
In response to such glaring omissions of
history, we are developing a mobile application and a complementary interactive website
that invite participants to consider both the local and national policies and politics that
fueled urban renewal in Columbia, SC and
elsewhere in the country. Called Ward One,
the project focuses on how matters of race
have functioned to reconfigure the institutional
landscape of USC (from its inception as South
Carolina College in 1801). Moreover, the project suggests how other similar landscapes in
the US likewise “benefited” from federally
sanctioned redevelopment – or revitalization –
efforts that displaced black communities. By
raising questions about how local, state, and
federal efforts succeeded in eradicating
“blighted” areas, the project makes visible an
oft-ignored history that is national in scope.
Using
the
affordances
of
both
touchscreen and desktop interfaces, Ward
One mobilizes local news footage, photographs, and other archival materials that serve
as evidence of the historic place and its
demolition, as well as the site’s initial
appropriation by the City of Columbia and the
Columbia Housing Authority and its subsequent acquisition and transformation by the
University of South Carolina. It features Ward
One community representatives, who offer
narratives of forced relocation and efforts to
protest such acts of “progress.” These reflections and memories of those who refuse to
forget offer a counter-narrative of cultural renewal. In this way, Ward One endeavors to
harness the spirit of the Ward One community,
which lives on in the stories shared by and
ongoing efforts of people who remember a
time when they called Ward One home. At the
same time, it places these local stories in the
larger context of mid-twentieth century “reconstruction” that was enabled by discourses of
“poverty” and “slum life” and the “bourgeois
imagination” (Mullins and Jones, 2011, p. 34)
that rationalized such discourses and the legal
instrument of eminent domain by which private
property was appropriated.
Cooley et al – 51
The Ward One mobile application, in its
first instantiation, features the historic
Palmetto Compress building, an early 20th
century (ca. 1917) cotton warehouse that recently escaped plans for demolition that will be
renovated and will house a museum that the
Ward One Organization will curate. The corners of Blossom and Huger, where the warehouse sits, serves as the point of departure for
the app, which will follow an initial set of
individual itineraries (e.g., as determined by
Ms. Mattie Anderson-Roberson and Deacon
Arthur F. Jones, former residents who are active in the Ward One community organization).
Incorporating audio-visual media, the app will
follow these former Ward One inhabitants as
they traverse the former Ward One terrain.
Interactants will see where once stood Ms.
Mattie Anderson-Roberson’s childhood home
stood; she will follow Deacon Jones through
alleys where he played chess. The interactive
website frames these local stories in the context of national urban renewal and tenement
reform initiatives.
Toward Empathic Awareness, Critical
Interaction, and Social Engagement
The state of South Carolina boasts a population of 4,625,364, approximately 28% of which
is African American (2010). By contrast, the
state’s flagship research university has a student body of only 11% African American/Black
(http://www.forbes.com/colleges/university-ofsouth-carolina-columbia/). Neither Ghosts nor
Ward One will change these statistics in any
direct or immediate way. But in tandem, that
is, as a suite of interactive applications, they
might very well inspire in others an “empathic
awareness” of how race matters to a “sense”
of responsibility for a past whose politics still
bears on the present.
We cannot change the past. And, with
tensions still high, because race is still the primary divisive issue, at least in the South if not
the entire United States, reconciliation and
understanding are unlikely to result from
“preaching.” We argue that the most produc-
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
tive means to secure social engagement can
be by means that are subtle and evocative.
Ghosts and Ward One attempt to show that
“bodies are not merely texts or performances
but flesh and bone, histories and entanglements, suffering and illness, capabilities and
desires, life and death – in short, bodies are
material and not just materialized” (Casper
and Moore, 2009, p. 16).
The records that survive of the enslaved
persons who made the bricks and built the
buildings and Wall of the USC Horseshoe are
predominantly records of labor, contracted for
and treated entirely as a commodity. We have
attempted with Ghosts to engage the interactant with the reality that these enslaved persons were persons, to make her aware that
the buildings and Wall are perhaps all that remains of their lives and work, and that the we
should be reminded of the (almost) intentional
erasure in the record of their presence on
campus.
Moving from Ghosts to Ward One, we
find ourselves not with a paucity of information
about the individuals who will populate the
interactive narrative but with a surplus. Our
task here is to re-create in the new medium
the stories and the sense of community that is
still felt by the former residents. The task is
made harder by the need to select a small
number of narratives to be presented from the
very large number that could be presented.
On the other hand, the task is made easier by
the fact that former residents are involved in
the development of Ward One. Their stories
can be told in the first person. Their sense of
community can be felt in the give and take of
their discussions among each other. The official historical record is one of urban renewal to
eliminate blight, with the university as the
benefactor expanding (for the most part, only
recently) into the land area made available by
the displacement of that community. The community itself is still present, more than forty
years later. Ward One endeavors to elicit an
empathic awareness in its interactants in order
to cultivate reconciliation along and across the
Cooley et al – 52
color line and, by extension, across campuscommunity divides. It endeavors to make all of
us aware of the human cost of decisions –
federal and local – whose result seems only to
be modern buildings.
Finally, we acknowledge the role played
here by the new medium, by the mobile platform that permits both Ghosts and Ward One
to present the history to the interactants.
These are interactive presentations of history,
with all the emotive power of imagery, audio,
and the sense of being present on the location
where the history took place. In this regard,
we endeavor, as Monica J. Casper and Lisa
Jean Moore assert, to “reveal, resituate, and
recuperate” those people whose stories, indeed whose bodies, in the instance of the historic Horseshoe, have fallen victim to historical
erasure (Casper and Moore, 2009, p. 15). It is
worth reminding ourselves that race and
reconciliation are – 150 years after the end of
the Civil War, 60 years after Brown v. Board of
Education, and 50 years after the Civil Rights
Bill – still enormously troubling issues for the
United States. It is time to acknowledge that
“The act … of focusing on [those whose
voices have been muted] in a critical way … is
an ethical responsibility” (Casper and Moore,
2009, p. 15).
References
Buell, D. A., and H. R. Cooley. (2012). Critical
Interactives: Improving public understanding of
public policy, Bulletin of Science, Technology,
and Society, 32, 486-493.
Casper, Monica J., and Lisa Jean Moore. (2009).
Missing Bodies: The Politics of Visibility. New
York and London: NYU Press.
Cooley, H. R., and D. A. Buell. (2014). Ghosts of
the Horseshoe, a Mobile Application: Fostering
a New Habit of Thinking about the History of
University of South Carolina's Historic
Horseshoe. Annual Review of Cultural Heritage
Informatics, 1, 193-212.
Mullins, P. R. and L. C. Jones. (2011).
Archaeologies of Race and Urban Poverty: The
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
Politics of Slumming, Engagement, and the
Color Line, Historical Archaeology 45.1, 33-50.
Weyeneth, R., et al. (2012). Slavery at South
Carolina College, 1801-1865: The Foundations
of the University of South Carolina. URL:
http://library.sc.edu/digital/slaveryscc/
[September 15, 2014].
Cooley et al – 53
INTERACTIVE NARRATIVES
NEW MEDIA &
SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT
October 23‐25, 2014 | University of Toronto |ISBN: 978‐0‐9939520‐0‐5
STREAMS OF THE SELF: THE INSTAGRAM FEED AS NARRATIVE
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Kris Fallon, UC Davis
kfallon@ucdavis.edu
Suggested citation: Fallon, Kris (2014). “Streams of the Self: The Instagram Feed as Narrative
Autobiography.” In Proceedings of the Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement
International Conference. Eds. Hudson Moura, Ricardo Sternberg, Regina Cunha, Cecília
Queiroz, and Martin Zeilinger. ISBN: 978-0-9939520-0-5
This article is released under a Creative Commons license (CC-BY-NC-ND).
Abstract: This article offers a working draft of a larger qualitative analysis of the popular
smartphone application Instagram. It offers a reading of the ubiquitous contemporary form of
self-portraiture, the selfie, locating its origin in the longer evolution of digital photography into a
form of social media. Though its function as a basic self-portrait and signifier for our various social profiles appears straightforward, it has somehow become the ‘face’ of online sociality and
subjectivity, a portrait of the promise and peril of our online existence. And yet, a closer look at
the various feeds and streams in which the selfie appears reveals that it is one genre amongst
many, no more or less common than a variety of landscapes, still-lifes, and other modes of
photographic observation. Taken together, these various views of the world reveal an emplaced
mode of image-driven autobiography, one far more complex and nuanced than a straightforward
meme would appear to be.
“With smartphone in hand, we can now share with others how our narcissism looks to us. The
selfie chronicles a counter-Copernican revolution…everything once again revolves around us.”
(Guengerich, 2014)
Of the myriad of cultural objects generated by
the rise of ubiquitous digital media, few are
perhaps more loathed than the selfie. The
simple act of taking one’s own picture and distributing it via social media to varying spheres
of the public is apparently symptomatic of any
number of social and individual ills. It has
been deemed the paragon of social narcissism, an emblem so to speak of our wider social tendency to get lost in ourselves. It is also
a symptom of mental illness and risk for sui-
cide, an overwhelming indication of a lack of a
sense of self (Wollaston, 2013). Generationally, they seem to be the cultural mark of the
so-called me-generation (or more accurately,
the ME-ME-ME generation), the crop of digital
native millenials who grew up overly supported by protective parents, coddled and with
plenty of self-esteem (Perman, 2013). Even
the act of taking the selfie, posing with one’s
arm stretched in front of oneself, has become
an object of scorn. The comedian Jena
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
Kingsley ironically voiced this revulsion by
creating a ‘no-selfie-zone’ in Central Park and
handing out fake tickets to hapless violators
as park ranger (Thomas, 2014).
On the one hand, the anger and
condemnation generated by the selfie is perhaps understandable, if not entirely justified.
As a sub-cultural trend that has reached the
mainstream, selfies provide a convenient
scapegoat for a conservative free-floating social scorn that identifies various signifiers as
indications of a wider cultural decline. They
are an easy answer to the perennial rhetorical
question “You know what’s wrong with the
world today?” Their strong connection with
mobile technology and social networking further implicates them in wider concerns about
the fetishization of gadgets and the ill-effects
of living through one’s screen. The selfie is a
poster child for the sort of insularity that
Sherry Turkle describes in Alone Together
(Turkle, 2012).
On the other hand, however, the
connection between the selfie and the level of
self-centeredness that a diagnosis of narcissism would imply is paradoxical. The impulse
to share the selfie with the world is a gesture
of broadcasting the self for the world to see,
not a closing off of the self. Indeed, it invites a
level of inter-action between participants, the
audience and the subject, that we might classify as a form of interactive media. Moreover,
isolating the selfie ignores the broader spectrum of images that we capture in and alongside of them, and indeed the narrative threads
that emerge within and between images as
they form a larger stream or feed. And finally,
as image capture becomes a common cultural
practice it alters the relationship between the
self and the world, inviting one to view the
world, if not photographically, then at least as
it might be photographed. These interactions
with the world and others seem to obviate the
apparent self-centeredness and narcissism
that at first glance motivates the gesture of
staring at one’s image in a screen and recording that image for the world to see. Far from
Fallon – 55
appearing frozen or captivated by one’s
appearance, I would like to offer instead that
the selfie comprises one part of a dynamic,
unfolding interactive narrative socially authored by the self and the wider world.
In his influential Language of New Media, a book perhaps more influential for
stimulating debate than settling it, Lev
Manovich stipulates that new media are not,
among other things, interactive (2001, pp. 70–
75). Calling it “The Myth of Interactivity,”
Manovich rejects the term on the grounds that
it is both too general and too specific. In a
general sense, all media are interactive in that
the user is always an active participant in the
meaning-making process. More specifically,
he reserves the term interactive new media for
those works which directly solicit user
intervention in order to function. For him,
these are but one type of a wider constellation
of objects that constitute the field of new media. Interactivity is neither a new, exclusive
quality initiated by new media nor is it a quality
universal to all new media.
Manovich’s dismissal of interactivity offers a useful starting point for considering the
selfie as interactive narrative because it
simultaneously demonstrates the need to consider the selfie within a longer tradition of
autobiographical photography, but also because, as we will see, he significantly underplays the productive power of interactivity as a
myth that emerges when digital photography
becomes a widespread form of Social Media
through apps like Instagram (another of
Manovich’s ‘myths’ about new media; 2001,
pp. 68–70). The selfie of course preexisted the
camera phone, but the emergence of the camera phone is instrumental to the selfie’s evolution into a form of interactive narrative. Indeed,
the series of media traces left behind by social
interaction constitute a form of interactive media, a transcript of a conversation conducted
in media form. While Manovich can of course
be forgiven for not predicting the rise of social
media, part of what the history of digital
photography demonstrates is the need to
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
move beyond general categories and theories
of analog vs. digital and toward a more focused consideration of the spheres and practices that emerge and fade as quickly as the
trend of the selfie likely will.
Adam Levin’s thoughtful discussion of
the selfie unearths a great deal of the predigital history of the form, tracing it back
through early self-portraits and linking it, for
him, most directly with the polaroid. (“The
Selfie in the Age of Digital Recursion,” n.d.)
For Levin, the recursive relationship between
“selves, selfies and the [digital] ecologies they
inhabit” exhibits a type of interactivity between
culture, individuals and specific forms of
technology. Photography has always demanded and documented certain performative
behaviors of its subjects (e.g., the pose) which
in turn alter social norms about how to not
only behave in front of a camera but how to
behave in general as well. The historical
evolution of the technology for photographing
the self recursively shapes the evolution of the
self that is photographed, and vice versa, in a
process that mimics the species/environment
relationship in biological evolution.
While Levin’s discussion unearths the
media ecology in which the selfie evolves and
thrives, it overlooks the importance, or perhaps the appropriateness, of still photography
as the vehicle for this particular form of
self/media interaction. Still photography was in
many ways the first mass market form of
mass media. As Patricia Zimmerman has
demonstrated, the emergence of Kodak’s roll
film in the 1880s and its $1 Brownie camera at
the turn of the century pushed photography
from a specialized technology practiced by
professionals to a widespread group of amateur hobbyists that we would now refer to as
‘users’ (Zimmermann, 1995, p. 32). The move
to market photography to a mass public, in
modern terms democratizing or consumerizing
the technology, makes it an important precursor to the emergence of user generated content over the last decade. Indeed, the push
within social media to allow for mass content
Fallon – 56
sharing relies of course on the ability of the
masses to create and distribute content easily
and cheaply. Tools like the Brownie, and
eventually the Polaroid, solved the first part of
this
equation,
while
their
handheld
descendent, the smartphone, solved the second.
It is difficult to overstate the impact of
social media and mobile technology on photographic practice, not to mention the industry
behind it. While the break between analog and
digital photography generated a great deal of
scholarly and popular discussion about the
‘nature’ of photography and the fate of
indexicality, the break between the digital
camera and the cameraphone is equally dramatic. Since the emergence of the iPhone in
2008, Apple has claimed that it makes the
world’s number one camera, and Kodak and
Polaroid have both gone into bankruptcy. As
Heidi Rae Cooley points out, the move toward
“mobile screenic devices” troubles the easy
distinction between amateur/professional (now
everyone can ‘publish’ their work) and alters
standards of aesthetics and subject matter.
(Cooley, 2004a, 2004b, 2005) Cooley’s
account of early mobile imaging, published
presciently in a pre-iPhone era, argues that
users of early cameraphones and other
handheld devices participate in a form of “selfevidencing”, incessantly capturing fragmentary
and ephemeral images of experiences and
objects in their environments “tactile vision.”
While this produced an accumulation of
autobiographical fragments to emerge, these
collections operated according a database
driven logic rather than a narrative logic of linear cause and effect.
Looking back at these early mobile devices and the social practices they engender,
one is reminded, however, of the speed at
which technologies change, and the recursive
social behaviors that alter alongside them.
Cooley’s descriptions of PDAs, moblogs, and
other bygone practices offer a look back at
forms that were perhaps more primitive but
also more radical in their approach than many
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
contemporary standards. While current devices may capture, edit and upload with a
prowess
only dreamed of by their
predecessors, the resultant images and the
streams they populate appear to be moving in
a retrograde fashion toward more traditional
aesthetics and a more rigidly linear forms. The
emergence of social media platforms for sharing images, first on the computer and then
through the smartphone, turned these early
freewheeling experiments into a more
standardized, mainstream practice.
Flickr emerged in the early days of social networking as a platform for users to
upload, share and comment on one another’s
photos. While previous sites like Ofoto and
Snapfish had enabled users to upload digital
and analog images into albums for printing or
sharing via email, Flickr was built as a
community driven site from the beginning,
allowing novel combinations and collections of
images to emerge. Instead of treating user
uploads as private material that it was storing
and managing the way a web-based email
account is handled, Flickr approached them
as parts of a massive, open user-generated
database of content. This approach opened
up new perspectives while closing down
others. The fragmentary, catalogic approach
that Cooley described found a perfect compliment in Flickr’s bottom-up system of organization through user generated tags. This
enabled categories and collections to emerge
across users, creating a multi-perspective,
multi-authored media text, what Jose Van
Dijck refers to as a form of “connective
memory” (Dijck, 2011, p. 411). But as Susan
Murray points, the move from stand alone
photoblogs to a site based on the contributions and interactions of its users produces a
norming effect where an identifiable group
aesthetic emerges (Murray, 2008, pp. 155,
159–160). While the Flickr aesthetic may bear
little resemblance to the traditional studio or
snapshot aesthetics that emerged in the analog film era, it is nonetheless appears to be a
Fallon – 57
move away from the diverse experimentation
of the earliest mobile approaches.
The collective nature of sites like Flickr
creates a space in which the individual is put
under erasure by the weight of the group. Like
a search on Google images, Flickr collections
might offer a collective perspective on an
event or subject, but they aren’t any one person’s perspective. They are more Wikipedia
than Op-Ed page in the views they offer. This
creates an interactive text in that all authors
are simultaneously audience members (and
vice versa), but it works against any type of
linear progression or individual narrative.
Murray points out that isolating an individual
user’s profile reveals an “autobiography or diary by layering an ever changing or growing
stream of photos on their page” (Murray,
2008, p. 155). Nonetheless this feels counter
to the general thrust of the site.
Instagram, on the other hand, conceived
of and launched in a post-Facebook, postiPhone moment, flips the group/individual
hierarchy.
Unlike
Flickr
and
other
photosharing sites intended to be the final
destination for images that had traveled from
camera to computer to website, Instagram
emerged on the mobile iOS platform as a way
for users to quickly edit photos shot on their
iPhones and share them to other social networks like Twitter and Facebook. Rather than
a large pool of curated images tagged by
users according to specific subjects, the core
of Instagram is the image stream and the
strong connection between any image and an
individual’s profile wherever it might eventually
end up. With the introduction of the front facing camera on the iPhone 4 and other
competing devices on the Android platform,
the selfie, as we currently think of it, was born,
creating what can be considered a nascent
form of interactive autobiography in the process.
In contrast to Flickr’s disparate autobiographical fragments, Instagram’s emphasis on
the photo stream, and its ‘instant’ appearance
on other social media timelines bind it more
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
firmly with a traditional notion of individual
identity, temporal linearity and serial
progression. While Nathan Hochman and Lev
Manovich recently pointed out the inherent
fuzziness in Instagram’s presentation of this
timeline (e.g. there are no timestamps), it remains nonetheless bound to a fixed temporal
progression (Hochman & Manovich, 2013).
Outside of the #hashtag, a self-tagging system
borrowed from Twitter, there is no way to sort
or search images on Instagram other than the
default timeline of the photostream or one’s
feed.
And while the #hashtag loosely resembles Flickr’s more robust tagging feature, it
operates on the logic of the meme which it
was intended to capitalize on and facilitate. As
spontaneous trends which emerge and either
catch on or fade away, memes are a transitory, amorphous collection of practices that
have no single author. This would seem to put
memes at odds with the strong identity
connection that I am claiming Instagram
engenders. Indeed, as Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli
has pointed out, memes associated with the
group Anonymous are intended to destabilize
established
categories
of
individuality,
collectivity and recognizable identity (RavettoBiagioli, 2013). Instagram memes, of which
the selfie trend is a prime example, are the
polar opposite. Rather than acting as a cover
to shield one’s identity, trending hashtags are
often used to raise one’s profile or collect
additional followers. Participation in memes
like #bestofsummer are opportunities to distinguish one’s individuality even as they signify
participation in an ephemeral collective. Instagram emphasizes the ‘me’ in meme, as it
were.
This push toward greater visibility on the
site further enhances the autobiographical
potential of the timeline. One actively and consistently populates one’s stream (an individual
user’s contributions) in order to remain an
active presence in the feed of one’s followers
(the flow of images comprised of contributions
by the group one follows). The push to “feed
Fallon – 58
one’s followers” gives the images the same
ephemeral, disposable feel that many have
noted is so at odds with the processes of
freezing time associated with analog photography (Murray, 2008). And yet, these frequent
updates also add to the permanent size of the
individual photostream, giving additional depth
to the record of one’s activities and experiences. While the focus is always on a permanent sense of ‘now’ the by-product is a more
complete documentary record of one’s output
arranged from past to present. Arranged in the
default grid view, this record offers a type of
timelapse portrait of one’s activity. One can
even imagine that an account comprised
exclusively of selfies literally works as a sort of
timelapse progression of aging.
The interplay between the feed and the
stream is where the reciprocal give and take
of Instagram enables the type of interactive
exchange at work on Flickr. Users see the
work of others, adapt their own in direct or
indirect response to it, and post images seen
in turn by others. The result over time is that
many of the images begin to take on a
homogenized aesthetic, an effect only exacerbated by the inclusion and widespread use of
the app’s filter function.
But the ability to alter these images
nonetheless places them into a more expressive register than analog and even more traditional digital photography. The manipulative
effect of using Photoshop editing tools in contexts such as photojournalism and fashion to
alter what the camera recorded continues to
be a source of anxiety amongst the viewers
and creators of these images (Ritchin, 2010).
But in Instagram, one expects the images to
be manipulated. The app invites users to apply filters and crop the image before sending
as one of the procedural steps for posting. Rather than hiding the alterations, filters loudly
proclaim their presence through the excessive
nature of their appearance. It is significant that
these tools for the most part limit themselves
to altering qualities like color, exposure, tone
and framing rather than the less overt forms of
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
alteration like cutting and pasting, blemish removal, etc. The filtering process introduces an
affective, expressive dimension to the image.
This decreases its documentary value as an
un-altered record of what existed before the
camera, but increases its capacity to capture
the desires and moods of its author. Filtered
images do not claim “this is how it looked” but
rather “how I wanted to it look” or “how I felt it
looked.”
The net effect of the interface and the
tools that Instagram provides is that someone’s stream can reveal an interesting, if
idiosyncratic portrait of the person. Its most
active high profile users are often professional
photographers who use the platform as an
outlet away from, or an avenue into, their paid
work. In such cases the feed offers us an impression of their aesthetic sensibility. For
others, Instagram is merely a way to push
lightly edited individual or group photos to
Facebook, thereby curating a feed that chronicles personal relationships and individual
experiences. Looking through these portraits
may tell us who the person is or who they
want to be, the things they like or what society
tells them they should be like. It would of
course be foolish to generalize about the nature of this portrait or place too much weight
on the documentary evidence it is capable of
providing, but it can offer us alternative
perspectives and ways of being that may differ
very much from our own. By inviting us to
share our selves, photographically, with the
world, Instagram is part of the moment that
produced the selfie.
The ubiquity of image making spawned
by the camera-phone has enabled social
media to function to some extent as
‘socialized media’: inviting alternative, image
driven forms of social interaction even as it
profits large corporations through the free labor of its citizens. This type of push-pull
between community and commodity (or,
community as commodity) has always
haunted photography, marketed throughout
much of the 20th century as a way to preserve
Fallon – 59
memories and those ‘Kodak moments’. At
once a tool of artistic expression and state
surveillance and control, photography offers a
complex historical lineage as it moves onto
new platforms powerfully capable of both extremes. A cynical reading of filtering one’s appearance and experiences for an amorphous
audience of others would argue that these
tools simply allow users to imperfectly replicate the look and feel of advertising images or
parrot the surface appeal of celebrity culture.
A more generous reading might argue that
these tools open up the process to a broader
set of practitioners, allowing them to engage in
a creative play of identity and self-expression,
what Amelia Jones argued was a “technology
of embodiment” in more traditional self-portrait
photography (Jones, 2002). Once again we
find the same mix of authenticity and
commodification at work that has run throughout the history of photography, a potent
combination that Instagram has apparently not
escaped.
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INTERACTIVE NARRATIVES
NEW MEDIA &
SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT
October 23‐25, 2014 | University of Toronto |ISBN: 978‐0‐9939520‐0‐5
I‐DOCS AND NEW NARRATIVES: MEANING MAKING IN
HIGHRISE
Begoña González‐Cuesta, IE School of Communication, IE University, Madrid
begona.gonzalez@ie.edu
Suggested citation: González-Cuesta, Begoña (2014). “I-Docs and New Narratives: Meaning
Making in Highrise.” In Proceedings of the Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social
Engagement International Conference. Eds. Hudson Moura, Ricardo Sternberg, Regina Cunha,
Cecília Queiroz, and Martin Zeilinger. ISBN: 978-0-9939520-0-5
This article is released under a Creative Commons license (CC-BY-NC-ND).
Abstract: Digital media make it possible to move from a conventional storytelling medium to
other avenues that allow open stories to be told, maintaining the traditional basis of narratives
while also adding other elements that enrich and deepen storytelling innovation. Therefore, it is
important to analyze how the characteristics of digital storytelling work together in order to
create meaning through new narratives. Recent documentary projects show how new ways of
telling stories involve new ways of relating meaning and form, multiple platforms, and strong
interaction and engagement from the side of the viewer. Interactivity and participation change
the way in which a story is told and received, thus changing its nature as a narrative.
In order to delve deeper into this field, I will analyze Highrise. The Towers in the World.
World in the Towers, by Katerina Cizek. This is a complex project produced by the National Film
Board of Canada, a multi-year, many-media collaborative documentary experiment that has
generated many projects, including mixed media, interactive documentaries, mobile productions, live presentations, installations and films. I will develop a textual analysis on part of the
project, the interactive documentary Out My Window, by focusing on its ways of meaningmaking and the specific narrative implications of the relationship between meaning and form.
The project is ambitious: Cizek’s vision is “to see how the documentary process can drive
and participate in social innovation rather than just to document it; and to help re-invent what it
means to be an urban species in the 21st century.” (http://highrise.nfb.ca)
Digital media, audiovisual narratives, and
documentaries
The “call for papers” of this conference brings
into focus the need to reflect on interactive
narratives and digital media, especially on the
ways in which individuals and societies represent themselves on these screens, and the
ways these representations deal with their
identities at a creative, social and political
level in a globalized context.
These days, two elements of our communication ecosystem converge: the growing interest
in non-fiction digital narratives from both crea-
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
tors and consumers and the enormous impact
digital media has on the way stories are told
and received. In most of the cases of digital
media narrations, the traditional basis of storytelling remains, but new elements are added
into the mix, such us interactivity, use of multiple media, the transmedia dimension in some
cases, etc.
This new environment, the digital media
ecosystem, allows creators to develop innovative ways to represent reality – innovations
that in some cases have to do with a deeper
and richer approach to the topics. Digital media make it possible to move from a conventional storytelling medium to other avenues
that allow open stories to be told, maintaining
the basics of narratives while also including
other aspects that enrich and deepen storytelling innovation.
Some of the questions that arise in this
context include the following: What is the process and what are the consequences of
meaning-making in digital narratives? Does it
have to do with a different way of relating
meaning and form? Is it connected to the use
of multiple platforms? In what ways? Does it
allow a strong interaction and engagement
from the side of the viewer? Is interactivity
changing the way a story is told and received,
therefore changing its nature as a narrative?
Does it generate a different notion of authorship? What are the consequences in terms of
meaning-making? In brief, digital media are
giving us great opportunities to rethink the notion of narrative.
Moving more specifically into interactive
documentaries or web documentaries, it is important not to forget that the bases of
documentary creation remain and are still present in new projects, but taking different
shapes, as expressed here:
The documentary impulse has a long
history; practitioners are, it seems, still
driven to preserve, show, report, explain,
persuade and advocate. But it is also an
impulse that is constantly seeking new
González‐Cuesta – 62
avenues, new ways of capturing the
social-historical, or ‘treating’ actuality
and new ways of connecting with an
audience. […] Documentary has always
had an experimental dimension with first
filmmakers and now digital documentary
makers adopting and adapting emerging
technologies and generating new documentary forms. (Nash, Hight, &
Summerhayes, 2014, p. 1)
Innovation is one of the key words related to
this kind of documentary. And it is especially
significant in the way meaning is created in
interactive documentaries. Sandra Gaudenzi
(2014) says:
While in linear documentaries meaning
was created by framing shots and editing them together, in participatory
interactive documentaries meaning is
shared and layered: there is the meaning of the individual clips (not controlled
by the interactive documentary author),
the meaning of the interface (normally
conceived by the author) and the meaning of the browsing (the narrative route
and associations generated by the user,
while jumps between videos). The challenge therefore lies in playing with those
layers to create a richer meaning, while
avoiding the trap of internal contradictions.” (p. 138)
Highrise and Out My Window: a brief
description
Along these lines, I decided to analyze a very
interesting project, Highrise, by Katerina
Cizek. I consider this work extremely stimulating for the following reasons: it explores new
ways of telling stories in an interactive, digital
and collaborative way; it deepens into the life
at the margins, exploring how human life in
these spaces is richer than some stereotypes
could suggest; and all this is done by exploring new ways of searching for meaning, thinking about some dimensions of reality, and doing it by creating audiovisual works in which
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
the most radical relationship between content
and form is essential.
I will start by describing this work and its
context. Highrise is a documentary project directed by Katerina Cizek, at the National Film
Board of Canada. In fact it’s a multi-year,
many-media
collaborative
documentary
experiment that has generated many projects,
including mixed media, interactive documentaries, mobile productions, live presentations,
installations and films. All these experimental
projects are available on a common website:
http://highrise.nfb.ca. Each sub-project has a
meaning of its own and can be experienced
independently from the others, but all together
they form a rich, diverse, complex, and
orchestrated approach to vertical living in the
contemporary world. All of them approach a
common topic: what is human life like in
residential highrise buildings.
Highrise was launched in 2009 and now
includes
the
following
projects:
The
Thousandth Tower, Out My Window, One
Millionth Tower, A Short History of the
Highrise (in partnership with The New York
Times), and the director’s blog.
I will focus my analysis on the web
documentary Out My Window, produced in
2010. It also took the form of an interactive
exhibition. The previous and first project, The
Thousandth Tower, was focused on the city of
Toronto. In this second project, Cizek wanted
to explore vertical living around the world. She
didn’t want to approach the life in big cities,
famous for their highrise buildings such as
New York, Tokyo or Paris, but decided to look
into the medium cities and their suburbs. Using social media, she found 13 subjects in
different countries in the world, interested in
sharing their experiences and lives through
this digital documentary. The work was shot in
Chicago, Toronto, Montreal, Havana, Sao
Paulo, Amsterdam, Prague, Istanbul, Beirut,
Bangalore, Phnom Penh, Tainan, and
Johannesburg.
Out My Window received the inaugural
IDFA DocLab Award for Digital Storytelling. In
González‐Cuesta – 63
April 2011, it was awarded with the International Digital Emmy Award in the category of
digital program: non-fiction. In April 2011, the
web documentary was nominated for a Webby
Award for Best Use of Photography in the
Websites category. On May 10, 2011, Out My
Window received the New Media Award at the
One World Media Awards.
This is a snapshot of the main interface
of Out My Window (see Figure 1). The work is
described on the website as follows:
One Highrise. Every view a different city.
This is Out My Window – one of the
world’s
first
interactive
3600
documentaries – about exploring the
state of our urban planet told by people
who look out on the world from highrise
windows.
It’s a journey around the globe
through the most commonly built form of
the last century: the concrete-slab
residential tower. Meet remarkable highrise residents who harness the human
spirit – and the power of community – to
resurrect meaning amid the ruins of
modernism.
With more than 90 minutes of material to explore, Out My Window features
49 stories from 13 cities, told in 13 languages, accompanied by a leading-edge
music
playlist.
(OMW
Website,
http://interactive.nfb.ca/#/outmywindow)
Representation, meaning making and
marginal realities
The most relevant questions raised by Highrise have to do with the concept of representation and its consequences on meaning
making, in this case about marginal realities.
The project raises some questions that directly
touch one of the most relevant aspects of our
contemporary cultures.
I will develop now some ideas about
what audiovisual works can do in today’s media ecosystem to understand human life by
representing in a particular way marginal realities with the goal of thinking about them and
having a real impact on individuals and socie-
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
ties. Afterwards I will go into some details of
Cizek’s conception of documentary, relating
these general ideas to the reflections and
objectives she has expressed as being the
basis of her creative endeavor.
A crucial issue nowadays is the role of
images in the construction of our worldview. In
this paper I am taking into consideration a
topic that has to be confronted, both from the
academic and from the creative world. In order
to build our present and our future as citizens
involved in the creation of our culture, we need
to think about reality as something that we
"imagine" in the most radical sense of the
word: reality as something that somehow is
built when images about it are created. And I
think we have to make a joint reflection
between academics and creators, putting together and crossing these two possible approaches to the complex and fascinating fact
of generating images of reality in order to think
about it.
The audiovisual media are increasingly
influencing our contemporary society; this is
one of the key ideas that lies at the heart of
the reflection raised by this conference. Language allows us to know and understand the
world, creating culture; and the language of
the 21st century is audiovisual, digital and
multimedia. The way we communicate, think,
and build our representations of reality involves the creation of audiovisual and digital
works. It is therefore essential to know in
depth the language and the culture that is
generated, to learn how to read and write
these images.
In a changing and complex world such
as ours, it is necessary to know how to think,
analyze,
address
reality
in
multiple
dimensions, and understand and manage the
languages, including visual language. Going
deeper into the visual language, our
understanding of reality will grow and, therefore, our skills for analysis, interaction, flexibility, creativity, aesthetic awareness, engagement, and critical thinking will be developed.
We are not just in possession of some new
González‐Cuesta – 64
tools, but those tools are generating new
languages, new messages, new ways to receive those messages, and new forms of influence.
In this context, a discussion about the
consistency of these visual representations of
reality is necessary. We face the longstanding dichotomy: are images a means for
knowledge or a sham that anesthetizes our
senses? We have to approach critically the
forms of representation of reality. Obviously,
we are far from believing that realism is like
that image of the "mirror that strolls along the
way." We know about the need of "building
visual elements" so that realism becomes
significant. Thus, it appears necessary to stop
and think about the images and focus on the
images that “think.”
It is necessary to reflect on the ways of
developing deep thoughts in contemporary art.
Jean-Luc Godard coined – and often used to
refer to the cinema – the expression "a form
that thinks." Any form of art can be a device
that serves as the means for thought. I am
suggesting an approach to contemporary
poetics in different areas of creation, conceived as ways in which thought is materialized, therefore considering artistic work as an
epistemological and hermeneutic way to create meaning. The best contemporary art is set
up as a place for re-creation of the sense of
reality, as a gateway to the real in depth.
Our analytic perspective therefore focuses on studying the audiovisual creations in
which the search for meaning is in their heart.
In this regard, it is crucial to note that the
reflective audiovisual thinks through its own
materials; it doesn’t illustrates with images a
previously constructed thought. The audiovisual thought generates a reflective process in
the images and the sounds; the hermeneutical
dimension lies in the heart of the work
(González Cuesta, 2006).
To consider the image as a window to
the world, as a place of transparency, would
be an extremely naïve conception. From the
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
parameters of contemporary thought, we consider more appropriate an approach to the image from a certain opacity: the image is not a
space of safe transition to a reality which is
given us to see, and no more. We have to
stop in front of the image and, looking closely,
we will find its meanings, with an in-depth
approach to the real. I refer to this in regard to
a reflection by Josep Maria Català on "the
complex image," the image conceived as a
space in which reality is revealed phenomenologically and hermeneutically deepens its
meaning – an image that builds knowledge,
that leaves behind the "epistemology of reflection" to address the "epistemology of inquiry:"
The ‘complex image’ breaks the mimetic
link that images traditionally had with
reality and replaces it with a hermeneutical link: instead of an epistemology of
reflection, an epistemology of inquiry is
proposed. Images no longer passively
reflect the real, but go after it […] It
doesn’t mean that images are a simple
tool to build the real, but indicates that
reality, in order to be really significant
must be uncovered and that the complex
visualization is an effective way to do it.
(Català, 2005: 642-643)
It is, therefore, necessary to analyze
creative thinking in the audiovisual work. The
real image that seeks to be a creative-thinking
image does not merely reflect reality as if it
were a mirror image. As Català says, to show
something is not necessarily to help to understand that reality. In order to make meaning
out of the images, something has to be done:
It is not about producing a copy of reality, neither about showing what remains
after the surrender of copying it, but to
reveal through the visible a hidden
dimension of reality: in the paintings of
Bacon, the world is reborn through
forms. (Català, 2005: 37)
One of the most important debates today is about the role of images in the
construction of our world. In a context in which
González‐Cuesta – 65
the saturation of images is growing, we can
reach the paradoxical situation in which images don’t let us see, don’t let us look into
what we need to know. In the era of proliferation of television channels, mobile phones and
screens to access any image, in the world of
YouTube, of security cameras that record
everything, of the desire to transform into banal images any facet of existence, of teenagers recording the beatings they give to their
school mates to have a moment of "glory" on
the Internet, of the time when we seem to get
used to seeing landscapes of desolation and
broken bodies by violence – it is necessary to
consider this issue. The most complex dimensions of reality are often left without a
representation that addresses its complexity.
Such images, rather than making meaning about reality, are denying visibility to
deeper realities. We should reflect on the
ethics of the missing images. Against this, the
creative images can be effective tools to foster
a dialogue on these realities, beyond the
monologue generated by the mass media;
creative realities can critically challenge the
hegemonic and dominant images.
Nowadays, new modes of realism in image creation are emerging, involving new
ways of engaging with reality. Following the
issues raised by Ángel Quintana (2003), beyond the easy and sentimental speeches, beyond the "shy realism" that works only on the
mimetic dimension of images, some works
address a "strong realism" or "critical realism,”
the construction of an ethical perspective on
the issues in need of it.
In short, I consider necessary the study
of contemporary image-thoughts that work on
margins. It is about knowing how to formally
construct these image-thoughts and why to
generate reflections on those marginal situations. It is important to address one of the
great debates in our culture: the role of images as a cultural construction. Sometimes
the more complex layers of reality are left outof-frame, relegated as nonexistent by the media. It is more and more necessary to reflect
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
on the representation of margins. We need to
think about what realities are left aside by the
hegemonic representations, what marginal
realities are addressed by the image-thoughts
and how they are constructed to provide support for reflection, and finally how imagethought is a way of critically challenging the
status quo. There’s a need to consider the
ethics and poetics of the representations of
the conflicts generated in the margins of reality.
The margins, the borders, the thresholds, the limits have to be addressed. The
framework of the concept of “border” or “limit”
in our analysis rests on a philosophical
foundation, a theoretical basis that I consider
extremely firm yet disturbing: the philosophy of
the limit of the great Spanish philosopher
Eugenio Trías, especially and essentially his
conception of humans as beings that live on
the border, and his understanding of creation
as a symbolic space where the richer ways of
living takes place on the frontier. Particularly
relevant is his work Los límites del mundo,
(1985, Barcelona: Destino).
Reflections about representation, meaning
making and marginal realities regarding
Out My Window
I already said that the most relevant questions
raised by Highrise have to do with the concept
of representation and its consequences on
meaning making, in this case about marginal
realities. And it is also important to underline
the idea that this project touches some of the
most relevant aspects of our contemporary
cultures: representation, search for meaning,
margins.
The main interface of Out My Window
could work as a perfect metaphor of the ideas
I have been developing so far. By approaching
a two-dimensional representation of a building, we can go further and enter into a whole
and diverse life that is behind. The interface
works as the threshold through which reality in
its complexity can be reached. “On the outside, they all look the same. But inside these
González‐Cuesta – 66
towers of concrete and glass, people create
community, art and meaning” (OMW website).
This is how it works if we think about this
project from our perspective, the users’ point
of view. But, at the same time, and maybe
more importantly, by designing this interface
Cizek is placing the focus on the other side:
the eyes of the inhabitants of those spaces.
Their homes “are represented” and they look
at the world from those spaces. “What do people see out their own windows? I didn’t want to
just look into people’s homes; I wanted to
work with residents to see their experiences
from their point-of-view. Their windows onto
the world” (OMW website). The interactive dimension of this work, helps to mirror the different points of view when approaching how life
is at the highrise buildings around the world.
An important source for understanding
the reach and depth of this project can be
found in the texts created by Cizek and presented on the website of Highrise, and more
specifically on the website of Out My Window.
The explanations developed by Cizek on the
website, reveal the broad scope of the theory
of documentary implied in Out My Window.
Some of the general ideas I expressed about
contemporary audiovisual creation relate to
the reflections and objectives expressed by
Cizek as being the basis of her creative enterprise.
“The idea was simple: to build a virtual
highrise, with each floor housing a different
global city. But the process behind the idea
was a fusion of many conversations I had
been having with our technological, creative
and editorial teams,” says Cizek on the website about the interface design. And the way to
express this idea touches upon another relevant aspect of this work: the intention of
having conversations with different groups in
order to develop a deep reflection about this
reality. Conversations were held at many
different levels and collectives: conversations
with the people living in the highrise buildings,
academic conversations, conversations about
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
documentary, and conversations with the new
media world.
The participatory aspect lies at the core
of this work. And, at the same time, Cizek
maintains the idea of coordinating the
construction of this text, of orchestrating the
conversation. Many different options can be
taken regarding authorship in interactive documentaries. In this case, as Sandra Gaudenzi
explains after interviewing Cizek:
The material is not even user generated,
it is subject generated. When I asked
Katerina Cizek her views on UGC she
replied ‘I am not interested in UGC, I
want to maintain an authorial role’. She
is the facilitator, and as such she maintains the authorship of navigation, which
she considers as a type of content.
What she opens to collaboration is the
voice given to the subject. She accepts
subject-producers. (Gaudenzi 2014,
p141)
There is an ethical perspective in understanding participation and authorship in this
way. As Craig Hight says about interactive
documentaries: “Editing, in other words, is not
simply about representing a reality, but
actively interpreting it for an audience (Oldham 1992, p. 133), and thus is also at the core
of the ethical dilemma inherent to documentary practice (Cizek 2005, pp. 174-178).”
(Hight, 2014, p. 223)
In the description of this work, we can
find the following statement: “Meet remarkable
highrise residents who harness the human
spirit – and the power of community – to resurrect meaning amid the ruins of modernism”
(OMW website). It seems that for her, the best
way to find the meaning of human life and the
sense of living in community amid today’s
confusion is to approach real stories of people
living their lives in an actual search for meaning.
Cizek’s vision is “to see how the documentary process can drive and participate in
social innovation rather than just to document
González‐Cuesta – 67
it; and to help re-invent what it means to be an
urban species in the 21st century.” The goal is
ambitious, but it is in line with the best documentary tradition, envisioning the representation of reality as a way to understand and
change the world.
In this case the focus of attention is
placed on a growing model of living: “It’s a
new species of urban. The world’s cities are
actually growing fastest at their edges. At the
fringes. The margins. The suburbs” (OMW
website). And it is explicitly mentioned on the
website that this phenomenon is overlooked
by politicians and the media. And for Cizek,
our eyes have to turn to look into those marginal spaces, because they are not that
marginal for understanding contemporary
societies, and because some of the most
interesting things are happening there:
[…] in order to understand urbanization
– and that means to understand the
planet because we are now living on an
urban planet – we need to understand
the peripheries, the edges of our cities,
and that’s where the most exciting, problematic, complicated things are happening. Yet we really have no clue about
how these places work, both culturally,
politically, economically, at all levels.
(CollabDocs)
One of the main objectives of the project
is to challenge our perceptions of urban
experience. Cizek explains:
It also made me rethink where urban
‘culture and politics’ reside. My naïve understanding of suburbs – a retreat for
the middle classes – was a simplistic,
outdated
stereotype.
The
urban
peripheries both horizontal and vertical
are places overflowing with humanity,
yet are often invisible to the drive-byeye, to the closed mind. (OMW website)
I pointed out how crucial for making a
thoughtful representation it is to work together
on the formal and content aspects of a project.
By doing that, representation moves from be-
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
ing a mirror of reality to being a light that
makes clearer and deeper what we are looking into. In that respect, Cizek’s statement,
“Out My Window is a documentary that finds
its form from the content and vice versa,” is
especially meaningful. It was important to find
the best way to tell how life is in the highrise
buildings around the world:
The fragmented, non-linear stories of
Out My Window reflect the way we tell
our stories. Pieces. Snippets. Small
tales that, as they add up, create a
collage of meaning, of experience. Together, subtly, gently, the stories
accumulate into epic narratives about
globalization,
migration,
poverty,
environmentalism, reclamation, and the
search for spiritual meaning. But only if
you search between the seams, and
sew it together for yourself as you listen.
[…]. We would create collages, overlappings, doublings. Many seams. Leaving
room
for
interpretation,
for
the
unspoken, the unsaid, the private, the
personal. (OMW website).
To conclude, I will reproduce here this
sentence by Katerina Cizek that perfectly
summarizes the spirit of Out My Window:
To be human in this century is – more
than ever before – to be urban. And yet
we have such meagre understanding of
what that really signifies. It is not about
the financial capital in the downtown
core. It is to our peripheries that we must
look for the neglected pressing needs of
the most vulnerable, for stark economic
injustices, for the inspiration to change,
and for the search for meaning amid the
concrete. (OMW website)
González‐Cuesta – 68
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
González‐Cuesta – 69
Figures
Figure 1: A snapshot of the main interface of Out My Window.
References
http://highrise.nfb.ca
Catala, Josep M. (2005). La imagen compleja,
Barcelona: Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona.
CollabDocs interview to Katerina Cizek.
http://collabdocs.wordpress.com/interviews‐
resources/kat‐cizek‐on‐highrise/ (last visit 9/15
2014).
Gaudenzi, Sandra. “Strategies of Participation: The
who, What and When of Collaborative
Documentaries” in Nass, Kate, Hightt, Craig and
Summerhayes, Catherine (eds.) (2014). New
Documentary Ecologies (Emerging Platforms,
Practices and Discourses). Palgrave Macmillan.
González‐Cuesta, Begoña. (2006). “El cine como forma
que piensa: La Morte Rouge de Víctor Erice”,
Oppidum. Cuadernos de investigación, nº 2, pp.
187‐214.
Hight, Craig. “Shoot, Edit, Share: Cultural Software and
User‐Generated Documentary Practice” in Nass,
Kate, Hightt, Craig and Summerhayes, Catherine
(eds.) (2014). New Documentary Ecologies
(Emerging Platforms, Practices and Discourses).
Palgrave Macmillan.
Nass, Kate, Hightt, Craig and Summerhayes, Catherine
(eds.) (2014). New Documentary Ecologies
(Emerging Platforms, Practices and Discourses).
Palgrave Macmillan.
Quintana, Ángel (2003). Fábulas de lo visible. El cine
como creador de realidades, Barcelona: El
Acantilado.
Trias, Eugenio (1985). Los límites del mundo, Barcelona:
Destino.
INTERACTIVE NARRATIVES
NEW MEDIA &
SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT
October 23‐25, 2014 | University of Toronto |ISBN: 978‐0‐9939520‐0‐5
NONLINEARITY, MULTILINEARITY, SIMULTANEITY: NOTES ON
EPISTEMOLOGICAL STRUCTURES
Florian Hadler, University of Arts, Berlin
flohadler@udk‐berlin.de
Daniel Irrgang, University of Arts, Berlin
irrgang@medienhaus.udk‐berlin.de
Suggested citation: Hadler, Florian and Daniel Irrgang (2014). “Nonlinearity, Multilinearity,
Simultaneity: Notes on Epistemological Structures.” In Proceedings of the Interactive Narratives,
New Media & Social Engagement International Conference. Eds. Hudson Moura, Ricardo
Sternberg, Regina Cunha, Cecília Queiroz, and Martin Zeilinger. ISBN: 978-0-9939520-0-5
This article is released under a Creative Commons license (CC-BY-NC-ND).
Abstract: This paper addresses three paradigms in epistemological structures that could serve
as preliminary classifications enabling a systematic approach to past and current media
phenomena such as hypertext, diagrams and ubiquitous computing. Nonlinearity is discussed
by Vilém Flusser in the context of “technical images.” In his own approach to go beyond linear
text, Flusser and his publisher created a digital version of his book Die Schrift on floppy disk
(1987), enabling the reader to jump between chapters or to rewrite the text. Multilinearity is a
concept that is revived within the diagrammatology discourse, transcending linearity through
topographical ways of reading. Current examples can be found in arts and narratives such as
Chris Ware’s comics, who uses diagrammatics to blur the lines between the reader and the
author. Simultaneity as a technological attribute is essential to current ubiquitous and pervasive
technologies and services, and draws heavily on Heideggerian concepts such as readiness-tohand and background. In this epistemological shift, the information is instantaneously organized
according to the user’s needs. Each of these epistemological structures offers a different idea
about receiving and creating knowledge, information and communication, paving the way for
narrative and media strategies that are more and more determined by a ‘reader’ becoming a
‘user’ and a ‘text’ becoming a ‘service.’
Introduction
Linearity used to be an apriority of narratives,
either as negative or positive precondition for
any form of text. By looking at the current history of narrative clusters and representational
structures, one can easily recognize the im-
portance of linearity as an epistemological
concept of perception. But the reference point
of linearity loses its epistemological impact
regarding the instantaneous, immediate display of data as seen in apps and services that
deploy dashboards and cockpit-like interfaces.
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
With big data and real time analysis, and with
the arrival of simultaneity in everyday life,
linearity as the reference point for the perception of content has been transcended, much
like this occurred previously with non- and
multilinear narrative strategies.
Nonlinearity
When it comes to the concept of nonlinearity
in contexts of representational/medial and
epistemological structures, the discourses on
informatization and global computer networks
– evolving since the 1970s – are particularly
interesting. These discourses do not only involve technological and sociological topics,
but also epistemological and philosophical
implications with reference to structure and
representation of knowledge beyond discursive textual forms.
Even though concepts of alternative
representations for displaying and gaining
knowledge have a far longer tradition in the
history of science: approaches to transcending
“linear“ written text can be identified already in
early modern or even medieval times. Examples, among others, are taxonomic diagrams,
attempts to develop a taxonomia universalis, a
tradition
reaching
back
to
scholastic
hermeneutics (cf. Siegel, 2009; Weigel, 2003;
Schmidt-Biggemann, 1983).
However, the liberation of knowledge
from its printed boundaries (e.g., books) due
to telematics – a neologism (telecommunication & informatics) coined by Simon Nora and
Alain Minc (1978) in their governmental study
L'informatisation de la société – led to a
renaissance of concepts on how to collect,
structure,
process,
and
communicate
knowledge in ways not determined by a
“linearity” of writing. These euphoric, partly
utopian discourses might in some aspects
appear naive to today’s reader. Nevertheless,
they can provide inspiring ideas for a possible
future of how we share and develop our
knowledge. In fact, it is symptomatic for the
emergence of groundbreaking new (media)
technologies that they inspire hopes about
Hadler and Irrgang – 71
their potential for changing society. The advantage of such speculations is that they take
place in an early adoption period of these
technologies before they become standardized by economic/strategic requirements. It is
a period in which the way of development and
its possibilities are not yet determined (cf.
Zielinski 2002, 2011).
Among influential writings of these times
discussing new forms of knowledge structures, such as hypertext (Nelson 1984 [1974]),
information
visualization
(e.g.,
Card,
Mackinlay, & Shneiderman, 1999), and its
broader implications for society (e.g., Lyotard,
1979), Vilém Flusser‘s late work is particularly
interesting, since it combines these aspects in
a non-trivial interrelation. The Czech cultural
philosopher developed a media theory exploring the implications of evolving telematics and
computer generated visualization (Flusser,
1985, 1987).
In a historical approach similar to
Marshall
McLuhan‘s
media-historical
investigations, Flusser, just as McLuhan, declared the end of writing as the dominant
discursive and medial form. Similarly to
McLuhan, Flusser identifies a interdependence between human cognition, society, and
technological (especially medial) inventions.
But in contrast to McLuhan, Flusser emphasizes the impact of linearity of written text: the
invention of the alphabet enabled historical
thinking beyond myth and modern science in
its discursive form (Flusser, 1985). It does so
not only due to its preservation of information;
rather, the linear structure of writing “shapes”
the human way of thinking, reasoning, arguing, etc., to become linear processes; the linear structure of the concept of time might be
the most significant effect.
Flusser identifies a fundamental shift of
these existential preconditions in the rise of
the “technical images” at the beginning of the
20th century. In contrast to traditional images,
these images are generated by a technical
apparatus such as the photo camera, or more
advanced,
the
computer.
But
the
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
epistemological implications are more important than the technical conditions. According to Flusser, technical images do not
represent objects – they “project” concepts.
They “make concrete” abstract models, and
thereby create something new, rather than
representing existing things (for Flusser, also
a photography is not a representation, but a
projected concept determined by conditions of
the photographic apparatus and decisions
made by the photographer). In Flusser’s
analyses, writing is currently transcended by
operating, thinking, and communicating
through technical images. This has radical effects on our forma mentis: linearity is going to
be replaced by new ways of thinking, beyond
discourses of cause and effect. Instead, a
thinking associated with images becomes
possible, reflecting the chaotic reality of the
world we live in, where thinking “in probabilities” instead of linear causalities is required
(Flusser, 1985).
This Flusserian paradigm change is
significantly supported by shifts in media landscape. For Flusser, mass media is an effect of
the linear condition: a sender is discursively
sending Information to receivers, without dialogic possibilities. In contrast, artifacts such as
the telephone or networked computers enable
dialogues between individuals. In the case of
telematics, Flusser saw a possibility for exchanging technical images, for creating them
together with other people. He developed this
idea as a utopian concept of “telematic society” (Flusser, 1985).
However, Flusser found himself in a
paradoxical position. He, who claimed the end
of writing, was a man of letters. An author who
did not even use a computer to write his texts.
According to an interview about his last
publications (Flusser, 1989c), Flusser tried to
transcend these linear boundaries by, first of
all, experimenting with “scientific fiction” in collaboration with the French artist Louis Bec,
who created speculative images (cf. Flusser,
1989a); further, by publishing a collection of
essays as pre-texts, which were supposed to
Hadler and Irrgang – 72
be transformed into video images (Flusser,
1989b); and finally, by a digital version of his
book Die Schrift (Flusser, 1987), distributed on
two 5,25” floppy disks – which is particularly
interesting since it could be described as an
ebook before the ebook.
The floppy disk version of Die Schrift
does not only provide its text in a digital form,
but also enables direct navigation to selected
chapters,
full
text
search,
additional
information, and the possibility to actively
change parts of the text by the reader – or
user. The interface (see Figures 1 to 4) does
not look spectacular compared with today’s
standards, but at the time it was an exciting
way to experience a book – and to bypass its
linear structure. Thanks to a collaboration between the Vilém Flusser Archive at the Berlin
University of the Arts and the University of
Freiburg’s Department of Computer Science,
the electronic book can be experienced online
as an emulation (www.flusser-archive.org).
Another project Flusser was involved in
is the “Flusser Hypertext“, developed in the
context of a research project on electronic
books at the Karlsruhe Institute for
Technology
Assessment
and
Systems
Analysis (ITAS) at the beginning of the 90s.
Based on his lecture “Schreiben für
Publizieren” [writing for publishing] (cf.
Flusser, 1989d), the hypertext was built in collaboration with Flusser. The team at ITAS was
influenced by Flusser’s Die Schrift (cf.
Wingert, 1996). Here, in a chapter on computer-based reading, Flusser discusses a new
kind of reader who is actively linking information – without referring to the term “hypertext”:
The future reader sits in front of the
screen to call up the stored information. This is no longer a passive
taking in (pecking) of information
fragments along a prewritten line.
This is more like an active
accessing of the cross-connections
among the available elements of information. It is the reader himself
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
who actually produces the intended
information from the stored information elements. (Flusser, 2011, p.
153)
The researchers at ITAS used Flusser’s
lecture as content for the “Flusser Hypertext
Prototype 2,” built on Apple’s authoring system HyperCard. It contains the audio recordings of the lecture, the transcribed text, further
information Flusser implied during his lecture
(including images), and space for annotations.
The hypertext is built as a “T-structure”: the
“horizontal” level contains Flusser’s lecture,
the “vertical” levels the additional, deeper
information.
The structure and interface of this hypertext are particularly interesting. The pages are
organized in reference to classical file cards
(see Figure 5), relating to the “desktop metaphor” in order to provide orientation by
referencing the physical world. The user can
navigate through the horizontal level by clicking the numbered tabs, simultaneously listening to the audio recordings. Browsing to the
vertical levels is possible by clicking the small
squares attached to every linked word; the
number of the squares indicates the number
of levels.
The main menu (see Figure 6) is
unusual: the hypertext’s sections are displayed as a map, utilizing the concept of
overlapping windows (cf. Kay, 1993). Through
the element’s topological arrangement, the
researchers tried to provide an overview in
order to counteract the “lost-in-hyperspace”
effect. At any time, the user is able to return to
this “apollonic” view – the rational, controlled
perspective (Nietzsche) – to regain orientation
(even though the orientation has its limits, as
the critical number of overlapping windows
indicates). We will come back to this apollinic
promise of the topological in the context of discussing diagrams. Thanks to the abovementioned collaboration, the Flusser Hypertext is available online as an emulation
(www.flusser-archive.org, http://bw-fla.uni-freiburg.de).
Hadler and Irrgang – 73
The Flusser Hypertext could not be completed, and reached only prototype stage.
Nevertheless, as an artifact of these times it
provides enlightening insights into the
optimistic attitude towards this seemingly
“nonlinear” new medium. This attitude was still
influenced by Theodor Holm Nelson’s original
hypertext concept dating back to the 70s
(Nelson, 1984 [1974]; see also xanadu.com).
In the following years, the notions of hypertext
and nonlinearity became deeply interweaved.
The German standard book Hypertext by
Rainer Kuhlen (1991) describes its subject as
“a nonlinear medium between book and
knowledge database” – here, nonlinearity is
defined as “free navigation in complex networks”1 (Kuhlen, 1991, p. 6).
But even though the Flusser Hypertext’s
structure is determined by a logic of file cards
– the groundbreaking paper technology for
arranging information (cf. Rayward, 1975),
giving the impression of loosely joined information bits, the hypertext unveils its linear
structures as soon as it is used: the horizontal
and vertical “T-structure” of the Flusser Hypertext makes it easy to identify this linearity. But
also in cases of more complex hypertexts, and
even if other media is involved (cf.
“hypermedia”), a linear dimension is unveiled
by the exploring user while he “threads” its
content to a line. This is why we would like to
suggest the term multilinearity – with all its
implications – instead of nonlinearity when it
comes to analyzing hypertext and similar phenomenons.
Multilinearity
As
it
turns
out,
even
nonlinear
representational structures tend to be linear
after all. This very fact is reflected in the notion
of multilinearity, which relies heavily on visuality. Looking at pictures, one does not follow a
predefined linearity, but as soon as the visuals
are not perceivable with just one look, the
1 „Ein nicht‐lineares Medium zwischen Buch und Wissensbank.
[…] Sie erlauben den ‚Lesern‘ von Hypertexten eine freie
Navigation in komplexen Netzwerken.“
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
gaze becomes linear, tracing view-lines on the
picture, creating connections, following axes
and perspectives, even gazes from figures
portrayed.
These mechanisms can be seen in
current examples we already touched upon,
like the hypertext, but they also predate the
electronic age considerably. They apply
especially to visual storytelling, from earliest
examples of cave inscriptions to panel paintings and picture stories such as comic strips.
Most of these arrange their pictorial elements
in a linear order, but this order cannot be
sustained throughout the reading. It is instead
dissolved into multilinear dimensions, enabling
the reader to switch back and forth, looking at
both the overall layout and the single
elements, following one’s own path throughout
the narrative, lingering through space and time
of the text or story. This practice becomes
eminent especially in diagrams that are
depicting circumstances both at once and in
detail.
Studies on diagrammatic aspects have
become popular in the humanities. In the context of the rising interest on images as
subjects of research (trying to overcome the
scriptocentrism of the linguistic turn), diagrams
– strange hybrids between text and image –
promise an “operational iconicity” (Stjernfelt,
2007; Krämer, 2009): they unveil an invisible
structure of their signified object (cf. Peirce,
1998). By manipulating the diagram, this
structural iconicity enables a speculative
experimentation with possible formations of
the represented object. When it comes to
intelligible objects (models, theories, etc.), a
diagram is more than a representation; it
constitutes its object by making it visible – a
recursive hermeneutic operation (see Figure
7).
One significant precondition of this
iconicity is
the diagram’s
topological
appearance.
Even
though
sentential
representation systems (writing, mathematical
notations, etc.) also have a topological, albeit
rather linear structure (written on a page, dis-
Hadler and Irrgang – 74
played on a screen, etc.), the positioning and
orientation of diagram elements have specific
meanings: elements above might signify
greater importance, element groups might
signify similarity, and so on. This topological
apriority – enabling an apollinic overview –
can be an advantage of diagrams compared
to sentential representations (cf. Russel,
1988).
A similar interest in the diagrammatic
comes from cognitive science. Although the
referentiality of diagrams is also an important
aspect, these studies focus particularly on the
topological structure. One general assumption
is that visuo-spatial characteristics, enabling
spatial indexing (drawing conclusions from the
positioning of elements; cf. Larkin & Simon,
1987), can be more effective compared to
sentential representations when it comes to
fast information retrieval (cf. Cheng, Lowe, &
Scaife, 2001).
But even though this “simultaneity of the
overview” (Krämer, 2002, p. 117) is an essential aspect, the process of “reading” a diagram
takes place as temporal sequence (Cheng,
Lowe, & Scaife, 2001): after acquiring an overview and finding the element searched, one
needs to – multilinearly – trace its relations to
other elements in order to derive information
from the diagram.
Thereby, the often-claimed opposition of
sentential and diagrammatic representations
dissolves: writing, for instance, includes diagrammatic aspects, like its arrangement on a
surface (Krämer, 2009); diagrams, for instance, show linear structures as soon as they
are used. Hence, “the diagrammatic” and “the
sentential,” or the linear, appear to be rather
two poles of a scale within which
representational artifacts can be arranged
(Cheng, Lowe, & Scaife, 2001). It becomes
clear that diagrams are not per se “better”
than sentential representations; and neither is
multilinearity compared to linearity. In fact, it
depends on what cognitive effects should be
achieved (Larkin & Simon, 1987). Sentential
structures might be more appropriate, e. g., for
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
narrative formats where a storyline flow is important. And the simultaneity of diagrams
might be more helpful for fast information. But
in the end, it is a combination of both.
A certainly outstanding application of
multilinearity to narrative storytelling can be
seen in the works of Chris Ware, a Chicagobased comic author who is using a
diagrammatic approach to expand both time
and space, enabling the reader to develop the
narrative autonomously. In his most famous
Book, Jimmy Corrigan, the smartest Kid on
Earth, he uses several diagrams, the biggest
one being a foldout map from the interior of
the dust jacket. This map shows the storylines
of the protagonist, Jimmy, but also includes a
lot of information that is not included in the
book, such as the immigration of Jimmy’s
paternal great-great-grandfather and the
capture, transportation, and sale of Jimmy’s
stepsister Amy’s ancestors as slaves. This
diagram opens up a much larger stage and
historical perspective, contextualizing Jimmy’s
life within a long historical sequence of tragic
and lonely characters. It offers a perspective
that is usually reserved for third-person
narrators and enables much more immersion
and depth than a linear representation could
offer (see Figure 8).
In order to understand what is happening here, the reader needs to gather some
background information, and on top of that be
able to decipher this form of storytelling.
These skills are the topic of another diagram
on the first page of the book, where Ware
ironically tackles this “new pictorial language.”
According to Ware, this particular diagrammatic grammar is “good for showing
stuff” while “leaving out big words” (Ware
2000). The starting point of this diagram is one
single frame that is then dissolved into
different layers, explaining the mechanics and
conventions at use. So while offering an
explanation, it requires at the same time a
reader already conversant with its idiom of
symbols (see Figure 9).
Hadler and Irrgang – 75
The diagram reveals the close relationship between comics and information design
by using a flat, simplified cartooning style,
where characters and objects resemble pictographs or ideograms (Cates 2010). The process of signification in this case is less a
matter of resembling the thing they represent,
and increasingly a matter of symbolic conventions. Cates points out that this “stylistic transparency” (Cates 2010, p. 98) approaches the
semiotic directness of language, and that both
comics and diagrams share iconic drawings
as their “natural vocabulary.” He argues that
“the diagrammatic potential of comics allows
the pictorial space of the page to pull away
from strict, camera-like storytelling into the
pictorial equivalent of synopsis, analysis, or
explanation” (Cates 2010, p. 100). These
modes of representation follow multilinear,
circular and recursive directions, which are
constantly produced by the reader and therefore provide multilinear narratives while relying
on icon-like symbols. Ware states that he aims
for drawings so simple that “when you see
them you can’t make yourself not read them”
(Raeburn 2004, p. 20). This instantaneous
recognition is the condition for the
simultaneous reading, for the instant sensemaking that is used for the interfaces of
contemporary apps and services.
Simultaneity
Simultaneity is not only the basic paradigm of
current tracking apps and services such as the
numerous self-quantification tools or web
analytics dashboards and metrics, but is the
precondition of general human-machine
interaction on a much broader scale. If one
expands the definition of narratives and of
media strategies towards connecting, supplying, and rendering information, then we can
look at current paradigms that dominate our
contemporary experience with information,
shifting from a linearity-based epistemology
towards an instantaneous simultaneity. But
what are the preconditions and predecessors
of this simultaneity, of this instant sensemaking?
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
With technological object cultures
becoming unreadable, even imperceptible, we
see an avoidance of the subject as an agent
of sense-making. Bot-based communication
has surpassed human generated traffic on the
Internet in 2013 (incapsula.com/blog/bottraffic-report-2013.html),
and
networked
computation no longer relies on the human
based, hermeneutic signification that was so
central for the epoch of scripture. The network
is literally and metaphorically at the core of the
information, the communication and the text,
connecting and reading, writing and recording
without the need for human interference. This
is well reflected in the paradigm formulated by
Winograd and Flores in 1986, paraphrased by
Hookway: “the user is ‘driving,’ not ‘commanding’” (Hookway 2014, p. 147). The best user
experience is rendered when the user is not
aware of himself as being the user of a program, but experiences himself as the one
performing a task without noticing the
mediation.
The digital technology in place has lost
its mechanical transparency, but kept its ability
to exert instant control. Hookway traces the
genealogy of these current interface
paradigms back to wartime aviation and pilot
plane systems developed during WWII and
thereafter: “Flight is and always has been a
mediated activity; even before the airplane
cockpit was identified as a distinct spatial
enclosure, the central problem of flight was
one of establishing the mediations that would
allow for the production of control” (Hookway
2014, p. 37). This production of control becomes particularly important when visibility is
impaired, and it is crucial to provide instant
essential information and feedback to the pilot.
And in order to be instantly readable, the interface uses diagrammatic representations as
simple as iconic drawings. The Kinalog
Display System, which was put to use in 1959,
indicated pitch and roll as relation of the wings
to an artificial horizon with a simple
diagrammatic relationship in order to create a
Hadler and Irrgang – 76
maximum of compatibility between pilot and
cockpit (see Figure 10).
This paradigm of User Experience now
draws from the simulation of natural
interaction, from multimodal input and output
such as voice, gesture or touch, from instant
feedback, in order to achieve the greatest
compatibility between user and machine,
between reader and text. The Embodiment of
the cockpit transformed into Heideggerian
concepts such as readiness-to-hand and
presence-to-hand, with
the tacit and
subconscious control of the automobile as the
model for interface design (Winograd and
Fernando, 1986; see Figure 11).
In order to establish this unobtrusive
information and control, technology needed to
dissolve into the environment and become
invisible itself. The most effective, ubiquitous,
and pervasive computing therefore is seamlessly integrated into the ambience. The
theoretical underpinning of this development
again draws from Heideggerian concepts, formulated in 1991 by Mark Weiser, who is
considered to have coined the term
“ubiquitous computing“ and “calm technology“
as a chief scientist at Xerox Parc in the 1980s.
He and his co-authors write that the most profound technologies are the ones that
disappear, that integrate seamlessly into the
everyday life and are no longer distinguishable
from it. Whereas this idea remained more or
less speculation in the 1980s, it rapidly became reality with the development of sensors,
APIs and the so’called “Internet of Things,”
which is still in its very early stages. But one
can already see that technology becomes
background (Hintergrund), becomes a second,
artificial nature. With the rise of touch as the
main mode of input, the interaction becomes
instantaneous, natural and intuitive. And with
the adaption of cockpit-like interfaces, with the
usage of icons and small diagrams, of dashboards and live visualization of data,
technology even remains unobtrusive when it
is visible. The representation of one’s health,
of one’s sleep cycle, one’s athletic achieve-
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
ments and so forth with the numerous apps
and services integrated into mobile devices is
actually displaying data that has been invisible
until now. By manufacturing this instant,
simultaneous visibility of the invisible, the
media itself becomes invisible, becomes backgroundable and dissolves into the environment.
Real time data is no longer obtained
from the mechanical devices it used to rely on
in the cockpit of the pilot, but is gathered from
all kinds of sources, from sensors, tracking
tools and other metrics, quantifiying and
measuring performance, status, activities from
heart rate, body weight and sleep cycles to
click-through-rates, page impressions and
sales objectives, from temperature to ‘likes’
and engagement on social media.
Simultaneity applies to the tools and
tactics we have seen in the non- and multilinear strategies: speculative experimentation
creates the represented object by making it
visible with a recursive hermeneutic operation,
which can be found at the core of webperformance analysis and optimization such
as SEO (Search Engine Optimization) as well
as the quantified self apps and services such
as health trackers. Iconic and diagrammatic
representation enables a quick and intuitive
understanding of the quantified data,
producing an apollinic overview and effective
exertion of control. But simultaneity adds another feature: it not only allows but demands
instant interaction, as it no longer provides a
text that requires just passive reading, but
data that deliver motives for actions and decisions. Simultaneous media can no longer be
understood with the concepts of linearity or
multilinearity, but needs additional consideration of the instant character of interaction that
is required by the user.
Hadler and Irrgang – 77
Figures
Figure 1: Welcome screen of Vilém Flusser, Die Schrift. Hat Schreiben Zukunft?, floppy disk
edition. Copyright: European Photography, Andreas Müller-Pohle.
Figure 2: Main menu.
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
Figure 3: Field for full text search.
Figure 4: Full text view and content menu.
Hadler and Irrgang – 79
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
Hadler and Irrgang – 80
Figure 5: Content card of the Flusser Hypertext (running on Mac OS9), including “horizontal”
links (tabs) and vertical links (small squares attached to words of the text). Copyright: ITAS,
Karlsruhe Institute of Technologie; Apple Inc.
Figure 6: Flusser Hypertext main menu – a map with overlapping windows.
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
Hadler and Irrgang – 81
Figure 7: Charles Darwin’s “3rd diagram” (1837), Notebook B, also known as “Darwin’s corral”.
An attempt to grasp such a spatial and temporal highly abstract concept like evolution. The
sketch’s branches explore a possible “structure” of the evolution of some species and the
extinction of others. (Cambridge University Library, dar. MS 121, fol. 36. Reproduced by kind
permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.)
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
Hadler and Irrgang – 82
Fig. 8: Chris Ware’s Diagram on the interior of the dust-jacket from Jimmy Corrigan, The
Smartest Kid on Earth. This Map not only conceals certain details within the story and life of the
protagonist, such as his hidden comic collection and some glimpses inside the life of his
grandfather, but also suggests a much deeper historical background of the story, displaying both
the immigration- and slave-routes from the 18th and 19th century. Copyright: Chris
Ware/Pantheon
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
Hadler and Irrgang – 83
Fig. 9: Chris Ware’s Diagram on “graphic language”, that not only explains each single line
shown in the mainframe, but also – among other things – situates the moment in the history of
the cosmos, locates the drawing style between realistic representation and language and shows
how sound and time are constructed within the panel. Copyright: Chris Ware/Pantheon
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
Hadler and Irrgang – 84
Fig. 10: The Kinalog Display System provides a state of augmentation to the pilot, conveying the
orientation or attitude of the aircraft with respect to the earth, which is essential for impaired
visibility. Image taken from the patent „Advanced flight control instrumentation and control
system US 2960906 A“.
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
Hadler and Irrgang – 85
Fig. 11: This drawing is taken from a recently registered patent from Apple Inc. and describes
the simulation of physical characteristics for files and data. Files can be „poured“ like liquid from
one device to the other. „Graphical Objects that respond to Touch or Motion Input. US Patent
No.: 8,839,150 B2“
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Hadler and Irrgang – 87
INTERACTIVE NARRATIVES
NEW MEDIA &
SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT
October 23‐25, 2014 | University of Toronto |ISBN: 978‐0‐9939520‐0‐5
INÊS DE CASTRO ON YOUTUBE: RE‐GENDERED NARRATIVES
Aida Jordão, York University
a.jordao@mail.utoronto.ca
Suggested citation: Jordão, Aida (2014). “Inês de Castro on YouTube: Re-gendered Narratives.”
In Proceedings of the Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement International
Conference. Eds. Hudson Moura, Ricardo Sternberg, Regina Cunha, Cecília Queiroz, and
Martin Zeilinger. ISBN: 978-0-9939520-0-5
This article is released under a Creative Commons license (CC-BY-NC-ND).
Abstract: Since the fourteenth century, when Inês de Castro was laid to rest in her magnificent
tomb in the Monastery of Alcobaça, artists have told the tragic story of the Galician noblewoman
who was assassinated for political reasons and became Queen of Portugal after her death. Inês
embodies beauty, love, innocence, and saudade, and figures prominently in the lusophone
cultural imaginary. Plays, novels, poetry and feature films offer representations of the Dead
Queen that range from tragic and defiant to sentimental and trite. In new media, the moving images that currently vie with iconic figurations of the legendary colo de garça are YouTube videos
about the love of Inês and Pedro. Responding to homework assignments in Portuguese history
or literature courses, primary and secondary school students engage with the love story and
create new narratives – plays, animation, and videos – that attract thousands of viewers.
In this paper, I consider a selection of YouTube videos made by Portuguese and Brazilian
students that tell the familiar love story in a unique way, taking varying degrees of poetic license
with their sources, the medieval period and the medieval woman. Some are original and irreverent while others simply glorify dead poets. Through a feminist lens, I analyse the mediated
embodiment of Inês de Castro and interrogate the inflexible and hierarchical binary dualisms of
man/woman, masculine/feminine, and public/private to posit a fluid conception of historical
adaptation and the gendered representation of iconic figures.
The representation of Inês de Castro, Portugal’s tragic medieval Dead Queen and iconic
symbol of beauty, love, innocence, and
saudade, in twentieth and twenty-first century
cinema and video must necessarily be complicated by a feminist reading that produces
pluralistic meanings to challenge the dominant
masculine linear form and narrative.1 The na1
This feminist strategy is founded on the theoretical
ideas of French feminism of the 1970’s (Cixous, Kristeva
tional Inesian feature films, José Leitão de
Barros’s Inês de Castro (1944-5) and José
Carlos de Oliveira’s Inês de Portugal (1997),
are rooted in masculinist discourses originating in their respective source material and the
and Irigaray) and has developed through the postmodern period to include a non-binary analysis of class
and race, as well as gender; see, for example, Luce
Irigaray’s concept of “feminine language” in (1977),
Women’s exile, Ideology and consciousness, no. I. pp
62-76.
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
canonized history of the eternal love of Pedro I
of Portugal and Inês. They are historical
reconstitutions that include aspects of the
popular Inesian legend – for example, Inês
comes to Portugal as the lady-in-waiting of
Constança, the Crown Prince Pedro’s betrothed, but it is Pedro and Inês who fall in
love; after Constança’s death, they live together and have children; Afonso IV assassinates Inês because her brothers are powerful
war-mongers who influence Pedro and
threaten the peace with Castille; when Pedro
becomes King he kills Inês’s assassins by ripping out their hearts and then exhumes Inês’s
body and makes her his Queen 2 – but
nonetheless revision the events and the
protagonists in accordance with political and
socio-cultural demands of their times. The first
film, produced under a national propaganda
program and a treaty of friendship with Spain
is based on a contemporary novel 3 that
demonizes Inês as a carnal temptress; the
cinematic narrative, however, visualizes the
heroine as innocent and remorseful. The second feature is based on the chronicles of
medieval Kings in which Inês’s fate at the
hands of powerful men is condemned; the
filmmaker creates a lively and passionate Inês
with sexual initiative. In both films Inês has
some narrative and formal agency but,
problematically, it is in death that she is ultimately empowered. Her tomb stands today as
a testament to her Queenly status and the inscription on Pedro’s tomb, “Até ao fim do
mundo” (“Until the end of the world”) 4 suggests they are waiting to be re-united, forever
2
Inês was made Queen by law but in fictional accounts
her corpse is crowned and her hand kissed by the royal
subjects. This aspect of the legend was first staged in
Luís Vélez de Guevara’s seventeenth century tragedy,
Reinar después de morir.
3
Vieira, Afonso Lopes (1939-40). A paixão de Pedro o
Cru. Lisboa: Bertrand.
4
This is the popular interpretation of the phrase that is
carved on the tomb; for alternative readings see Serafím
Moralejo (1991), El ‘Texto’ Alcobacense sobre los
a
amores de D. Pedro y D Inés, in Actas do IV Congresso
da Associação Hispânica de Literatura Medieval, Vol. I,
Sessões Plenárias, Lisboa: Edições Cosmos.
Jordão – 89
present in the cultural imaginary, forever
hovering as metaphysical entities of the national project. Both films end in the Monastery
of Alcobaça, in the nave where the tombs are
found and visually declare that this is the site
where Inês reigns supreme as Queen of
Portugal, legitimate and Portuguese.
There is, however, an emerging cultural product where Inês appears as a moving
image for popular consumption that vies with
the feature films as the iconic cinematic representation of the Dead Queen: YouTube student videos about the love of Inês and Pedro.
On the internet, we find an abundance of
Inesian videos with a great variety of figurations of the Dead Queen. In the past year
alone, there were over ten blog and YouTube
postings of the story of Inês and Pedro as it is
imagined by students in Brazil and Portugal.
Responding to homework assignments in
Portuguese history or literature courses, primary and secondary school students engage
with the love story, creating filmed playlets or
short films. Although the image and sound
quality is often very poor, I believe this is the
area where the moving image and the
visualization of Inês de Castro is having the
most impact. Compare, for example, the number of viewings for the 1997 feature film Inês
de Portugal, 38,797,5 and those for a student
film with shaky camerawork, teenagers in ragtag costumes and wigs, and arias from Bizet’s
Carmen as background music, 6,901.6 Multiply
the last figure by ten, which is a modest estimate of school plays and films that have been
posted to YouTube, and you have almost
double the number of viewers of the feature
film. Even acknowledging that this is a very
informal poll based only on the number of
viewings (ignoring the length of time they have
been posted) and that viewings could be a
5
URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2_fHIFltBQ
[Aug. 21, 2014].
6
D. Pedro and D. Inês de Castro, setting unknown but
likely in Portugal. URL:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLzYX4ZmEwY&featu
re=fvsr [Aug. 21, 2014].
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
one-second visit to the page, the estimate is
impressive and justifies a brief analysis of the
various representations of Inês on Internet
sites. In this paper, I consider a selection of
YouTube videos made by Brazilian and Portuguese students that each tell the familiar story
in a unique way, taking varying degrees of poetic license with their sources, the medieval
period and the medieval woman. I will start
with three Brazilian videos that are both original and irreverent.
The first features a teenage girl sitting
in her room speaking directly to the camera in
close-up, and in the first person as Inês.7 She
titles the video “A Minha Versão ;D” (“My
Version ;D”) and in the caption states that it is
an assignment in “Intertextual Relations in
Portuguese Literature,” acknowledges her
friends, and thanks her dog for not barking
while she filmed. Her monologue is in a colloquial Portuguese, at times dismissive – and
sarcastic when Constança, Pedro’s legitimate
wife, is mentioned – commenting on the
events in a distanced way. And although she
is wearing glasses and a t-shirt, making no
attempt at historical reconstitution, and adopting an offhand tone, she has the same objective as Garcia de Resende’s high medieval
Dona Inês,8 who is resurrected to tell her story
to the ladies of the court to prove her innocence. This Brazilian girl’s Inês laments her
illegitimate status even though her father was
“um nobre galego cheio de grana” (“a filthy
rich Galician nobleman”), and defends the
love she and Pedro shared as innocent, “Não
creio que tenhamos cometido nenhum erro” (“I
don’t think we did anything wrong”). This
young woman also laments that “o povo me
odiava” (“the people hated me”) once again
placing Inês, and her private love for Pedro, in
the public domain, and, as Cristina Segura
Graiño suggests, transgressing the medieval
gender role to which she has been assigned
7
URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjK4LmnZY3o
[Aug. 21, 2014].
8
In “Trovas que Garcia de Resende fez à morte de D.
Inês de Castro” published in 1516.
Jordão – 90
and becoming a “bad” woman (1993, p. 54).
By incarnating Inês, this teenager at once
resurrects the misogynist commonplace that
honours the private woman while maligning
the public one, and, by posting a video of herself in a private place, her bedroom, in a public internet forum, YouTube, challenges this
very dictum. Nonetheless, her innocent remark about having done nothing wrong
demonstrates Inês’s unexpected transition
from the private to the public realm and its dire
consequences. As in Resende’s and António
Ferreira’s influential Inesian texts, 9 “the people” clamour for Inês’s death and she is
sacrificed for the good of the Kingdom. Finally
though, this girl echoes Resende’s poet who
glorifies Inês’s death, declaring that if she
hadn’t been killed there would be no story to
tell.10
The second Brazilian student video is
set in the present, made by Amanda Fideles
with a group of students from the Colégio
Adventista of Cidade Ademar. 11 They have
adapted the story from Canto III of Luís de
Camões’s Os Lusíadas but have set it in São
Paulo, overtly calling it “Inês de Castro e D.
Pedro, Século 21” (“21st Century”). A poor migrant woman, Inês, who has lived in the favela
since coming to the city, ends up working for a
rich banking family;12 she and the son, Pedro,
who is married to Constança, fall in love.
Bruno Mars’s “Talkin’ to the Moon” plays as
Inês and Pedro drop their tray and newspaper
respectively and realize they are in love.
Constança dies in childbirth and Pedro tells
9
Ferreira penned the first Portuguese tragedy, Castro,
with the tale of Inês and Pedro as its subject.
10
One wonders if the study of intertextuality in her
course includes Resende’s ballad, and if this monologue
is a very loose adaptation of the same.
11
Cidade Ademar is a suburb of São Paulo. URL:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFU2lo0qhuA [Aug.
21, 2014].
12
A Portuguese-Spanish short film, Inês de Castro
(2000), directed by Grandela tells a similarly class-based
tale founded on Inesian lore: The son of an industrial
magnate falls in love with a female factory worker; the
shareholders intervene and endanger the couple (ICAM
catalogue, 1999/2000).
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
his father Afonso he wants to marry Inês.
Afonso is` enraged, “Aquela empregada?”
(“That maid?”), and sets his goons on Inês;
she is holding a baby and has a young daughter who begs for mercy. The goons, played by
tough ’hood girls, stab Inês and slash her
daughter’s throat. The rest of the story,
Pedro’s revenge and Inês’s entombment is
told in intertitles with the poignant cover of
“Somewhere Over the Rainbow” by the late
Israel Kamakawiwo'ole playing the ukulele.13
The cast, as in all the Brazilian student videos,
is multi-racial, but only in this one are Inês and
Pedro played by black actors, a truly postcolonial approach. Although this particular version
of the story is set in the twenty-first century,
one is reminded of Sharon Farmer and Carol
B. Pasternak’s study of the fluidity and
multiplicity of gendered identities in the Middle
Ages and how they intersect with social status, religion and sexuality (2003, p. xi). The
matrices of domination14 explored by the authors as a site for the construction of gender
are illustrated here with the class difference
between Inês and Pedro, and the race difference between Inês and Constança. No longer
a noblewoman, Inês serves Constança and
the family and it is while she is literally serving
Pedro a drink that he falls in love with her. He,
engaged in the manly ritual of reading the
newspaper, discards it as she also discards
her service instruments. When Afonso learns
of Pedro’s intent to marry Inês, he asks what
Pedro will get for it, foregrounding the
materiality of their union. The masculinist posturing that follows is only challenged by the
sex of the goons he employs: they are girls
but sufficiently masculinized (i.e. they dress as
boys and play the conventional heavies of
’hood films) to do the job of killing Inês and her
Jordão – 91
children. Inês’s portrayal as a mother in the
last scene further genders the interaction but
does not erase the class-based matrix of
domination through which the episode is
streamed.
The third example of a video by Brazilian students narrates the story as in medieval
times, with Princes and Princesses, Knights
and Ladies, but the characters are in modern
summer clothes with girls who play male characters wearing blazers and make-up as facial
hair; the setting is a working class neighbourhood of low-rise buildings and adjoining
fields.15 Pedro is played by a young girl and
another girl who plays Inês shows a hyper
femininity perhaps to emphasize the sex
difference. She giggles coyly, flings her bag
away in mock abandon, places a flower behind her ear, etc. But Pedro does not indulge
in macho posturing; both he and Inês skip like
children and dance exuberantly to the pop
song “In a Perfect World” by Filipina singer
Toni Gonzaga.16 An intercut slide of a castle
reminds us we are in medieval times and
when Pedro tells Inês he’s married she says
laughingly, “Ó Pedro, não tem problema, eu
não tenho ciumes!” (“It’s not a problem, I’m
not the jealous type!”). In this re-telling of the
story, Pedro and Inês are white, Afonso and
Constança are black. The story continues to
its inevitable end with the singular variation
that Pedro avenges Inês’s death by killing his
father, King Afonso.
All three of these Brazilian videos are
extremely playful and present a great contrast
to the student videos made in Portugal, which
are earnest in their attempts to reconstruct
medieval language, setting and behaviour.
The result is a scenario of authentic castles
and cathedrals (which Portugal has in abun-
13
It is intriguing that both the extradiegetic songs are by
Hawaiian singers, yet another postcolonial aspect of this
student project.
14
Issues of oppression based on race, class and gender
as per the integrative feminism of the third wave; see, for
example, Patricia Hills Collins (2009) Black feminist
thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of
empowerment, New York, London: Routledge.
15
Posted in May 2012, it is a good example of the
‘historical’ story; by ETEC Ângelo Cavalheiro. URL:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRpe9Z296eY [Aug.
21, 2014].
16
It is interesting that two of these Brazilian videos
feature music by singers with Philippine roots; Bruno
Mars was born in Hawaii of Filipino parents.
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
dance) and period costumes, but wooden acting as the students struggle with the hallowed
spaces, unfamiliar attire and medieval texts.
They are reverent of the material but fail to
engage meaningfully with the eternal love proclaimed in the narratives. Nonetheless, a twopart video by Escola E.B. 2,3 of Ceira,
Coimbra with commentary by two students on
a rooftop basketball court has had about
15,000 viewings.17 The story follows Leitão de
Barros’s film plot with Pedro mistaking Inês for
Constança in their first meeting and Inês
blaming herself as a sinner and traitor and
sending Pedro off to his lawful wife; still, Dom
Afonso calls her demonic. How different this is
from the Brazilian girl who embraces adultery
because she’s not the jealous type! The students are dressed in rich velvets and satins,
stand in front of images of gorgeous medieval
architecture and speak a formal medieval
Portuguese but fail to stir the emotions. It is a
museumification of the tale of Inês. There is a
nod to contemporary love with a final shot of
Inês and Pedro in modern dress sitting on a
bench overlooking Coimbra and rock-jazz
singer Pedro Abrunhosa’s “Beijo” playing over
the credits. But this alleged adaptation of
María Pilar Queralt del Hierro’s novel Inês de
Castro and Ferreira’s Castro, is pedantic and
slow-moving. Another Portuguese video with
almost 6,000 viewings is by the Escola Básica
José Afonso de Alhos Vedros and it is filmed
on location in the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos in
Lisbon; the students again attempt medieval
costumes and language. 18 One enthusiastic
viewer praises the youth’s interest in Portuguese history but questions whether the costumes are not more similar to those of
Russian princesses. Again, the acting is stiff
and ineffectual but the cast is multi-racial,
17
8,855 views, URL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQOEz7PfVs&feature=related and 5,948 views, URL:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Huf3PckHVUM&featur
e=plcp [Aug. 21, 2014].
18
5,774 views., URL:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=J
WM6_KynOwM&NR=1 [Aug. 21, 2014]..
Jordão – 92
which shows some flexibility in casting. There
is also a rap song by the students on the
school’s YouTube page19 which indicates how
they want to tell the story: five female
students, black and white, keep the beat with
a chorus that urges Inês and Pedro to declare
their passion, and a black male student raps
verses that sum up the Camonian episode.
This, however, is not part of the main video
which remains a flat, unimpassioned
representation of Inesian lore.
This small sample of student videos
demonstrates two tendencies. First, the
figuration of Inês is fluid: she is represented
physically as brunette, blonde or black and her
personality ranges from silly to self-blaming to
dignified. The degree of femininity displayed
by the character is stressed in the video where
Pedro is also played by a female and Inês is
hyper feminine to compensate, though, as I
observed, “he,” in a masquerade of femininity,
also skips and dances in an unmasculine
manner. Another common feminizing trait is
the long hair of the heroine, though, again,
because Pedro is played by a girl or sports a
medieval hairstyle, his hair is also long. In the
Portuguese videos the students stand
statically with their arms at their sides, so stiff
and uncomfortable that their non-gesturality
defies an identification of feminine/masculine
traits. As for Inês’s agency in these videos, the
teenage girl’s monologue demonstrates full
control of her situation; she uses the
intertextuality demanded by her school course
to create an original autobiography that she
literally incorporates. She is an Inês who
writes, directs and performs herself. The Inês
and Pedro played by the girls who giggle and
skip together, and are mutually active as letter
writers when forced apart, show an egalitarian
approach to the characters where both the
protagonists are subjects. In contrast, the
Portuguese videos give agency to the voice of
authority which, in one, is the teacher reading
19
1,608 views, URL:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aOSM-2siZc [Aug.
21, 2014].
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
out the ensuing acts and scenes, in another,
the canonized literary text which they have
memorized; all of the participants are
objectified here. Second, the Portuguese
youth are loath to challenge the master
narrative of history and produce dry, didactic
narratives while the Brazilian students are
fresh and creative with their versions of the
story. The nationalistic objective that drives
the Portuguese students’ Inesian video
projects is evident in their reticence to place
the story in another time and place from that in
which history occurred and reflect the national
feature films made about Inês and Pedro (as
noted above); the first scene of the two-part
video by the students from Coimbra is
modelled on the Leitão de Barros film. The
video shot in the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos,
inspired the following turgid comment.
Dá consolo e alento ver que nem tudo
está mau no reino de Portugal!
Continuamos a ter gente nova a
aprender e a GOSTAR das estórias da
nossa história! Enquanto este lume
arder temos esperança!
(It is consoling and encouraging to see
that not all is bad in the kingdom of
Portugal! We continue to have young
people learning and LIKING the stories
of our history! While this flame burns
we have hope!)20
The reference to Portugal as a kingdom,
though ironic, signals the desire to maintain
national borders, and the pride in youth the
hope that they will guarantee this.
Reconstituting, not reconstructing, history
becomes the instrument of the national
project, indoctrinating the participants and,
presumably, the hundreds of viewers reached
by a YouTube posting. The Portuguese
students would do well to view the work of
their Brazilian colleagues, consider the
postcolonial world they also inhabit, and
20
URL:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=J
WM6_KynOwM&NR=1 [Aug. 21, 2014].
Jordão – 93
entertain a fluid conception of historical truth.
This is challenging, however, when they are
steeped in the pedagogy of a national project
which reproduces the master narrative and
promotes inflexible and hierarchical binary
dualisms of man/woman, masculine/feminine,
public/private, etc. It is almost certain that the
Portuguese students’ models for their video
creations are the cultural products of a
Portuguese nationalist discourse which
reconstructs historical episodes, like Leitão de
Barros’s Inês de Castro, made at the height of
fascist nation-building, and José Carlos de
Oliveira’s Inês de Portugal, with its millennial
anxieties.
Elizabeth A. Ford and Deborah C.
Mitchell’s Royal Portraits in Hollywood:
Filming the Lives of Queens details society’s
preoccupation with queens’ lives on film and
the filmic representation of the historical
sovereign. Their research questions are,
What slice of the life do film
biographers choose to tell? Which
events are treated, which deleted?
Does the film chronology mirror or
depart from the life’s time line? Are
fictional scenes added? If so, how do
these affect the overall subject? ...
How far is too far from established
truth? What responsibility does an
auteur have to the life held up for
viewer’s pleasure? (2009, p. 6)
These concerns apply as much to a
professional director’s as to a student
videographer’s vision of Inês de Castro and
problematize how the cinematic image
replaces other imagined renderings of the
historical figure. The videos analysed here,
and the dozens of others posted on YouTube,
circumvent previous historical fictions or
emulate a canonized history. In both cases,
with the dearth of information about the
historical Inês de Castro, they “depart from the
life’s time line” and often include scenes that,
for the “pleasure” of feminist viewers, figure
the female protagonist as subject. It is the
objective of a feminist analysis to discover
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
these instances and view/read Inês as a
female character with agency and a fluid
identity
that
eschews
limited
binary
oppositions. As the story of the Dead Queen
proliferates on YouTube – there is even a
Lego version of Os Lusíadas that features a
Lego Inês in a Lego tomb21 – it is crucial to
analyse her representation through a feminist
lens and re-gender the character.
References
Camões, Luís de [1572] (2003). Os lusíadas.
Lisboa: Edicões Expresso.
Farmer, Sharon, and Carol Braun Pasternak, eds
(2003). Gender and difference in the middle
ages. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press.
Ferreira, António [ms circa 1556, pub. anon. 1587
and 1598] (1974). Castro. Introdução, notas e
a
glossário de F. Costa Marques. 4 ed., revista.
Coimbra: Atlântida.
Ford, Elizabeth A. and Deborah C. Mitchells
(2009). Royal portraits in Hollywood: Filming
the lives of Queens. Lexington: University Press
of Kentucky.
Jordão – 94
Screenplay, Spanish version Ricardo del Mazo,
José María Alonso Pesquera, Garcia Viñolas.
Perf. Alicia Palacios (Inês), António Vilar
(Pedro), María Dolores Pradera, Erico Braga,
João Villaret. Filmes Lumiar, Portugal/Faro
Producciones Cinematográficas, Spain. VHS.
Inês de Portugal (1997). Dir. José Carlos de
Oliveira. Screenplay João Aguiar. Perf. Cristina
Homem de Mello (Inês), Heitor Lourenço
(Pedro), Ruy de Carvalho, Manuela Carona.
Imagemreal, Portugal. VHS.
Inesian Videography (student videos on YouTube
analysed in this paper):
A Minha Versão ;D. URL:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjK4LmnZY3
o [Aug. 21, 2014].
D. Pedro and D. Inês de Castro. URL:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLzYX4ZmE
wY&feature=fvsr [Aug. 21, 2014].
Inês de Castro e D. Pedro, Século 21. Amanda
Fideles, Colégio Adventista of Cidade Ademar.
URL:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFU2lo0qhu
A [Aug. 21, 2014].
Queralt del Hierro, María Pilar (2003). Inés de
Castro. Barcelona: Ediciones Martínez Roca.
Os Lusíadas – Inês de Castro. ETEC Ângelo
Cavalheiro. URL:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRpe9Z296e
Y [Aug. 21, 2014].
Segura Graiño, Cristina (1993). Mujeres
públicas/malas mujeres. Mujeres
honradas/mujeres privadas. Árabes, judías y
cristianas: Mujeres en la Europa medieval. Ed.
Celia del Moral. Granada:Universidad de
Granada, 53-62.
A história de Pedro e Inês. Escola E.B. 2,3 Ceira.
URL:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQOEz7PfVs&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Huf3PckHVU
M&feature=plcp [Aug. 21, 2014].
Resende, Garcia de [1516] (1999). Trovas que
Garcia de Resende fez à morte de D. Inês de
Castro. Cancioneiro geral de Garcia de
Resende, Folios 221b-222b In Poesia de
Garcia de Resende, editor José Camões,
Lisboa: Comissão Nacional para as
Comemorações dos Descobrimentos
Portugueses.
Encenação D. Pedro e D. Inês. Escola Básica
José Afonso de Alhos Vedros. URL:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscr
een&v=JWM6_KynOwM&NR=1 [Aug. 21,
2014].
Inesian Cinema:
Inês de Castro (1944/45). Dir. José Leitão de
Barros. Screenplay, Portuguese version José
Leitão de Barros, Afonso Lopes Vieira.
21
Os Lusíadas–Versão Lego–Apresentação, URL:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNf5uSa6ZKI [Aug.
21, 2014].
INTERACTIVE NARRATIVES
NEW MEDIA &
SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT
October 23‐25, 2014 | University of Toronto |ISBN: 978‐0‐9939520‐0‐5
EMERGING FORMS OF CITIZEN VIDEO ACTIVISM: CHALLENGES
IN DOCUMENTARY STORYTELLING & SUSTAINABILITY
Ben Lenzner, University of Waikato
ben.lenzner@gmail.com
Suggested citation: Lenzner, Ben (2014). “Emerging Forms of Citizen Video Activism:
Challenges in Documentary Storytelling & Sustainability.” In Proceedings of the Interactive
Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement International Conference. Eds. Hudson Moura,
Ricardo Sternberg, Regina Cunha, Cecília Queiroz, and Martin Zeilinger. ISBN: 9780993952005
This article is released under a Creative Commons license (CC-BY-NC-ND).
Abstract: Gilles Deleuze’s early reflections on assemblage identify the idea of the diagram or
possibility space as a framework to suggest the ways in which the assembling of technology
and human practices merge to create distinctive and innovative new assemblages. Yet routinely
it is the technological advances of the 21st century that receive the most revered credit for shifts
within citizen based video activism. Essential to the new and often undefined waves of digital
documentary birthed in scattered alcoves of social activism and human rights movements are
the relationships between the components of these assemblages. Particularly influential are the
facilitating agents spearheading the means to digital video literacy that allow these narratives to
be shared.
Conducted over three years, my PhD research has examined very specific emerging video
practices rooted in social activism in a number of global settings. My fieldwork has sought out
citizen media makers in order to discuss how these practitioners have approached their nascent
video activism with the goal of identifying properties that might allow these surfacing video practices to become sustainable over time. This paper examines and critiques specific elements that
these particular forms of video activism confront in their own unique global possibility spaces.
Moreover, as traditional methods of video distribution and video recording continue to change
even further through online platforms and mobile technology, how might we begin to identify
emerging forms of citizen based video activism and documentary media?
In June 2012, in Crispus Attucks Playground
on the edge of Bedford-Stuyvesant in
Brooklyn, I met Tim Pool (who at the time was
a prominent live streamer) to chat about the
evolution of his video practice. “My stuff that
exists is a collaboration,” he told me, “it’s like
open source journalism … I don’t have one
editor, I’ve got you know, three million” (Tim
Pool, interview with author, June 27, 2012).
Nine months later, in March of 2013, I was lost
on the outskirts of the city of Lucknow in the
Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, trying to attend
a workshop conducted by the NonGovernmental Organization (NGO) Video
Volunteers. I had interviewed a number of
Video Volunteers’ Community Correspondents
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
throughout the country who document local
issues happening in their districts and villages
and slums for the Video Volunteers’ India Unheard program, which seeks to publish one
short YouTube video a day (though they regularly surpass this goal). In Lucknow, I chatted
with the Allahabad based community correspondent, sometimes called local changemaker, Ajeet Bahadur. “After making India
Unheard videos, what happens is that what is
happening here and what is happening in
Kashmir, we both know it and can share it,” he
told me. “This way people can get acquainted
and associated with us. What is happening
right now is that the media or any other medium of such communication to give information to people is limited on a local level”
(Ajeet Bahadur, interview with author, March
3, 2013).
In the last two years, I’ve sat down and
talked with a wide range of documentary media makers engaging with recent digital video
technologies in the United States, India and
New Zealand. One of my goals has been to
achieve a better understanding of the
possibilities for creative practices. Why are
certain practices emerging in specific areas?
How do constraints in technology, language
and connectivity (to name a few) play roles in
the shaping of digital documentary media
practices? The creative practitioners that are
participants in my PhD research are not documentary media makers in the traditional
sense. Nor are they often well known. They
tend to be regular folk, inquisitive individuals
from many walks of life, who have embraced
accessible video technologies to often document activism, human rights and social justice
movements. The multiple crossroads where
current digital video practices and technologies merge are exciting and inspiring spaces
to examine how these practices are constructed.
My research uses the lens of
assemblage theory to engage with the ways in
which individual agency and communities of
practice experiment with digital video
Lenzner – 96
technologies in very nascent, emerging and
often changing possibility spaces. Furthermore, I’ve begun to ponder how these practices might, if at all, relate to documentary
practices in the traditional sense. How do
these creative sparks form? Can they be
deliberate, and how do assemblages sustain
themselves? Where do practices that we may
recognize as documentary emerge from and
might they re-inform how we see and perhaps
even define documentary? Moreover, in such
a digitally connected world, what if Ajeet
Bahadur had the opportunity to craft stories in
New York City or Tim Pool found himself on a
road that leads to New Delhi, how would their
creative practices thrive, change or fade due
to the constraints or limitations of their new
assemblage?
Let us start with Tim Pool, whose practice was sparked in the Autumn of 2011 by
curiosity, as he clicked through countless
YouTube videos of Occupy Wall Street protestors knocked around by the police; he eventually stumbled upon one short clip of a police
officer boasting that “My little nightstick is going to get a workout tonight” (Heaf, 2012).
Pool had two responses to this video. He
wanted to know (Heaf, 2012) who was filming
this footage and why wasn’t this footage being
exposed to a larger audience? Inspired and
intrigued, Pool bought a ticket from Virginia to
New York that very same afternoon.
Arriving in Manhattan, Pool initially documented the protests in the same way as we all
might do, recording with his smart phone and
saving the footage to the memory card, then
recording again, repeating the cycle. Soon,
using the live streaming application, Ustream,
Pool began to stream live broadcasts along
the lines of a traditional news report, his
collaborator at the time was Henry James
Ferry, who played the role of an on-camera
reporter. Yet Pool soon came to realize that
the action of the protests often sprouted
spontaneously. A reporter didn’t seem to fit
the flow of events and his viewers on Ustream
were expressing through a live chat function
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
that they didn’t care to see a reporter in the
frame. As Pool explained to me, “that just presents the same old same old. Might as well be
on CNN, if you’re just going to watch some
guy talk” (Tim Pool, interview with author,
June 27, 2012). Pool recognized the evolving
possibilities and realized that his journalism
had to shadow the emerging protests around
him. As Pool reflected, “the first was me filming him (James Ferry). And the second time
we went out, he couldn’t keep up with the
group because they were running full speed,
so I just took off and took over” (Tim Pool,
interview with author, June 27, 2012).
Assemblages,
whether
they
are
technologies, social structures, creative practices or another configuration, form out of a
diagram that consists of a multiple set of
possibilities. The diagram was present for the
journalistic niche carved by Pool’s video practice; the infrastructure was there – a smart
phone, a 3G network, Wi-Fi, a mobile streaming app, blogs, websites for dissemination and
an emerging possibility space. Pool’s lightweight digital tools (specifically his smart
phone – a Samsung Galaxy II) gave him
flexibility absent in traditional media. He could
be on the front lines, documenting the arrests
and police brutality that traditional news makers couldn’t access with their large, bulky
cameras and reporters dressed in suits. The
technology he was working with offered new
possibilities to a video practice that he seemingly created spontaneously – assembling
components from available resources within a
diagram.
Thus the way in which Pool’s practice
formed indicates Manuel DeLanda’s descriptions of “mechanisms of emergence”
(DeLanda, 2006, p. 10). Tim Pool’s work and
his tools, knowingly and unknowingly, allowed
for “the possibility of complex interactions
between component parts,” enabling and
exercising their “capacities to interact,” which
essentially explains how the properties of a
certain entity interrelate and connect with another entity (DeLanda, 2006, p. 10). In a mat-
Lenzner – 97
ter of days, Pool’s practice matured
monumentally and his reporting received
worldwide attention as it was distributed
through other more established assemblages.
Seemingly, the unsettled formation of citizen
media assemblages straddles an undefined
space that dances between journalism, reportage and documentary. When I spoke to Pool,
he was unyielding in his criticism of mainstream media. “Journalists are the enemy,” he
told me towards the end of our conversation
(Tim Pool, interview with author, June 27,
2012). Yet to foresee how practices might
evolve can be hard to predict. As DeLanda
(2006, p. 10) states, “there is no way to tell in
advance in what way a given entity may affect
or be affected by innumerable other entities.”
Today, Pool is director of media innovation at
Fusion, a collaborative media enterprise
between Univision and the Disney-ABC
Television Group (Steel, 2014). It’s difficult to
say how Pool’s practice might develop going
forward or where components of his work may
surface. In early 2012, one of Pool’s live
streams was used as evidence within the legal
system.1 As Pool (interview with author, June
27, 2012) explained,
In May, it was announced that the
first Occupy Wall Street trial in an arrest case, was, resulted in an acquittal because they used my footage as
evidence. So, that’s kind of the point.
You know, that powerful interests
aren’t allowed to decide what the past
is … You’ve got police officers who
lie under oath and they did and that
aren’t held accountable for it. But at
least now we know for sure, the truth.
1
Note: At the time, Alexander Arbuckle was a NYU
journalism student who happened to be working on
a school photojournalism project documenting the
point of view of police officers patrolling the
Occupy movement. He was charged with
disorderly conduct.
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2012/05
/in_the_first_oc.php (accessed September 20,
2014)
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
Since 2006, on the other side of the
globe, the organization Video Volunteers,
based in the Indian state of Goa, has trained
community based activists to produce original
video content for the Web, for their communities and for local and regional authorities that
often have the power to address the issues
that these community correspondents document. Thus when Zulekha Sayyed, a community correspondent from the Vikrohli Parksite
Slum in Mumbai, explained how she hid in her
friend’s first floor apartment overlooking the
location of now razed homes and had
clandestinely recorded forced evictions, it recalled similar challenges that Pool and other
practitioners discussed during the course of
my fieldwork. As Sayyed insisted, “if the police
saw me, they would have put me in lock up,
put me in prison. They would have taken my
camera and not returned it” (Zulekha Sayyed,
interview with author, February, 6, 2013).
The evolution of Video Volunteers presents an intriguing case study of an
organization deliberately trying to encourage
the formation of well-thought out assemblages
that support human rights video practices, yet
are continually challenged by a variety of constraints specific to the diagram they work
within. Consequently, their assemblages are
fragile and Video Volunteers often reassesses
their strategy in the hopes of generating
sustainable assemblages that support and
propel the work of their community
correspondents.
Video Volunteers began with community
video and the voice of the people as its central
objective. Non-governmental organizations
often use video as a means to publicize their
work or raise funds or get out the word about
different issues or actions, take the KONY
2012 video or Greenpeace for example and all
its precursors and successors. Yet from its
inception, the goal of Video Volunteers has
been to get video tools into the hands of
individuals so that they might be able to tell
stories that are meaningful to their communities and that also may work to create impact
Lenzner – 98
and fuel change. As Video Volunteers codirector, Jessica Mayberry explained to me in
January 2013, “It wasn’t video for health. It
wasn’t video for education, which is how so
many projects have been done. But it was really about creating local media, just giving
people a voice. What would that look like?”
(Jessica Mayberry, interview with author,
January, 23, 2013).
Initially, Video Volunteers started with
Community Video Units. These were small
regional teams of local people who would produce half hour video news magazines on
different issues. Each team would go on a
month long road trip, conducting screenings in
the twenty-five or so communities where the
news magazine had sourced and produced
stories. On average, the organization saw a
fifty percent turnout of villagers attending
screenings and there was strong community
involvement. Yet it wasn’t sustainable. The
screenings were expensive and there was little possibility of revenue generation. As well, it
was exhausting for each group, whose task
was to create next month’s thirty-minute video
news magazine while traveling from village to
village conducting screenings.
And so in 2009, Video Volunteers
scraped that program and since then has run
a new model called – India Unheard. With the
goal to have a network of community correspondents in each of India’s 650 or so districts, India Unheard identifies young activists
who are employed part time or not at all and
they train them in video making and storytelling for two weeks and supply each new
correspondent with a Flip Cam. Generally,
these community correspondents shoot a
story or two each month (for each story they
publish they are paid on a sliding scale based
on the quality of work, the type of video made,
years in the organization, etc). Each
correspondent accesses a computer, downloads their footage, burns it to a CD and sends
the CD along with notes/storyboard via postal
mail to Goa, where it is eventually edited, put
on both YouTube and the India Unheard web-
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
site and often screened informally at home in
the community as well. This system is not precisely low-tech, though it is quite a distance
from Pool’s real-time video broadcasting practice.
Although constraints are abundant for
community correspondents, these limitations
are not always negative. In India, the speed of
both mobile networks and Internet access is
not conducive for online transfers of video
footage, thus forcing correspondents to
diligently craft a narrative for post-production.
Since Tim Pool uploads footage with ease, he
is almost encouraged to deviate from the crafting of a narrative. Yet as an organization, with
the goal to upload one story to the Internet
each day, Video Volunteers’ editing capacity is
already stretched thin and soon they hope to
support regional video editors of which currently there is only one. However these limitations are also incredibly frustrating. Although
only a couple of the correspondents I spoke
with owned a computer, the majority had to
travel to a cyber café or borrow a friend’s computer to transfer files and prepare their reports. As Ajeet Bahadur (interview with author,
March 3, 2013) jokingly reflected,
Right now I need a computer. In the
beginning I worked without it. I had
friends … and I used other people’s
computers. I spoilt a lot of computers. Now people are really scared of
me. Either they run away with their
computer and thus I don’t get to
meet them; or if I get to use their
computer then they sit with me while
I work.
Because of this combination of digital
technology and snail mail, most stories take at
least a month, often longer, to shoot, send,
edit and publish to the Web. Directly, the various infrastructure and economic limitations on
the possibility space of the diagram in which a
correspondent creates video reports often restricts the speed of what DeLanda might
describe as capacities to connect. In contrast,
Pool’s practice almost basks in the possibility
Lenzner – 99
space that is New York City and thrives upon
the cohesion of that potential. Pool doesn’t
wonder how he is going to get his next smart
phone; he ponders which smart phone he’s
going to get next. Some of the community
correspondents I spent time with came from
extremely difficult backgrounds and the fifteen
hundred rupees they would make on an India
Unheard video might be the majority of their
income for the month. As well, the organization itself sometimes struggles to get equipment for their correspondents. The Flip HD
video cameras, for example, are a vital tool
and crucial to the NGO’s work. They play a
major role in the evolving media practices of
Video Volunteers and their affordability allows
for each correspondent to be given a camera.
Yet in April 2011, Cisco, the technology company who owned the Flip HD line of camcorders decided to discontinue the product. As
Jessica Mayberry, the Video Volunteers codirector told me (interview with author,
January 23, 2013),
And then it failed because technology, driven by western ideas of
tech, that being the primary market
decided that well nobody needs a
hundred dollar video camera when
you’ve got it on your phone without
realizing that not every, you know,
yes in America everybody is going
to have a fancy five hundred dollar
cell phone, but that’s not going to be
the case in India.
With the death of the Flip camera, it was
possible that the assemblage Video Volunteers had helped to craft might fade away. Yet
the organization took a chance, directly
reached out to Cisco and secured hundreds of
Flip cameras that had been manufactured but
weren’t going to go to sale because of the discontinuation of the product. The predicament
was fragile and tenuous and needed deliberate reinforcing and careful management in
order to proceed and thrive. If the Flip video
camera, a crucial component of the diagram
evaporated, the assemblage could be forced
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
to change. This effort by Video Volunteers allowed for India Unheard not only to sustain but
also to grow.
Technology is a tool. Yet within different
locations a digital video camera might have
exceedingly ever-shifting repercussions in the
way it is being used, who might be using it and
why. Many of the components that contribute
to how assemblages form are intangible,
including that of agency and the factors that
shape and hinder agency. Cultural constraints,
distinct power structures, lack of awareness of
the possibility space and scarce exposure to
multiple methods of digital storytelling, all play
roles in the formation of assemblages that
these practitioners creatively energize.
It
is
the
relationships
between
possibilities, the exploration as to why creative
sparks happen and an examination of how
certain practices become sustainable that is
the focus of my continuing research in New
Zealand, New York and India. When I sat
down with Zulekha Sayyed, the community
correspondent who hid in a friend’s home in
order to record forced evictions in her slum, I
asked her about other media that might have
been present that day. “No, no, no they are
not coming,” she passionately exclaimed
(interview with author, February, 6, 2013).
“Last video I made, forced eviction, so there is
major problems. So I shoot it but I call, there is
a TV 9 news channel, TV 9, I called them,
they clearly told, we are not allowed to go
against the builder’s, sorry we can’t.” Perhaps
it is the unseen impact, not the number of hits
on YouTube or the speed at which footage
can be uploaded, but the work on the ground,
person to person, breath to breath, that makes
a practice sustainable, or more importantly
meaningful? Or maybe the significance of individual agency within these creative assemblages simply becomes the act of being
present – recording and bearing witness –
sharing an existence and documenting a reality?
Lenzner – 100
References
Bahadur, Ajeet. (2013, March 3). Interview with
Author.
DeLanda, Manuel. (2006). A New Philosophy of
Society: Assemblage Theory and Social
Complexity. New York, NY: Continuum.
Heaf, Jonathan. (2012, October 19). Comment /
Politics: Breaking News. GQ Magazine (UK)
October 2012. URL: http://www.gqmagazine.co.uk/comment/articles/201210/19/tim-pool-occupy-wall-street-interview
[September 20, 2014].
Mayberry, Jessica. (2013, January 23). Interview
with Author.
Pinto, Nick. (2012, May 16). In The First Occupy
Wall Street Protest Trial, Acquittal. The Village
Voice. URL:
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2012
/05/in_the_first_oc.php [September 20, 2014].
Pool, Tim. (2012, June 27). Interview with Author.
Sayyed, Zulekha. (2013, Febuary 2013). Interview
with Author.
Steel, Emily. (2014, September 8). Fusion Set to
Name Director of Media Innovation. The New
York Times, p. B7.
INTERACTIVE NARRATIVES
NEW MEDIA &
SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT
October 23‐25, 2014 | University of Toronto |ISBN: 978‐0‐9939520‐0‐5
XAPIRI: AT THE JUNCTURE OF HISTORY, EXPERIENCE, AND
TECHNOLOGY
Sandra Lim, Ryerson University
ardnasmil@gmail.com
Suggested citation: Lim, Sandra (2014). “Xapiri: at the Juncture of History, Experience, and
Technology.” In Proceedings of the Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement
International Conference. Eds. Hudson Moura, Ricardo Sternberg, Regina Cunha, Cecília
Queiroz, and Martin Zeilinger. ISBN: 978-0-9939520-0-5
This article is released under a Creative Commons license (CC-BY-NC-ND).
Abstract: The digital documentary film Xapiri (2012) is a film that takes as its subject matter the
indigenous Yanomami people who inhabit the Amazonian rainforest regions on the borders of
Brazil and Argentina. In this documentary, the filmmakers set out to explore Yanomami
Shamanism, with the intention of presenting, on one level, a sensory and embodied experience
of the culture. As this paper will also suggest, the formal and technical aspects of sound and image relations in this film are further important aspects to consider, since these are the means by
which the filmmakers reconstitute the Yanomami for the viewer, aspiring to a relational experience of Yanomami ritual and culture. This paper concludes by briefly considering how Xapiri as
a work of experimental documentary might also be considered as a work of expanded documentary, in relation to the historical form of Expanded Cinema of the sixties and seventies, suggesting that Xapiri extends the gesture of Expanded Cinema’s critical and formal drive to shatter the
embedded structures of power of conventional cinema’s cinematic apparatus to documentary
film, through a reconfiguration of the viewer’s relationship to the cinematic frame, and the idea of
space within the screen.
Screening at last year’s Brazilian Film and
Television Festival (BRAFFTV), the experimental documentary Xapiri (2012) offered a
lush audio-visual presentation of the indigenous Yanomami people, who inhabit the
Amazonian rainforest regions on the borders
of Brazil and Argentina. Through the
collaborative efforts of the filmmakers Leandro
Lima, Gisela Mota, Laymert Garcia dos
Santos, Stella Senra, and Bruce Albert, the
subject of Yanomami Shamanism was explored, with the intention of presenting: “…two
different notions of image: those of the
Yanomami and ours … allowing different cultures to visualize and feel the way in which the
shamans “embody” the spirits, their bodies
and voices” (Puente Communication Agency,
2013).
Seated in the somewhat cavernous and
intimate environment of Toronto’s Carleton
Cinemas, one couldn’t help but feel that within
the first few minutes of viewing Xapiri, the film
entailed something more than a conventional
form of ethnographic representation. For
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
example, in viewing the film, there was often a
sense of being on the outside looking in on the
Yanomami, of being a cinematic voyeur trying
to make sense of what was being seen and
heard. At other times, there was also a sense
of being nearby, or even in very close
proximity to the Yanomami, as if sharing the
filmmaker’s perspective, but at the same time
being that of an outsider, not entirely privileged to the meaning of Yanomami
Shamanistic ritual, language and culture. In
viewing and experiencing Xapiri, there were
also occasional moments of becoming aware
of one’s own consciousness, blending into the
darkened theatre with the audience nearby, or
that of encountering images, sounds and textures that seemed to exceed one’s cognition.
With no authorial commentary, or the visible
scientific involvement of a documentarian to
explain Yanomami culture, there was an
overriding sense of the film as an immersive
and unfolding audio-visual experience in the
blacked-out box of the theatre environment.
Part observational, part documentary, and part
expanded cinematic environment, the sounds
inherent to the world of the Yanomami
seemed to filter within, around and beyond the
film frame, in constant relation to the images
and objects on screen. As a result, this panoply of sound and image promoted an unfixing
or destabilization of one’s point of view, both
in terms of one’s spatial location and in relation to the screen, as well as in terms of the
subjective eye.
The French sound theorist Michel Chion
relates something of this paradoxical quality,
of sound and image relations in films, and the
effect of this upon spectatorship and point of
view. For example, sounds can be
“acousmatic,” in that we might not see where
a sound originates, based on the images we
see on screen (thus dislocating our spatial
reference point). Such is the case in hearing a
ringing telephone in “offscreen” space. Yet
sounds can also be contained within the
screen, as is the case with “visualized
sounds,” or in pairing a sound with a corollary
Lim – 102
object seen on screen (fixing our subjective
and spatial point of view in paring a sound
with an image). Sounds can also be “ambient”
or “territory-sound,” consisting of the local
sounds that are characteristic of a given environment. According to Chion, these sounds
tend to permeate the space within and outside
of the screen, and fill spaces like that of the
spreading molecules of a gas into air and
space. (This would seem to be the way in
which the spectator embodies a sound-imagescape through the incorporation of sound outside of “screenspace”) (Chion, 1994, pp. 6691).
Chion also observes that one of the
most striking characteristics of sound in relation to moving images is the psychological
perception of how images “magnetize sound
in space.” In this respect, sound doesn’t actually emanate from points of origin within the
screen, yet this is actually how we perceive
the source of sounds to be. This is the case
for both monaural and Dolby digital surround
sound. For example, if we look away from the
screen and hear the sounds of a film without
the image, the sounds become depthless.
They require the image to become activated
spatially. According to Chion, the other big
paradox of sound in relation to the image is
that while the cinematic frame always encloses the images of a film, the same frame
does not always bind sounds to the image.
Rather, sounds gain a spatial character in
relation to the images on screen. As Chion
observes, sounds can be perceived as
“synchronous and onscreen”, or “wander at
the surface and on the edges as offscreen…”
(potentially pulling our spatial viewpoint and
subjective eye in more than one direction). In
other words, sounds “…dispose themselves in
relation to the frame and its content…we classify sounds in relation to what we see in the
image, and this classification is constantly
subject to revision, depending on changes in
what we see” (Chion, 1994, pp. 66-91).
While Chion’s observations for sound
and image are mainly observed in relation to
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
Lim – 103
fiction films, they seem equally plausible for
understanding the sound and image relations
of documentary and non-fiction films, since in
either case, sounds and images are usually
sourced from reality and then artfully processed and edited alongside the image track.
In fact, transposing Chion’s observations and
theory of Audio-Vision to the problem of documentary and ethnographic representation presents the problem of how our perception of
sounds in relation to images may affect the
way in which we view and experience
documentary films, and specifically how we
construct knowledge of another culture, such
as the Yanomami, through documentary
spectatorship.
might expect, but are asked, rather, to begin
to consider and embody the sounds, textures
and colors, which constitute a kind of material
environment that the Yanomami inhabit, from
an outer perspective. As Xapiri opens, the
screen is divided into brilliantly colored and
simultaneously upper and lower zones of
cerulean blue and burnt orange. Our sense ist
that each zone is expansive as the sky, but at
the same time rather depthless in terms of the
lower part of the image, which depicts a forest.
We have this sensation until depth, space and
sky are verified through the visualized sounds
of black cawing birds in the upper parts of the
blue image, whereby a spatial point of view
becomes established.
This paper proposes that the sound and
image relations evident in Xapiri constantly
require the spectator to adjust his/her
perspective, in terms of a spatial viewpoint
and subjective eye, and this is evident
throughout various points of the film including:
in the opening scenes of the film, and in sequences where we are presented with the
Yanomami Shamans preparing their bodies
for the Shamanistic ritual. A relational positioning of our point of view is also evident through
the scenes of the Shamanistic hallucinogenic
ritual as it unfolds. Importantly, this way of
relationally positioning the spectator’s “point of
view” substantiates the idea that knowledge of
another culture is situational, constantly evolving, and therefore, never complete (Kaplan,
1997, pp. 198-199). The conclusion of this paper gives some consideration to the idea that
Xapiri extends the concerns of the historical
avant-garde form of Expanded Cinema and
French Structuralist apparatus theory of the
sixties and seventies to documentary film
spectatorship, resulting in a form of Expanded
Documentary.
From these opening images and
sounds, we are next introduced to the sonic
element of a child’s powerful yet breathy
voice, singing solo, and then more children
singing in accompaniment with the ambient
sounds of birds and a forest environment,
which permeate beyond and encircle the forest within the frame. The forest is perceived
more in terms of transparency, like a glass
surface through which layers of leaves and
foliage are interwoven with barely perceptible
traces of human figures, rather than depth.
Each element is almost indistinguishable from
the next, the effect of which is that the barely
perceptible human figures evade our visual
and subjective grasp. As a result, our spatial
point of view locates itself around the outer
edges of the screen, along with the acousmatic sounds of the singing voices. Eventually, the children’s voices are replaced by
adult singing voice, and the glass surface
seems to dissipate. The transparent figures
begin to centralize within the image, and seem
to move into it’s depths, and as a result, our
spatial point of view is drawn into the screen,
while the human figures disappear before our
eyes. With the figures’ exit, we enter the forest, and shift our perspective from that of outside the screen to inside screen space,
nevertheless trailing at a distance behind the
figures.
A relational positioning of our subjective
and spatial eye is evident throughout Xapiri,
beginning with the opening sequences and
our introduction to the Yanomami landscape.
In these sequences, we are not privileged with
a concrete image of the Yanomami as we
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
As the film progresses, we are brought
into the lived and domestic spaces of the
Yanomami, where the men, women and children engage in preparations for a ritual ceremony, and our perspective shifts, first of all,
from that of being on the edges of a society
looking in, to looking with and/or through the
filmmaker’s subjective eye. This is clear in the
way that the camera privileges specificity,
tracing the smallest of acts such as an extreme close-up view of a young Yanomami
man, holding a small plant-like paint pod in
one hand, while he dips and paints different
parts of his body with the other. There is also
a sense that our own point of view is in some
way being pressed in close to see such details, through the singing voice of a Yanomami
man, somewhere in off-screen space at the
edge of the screen, who seems to nudge us
forward from the outside in, with the ambient
sounds of rain and forest just behind our back.
While the Yanomami men are making
preparations in one area of the longhouse, we
are brought to another area of this space, with
a different sound texture. Here, several young
women sit at a table monitoring a shortwave
radio – the visualized sound and voices from
which place our spatial viewpoint within their
periphery, close enough to hear the shallow
voices emanating from the radio, but
unacknowledged and therefore keeping us in
the periphery of their space. That is, until the
gaze of a small child clinging to one of the
women peeks out from underneath her arm
and looks into the camera acknowledging our
presence, unbeknownst to her. It’s a secret
look, which catches the camera, the
filmmaker, and the viewer in the act of looking,
yet is paradoxically unsubstantiated by the
static voice emanating from the radio. In effect, the relations of images and ambient
sounds during the preparation scenes come
together to create a richly interwoven tapestry,
which positions our spatial and subjective
viewpoint in terms of being on the outside
looking in on the Yanomami, of being a cinematic voyeur trying to make sense of what is
Lim – 104
being seen and heard, as well as being placed
alongside the filmmaker, to view and hear
what he/she sees, hears and experiences.
Perhaps the most auditory and visually
challenging portion of the film occurs when the
film transitions into the hallucinogenic ceremony. The transition is both an auditory and
visual experience, which places our subjective
and spatial viewpoint clearly on the outside
looking in. This occurs when the voice of the
Yanomami, who sings and accompanies our
view of the preparations, takes on a different
tone. In this instance, the ambient sounds of
the longhouse blends with a gentle rain falling
just out of view, leaving the voice singing in
off-screen space, where we must also follow,
and take a similar position. We perceive the
hallucinogenic drugs take their effect on the
Yanomami shamans, as the images are transposed into sets of superimposed images,
which interpretively stagger and displace our
sense of the concrete. On the one hand, the
audio track imposes and asserts its presence
from outside the frame, holding our spatial
point of view in, as we hear loud multiple
voices chanting and singing back and forth.
The accompanying frenetic images seem to
unthread and come apart at the seams, disallowing our subjective eye any foothold.
From a sense of being locked in place,
our perspective is suddenly reversed several
minutes later in the film, as the singing and
chanting also takes on the ambient sounds of
the Yanomami environment. We hear the rain,
the forest and the textures of the space, the
voices of children, women in the periphery,
and there is a sense that we have changed
our spatial perspective and moved in a bit
closer. While the images continually move
back and forth, in terms of being abstract and
concrete, the sounds accompanying the images both locate and dislocate our spatial perspective, either through their force or subtly.
For example, a harsh and forceful sound of
spitting and blowing including the environmental sounds in which it is made, connects with
an explosion of white star-like lights and colors
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
on-screen to spectacular effect. Yet we still
remain exterior to the images, perceiving them
more in terms of surface and textures.
The subsequent profusion of image and
sound relations that follow in depicting the
hallucinogenic effects of the Shamanistic ritual
have an almost overriding effect, which seem
to exceed one’s cognition. This results in
throwing both our spatial and subjective point
of view back into an awareness of being in the
theater watching the film. Moments such as
these bring to mind the realization that the
hallucinogenic effect of the drugs are an
audio-visual interpretation, enacted through
the means of digital technology, rather than an
inter-subjective experience, as far as the camera and filmmaker filming the event, and the
filmmaker and editor through postproduction
effects bring this into objective reality. Xapiri
therefore also constructs a more objective
point of view from which to question how
Yanomami culture and Shamanistic ritual
might be encountered and experienced in another place and another time through different
means.
As the filmmakers of Xapiri have indicated, one of their primary intentions in making the documentary through an experimental
and sensory approach was to connect with a
broad range of viewers. However, this paper
also set out to offer that Xapiri’s formal relations of sound and image expand both subjective and spatial viewpoints for the spectator, to
also offer a relational and more equitable view
of another culture. While it is difficult to determine from this position how effectively Xapiri
connects with an audience on a sensory level,
this position does allow for connecting Xapiri
to the art historical, experimental tradition of
Expanded cinema and its concern for
democratizing the film experience.
For example, the British art historian
Chrissie Iles defines expanded cinema historically as a form that “…emerged at a specific
moment in the history of cinema, closely tied
to, or part of the emergence of Structural Film,
with its interrogation of the mechanics of the
Lim – 105
apparatus, the screen, the physical properties
of film and the politics of presentation and
audience” (Iles, 2009). Whether acknowledged or not, the polemics and theory of
British Structural Materialist Film (and the subset of expanded cinema) also had much in
common with French Cine Structuralism and
apparatus theory. In this respect, each called
for more democratic forms of film spectatorship through the dissolution of the idea of the
dominant cinema’s fixed viewpoint, and specific to apparatus theory, the subject-object
boundary/divide, which was deemed to favour
not only a controlled film spectator, but also a
film spectator who unequally controls and
masters the objects/people on screen (Lim,
2013, p. 45).
The ongoing practice of Expanded
Cinema art from early cinema panoramas to
the present, as Iles has observed, has sought
to democratize the cinematic experience for
the viewer, through an expansion and distillation of the spectator’s visual viewpoint,
through such means as expanded screens, or
allowing for viewers to get up out of their seats
and interact with the projected image, or even
in incorporating opportunities for sensory
experiences into the cinema itself (Iles, 2009).
In this respect, I believe Xapiri offers another
way to expand the viewpoint of the viewer,
and democratize the film experience – this being through a consideration of the relations of
sound and image, in relation to the screen,
and how such relations articulate the viewer’s
spatial and subjective point of view to abolish
the bifurcation of subject and object relations.
Moreover, since Xapiri also functions as a
form of documentary, it also provides a muchneeded example of how to accomplish this
form of expansion through an encounter with
social space.
References
Chion, M. (1994). The Audiovisual Scene. In C.
Gorbman (Ed.), Audio-Vision: Sound on
Screen. New York: Columbia University Press
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
Iles, C. (2009). Inside Out: Expanded Cinema and
It's Relationship to the Gallery in the 1970's.
Paper presented at the Activating the Space of
Reception Documentation, The Tate Modern,
London.
http://www.rewind.ac.uk/expanded/Narrative/Tat
e_Doc_Session_2_-CI.html
Kaplan, E. A. (1997). "Speaking Nearby": Trinh T.
Minh-ha's Reassemblage and Shoot for the
Contents Looking for the Other: Femininism,
Film, and the Imperial Gaze. New York &
London: Routledge.
Lim, S. E. (2013). Interpreting Urban Space and
the Everyday Through Video Practice. (Ph.D.
Doctoral Thesis), The University of Brighton,
Brighton, United Kingdom. Retrieved from
http://eprints.brighton.ac.uk/12347/ Available
from The University of Brighton Repository
Puente Communication Agency. (2013). Official
Site of Brazilian Film & Television Festival
Toronto. 9th Edition. Retrieved September 20,
2014, 2014, from
http://www.brafftv.com/en/films/2013/xapiri.html
Lim – 106
INTERACTIVE NARRATIVES
NEW MEDIA &
SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT
October 23‐25, 2014 | University of Toronto |ISBN: 978‐0‐9939520‐0‐5
OFF THE WALL WITH SHCHEDRYK
Kalli Paakspuu, York University
paakspuu@yorku.ca
Suggested citation: Paakspuu, Kalli (2014). “Off the Wall with Shchedryk.” In Proceedings of the
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement International Conference. Eds. Hudson
Moura, Ricardo Sternberg, Regina Cunha, Cecília Queiroz, and Martin Zeilinger. ISBN: 978-09939520-0-5
This article is released under a Creative Commons license (CC-BY-NC-ND).
Abstract: This paper examines how music and juxtapositions can ground a story in a longer
history where the potential of images and cutting points become a dialectics of point, counterpoint, and fusion in a revisitation of archetypal images and as a co-authorship of reception. A
visual dialogue evolves in the film Shchedryk (2014) through a remediation of scenes from
Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925), Alexander Dovzhenko‘s Earth (1930) and
Norman McLaren’s experimental film Synchromy (1971). People who do not have recourse to
the dominant culture are through recipient-co-authorship able to replay things in more sophisticated ways. Judith Butler’s idea of the performative and of subjects re-performing an injury
(Butler 1993) can be introduced to the multi-screen experience. Foregrounding the wounding
aspect as visual images is about ‘bad pleasure’ (O’Brien & Julien 2005). If realness is a standard by which we judge any performance, what makes it effective is its ability to compel beliefs
and embody and reiterate norms (Butler, 387).
The film Shchedryk is a contemplation of wartroubled Ukraine through composer Mykola
Leontovych’s arrangement of a traditional a
cappella chant. Our design team identified
McLaren Wall-to-Wall as an opportunity to develop an audience for our theatrical documentary 1921 The War Against Music. A Call for
Projects for architectural videos stated, “If
Norman McLaren were alive today, his creative canvasses would be the Web browser,
tablets, airports, public spaces and architectural surfaces” (3). This was McLaren Wall-toWall – a centenary celebration of the birth of
Norman McLaren, the founder of the National
Film Board of Canada’s animation studio – an
international competition and initiative of the
National Film Board of Canada in coproduction with the Quartier des Spectacles Partnership. Jazz artist Paul Hoffert improvised a performance of Leontovych’s Shchedryk for our
documentary, and a visual dialogue evolved
through a remediation of scenes from Sergei
Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925) and
Alexander Dovzhenko‘s Earth (1930), both
shot in Ukraine. These innovators of soviet
montage theory were activists of social movements, and fusing frames from Eisenstein’s
and Dovzhenko’s early films with citations
from McLaren grounded our story into
Ukraine’s longer history (see Figure 1).
Each wall of the Quartier des Spectacles
was to project a video that cited one of
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
McLaren’s films, Synchromy (1971), Spheres
(1969), Begone Dull Care (1949) and
Neighbours (1952). The finalists would be
spiritual heirs to McLaren, and the competition
required artists to use visual content from their
chosen McLaren film, such as Synchromy, “to
create a dual perspective, a dialogue with the
work of McLaren” (p. 4) and share a $40,000
prize; their work would be projected on the
facades of The Place de la Paix, Cégep du
Vieux Montréal, the UQAM Bell Tower and
UQAM’s Centre de Design, respectively, from
April 11 – June 1, 2014. Our collaborative design team with myself as director, Ron Graner
as writer and Peter Gugeler as editor envisioned a McLaren-inspired visual language for
Hoffert’s performance, used as a framing device for Synchromy.
Dovzhenko’s lyrical and poetic film depicted the life of rural farmers in a sympathetic
portrait of Kulaks wanting to keep their land
after Joseph Stalin’s 1929 effort to “eliminate
rural capitalism” and “smash the Kulaks.”
Eisenstein wrote the revolutionary propaganda
film to test his montage theory. His famous
Odessa Steps sequence from Battleship
Potemkin is one of the most memorable
scenes in the history of film montage. The
massacre on the steps by the descending
Tsar’s soldiers and the mounted and charging
Cossacks is actually a fiction, though “the
bloodshed on the Odessa Steps is often referred to as if it really happened” (Ebert 1998).
Eisenstein “argued that film has its greatest
impact not by the smooth unrolling of images,
but by their juxtaposition. Sometimes the cutting is dialectical: point, counterpoint, fusion.
Cutting between the fearful faces of the unarmed citizens and the faceless troops in uniform, he created an argument for the people
against
the
czarist
state”
(Ebert
1998). Eisenstein’s and Dovzhenko’s scenes
as part of the Shchedryk song bring an expanded dialogue to their work that resonates
with today and the contemporary war in a context of McLaren’s playful experimentation. As
a rearticulation of the wounding project of
Paakspuu – 108
dominant imagery, Judith Butler’s idea of the
performative and of subjects re-performing an
injury (Butler 1993) can be introduced to the
multi-screen experience, as people who do
not have the recourse to dominant culture
through recipient-co-authorship are able to
replay things in more sophisticated ways.
Foregrounding the wounding aspect as visual
images is about ‘bad pleasure’ (O’Brien &
Julien 2005). If realness is a standard by
which we judge any performance, what makes
it effective is its ability to compel beliefs and
embody and reiterate norms (Butler, p. 387).
When slippage occurs between the continuity
and rupture of expectations, conceptual and
political transitions are made possible. An
exterior wall or gallery space moves the cinematic experience beyond the normative,
narrative expectations towards questions of
spectatorship and the autonomy of the viewer
in different relations of parallel montage and
surround sound, wherein disjunctive and creative relationships exist around “time,”
“memory” and the lived effects of globalization
(O’Brien & Julien, p. 50) as a speaking from a
positionality and not for it.
A “visual citation” of Synchromy was a
requisite at the Place de la Paix location. The
synopsis from the Call for Projects described
Synchromy thus: “A rigorous experience of
synchronism between sound and image: cards
with synthetic sounds are photographed on
the soundtrack. Norman McLaren thus obtains
absolute synchronism” (7). This clinical synopsis conceals the transgressive cinema that
McLaren actually practiced, which invariably
questioned the accepted conditions of art, undermined its axioms, transcended existing
limitations, and questioned the nature of film
as art and as medium (Kluszczynski 2007).
The postmodern question is then turned over
to the recipient, who participates in a critical
evaluation of film as co-author recipient. Humming the tune from the film would be an
interaction that could spontaneously erupt
away from the exhibition site – and it would
give an interpretation of the “wounding” – wit-
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
nessed outside the editing room by passerbys
humming the tune where the film Shchedryk
was created.
American experimental filmmaker Stan
Brakhage theorized that there were three
spheres participating in a film event: 1) the
phenomenological external world, 2) the optical-biological and mechanical-apparatus, and
3) the psychical universe, including both the
physical brain and its process of memory,
imagination, dreams and capacity to generate
visions in a closed eye. Every time a film is
subjected to the recipient’s perception, “This
unification, the particular syntheses of the individual, the external world and the hybrid, optic
interface connecting them, might then be said
to become the perceptive and creative experience of each viewer” (Kluszczynski 2007, p.
471).
Narratives are the stories that emerge
as products of our interactions and goals as
we navigate an experience. Emergent narratives are constructed throughout our daily
activities to help us remember, understand,
categorize and share experience (Galyean,
1995). A story produced by a group of
improvising actors is not determined from the
top down, it emerges from the interactions
among the members of the group, which includes embodied memory through the sensual
and somatic. Deconstructive methods are projecting film on more than one screen
simultaneously, looping, introducing performance actions and spectacles that lead to the
erosion of obligatory frames and boundaries of
films. A dialectic occurs when there is an
ongoing relationship with looping. Parallel
montage, surround sound and the distinctive
and creative relationship that a recipient
develops and explores around “time” and
“memory” are unique to multiscreen setups
and interrogate and inhabit their multitemporal environments. Digital technology
enables different ways of looking at the moving image, and enables a transgression of
time that can occur in and between frames,
side by side, and in relation to each other.
Paakspuu – 109
With four of McLaren’s films cited in various
Montreal locations, the decentring of the cinematic experience is transformed into an
interactive multimedia art.
We studied the dimensions of the building surface of Montreal’s Hotel Zero1 building,
its brick structure and placement of windows,
and incorporated these physical aspects into
the editing design of Shchedryk and our proposal. The Place de la Paix (or Peace Park) is
located on Montreal’s famous Saint-Laurent
Boulevard. The square “blends granite and
nature harmoniously, symbolizing both the urban bustle of Montreal and the city’s appetite
for the great outdoors” (p. 7). We considered
the impact of looping a repetitive sound track
in the geographical location over an extended
time. Shchedryk could have multiple lives, and
will also be seen in the conventional theatre
and in our crowd-funding on-line experiences.
It will eventually be incorporated into the intro
sequence of our documentary, 1921 The War
Against Music, which features two Ukrainian
composers, whose beautiful music inspired
their peoples: David Nowakowsky (18481921), a Jewish Reform Zionist whose unpublished manuscripts were buried in occupied France, and Mykola Leontovych (18771921), an Orthodox Christian Ukrainian
Nationalist who arranged Shchedryk. Both of
these composers were mostly unknown to
Western audiences, with the exception of
Leontovych’s Shchedryk. There were very few
composers collecting or arranging Ukrainian
folk music, and Leontovych made songs from
the communities where he taught music a career focus. Our theatrical story would be a
revisitation of the earlier Ukrainian history
through film frames of Ukraine’s early 20th
Century years, which had several purposes: 1)
we could be re-immersed in the time and
place through actual people of the time, 2)
there was a particular address of activism
made to the public by filmmakers Sergei
Eisenstein and Alexander Dovzhenko, which
was important to know, 3) as the 1920s was a
time of upheaval and nationalist movements, a
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
re-evaluation from a decades-later perspective
could bring another evaluation to the film arts,
and 4) in incorporating the experimentation
and innovativeness of McLaren, Eisenstein
and Dovzhenko in a culture jam with an a
capella song, their multiple perspectives afforded a unique visual treatment to our creative team. The reason this song became
known by the name of Carol of the Bells is because neither Ukraine nor Russia were signators of the Berne Convention, an 1886
international agreement governing copyright
that recognized author copyright in other
signatory countries. This made copyright
unprotecable in, and music produced in countries that were not members of the Berne
Union unrestricted for use in Russian and
Ukrainian film and television.
Norman McLaren believed cinema was
in an experimental stage as an art form, and
he pioneered techniques of drawing and
engraving on film, cross dissolves, pixilation,
synthesized sound, stop motion, optical printing, and innovative montage techniques. His
early works had an immense influence on experimental methods of the sixties and seventies, such as structural filmmaking, conceptual
art, multimedia performance, painting directly
on celluloid, and the use of found footage. The
N.F.B. gave us the entire film of Synchromy in
a high resolution digital form, on the premise
that we would cite visual sequences of it, but
we could not use the original synthesized music. Our own recorded music had been the
motivating factor for entering the competition.
The song Shchedryk itself had been viral from
its beginnings as a Ukrainian folk chant
welcoming spring to its transformation in the
West as Carol of the Bells – a Yuletide favourite featured in popular Hollywood films like
Home Alone (1990). It was a song that worked
with McLaren’s original film, with its bright
psychedelic colors that improvised on each
other and flowed in a musical round of marching tones of sound, color and shifting lines.
We proposed:
Paakspuu – 110
In Ukraine the song Shchedryk was arranged by composer Mykola Leontovych
as a New Year’s carol that sings of the
wealth to come in the spring. Utilizing
digital
manipulation
techniques,
Shchedryck cites Norman McLaren’s
Synchromy in its juxtaposition of color,
tone and visual rhythm, in an interplay
with this music. A close up of jazz musician Paul Hoffert’s hands playing
Shchedryk is intercut with McLaren’s
Synchromy, filmed portraits of 1920’s
Ukrainians from Eisenstein’s Odessa
Steps
and
Ukrainian
Alexander
Dovzhenko’s films. Hoffert’s performance is manipulated visually and
transformed into the bright color range of
Synchromy’s reds, greens, blues and
yellows. The hands on the piano turn upside down, multiply with the rhythm of
Synchromy in the spirit of McLaren’s improvisation. Place de la Paix’s wall will
flicker with 1920s filmed portraits of the
ongoing struggle of Ukrainians to maintain their culture through the tyrannies of
the Russian Czar, the Bolsheviks and
the present-day political forces in efforts
lasting centuries. Leontovych was
assassinated in 1921 for his role in the
nationalism movement in Ukraine, which
became a republic after the independence war in 1917-1921. The film
Shchedryk will be a dual homage to
McLaren and to the Ukrainian peoples’
call for a promised prosperity. Hoffert’s
filmed performance will be book-ended
with a digitally manipulated performance
of his piano recording of Shchedryk in a
dialogue between the public, the
environment, and the experimental arts,
and in a homage to Norman McLaren.
Our proposal didn’t become a finalist for
McLaren Wall to Wall. A company from Spain
got the grand prize for their interpretation of
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
Synchromy and no other Canadian 1 projects
were finalists. However, we did get the rights
to use the McLaren footage for the film festival
runs, and Shchedryk was exhibited in a loop
of experimental films in a gallery at the
Muskoka Independent Film Festival from
August 28-31 and in competition at the Jasper
Short Film and Media Festival, Sept. 27, 2014.
We also cut a version without any of
McLaren’s footage, which was featured in a
palace gallery at the Venice International
Experimental Cinema and Performance
Festival on Sept. 1, 2014.
The film Shchedryk features several
cinematic narratives through the multiple
frames that weave through Synchromy’s architectural composition. If history is “a manifestation of our perception and understanding of
the past through the present, it is a product of
changing philosophical and methodological
approaches,
cultural
strategies
and
deconstructive and reconstructive strategies”
(Kluszczynski 2007, p. 469). Our original
recording of Shchedryk provided a narrative
and story structure manipulated with
Synchromy, where jazz artist Hoffert’s hands
perform in a panopoly of multiple images with
distortions that dissolve in the sequences from
Synchromy. The multiple portrait frames within
the film frame are projections like windows
originally conceived to be bent and distorted
on the uneven hotel building’s surface with its
own windows; these pulsate with the centuries-long struggle of Ukrainians to maintain
their culture, which becomes a lens on the
present day politics and war for which a
historical continuity cannot be ignored. We
selected portraits from Eisenstein and
Dovzhenko’s famous films, which were clearly
critical of a dominant political systems.
Interestingly, Eisenstein’s most famous film,
Battleship Potemkin, was lauded in Europe as
a prime example of the propaganda film, as its
1
The Grand Prize winner was Christo Guelov of Spain.
See http://mclarenwalltowall.com/en/works/colorrythmetic
Paakspuu – 111
criticism of the czar advocated socialism in the
Soviet state. Hitler’s propagandist Leni
Riefenstahl emulated Eisenstein’s films to glorify the Third Reich in her films, Olympia
(1938) and Triumph of the Will (1935).
Returning to McLaren’s experimental
form and revisiting earlier film masters of the
public domain can bring a certain consciousness to Ukraine’s present civil war – of which
the portraits from Dovzhenko and Eisenstein’s
films speak eloquently. The performativity of
their actors in the Ukrainian locations of their
films embody a way of being in a historical
community and as a screen performance. Our
design of Shchedryk anticipated a multiframe
experience with the irregularities of windows
on a brick surface as a screen. Hoffert’s piano
performance of Leontovych’s song stirs it up
with the haunting visual of Eisenstein’s blood
splattered nurse. In a second version of the
film, 1921 The War Against Music, the nurse’s
portrait is followed by images of composer
Leontovych splattered with blood. The classical composer was murdered in his sleep by an
overnight guest at his father’s home in 1921.
Leontovych’s classical music was suppressed
for being too influential in the Ukrainian
nationalism movement.
In the spirit of McLaren’s experimentation, our editor Peter Gugeler manipulated the
visuals and piano improv of the two films
featuring Ukrainian performers. Citing the
early film innovators is an archaeological perspective that transforms the past itself through
new interpretations and shifts away from those
perspectives previously privileged. Utilizing
digital manipulation techniques, the film
Shchedryck is a culture jam in innovative film
arts, designed as a first step in the development of the theatrical documentary 1921 The
War Against Music, which will feature original
classical music recordings of two banned
composers, David Nowakowsky and Mykola
Leontovych. Digital technology enables a
different looking and listening of moving image
arts, where a transgression of time is within
the reach of our imagination. Our design team
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
met our film public with McLaren-inspired aesthetics of experimental animation and its
deconstructive and transformational potential.
The curatorial context of the gallery space
where the film was looped in a programme of
experimental films offered a particular audi-
Paakspuu – 112
ence address, with viewers maintaining a certain autonomy in co-authorship. An interactive
concept of authorship through the use of multiple frames expands the dialogue into personal
memory tropes and questions of historical
veracity.
Figure 1: Frame from Shechedryk, directed by Kalli Paakspuu.
References
Butler, Judith. (1993). Bodies that matter: On the
discursive limits of "Sex". New York, NY:
Routledge.
Ebert, Roger. The Battleship Potemkin, Roger
Ebert.com Reviews, URL:
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-moviethe-battleship-potemkin-1925 [Sept. 12, 2014]
Galyean, T. (1995). Narrative guidance of
interactivity. Ph.D. thesis, MIT Media Lab, MIT.
Kluszczynski, Ryszard W.. (2007). Re-writing the
history of media art: From personal cinema to
artistic collaboration, Leonardo, Vol 40, No.5
(The MIT Press), pp. 469-474
McLaren, Norman. URL:
http://mclarenwalltowall.com/en/normanmclaren. [Sept. 2, 2014].
O’Brien, Aine & Julien, Isaac. (2005). Suturing the
aesthetic and the political-- Multiple screens,
multiple realities: An interview with Isaac Julien.
Circe, #114, Winter.
Walsh, Richard. (Jan. 2011). Emergent narrative in
interactive media, Project Muse, Vol. 19, #1.
Call for Projects, McLaren Wall-to-Wall:
Architectural Video Projection in Montreal’s
Quartier des Spectacles. URL:
http://www.mclarenwalltowall.com/pdf/McLarenCALL_FOR_PROJECTS.pdf [Sept. 2, 2014].
INTERACTIVE NARRATIVES
NEW MEDIA &
SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT
October 23‐25, 2014 | University of Toronto |ISBN: 978‐0‐9939520‐0‐5
COLLECTIVE AUTHORSHIP IN REAL TIME
Alexandre Coronato Rodrigues, ESPM, São Paulo, Brasil
ale.coronato@gmail.com
Roselita Lopes de Almeida Freitas, ESPM, São Paulo, Brasil
rosefigueiredo@espm.br
Suggested citation: Rodrigues, Alexandre Coronato and Roselita Lopes de Almeida Freitas
(2014). “Collective Authorship in Real Time.” In Proceedings of the Interactive Narratives, New
Media & Social Engagement International Conference. Eds. Hudson Moura, Ricardo Sternberg,
Regina Cunha, Cecília Queiroz, and Martin Zeilinger. ISBN: 978-0-9939520-0-5
This article is released under a Creative Commons license (CC-BY-NC-ND).
Abstract: The audiovisual has always been associated with technological developments, which
it uses to create new forms of artistic expression through their expressive capacities and the
fresh ideas brought by those innovations.
Livecinema, which emerged in the beginning of 21st century, is a good example of the impact of technological innovations on the construction of new paradigms for audiovisual production. The word Livecinema designates the execution of a live audiovisual piece in which the
editing happens in real time, in front of the public. However, the films produced in this way are
mainly based on the construction of abstract narratives that privilege synesthesia as an instrument that produces meanings. In other words, the sequence of images on the screen causes
different reactions in the spectators, depending on the sensations decoded by each individual
and his or her cultural and aesthetical repertoire. Therefore, meaning is not made explicit, and
the film itself does not have a direct and objective explanation, instead offering an open narrative without a specific story.
In this paper, we show the result of research on the experiences utilizing real time cinema
and collective construction of the narrative. We also present a project of a system that enables
the creation of collective audiovisual narratives in which the recording and the editing occur in
real time with a single semiotic intention, resulting in an objective narrative built from the sum of
the perceptions of many individuals who function as the co-authors of the narrative.
Introduction
The ability to produce narratives is the basis of
our ability to convey knowledge through time,
and relates directly to the evolution of our
knowledge. The etymology of the word narrative has its origin in the Latin word narrare and
means counting, reporting, or making known,
which indicates a direct relationship between
narratives and the production of knowledge,
making unquestionable the relevance of the
study of intellectual and cognitive processes
involved in building stories. With the emer-
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
gence of digital technology for the transmission and manipulation of information, the
possibilities of human communication and
interaction widened with new possibilities for
individual, collective, automatic and interactive
semiotic construction in the form of narratives.
With the emergence of digital media, a
new context for producing content is presented, which modifies concepts established
before those new possibilities for the production of cultural content – whether it be artistic,
scientific, journalistic, etc. – became available.
But it is in the field of artistic productions
that we find the most fascinating laboratory for
developing new forms of expression. The
introduction of interactivity, collaborative
production, and the possibilities for real-time
interaction created by network connections
linked to the convergence of media in digital
environments inaugurated new paradigms that
raised new issues including copyright as well
as conceptual problems regarding the produced content as well as its relationship with
spectators, physical space, and physical
quantities such as time.
Rodrigues and Freitas – 114
... [T]he narrative is present at all
times, in all places, in all societies; the
narrative begins with the history of humanity; there was never any people
anywhere without narrative; all classes
and all human groups have their narratives, these narratives often are enjoyed in common by people of different
and even opposite cultures: the narrative mocks the good and bad literature:
international, transhistorical, transcultural, the narrative is always present,
like life. (Barthes, 2001, pp. 103-104)
Like the philosopher Roland Barthes,
Janet Murray emphasizes the importance of
narrative in the preface to the Brazilian edition
of her book Hamlet on the Holodeck: the
Future of Narrative in Cyberspace, in which
she states, "narrative is one of our primary
cognitive mechanisms to understand the
world. It is also one of the fundamental ways
in which we build communities" (Murray, 2003,
p. 9).
Our research presented here is the
beginning of a search for new ways to build
narratives that emerged with new technologies.
The importance of narrative meant that,
since very early on, philosophers and scholars
alike studied narratives seeking to identify
their constitutive elements and the relationships between these elements in the narrative
construction process.
Concept of narrative
Narratology – narrative as science
Empirically, we all understand the word ‘narrative’ to mean the telling of a true or fictional
story; but you can see that this word also carries the depth of man's cultural history, because it is through narratives that we construct, transmit and perpetuate our shared
knowledge.
According to Jan Christoph Meister, a researcher at the University of Hamburg, the
main elements in the construction of narrative
were introduced in ancient Greek with Plato
and Aristotle. The former distinguished two
main ways of narrating: mimesis, a direct
imitation of speech in the form of dialogues
and monologues of the characters, and
diegesis, which comprises all statements attributable to the author. The Poetics of
Aristotle presented a second criterion that remains fundamental to our understanding of
narrative: the distinction between all events
that occur in a depicted world and the plot or
mythos of the narrated fact, a construction that
The etymology of the word narrative has
its origin in the Latin word narrare and means
counting, reporting, or making known, which
indicates a direct relationship between narratives and the production of knowledge, making
unquestionable the relevance of the study of
intellectual and cognitive processes involved
in building stories.
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
presents a subset of events selected and arranged according to aesthetic considerations.
In the 18th century, we find the first
theorists in the budding field of narratology,
including
Christian
Friedrich
von
Blanckenburg. In the 19th century, narrative
begins to be studied in the context of
classification as form and interpretation. However, it was not until the 20th century and the
emergence of French structuralism that the
study of logic, principles and practices of
narrative production was configured as a
science, with the formation of a coherent
methodological body to create a theory of
narrative. This new method was first published
in 1966 in a special issue of Communications
Magazine, entitled "L'analyse structurale du
récit", with articles written by Roland Barthes,
Umberto Eco, Genette, Greimas, and
Todorov.
The term narratology was first used by
Todorov in his book Grammaire du
Décaméron, in which he advocates a shift in
focus in the study of narrative, from the text
itself and the speech that is formed with the
words to the structural properties of narrative
as a mean of creating representations and
meanings.
In his article "Narratology," published by
the Interdisciplinary Center for Narratology,
University of Hamburg, Jan Christoph Meister
presents a historical overview of the evolution
of ideas and concepts about the stories and
the names of principal researchers who were
dedicated to creating this conceptual body.
The members of the structuralist movement were interested in identifying and
defining the universal aspects of narrative.
Algirdas Julien Greimas proposed a model of
deep level of meaning called "semiotic
square," which represents the semiotic infrastructure of all systems of signification, and
which assigned a typology of functions to the
characters of narratives (such as lead against
secondary, adversary against savior, emitter
against receiver).
Rodrigues and Freitas – 115
In his book An Introduction to the
Analysis of Narrative (1966), Roland Barthes
proposed a functional scheme of narrative
events that distinguishes "core events" as
those required to ensure the coherence of the
story, and "satellite events" as optional events
that serve to beautify the basic plot.
In Grammaire du Décaméron (1969),
Tzvetan Todorov promoted the linguistic analogy, equating actions to verbs, nouns to
characters, and their attributes to adjectives,
connecting these elements through modal
operators. This "grammar" included the logical
sequence of virtual action, for example those
imagined in the mind of a character, and not
merely the logical sequence of actions that
compose the scene.
More recently, narratology, in its
applicability to various means of communication, moves towards an understanding of the
cognitive and epistemological functions of
narrative. Meister (2003) identifies three
trends in contemporary narratology: the
contextual one, which seeks to relate the
narrative to specific cultural contexts with a
focus on the content of the narration; the
cognitive one, based on the search for models
of human understanding of narratives, an important approach for the development of artificial intelligence (AI) in the quest for simulation
of this human ability to narrate; and the
transgender one, which seeks to apply
narratological concepts in the study of genres
and other media going beyond narratives
based on texts and words.
Computational narratology
Computational narratology applies to computing and information processing based on the
construction of computational algorithms able
to create narrative texts. Using the concepts of
narratology to dissect narrative structures in
the form of formal modules of simulative
representation in computer systems, computational narratology seeks ways to simulate texts
produced by humans.
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
This task seems difficult, because it requires large computational processing capacity due to the large volume of information,
such as knowledge, culture and the ability to
relate and make inferences, which are tasks
involved in understanding and constructing
meanings by humans. Its direct connection
with studies on AI is applicable to automatic
interpretation of texts and the construction of
automatic systems that produce stories,
widely used, for example, in role-playing
videogames (RPGs).
We can identify two challenges for modern computational narratology: the search for
a methodological division covering the
interdisciplinarity involved in studies of cognition to construct more accurate analysis of the
narratives, as occurred in the structuralist
phase of narratology, and thereafter to produce computational representations of story
generation capable of producing more complex and interesting texts.
The researcher Marie-Laure Ryan suggests three criteria for the evolution of storygenerating programs towards the production
of more elaborate narratives: creativity, aesthetic
awareness
and
understanding.
Creativity, according to the author, would be
measured by the active role of the system during the construction of history and the variety
of possible alternatives as system output. The
greater the creativity, the smaller the limitation
imposed on the story structure. The aesthetic
consciousness is a function of the system with
the ability to choose, between possible plot
structures, those that are considered most
useful for producing a good narrative. Understanding is the system's ability to summarize
the story and answer questions about the
events of the narrative (Rauch, 1989, p. 173).
Computational narratology also produces important narratological concepts of
plot fine-tuning as well as creating long
plotlines based on smaller plot units (Lehnert
1981), in a succession of events that involves
the motivations behind the actions of the characters and their emotional consequences. But
Rodrigues and Freitas – 116
the inferential challenges involved in imputing
motives to characters and in understanding
the narrative are of such volume that they
become impossible to carry out by current
computer systems, which limits the ability of
computer systems to fully extract the inferred
meanings in a story's plot.
To understand a story, it is necessary to
infer the causes of events and the goals of the
characters involved in the plot. Such
inferences cannot be mentioned explicitly in
the text of the story, which causes major
limitation of these systems. Story understanding systems (e.g., Wilensky 1978) collide with
this limitation, since inferring the goals of characters involves a great deal of search on the
basis of repertoires, a task that should also be
reviewed and modified during processing, because humans use a lot of knowledge to interpret stories. To transmit to a computer this
whole body of knowledge, which may be trivial
for humans, is a very difficult task, as is the
communication of the nuances of language
necessary for the understanding of history as
humor, irony and lexical associations like
idioms.
The researcher Jerry R. Hobbs, however, argues in his paper "Will Robots Ever
Have a Literature?" on the current situation of
computational narratology that humans and
machines are in the same epistemological status regarding the production of literature. If we
understand evolution as a sequence of levels
of increasingly complex organization that directly represent levels of competence, we note
that this is the evolutionary process that machines suffer, machines being understood as
the combination of hardware and software to
process information, where levels of complexities of the systems can be seen as new
organizational levels that directly affect the
ability to perform tasks.
Since we, as humans, are also evolving
our understanding of the world and of ourselves from simpler models of representation
of reality to increasingly complex and
comprehensive models that extend our
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
capabilities to act, influence and interact with
the world, machines exist in a direct analogy
to this evolutionary process.
We can perhaps say it's just a matter of
evolutionary time until machines and
algorithms effectively generate creative narratives stuffed of meaning.
Algorithms to generate stories
Algorithms capable of producing stories have
been researched for over 50 years, but more
recently there has been a significant increase
in the number of systems developed for this
purpose, due to the appearance of commercial applications.
We define as story the coherent chain of
events and actions that form the plot without
taking into account any aesthetic parameters.
The problem consists in creating systems and
algorithms capable of performing a nondefined task. Understanding algorithm as a set
of instructions which, when receiving a
particular input, produce one result as output,
the creation of an algorithm without prior
knowledge of the inputs and characteristics of
what is expected as output seems to be an
impossible task. This uncertainty is also seen
in the human process of constructing a narrative or story, because we cannot clearly define
the data an author uses to begin the process
of creation, what perhaps explains why computer systems still fail to reproduce the human
capacity to create and tell stories in diverse
ways.
The algorithms listed below vary in the
type of stories they produce and the quantities
and types of input data they need. These
variations directly influence the quality of the
texts produced by each program, since the
higher the amount of input data and the more
restricted the possibilities of outputs, the more
defined is the task to be performed and therefore the more consistent is the output produced by the algorithm.
1) Novel: one of the first algorithms for
generating stories was developed by Sheldon
Klein (Klein et al, 1973). This software gener-
Rodrigues and Freitas – 117
ated stories of murder in an environment given
as input along with details of the story’s
characters, including their emotional connections and predisposition to violence and sex.
As it was based on a well-defined set of rules,
this algorithm produced only a specific type of
story, and the differences between the stories
produced were very small.
2) TaleSpin: developed by James
Meehan (Meehan, 1977), it generated simple
stories about the life of woodland creatures. It
received, as a starting point a known universe,
but with a substantial increase in the
characteristics of the characters, such as kindness, intelligence and honesty, as well as the
introduction of a goal to be achieved by the
character. The plot was then developed toward the resolution of this goal through a complex model of possible relationships between
the characters. With this, despite producing a
particular kind of story, the differences between the stories produced were more relevant.
3) Author: created by Natalie Dehn
(Dehn, 1981), this program tried to simulate
the mind of a human author based on the assumption that the worlds of a story are
developed by the authors to justify actions already chosen for inclusion in the story. Here,
we have a large volume of incoming information about the characters, situations to
which the author wishes to take these
characters, and the role of each character in
the story. Dehn's algorithm builds the story
crossing these goals defined by the author for
each character.
4) MINSTREL: developed by Scott R.
Turner (Turner, 1993), this algorithm created
stories about King Arthur and the Knights of
the Round Table. The program received as
input a moral that was used as a starting point
for building the story, and the goals of the
author. The program built a story based on a
two-phase process: planning and then solving
the problems reusing knowledge from previous stories. The texts generated were short,
about half a page.
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
5) Mexica: created by Rafael Pérez y
Pérez (Pérez y Pérez, 1999), this program
was designed to generate short stories about
the first inhabitants of Mexico. It was based on
an algorithm that evaluated the story as it was
produced, taking into account emotional
connections between the characters and
trying to reproduce the creative process of the
production of narratives.
6) BRUTUS: developed by Selmer
Bringsjord and David A. Ferrucci (Bringsjord &
Ferrucci, 1999), it wrote short stories of betrayal based on a pre-defined logical model of
betrayal, taking into account a lot of
knowledge of grammar and literature, and performing a large number of inferences, allowing
the production of texts with literary quality.
Collective narratives
Audiovisual arts have always been associated
with technological developments, appropriating from these to create new forms of artistic
expression with the use of their languages and
through new ideas and worldviews that these
innovations bring. Earlier in this century, we
began to experiment with new forms for audiovisual production, which are updates that
incorporate the possibilities of digital media to
past experiences.
An example of this is the emergence of
Livecinema earlier in this century as a
catalyzer of ideas of the early nineteenth
century multimedia theater with audiovisual
remixes made by VJs of the 1990s and 2000s.
The term Livecinema was used early in
the history of cinema to designate a silent film
session that had live music being played, because, as Arlindo Machado says in The
Beginnings of Cinema: 1895-1926, the
sessions took place in a variety theater, like
the British music halls, the French coffeeconcerts, and American vaudevilles, where
you could eat, drink and dance.
Nowadays, the term Livecinema refers
to the execution of a live audiovisual work. In
other words, it is the manipulation of images
and sounds performed in real time in front of
Rodrigues and Freitas – 118
the audience. It is an extension of Sergei
Eisenstein's cinema of attractions, uniting
picture and sound in a physiological and visceral way in which meaning is made through
the body and through the physical sensation
produced by the sound overlapping with what
the viewer sees. Livecinema perpetuates this
tradition because it broadens the experiences
of multimedia performances, appropriating
from digital technologies of information processing to add chance and improvisation as
part of the work.
In this project, we intend to go one step
further in the production of collective content
by adding the idea of narrative production to
Livecinema, which so far is based mainly on
the construction of abstract narratives that
privilege synesthesia as an instrument to produce meanings. The commitment to linear and
objective narrative that tells a story like a
Hollywood movie or a book is not important.
Livecinema is based on abstract narratives, in
which the sequence of images on the screen
causes various meanings in viewers according
to the sensations produced and decoded by
each viewer and their cultural and aesthetic
repertoire. In this way, the senses are not explicit, and the film itself does not have a direct
and objective meaning, composing an open
narrative without a specific story.
As an example of this, we present a
video with excerpts from four works that were
part of the 2011 IV Livecinema Exhibition
(http://vimeo.com/29854022), Metaremix –
DUO N-1, remixCidade: Rio – Grupo Mesa de
Luz, Ponto: a video game without winner and
– HOL STORM – luizduVa and Manuel
Pessôa, produced live and in real time.
At the other end of the spectrum of
collective audiovisual productions, we have
experiments that attempt the collective
generation of objective and committed narratives with a specific meaning or sense, where
the sum of diverse views on a particular subject suggests a closer relationship with the
reality of the event narrated. A good example
is EchoChamber (echochamberproject.com),
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
made by Kent Bye, which aims to produce
documentaries
and
therefore
objective
narratives and films with defined subjects, in a
collective process.
The EchoChamber Project explores
investigative and collaborative film
through new media technologies as well
as a repository of original video interviews with journalists and scholars. It is
a project that details the limitations of
American journalism and at the same
time incorporates innovative solutions
through collaborative media production.
Summing up, it is the "YouTube" of an
independent filmmaker combined with
"Wikipedia" for serious journalism.
Radical innovation is necessary in order
to discover sustainable business models
for investigative journalism, as well as
new ways to keep the influence and
attention of the public with reliable content. The EchoChamber Project explores
the two main trends in online video by
working with Collective Intelligence
through Citizen Participation (Kent Bye,
echochamberproject.com).
The prototype proposed in this project
seeks for an intermediary path between the
two extremes of audiovisual narratives,
proposing the construction of a collective
narrative in real time, which has a unique
intention, but constructed in a poetic form and
preserving the freedom of metaphorical
meaning-generation for the participants who
will make the film.
It is, thus, a hyper-narrative as defined
by Lev Manovich in his book The Language of
New Media, with the difference that the database is reality itself, captured in real time,
which becomes the sum of the trajectories
chosen by each participant.
An interactive narrative (which can be
also called ‘hyper-narrative’ in an
analogy with hypertext) can then be
understood as the sum of multiple
trajectories through a database. A
Rodrigues and Freitas – 119
traditional linear narrative is one,
among
many
other
possible
trajectories; i.e., a particular choice
made within a hyper-narrative. Just as
a traditional cultural object can now be
seen as a particular case of a new
media object (i.e., a new media object
which only has one interface), traditional linear narrative can be seen as a
particular case of a hyper-narrative.
This "technical," or "material" change
in the definition of narrative does not
mean that an arbitrary sequence of
database records is a narrative. To
qualify as a narrative, a cultural object
has to satisfy a number of criteria,
which cultural theorist Mieke Bal, the
author of a standard textbook on narrative theory, defines as follows: it should
contain both an actor and a narrator; it
also should contain three distinct levels
consisting of the text, the story, and
the fabula; and its "contents" should be
a series of connected events caused
or experienced by actors. Obviously,
not all cultural objects are narratives.
However, in the world of new media,
the word narrative is often used as an
all-inclusive term, to cover up the fact
that we have not yet developed a language to describe these new strange
objects. It is usually paired with another over-used word — interactive.
Thus, a number of database records
linked together so that more than one
trajectory is possible, is assumed to be
constitute "interactive narrative." But to
just create these trajectories is of
course not sufficient; the author also
has to control the semantics of the elements and the logic of their connection
so that the resulting object will meet
the criteria of narrative as outlined
above. (Manovitch, 2007, pp 200-201)
The definition of narrative is complex
and still undetermined, but in a simplified way
we can define three types of narratives: linear
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
narratives, where scenes or facts are chained
to build a story with a definite sense; abstract
narratives, where the sequence of scenes or
events have no direct link with the earlier
scenes and there is no compromise with a
specific meaning or a story to be told, and
what matters is the sensory experience generated in the viewer; poetic narratives, where
there is a general sense, or a message, that
must be built from metaphors. We can consider this kind of narrative as an intermediate
between linear and abstract narratives, differing from the last one by the semiotic intent
with the general meaning of the message or
theme set.
The production of a poetic narrative
seems well suited to the project proposal, as it
has a signic intention but does not bind or
stifle the choice of scenes, does not determine
the content of the next scene of the movie,
and does not impose strict limits to the choice
of content by the agent author/filmmaker. The
poetic narrative allows us to convey ideas related to a topic, but in a nonlinear and abstract
way, guaranteeing freedom of choice to the
author/filmmaker, which is essential for the
functioning of the system.
The definition of a theme and the
communication between authors/filmmakers of
the videos are essential to provide a narrative
intention and to build this narrative, because
through feedback between the collecting
agents the capture of the images begins to
compose the scenes of a film, creating the
semiotic relationship between each scene in
real time through the choices made by each
collector of images from what has already
been produced, and exchanging ideas with
other agents/collectors/authors/filmmakers.
Thus, this system of producing narratives of collective authorship has the
characteristics of a complex system because
the end result is the sum of the intentions of
each collector agent, modified and influenced
by the outcome that is seen and commented
by people who are building a movie in real
time. The decision on a scene to be captured
Rodrigues and Freitas – 120
is influenced by the narrative that has been
constructed in the previous scenes, and ideas
generated by the debate with the other
agents. It's a system being modified through
the analysis of the results, and adjusting its
parameters to modify the end result is the film
itself.
The system shall consist of modules to
capture images operated by people, or
authors/filmmakers agents, equipped with IP
cameras that transmit the signal captured by
each agent to the projection room. Besides
the cameras, each module to capture images
has a tablet with Internet access that allows
the agent to watch in real time the film that is
being produced, and also a button so that the
signal of your camera can be projected after
the signal of another camera finishes. Through
the tablet, the narrative agents can also
communicate with each other in order to drive
the narrative construction, making decisions
together, directing and choosing the scenes,
creating the narrative sense determined by a
previously chosen topic. The film, therefore, is
created scene-by-scene by the agents and the
people who act and appear in the scenes,
without a script, only with the direction given
by the subject / title.
These
capturing/recording
stations
would be similar to those used by the project
Blast
Theory
in
(blasttheory.co.uk/bt/work_cysmn.html),
which players from around the world can
participate in the action taking place part in a
physical space, partly on a virtual map of the
city where the game is played. The relative
position of the players is tracked by satellites.
The information is sent to handheld computers
that help you find the opponents.
Technology
To build the ideal system, we will use tablets
with 4G connection and a camera for the
image capturing. These images will be
transmitted in real time to a server that is running a software such as Isadora, which receives the transmission of video clips captured
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
Rodrigues and Freitas – 121
Machado, Arlindo. (1997). Os Primórdios do
Cinema: 1895-1926. São Paulo: Agência
Observatório.
by each station and then project them on a
screen in the order they arrive at a destination
folder. The same signal is streamed over the
network, so the collecting agents can watch
the movie at the same time.
Manovich, Lev . (2002). The Language of New
Media. EUA: The MIT Press.
The communication between the collecting agents occurs through tablets with Skype,
allowing decisions to be made about the content of the narrative being produced.
Meehan, James R. (1977). Tale-Spin, an
interactive program that writes stories.
Proceedings of the Fifth International Joint
Conference on Artificial Intelligence, MIT,
Cambridge, MA.
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São Paulo: Martins Fontes.
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Barthes, Roland . (1975). An Introduction to the
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Computer Science Department, The University
of Wisconsin, Madison.
Pérez Y Pérez, Rafael. (1999). MEXICA: A
Computer Model of Creativity in Writing. PhD
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Science Research Report.
INTERACTIVE NARRATIVES
NEW MEDIA &
SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT
October 23‐25, 2014 | University of Toronto |ISBN: 978‐0‐9939520‐0‐5
CROSSING BOUNDARIES
Dr. David Sweeney
Forum for Critical Inquiry, The Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow
d.sweeney@gsa.ac.uk
Suggested citation: Sweeney, David (2014). “Crossing Boundaries.” In Proceedings of the
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement International Conference. Eds. Hudson
Moura, Ricardo Sternberg, Regina Cunha, Cecília Queiroz, and Martin Zeilinger. ISBN: 978-09939520-0-5
This article is released under a Creative Commons license (CC-BY-NC-ND).
Abstract: Promotional material for National Theatre Live (NT Live hereafter) – which broadcasts
live theatrical performances digitally to cinemas – emphasises the “exclusive behind-the-scenes
content” that audiences will receive. This includes not only backstage footage and interviews as
part of the broadcasts themselves, but also “additional videos, podcasts and information about
theatre-making” available online. Such additional content can be compared to the “bonus” material found on DVD and Blu-Ray releases; however, behind-the-scenes footage is also broadcast
live, which raises some provocative questions about the nature of performance and audience
expectation in the digital age. The footage may allow the audience privileged access not
traditionally available in theatre, but as the cast and crew are aware that they are being filmed
backstage, we may ask 1) Is their behaviour also a performance, and 2) If so, what is its value
to the audience?
In this paper, I compare NT Live's broadcast of live behind-the-scenes footage to the fictional presentation of backstage activity in two 'composed' films by Powell and Pressburger, The
Red Shoes (1948) and The Tales of Hoffman (1951), both of which deal with the boundaries
between reality and fiction and the consequences of transgressing these boundaries. In doing
so I draw on the work of the literary theorist Wolfgang Iser, the dramaturgy of Bertolt Brecht, and
the theories of observation, surveillance and spectatorship posited by Michel Foucault and Jean
Baudrillard.
The paper concludes that NT Live's broadcasting of behind-the-scenes content, live and
recorded, is characteristic of our current media climate in which the boundaries between backstage and on-stage, real and fictional, public and private, have been blurred to the point of erasure – just as NT Live itself has erased the differences between cinema and theatre, particularly
with its “Encore” presentations in which recordings of theatrical performances are broadcast in
cinemas – and in which audience expectation is for, in Baudrillard's terms, “maximal visibility.”
But I also suggest that NT Live should incorporate cinematic techniques directly into their
productions, rather than using them simply as a form of mediation, to create a new form of
contemporary spectacle for the 21st century.
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
The Red Shoes
Based on the fairy tale of the same name by
Hans Christian Anderson, Michael Powell and
Emeric Pressburger's 1948 film The Red
Shoes is a backstage drama that focuses on a
young ballet dancer, Vicky Page (Moira
Shearer) and her relationships with Boris
Lermontov, owner of the dance company
Ballet Lermontov, and an up and coming composer, Julian Craster, who works as the
company's orchestral coach. The film presents
the production processes – including
rehearsals, artistic disagreements, intercompany tensions, financial wranglings and
so on – of staging a ballet also called 'The
Red Shoes,’ which is also based on the
Christian Anderson story, starring Vicky, for
whom Julian has composed the score, and
which is included in the film, both as a
spectacle viewed by a theatre audience, but
also as a cinematic experience that makes full
use of techniques such as close-ups, dissolves, pans and the use of slow motion. The
film's audience, therefore, sees both what the
fictional theatre audience sees (but in a
cinematically enhanced form) and what the
theatre audience is denied access to: the
backstage events leading up to, and including,
the night of production. As such, the film audience has a privileged gaze that is nearomniscient. This privileging is pivotal in the
film's plot in the scene where Lermontov, jealous that Vicky and Julian have fallen in love,
dismisses Julian's latest composition as “childish, vulgar and completely insignificant,” which
both the audience and Julian know is not the
case. Lermontov uses this mendacious appraisal of Julian's work as a reason to fire him
from the company, which causes Vicky also to
leave, despite the fact that she is contractually
prohibited from dancing for anyone other than
Ballet Lermontov, a move that ultimately leads
to her tragic death when her need to dance
surpasses her loyalty to Julian: she agrees to
star in a revival of the ballet that results in her
Sweeney – 123
demise when, in an imitation of the fate of her
character in the ballet, the titular shoes, which
she wears both on and off-stage, appear to
take control of her body.
I was reminded of The Red Shoes while
watching an advertisement, in a cinema, for
National Theatre Live, which promised both a
cinematic treatment of theatrical events
(including ballet) and “behind-the-scenes” access, which was conveyed by a vertiginous
tracking shot which swooped, from a position
high in the auditorium's seating – the gods in
British theatre parlance – down through the
theatre, up onto the stage, then through the
set, into a backstage area teeming with
performers (in costume), and production crew
(in work attire), several of whom acknowledged the presence of the camera. NT Live
actively promotes backstage access in its
advertising.
Backstage drama demystifies the processes of theatrical production, albeit in a fictional way that often deploys established dramatic stereotypes such as the manipulative
male impresario, the idealistic yet ambitious
ingénue, the tortured young composer, and
the pushy stage mother. Other cinematic
examples of the genre include All That Jazz
(1979) directed by Bob Fosse, which is based
on his career as a choreographer and theatrical director, and, more recently, Darren
Aronofsky's Black Swan (2010), which is centred around a production of the ballet Swan
Lake. Both of these films incorporate fantasy
elements: in the former, Fosse's avatar Joe
Gideon (Roy Scheider) hallucinates the five
stages of accepting death as a Broadway
spectacle following a heart attack, while in
Black Swan, Nina's (Natalie Portman)
deteriorating mental health, a result of the
pressure on her to succeed as a ballerina, affects her perception of reality in a manner
reminiscent of psychological horror/thrillers
films such as Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940) or
Polanski's Repulsion (1965). Again, here, the
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
cinema audience's gaze is privileged: they see
what the characters see, even when that is not
objectively “real.” The Red Shoes also contains fantasy elements, but these are not
borne from physical trauma or mental illness:
rather, the presentation of the eponymous ballet uses cinematic techniques to abandon the
realism that has characterised the film up to
that moment, including the initial presentation
of the dance sequence, which is shown from
the point of view of the theatre audience, to
alchemize the fantastic elements of Christian
Anderson's story; that is, to make the fantastic
real. The fantastical feel of the ballet is not a
result of a cinematic representation of the
“magic of theatre,” because the effects – such
as slowing of motion and the camera's movement into the shoes – could not be achieved
using theatrical techniques. The dance sequence is pure cinema, and it allows for the
possibility that Vicky is truly possessed by the
shoes as a punishment for her betrayal of
Julian.
Another possibility, of course, is that her
own guilt over the betrayal compels her to
commit suicide (similarly, Nina may have died
by her own hand, as result of her ambitiousness, at the end of Black Swan). This would
require a psychological reading of the film,
and as such, an interpretation grounded in
realism. To accept that supernatural forces
actually do punish Vicky or Nina is to cross the
boundary from realism to fantasy. For
Wolfgang Iser, all fiction, regardless of genre,
involves boundary crossing: from the actual
world of the reader into the world of the fiction:
in this view, a realist text by, say Jane Austen
is no less artificial, and equally as fictional, as
a fantasy novel by George RR Martin.
Austen's oeuvre has been “re-genrified” with
the publication of (terrible) novels such as
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Sense
and Sensibility and Sea-Monsters (both 2009),
which introduce fantastic elements to the
Austen originals, thus creating new fictional
worlds. However, what we may term the
fantastic is part of the metaphysics of Martin's
Sweeney – 124
A Song of Ice and Fire series and is not,
therefore, supernatural (although his sorceress character Melisandre does admit to using
theatrical techniques to impress the credulous). The Red Shoes involves its audience in
two acts of boundary crossing: first, into the
world of the film, which I'll call The Red Shoes
A, and then into the world of the ballet-withinthe film, The Red Shoes B: in both worlds, the
cinema audience has a privileged gaze. Similarly, NT Live involves its audience in two
boundary crossings: into the world of the play,
separated from the actual world by, in theatrical terms, the invisible fourth wall that delineates the border of the play-world, and also by
providing behind-the-scenes access to the
hidden world of backstage reality.
But in what way is what we see behindthe-scenes “real”? As I mentioned, in the
advertisement I saw at the cinema, several of
the people present backstage acknowledged
and indeed played to the camera in what was
clearly a type of performance if not exactly
drama. The cast and crew know that they will
be filmed backstage on the nights when NT
Live broadcasts so it is reasonable to assume
that they will behave appropriately. In this
sense, behind-the-scenes access takes the
NT Live audience into a version of the actual
world, in which people play themselves,
including actors in the costume, if not the role,
of the character they will play onstage.
In his practice of Epic Theatre, the great
German playwright Bertolt Brecht emphasised
the importance of defamiliarisation in the
production
of
drama:
Brecht's
Verfremdungseffekt drew the audience's
attention to the artificiality of the spectacle
they were viewing through such techniques as
the exposure of stagecraft and the breaking of
the fourth wall via direct address of the audience. As such, Epic Theatre can also be seen
to be involved in a form of demystification, by
emphasising the industrial conditions of theatre. Breaking the fourth wall removes the
boundary not only between audience and
character, but also between fictional world and
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
actual world: NT Live's provision of behindthe-scenes access seems less concerned with
demystification of spectacle, even than in
backstage drama, than in the expansion of it
to encompass that which was hitherto restricted: reality becomes part of the spectacle,
of the fiction.
Behind-the-scenes footage, and the
interviews with cast and crew also provided in
both the cinema broadcasts and on the NT
Live website, can be compared to the bonus
material included on DVD and Blu-ray releases. NT Live have so far resisted demands
for their broadcasts to be released in these
formats, but have capitulated to audience desires with their “Encore Presentations,” in
which performances are re-broadcast in a
manner similar to television re-runs. While this
practice can be seen to compromise the temporal specificity of the theatrical experience, it
also moves theatrical spectacle closer to cinema: no live theatrical performance is ever the
same twice, but cinema, particularly digital cinema, which does not deteriorate in the way
that celluloid does, is always the same. In his
essay “Rhapsody for the Theatre,” Alain
Badiou writes “there can be no permanent
theatre. That adjective belongs to cinema, and
at the most to exhibitions”:
The fact that immediately the spectacle
is played a second time changes nothing in this regard. It is two times One,
with no access whatsoever to any
permanence. (192)
Badiou is dismissive of adaptations of theatre
to cinema or television, associating them with
“the shopkeeping bourgeoisie” and describing
them as being “as greasy as pork and beans.”
He makes specific reference to “actors whose
only effect lies in tremor or slow motion,” suggesting that theatrical performance is superior
to, and more authentic than, film acting because of the absence of special effects; for
him, “no other art form is able to pin down the
intensity of what happens the way theatre
does” (193). NT Live broadcasts, even as
Encore presentations, are, of course, not
Sweeney – 125
adaptations of theatre in the same way as the
form Badiou criticises, but nevertheless, as
they do involve camera movement, they can
be seen to adapt the form to a different medium. Whether or not this affects performances or stage direction is unknown to me,
but we may wonder if, for example, an actor
makes different choices with the knowledge
that the production is being broadcast and
may be repeated.
“Maximal Visibility”
While he or she is still required to attend the
cinema at a specific date on a specific time,
the NT Live Encore viewer is nevertheless
privileged in no longer being bound to the temporal and spatial specificity of live theatre. We
can think about this privileging, and the
behind-the scenes access, in terms of Jean
Baudrillard's concept of “maximal visibility” as
outlined in his 2004 lecture to the European
Graduate School, “The Violence of the Image.”
Baudrillard argues that “Maximal information,
maximal visibility are now part of the human
rights (and of human duties all the same)”: we
expect to see all, and for others to make themselves visible to us. For Baudrillard, reality
television shows like Big Brother provide a
“wonderful model of this forced visibility”:
All that is visualized there, in the
operation Big Brother, is pure virtual
reality, a synthetic image of the banality, producted : as in a computer. The
equivalent of a ready-made – a given
transcription of everyday life – which is
itself already recycled by all current
patterns.
It would be harsh, of course, to compare NT
Live's backstage footage with the voyeurism of
Big Brother, but behind-the-scenes access
can be seen as a response to the current expectation of “maximal visibility.” Furthermore,
like reality television, this footage raises questions about what constitutes fiction today. Just
as docu-soaps, for example, involve the
viewer in a boundary crossing, into the “real
lives” of the shows’ participants, so behind-
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
the-scenes access stimulate a discussion of
what constitutes “real” behaviour under conditions of observation. Invoking Foucault,
Baudrillard claims “we are beyond the Panoptikon, where there was still a source of power
and visibility;” this may be true in a wider cultural sense, but in the context of NT Live
specifically, we can see Foucault's argument
that the knowledge of even the potential of
surveillance tends to change behaviour:
prisoners in the panoptikon can never be sure
if they are being observed or not, but as they
are certain that they will be punished if they
disobey, they are likely to act as if they are
under surveillance, and so become obedient,
“docile bodies;” cast and crew backstage on
broadcast night know for sure that they are
being filmed and are likely to be part of the
expanded spectacle that NT Live provides
with its crossing of boundaries. It seems likely
that this would change their behaviour.
Tales of Hoffman
Powell and Pressburger returned to ballet with
Tales of Hoffman (1951), which also starred
Shearer in the dual role of Stella/Olympia. The
film is adapted from the opera of the same
name by Jacques Offenbach, itself based on
the fantasy stories of E.T.A. Hoffman (who
also provided Christian Anderson with the
source material for 'The Red Shoes'), and presents us with layers of fiction: a character
based on Hoffman tells three stories in a tavern during the interval of a ballet starring
Stella, his betrothed, part of which we also see
in the film. The stories are ostensibly autobiographical, detailing Hoffman's three failed love
affairs before meeting Stella; however,
Hoffman finally reveals that they are fictions,
presenting aspects of Stella's personality. This
is hinted at in the first tale, which includes a
ballet sequence, in which Shearer plays
Olympia, an automaton for whom an unwitting
Hoffman falls. In this tale, Shearer's vocals
were in fact performed by the opera singer
Dorothy Bond, which prompted the film theorist André Bazin to remark, in an allusion to
Frankenstein: “The cinema thus creates here
Sweeney – 126
a new artistic monster: the best legs adorned
by the best voice” (54).
For Bazin, Powell and Pressburger’s
work is a modern Prometheus because “[n]ot
only is opera liberated from its material
constraints but also from its human limitations”
and “dance itself is renewed by the
photography and the editing, which allows a
kind of choreography of the second degree
where the rhythm of the dance is served by
that of the cinema” (54). NT Live, with its
preservation of the intergrity of the traditional
theatrical experience – which Badiou values
so highly – does not perform a similar
liberation or renewal for theatre, but potentially
it could by integrating cinematic techniques
directly into productions rather than using
them simply for mediation. This would be an
expansion of not just the spectacle of theatre,
as is provided by behind-the-scenes footage,
but, to borrow a term from Gilles Deleuze, of
the concept of theatre, to create a new form
which is not only live, but alive to the
conditions of the 21st century and its
maximisation of visibility.
References
Aronofsky, Darren (Director), 2010, Black Swan,
US: Fox Searchlight Pictures.
Badiou, Alain, 2008, 'Rhapsody of Theatre: A Short
Philosophical Treatise' in Theatre Survey 49:2,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Baudrillard, Jean, 2004, 'The Violence of the
Image', online, Wallis, Switzerland, European
Graduate School.
http://www.egs.edu/faculty/jeanbaudrillard/articles/the-violence-of-the-image/,
accessed 14/9/2014
Fosse, Bob (Director), 1979 All That Jazz, US: 20
Century Fox/Columbia Pictures.
th
Iser, Wolfgang, 1993, The Fictive and the
Imaginary: Charting Literary Anthropology.
Baltimore, London: the John Hopkins University
Press.
Powell, Michael and Pressburger, Emeric
(directors), The Red Shoes (1949), UK: British
Lion Pictures.
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
Powell, Michael and Pressburger, Emeric
(directors),Tales of Hoffman (1951), UK: British
Lion Pictures.
Wimmer, Leila, 2009, Cross Channel Perspectives:
The French Reception of British Cinema, Bern:
Peter Lang.
Sweeney – 127
INTERACTIVE NARRATIVES
NEW MEDIA &
SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT
October 23‐25, 2014 | University of Toronto |ISBN: 978‐0‐9939520‐0‐5
IN‐BETWEEN: BETWEEN THE CONCRETE AND THE VIRTUAL,
BETWEEN THE PHYSICAL AND THE IMAGINARY
Isabella Trindade, York University
i_trindade@hotmail.com
Suggested citation: Trindade, Isabella (2014). “In-Between: Between the Concrete and the
Virtual, Between the Physical and the Imaginary.” In Proceedings of the Interactive Narratives,
New Media & Social Engagement International Conference. Eds. Hudson Moura, Ricardo
Sternberg, Regina Cunha, Cecília Queiroz, and Martin Zeilinger. ISBN: 978-0-9939520-0-5
This article is released under a Creative Commons license (CC-BY-NC-ND).
Abstract: This article discusses ways in which films, digital screens and new media have been
used in exhibition spaces, providing innovative and inclusive means for artistic expression and
new perspectives on contemporary exhibition practices.
The intersection of architecture, art and the expanding digital sphere allows for a transformation of the conventional standards for exhibition spaces, and provides new ways of enjoying
an exhibition. To discuss ways in which films, digital screens and new media have defined new
parameters and outlined a new way of designing and creating spaces, this paper has been
organized into three parts to conceptualize, contextualize and identify the advantages of the format.
The point is not to list the new technological devices that are used in various exhibition
spaces. It is only to note: 1) how they have changed the way art, especially film, is observed in
an exhibition; 2) how they have led to an essential transformation in exhibition spaces over the
years; and 3) how these contemporaries spaces are ‘in-between’ – between the concrete and
the virtual, and between the physical and the imaginary.
Media Studies is a relatively new field in the academic circuit, combining the approaches
of multiple disciplines. This paper specifically engages with, and borrows analytical tools from, a
number of disciplines, including the history and theory of architecture, cultural studies,
communication and media studies, museum studies and sociology.
1. The transposition of film to museums
In its broadest sense, museums are as old as
the history of humankind, and can be considered to have been around ever since humans
began to collect and store valuables in specially built rooms. The origin goes back to
classical antiquity, where objects were col-
lected and kept in temples as an offering to
the muses. In the Renaissance, royal private
collections were gathered in palaces, which
formed the initial core of national museum
collections. Later, between the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, the first museums,
as we understand them today, were estab-
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
lished with the specific purpose of collecting
and protecting precious objects of interest.
The newly established museums began to occupy public buildings or palaces that were
converted into museums, the most notorious
example being the Louvre museum in Paris.
In the late nineteenth century, numerous
museums emerged around the world,
especially in Europe, and artists and architects
began to question the adequacy of these
spaces, which had been designed to house art
collections. In the twentieth century, the idea
of creating a specific building to house a
collection emerged when the Swiss-French
architect Le Corbusier designed the “Musée
de la Connaissance” (Museum of Knowledge)
in 1939. A museum’s architectural design
represented the biggest change that had occurred in terms of shape and form. Buildings
began to be designed to organize space, while
the control of natural and artificial lighting,
ventilation, and a museum’s internal spaces
were part of a continuum.
Over the years, the design of museums
and exhibition spaces has changed, and not
only in shape and form: museums are no
longer simple exhibition galleries; they are designed to be pleasant places to visit, with
restaurants, cafes, shops and gardens.
Museums have also widened their activities,
promoting courses, conferences, events and
parties, such as the AGO 1st Thursday at the
Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto and the ROM
Friday Night Live at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. Both events feature onenight-only artist projects, performances, popup speakers, music and dance, transforming
the museums into lively and more attractive
spaces. Moreover, museums today are designed to be trendy and to create attractive
"hands-on" exhibits to engage visitors.
Regarding artistic expression and
museum exhibitions, the most radical changes
have been produced by the latest avantgarde: art brut, pop art, land art, minimalism,
video
art,
happenings,
performances,
installations and many other artistic media.
Trindade – 129
Whether interactive or ephemeral and varying
in size, shape and features, all these artistic
expressions require changes to exhibition
spaces. The public not only interacts, but is
also part of the artwork and the exhibition.
There is an interaction between the viewer
and the artwork, whose existence is based on
the relationship established between them.
Thus, in the same way in which art has
changed in recent years, architecture has
gone through its own continual process of
review, an innovative understanding of its role
in terms of a dialogue or eventual
confrontation with an exhibition’s contents.
In this process of transformation, films
and all kinds of projections have been seen as
an important communication tool for creative
expression. As we know, films were traditionally seen only (or primarily) in movie theaters,
and later became incorporated into the rooms
of exhibits and museums worldwide. Films
shown inside museums are seen as an important communication tool for telling a story,
supporting knowledge, and reflecting on and
critically examining a specific fact. In some
cases, it incorporates the role of the artwork
itself, the so-called “Cinéma d'Exposition”
(Cinema of Exhibition), a term coined by art
critic Jean Christophe Royoux in the early
2000s to describe the transposition of film to
museums and art galleries, as opposed to the
traditional 'film projection' in dark rooms,
involving a hidden projector from behind and
an immobile spectator (Païni 2002, p. 1).
2. The in-between areas: between cinema
and visual art
From a historical perspective, the relationship
between films, the Cinema of Exhibition
(which incorporates and is appreciated as an
artwork), contemporary art and museums has
intensified in the past twenty years. Museums
such as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in
New York and the George Pompidou Museum
in Paris have created film departments.
Furthermore, we have seen museums entirely
devoted to films – such as London’s Cinema
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
Museum, dedicated to keeping the spirit of
cinema alive, or The National Museum of
Cinema in Italy – and film archives, and currently almost all museums use projections or
movies inside their interior spaces.
Philippe Dubois, considered one of the
leading researchers in the field of cinema’s
artistic dimension and its relation to contemporary art, points out that it was only in 1936 that
the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New
York included a film department that was
equal in importance to the departments of
painting and sculpture. “Initially, the board of
the museum did not agree. ‘How to put movies
alongside El Greco and Pollock?’ they asked.”
That was, until someone, who would later become the first director of the film department,
convinced them. She had to give a lecture on
cinema as the seventh art, one to be treated
as an art like any other (Lins and Fraga, 2012,
p. 7).
Cinema and contemporary art are closer
than ever before: some artists use movies as
a form of artistic expression, while some
filmmakers put on exhibitions and installations:
“L'installation pour les Cinéastes, le cinéma
pour les Plasticiens,” the art critic Jean
Christophe Royoux once said. Although
treated for many years only as cultural objects
for the consumer or a type of enjoyable entertainment inside a dark room in a movie
theatre, movies can also be understood as art.
As an example of this relationship, the
'Cinema of Exhibition' can be exemplified by
the installation 24 Hour Psycho (1993) by
Scottish artist Douglas Gordon, in which he
presents a slowed-down version of Alfred
Hitchcock's 1960 masterpiece Psycho. Thus,
instead of its original 109 minutes, this
installation lasted exactly 24 hours. In this
installation, Gordon presented a reality that
was completely different than what we normally experience in a movie theater (see
Figures 1 and 2).
Is there any difference between watching a movie in a theater or in a museum?
Trindade – 130
Absolutely! How does the viewer interact with
a movie in these two situations? It depends on
many factors.
Parente and Carvalho (2008, p. 37)
have pointed out that, “We usually think of
cinema as a spectacle involving at least three
distinct elements: a movie theatre, a device to
project a moving image and a film that tells a
story in roughly two hours.” Watching a movie
in a museum rather than in a movie theatre is
quite different. In a museum, a viewer is no
longer locked inside a dark room, seated in an
armchair, with a scheduled time to start and
end. The projection can be viewed in many
different ways. Visitors can stand, sit or switch
positions (depending on the location, purpose
of an exhibition and furniture available).
Visitors can stand in front of a screen or beside it, or walk in several directions (while
looking at a sequence of images across multiple screens, for example). Visitors can be
alone, or accompanied by others, or
experience a flux of viewers (depending on
the number of visitors passing through the
space and the amount of time each viewer
wishes to 'watch' the projected images). They
have their own trajectory as a participant, in
an experience that is unique to them.
A room prepared for an exhibition is not
necessarily dark or silent; and viewers can
watch the movie in its entirety or only a part of
it. Some films explore other lengths and
intensities (slow motion or fast), such as the
24 Hour Psycho installation mentioned previously, which completely affect and modify our
understanding.
The works of artists such as Douglas
Gordon, Eija-Liisa Athila, Stan Douglas,
Pierre Huyghe, Doug Aitken, Isaac
Julien, Sam Taylor-Wood, Anthony
McCall and David Claerbout, among
others, reiterate and recreate the cinema
experience. The experiences that they
invite us to witness call our attention to
the reconfiguration of cinema’s architectural space, using multiple screens
(Today/Tanaan [Eija-Liisa Athila, 1996]
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
and Third Party [Sam Taylor-Wood,
1999]), and continual repetition of certain film classics (24 Hour Psycho
[Douglas Gordon, 1996] and Taxi Driver
Too [Vibeke Tandberg, 2000]) or by experimenting with the basic properties of
the cinematic medium, such as
field/counter-field (Hors-champ [Stan
Douglas, 1993] and Sections of a Happy
Moment [David Claerbout, 2007]).
(Parente and Carvalho, 2008, p. 50-51)
There are many possibilities representing a shift in how movies can be displayed, in
terms of the architecture of a screening room
(the conditions for image projection), new
technological possibilities for capturing and
projecting images, and relationships with
spectators. Many cinematic works have transformed the architecture of the projection room
or proposed different relationships with
spectators. Works exhibited in museums and
art galleries nowadays can reinvent cinema in
several ways, while all kinds of projections
exhibited in museums and art galleries can
reinvent the architecture (see Figures 3 and
4).
Cinematographic installations can be designed from projections on various surfaces
and materials (fabric, glass, screens), on
multiple, rather than single, screens, and with
different screen sizes, and projections pointing
at unusual locations – walls, floors, ceilings,
furniture or people moving into a room.
These experiences first began in the
1960s with the use of experimental video art
as a form of artistic expression, which was
shown in its various forms in open or closed
spaces. We need only remember the
American pop artist Andy Warhol's experimental video Exploding Plastic Inevitable
(1966), which combined the world of rock
music – performed by the Velvet Underground
and a group of dancers – with the
simultaneous use of various projections (see
Figure 5).
Trindade – 131
These various ways and possibilities of
designing images associated with an artist's
work are also responsible for many different
sensations.
Durant les années 60 et au début des
années 70, l'image projetée joua un rôle
déterminant dans la création d'un
nouveau langage de la représentation.
Les artistes utilisaient le film, les
diapositives, la vidéo et le projection
holographique et photographique pour
mesurer, étudier, abstraire, refléter et
transformer les paramètres de l'espace
physique. (Iles, Chrissie, 2001)
According to Jean-Christophe Royoux,
cinema has expanded through exposure in
space and exposure to other art forms.
Les années 90 voient la consécration
des images en mouvement dans les
lieux d'exposition apportant ainsi des
conséquences importantes sur sa
perception. Ce qui est en jeu, c'est non
pas de comprendre combien dans l'art
contemporain l'image s'anime, quand
bien même il s'agirait d'images filmées,
mais au contraire ce que signifie et
comment se manifeste la réversion du
mobile dans l'immobile; c'est le passage
du cinéma à l'exposition qu'il faut
interroger, et par là même la
reconstruction de multiples manières,
d'une expérience indissociable de la
construction d'un lieu du spectateur.
(Royoux, 2000, p.38)
3. Architecture: between concrete and virtual, physical and imaginary.
The relationship between the fields of art (cinema and the various forms of artistic
expression), the architecture of exhibition
spaces and technological development has
forced architects and engineers to keep
abreast of these changes, and to rethink architectural solutions in a world where everything
has become digital: video, film, the Internet,
text, sound and images. As an example,
movies nowadays can be in 2D, 3D or 4D,
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
Image Maximum (IMAX), IMAX Dome (180°
projection), IMAX 3D and IMAX Digital
formats.
The rapid evolution of computers, wireless sensing techniques, audio guides, audio
description, 3D environments in movies and
video games, and projection and display
technology, has given space designers access
to sophisticated technologies for applications
or tasks ranging from artistic performance to
museum exhibit design.
Movies and, more recently, interactivity,
emerge naturally, coming from a culture in
which the Internet, smartphones, app devices,
tablets and new technologies are becoming
increasingly available in everyday society. We
live in the age of cyber culture, and these new
forms of media provide a new relationship between space and a museum collection, leading to a new architectural transformation.
Spaces in museums and art galleries need to
be as flexible as possible to enable various
spatial arrangements, and be concerned with
issues such as acoustics, lighting and highspeed connectivity. Re-thinking museums’
communication systems is a natural and pertinent way of expanding access to and enjoyment of, the public. Over time, changes to the
concept of what a museum is prove that a
museum changes as a society transforms.
Spaces need to be able to articulate an
entertaining and interactive audio-visual narrative for visitors, communicating via large-scale
synchronized projections, sounds and displays, whose contents are choreographed by
the natural body movements or physical gestures of the people passing through them.
The intersection of architecture, art and
the expanding digital sphere allows for a
transformation of the conventional standards
for exhibition spaces and provides new ways
of enjoying an exhibition. The relationship
between the viewer and the artwork has completely changed. We are no longer viewers
who only contemplate art. We need to interact
with it and try it. Our position is actually some-
Trindade – 132
where between the concrete and the virtual,
the physical and the imaginary.
Regarding this aspect,
Zonenschein point out that:
Parente
&
Combined with hypertext systems, digital technologies represent a key to the
museum, epistemological and heuristic
processing. On the one hand, they allow
the intensive use of audiovisual collections in order to create a new pedagogy
of museum spaces, a new dynamic to
these spaces. On the other hand, they
allow extending them considerably, because the hypertext information spaces
are virtually unlimited. This is how certain museums, even small ones, can extend their spaces and their actions via
multimedia collections. (Parente &
Zonenschein in Bittencourt et al, 2007,
p. 272)
Marcello Dantas, the first artistic director
of the Museum of the Portuguese Language in
Brazil, points out that we live in a visual culture, and that films share a close relationship
with the language of interactive and immersive
exhibits. For him, films speak a unique language, interacting with several elements that
are dealt with in an exhibition: scale, narrative,
immersion in space and collective experience.
The reason you go to a museum today is to
experience culture, first and foremost, in a collective way. All of these elements are essential. Then you use film, interactivity and set
design language, which all add up in the museum space (Menezes, 2011).
In conclusion, it is important to clarify
that interactive museums do not spell the end
or replacement of traditionally organized
museums. They enrich and help democratize
culture, sharing information, facilitating understanding and suggesting new relationships
between a museum and its public. It is a vision
of the museum as an institution that not only
preserves, but also studies and values the
diversities in a world with so many cultural
multiplicities. We can also say that including
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
films in museums will not spell the end of
movie theatres. Going to a museum is an
Trindade – 133
experience that can be as just emotional as
going to the cinema.
Figures
Figures 1 and 2: Douglas Gordon, 24 Hour Psycho. Installation based on the 1960 Hitchcock
film. Source: Retrieved from http://www.apieceofmonologue.com/2010/03/douglas-gordon-24hour-psycho.html.
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
Trindade – 134
Figures 3 and 4: Museu da Língua Portuguesa (The Portuguese Language Museum).
Photo: Isabella Trindade, 2006
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
Trindade – 135
Figure 5: Photograph taken at a performance of Andy Warhol’s “Exploding Plastic Inevitable”,
featuring Nico, at the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor.
Source: Unidentified. 1968 University of Michigan Yearbook, Michiganensian, p. 89
References
Bittencourt, José Neves; Granato, Marcus;
Benchetrit, Sarah Fassa (organizadores)
(2007). Museus, ciência e tecnologia: livro do
seminário internacional. Rio de Janeiro : Museu
Histórico Nacional.
Gordon, Douglas. (2010). 24 Hour Psycho.
Installation based on the 1960 Hitchcock film.
URL:
http://www.apieceofmonologue.com/2010/03/do
uglas-gordon-24-hour-psycho.html [March 3,
2010]
Iles, Chrissie (2001). Into the Light: The projected
Image in American Art 1964-1977. New York:
Whitney Museum of American Art.
Lins, Consuelo, Fraga, Isabela. (2012). O cinema
vai ao museu. Suplemento Trimestral da
Revista Ciência Hoje CH (SobreCultura 10),
296, 7-8.
Menezes, Natassja (2011). O Boom de museus
interativos no Rio de Janeiro: Linguagem e
Democratização da cultura. Rio de Janeiro.
Monografia (graduação em Comunicação social
/Jornalismo). Universidade Federal do rio de
Janeiro – UFRJ, Escola de Comunicação –
ECO.
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
Païni, Dominique (2002). Le temps exposé: Le
cinéma de la salle au muse. Cahiers du
Cinéma. Paris.
Parente, A., Carvalho, V. de. (2008). Cinema as
dispositif: Between Cinema and Contemporary
Art. Cinémas: Journal of Film Studies,
Volume 19, numéro 1, p. 37-55. DOI:
10.7202/029498ar
Royoux, Jean-Christophe (2000). Cinéma
d'exposition: l'espacement de la durée. Art
Press n°262.
Ybert, Clément (2005). Le cinéma accroché.
L’image animée projetée dans les installations
d'art contemporain. Mémoire de fin d’études.
Ecole Nationale supérieure NS Louis Lumière.
1968 University of Michigan yearbook,
Michiganensian.
Trindade – 136
INTERACTIVE NARRATIVES
NEW MEDIA &
SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT
October 23‐25, 2014 | University of Toronto |ISBN: 978‐0‐9939520‐0‐5
WHAT’S MISSED WHEN NO ONE IS MISUNDERSTOOD?
UNDERSTANDING WHOSE AGENCY IS INCREASED THANKS TO
INTERACTIVITY
Kateland Wolfe, Georgia State University
kwolfe5@gsu.edu
Suggested citation: Wolfe, Kateland (2014). “What’s Missed When No One is Misunderstood?
Understanding Whose Agency is Increased Thanks to Interactivity.” In Proceedings of the
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement International Conference. Eds. Hudson
Moura, Ricardo Sternberg, Regina Cunha, Cecília Queiroz, and Martin Zeilinger. ISBN: 978-09939520-0-5
This article is released under a Creative Commons license (CC-BY-NC-ND).
Abstract: Interactive fiction is aptly named, for it is interactive. Let it not be forgotten, though,
that interaction is not synonymous with user/reader agency. The interactivity in interactive
fiction, the non-linear nature, the ever-changing circumstances and storyline, all make the
experience much more focused and mediated than the reading of a linear, traditional novel. In
this paper, I use Roland Barthes to suggest that the reader has complete agency in the act of
reading a “traditional” book, and suggest that the agency has to be removed in order to share it
with the computer program in the narrative setting of interactive fiction. I come back to
interactive fiction, the text-based exploration of fictional worlds that had its heyday in the 1980s,
because it is one of the very few representations of the creation of a program that develops a
narrative through collaboration with the player. I then do a rhetorical analysis of Aaron Reed’s
interactive fiction, Whom the Playing Changed, in order to study the moves that the interactive
fiction takes in order to limit the agency of the reader and encourage collaboration with the
computer program.
If a user has to make use of a message in
order to continue receiving the message, does
it not automatically influence the user to limit
his/her response to the realm of possibilities
thought up by the creator? Chris Crawford, in
On Interactive Storytelling, defines interactivity
as “A cyclic process between two or more
active agents in which each agent alternately
listens, thinks, and speaks” (Crawford, 2005,
p. 29); but can a user who has to input
decipherable material in order to receive the
rest of the text actually be given space to
think? Or is the realm of possible responses
already limited by the function of the creator,
thus only giving the user the ability to pick
among options? That is, can a user really ever
have agency in an interactive world, or is there
more agency on the part of a user when a
response is not mandatory for continuation?
While there is certainly value to both
interactivity and user agency, they seem to be
often conflated leading to the assumption that
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
interactivity is a highly valued function
because of the agency that it gives to the
user.
For example, Richard Lanham, in “The
electronic word: literary study and the digital
revolution,” a 1989 article, expresses the
growing values of the last twenty-five years
when he says: “the interactive reader of the
electronic word incarnates the responsive
reader of whom we make so much” (Lanham,
1989, p. 268). His essay also aptly expresses
why this is valued: the authority of a fixed,
print text is destabilized. This humorous
question of pronouns shows Lanham’s desire
to destabilize the binary between creator/
medium
and
critic/admirer:
“Programs
available widely and cheaply for use on
computers just like the one these words are
being written on (through? by? with? or from?)
allow novices to compose pleasant-sounding
music by enlisting the computer as cocomposer” (Lanham, 1989, p. 272). By
questioning the boundaries between the
creator of the text and the consumer of the
text, Lanham is making more tangible an
argument that Roland Barthes had first
theorized in 1967: the “Death of the author.”
Lanham, however, is making an
argument that without a stable text, the author
and reader can both exist as authoritative
agents because their texts will differ. Barthes
was suggesting that within the readership of
the same text, “the birth of the reader must be
at the cost of the death of the Author”
(Barthes, 1998, p. 386). This suggests a
binary opposition between the agency of the
author and the agency of the reader: “Once
the Author is removed, the claim to decipher a
text becomes quite futile. To give a text an
author is to impose a limit on that text, to
furnish it with a final signified, to close the
writing” (Barthes, 1998, p. 386). To give a text
an author is to suggest a way that it must be
read and interpreted. He goes on to argue that
“a text’s unity lies not in its origin but in its
destination” (Barthes, 1998, p. 386),
suggesting again that a traditional, printed text
Wolfe – 138
must lie in one or the other, and it lies with the
reader.
Interactive Fiction is suggested to solve
this binary because good interactive fiction,
according to Chris Crawford is developed
using “second person insight,” which is “the
ability to think primarily in terms of how an
expression will be perceived by the audience”
(Crawford, 2005, p.31). Crawford’s notion of
“second person insight” gives the idea that a
good creator of an interactive fiction can make
the reader the imposer of Barthes’ “limits” on
the text. This is because in order to have
“second person insight,” the creator “must
anticipate and respect it [any emotional
response the audience may have],” and “you
must be able to visualize the confusion
audience members bring to the experience”
(Crawford, 2005, p. 32). It does seem that a
good interactive fiction, wherein the creator
can truly anticipate and respect any emotional
response, would allow the interactor to have
agency in the text. Crawford uses the example
of students, one that many teachers do
sympathize with: “you stand up in front of your
students, reveal the truth to them in a few
clean, simple sentences, and note with shock
the utter incomprehension in their faces”
(Crawford, 2005, p. 32). This is a very noble
task and certainly creates a place that is
reader-centered. It does not, however, give
the user agency. By the very art of needing to
anticipate the user’s reactions, the creator has
set parameters on how the user can react.
And this user agency is important because
interactive fiction so often gets cited as a
model for something that can be used to
create spaces that allow for more user
agency.
Wasn’t interactive fiction the dead
precursor to videogames?
As many scholarly essays on interactive
fiction will state, interactive fiction was a textonly game popular in the 1980s; it is still a
program that is being discussed and
theorized, but only by a niche discourse
community. Infocom, the only company to
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
focus its commercial production on interactive
fiction, was sold to Activision in 1986 (Scott,
2013). Since then, interactive fiction has been
circulated, criticized, and theorized by a fairly
closed discourse community. This is alluded to
in Get Lamp, a full-length documentary on
interactive fiction and text adventures, when it
is noted that game creators are the ones
playing the game. This closed community is
also suggested by how little of the literature on
interactive fiction seeks to make the argument
relevant to a larger audience; many interactive
fiction scholars just start making their point.
Other scholars offer reasons that interactive
fiction is valuable to a larger community, such
as its use in the classroom to get students into
a meaningful relationship with reading. Aaron
Reed, author of Creating Interactive Fiction
With Inform 7, argues that “[interactive fiction]
not only talks back to its reader, but listens,
too” (Reed, 2011, p. xxi). He also argues that
text-based gaming allows the reader to go
beyond things that can be captured by an
image. Interactive fiction, seen as an ancient
artifact by many, is software that uses preprogrammed rules and descriptions combined
with input from a user to create a story. In this
way, anybody who considers a single session
in an interactive fiction as a narrative or a
piece of fiction is being asked to not only
consider the text as written by the programmer
of the game, but is also asked to consider the
way the text has been interpreted and reacted
to. In this way, reading an interactive fiction
session transcript linearly is more like reading
a relationship than reading a story.
Current views on user agency
Discussing the place of interactor agency in
interactive fictions seems first to depend on
determining the purpose of the interactive
fiction. As noted above, text adventures and
interactive fiction are often approached with a
different frame of mind; text adventures seem
to prioritize the gaming aspect and interactive
fiction prioritize the story. The question of
agency of the player is more concerned with
how much the player can do, and less with
how much the player can affect. In some
Wolfe – 139
cases, it seems to mirror that of a business
relationship. The interactor is viewed as the
customer and the programmer as the person
responsible for immersing the interactor into
the world. Dennis Jerz, in Get Lamp, shows
his concern that the interactor is “going to say,
‘ha-ha, that’s a mistake, this sucks!’” (Scott,
2006). The agency in this instance is a powerstruggle. The interactivity of the interactor is
something to be guarded against. Andrew
Plotkin, also in Get Lamp, addresses this
concern from the opposite point of view when
he says:
If you sit down in front of a text
adventure for the first time, the first thing
that is going to happen is that you’re
going to type something and the
computer is not going to understand it.
That’s
a
real
experience.
The
misconception is that that’s the intended
interaction of the game and that’s what
the author has spent all of his time
thinking about. (Scott, 2006).
Again, by addressing the assumed “intentions”
of the author, a self-defensive nature of the
author is addressed, suggesting that it is the
author that is being blamed (or even the
game), not the relationship between the two.
Ernest Adams says “because the more
freedom you give the player, the more the
player has the power to do things you did not
anticipate, and to do things you did not want”
(Scott, 2006). Again, this relationship pits the
interactor against the programmer or the
game (as it stands as the work of the
programmer).
This
relationship
sees
interactivity not in terms of agency of the
interactor, but in terms of “freedom” of the
player. The question being asked in these
instances is about the quality of the product:
how immersed can the player become in the
game world? This function of interactivity is
not concerned with the literary quality of the
session.
Another way of understanding interactor
agency that does not recognize interactive
fiction as a program to develop literary fiction
is to consider interactive fiction as a tool for
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
teaching and testing student understanding
and engagement. For example, Brendan
Desilets, in “Interactive Fiction Vs. the Pause
that
Distresses:
How
Computer-Based
Literature Interrupts the Reading Process
Without Stopping the Fun,” treats the reader
as a student. The interactor does not have
agency, instead the interactor is being
required to do something for his or her own
good. Desilets focuses on how interactive
fiction “forces” or creates situations where the
reader “must.” Granted, it “forces readers to
think about how they are controlling their
thinking” and the reader “must still pause
often” (Desilets, 1999). These are positive
outcomes that potentially help the interactor to
have more agency in his or her life or
subsequent education, but in the dynamic
presented by interactive fiction, the interactor
is without agency to choose whether he or she
is going to do these activities.
What’s at stake in giving some of the
reader’s agency back to the author, especially
in education, is seen in the end of Desilets’
essay when, he claims that it is the “careless
or unskilled” (Desilets, 1999) who cannot get
through the interactive fiction. This is not
taking into consideration that when interaction
happens,
it
is
also
possible
for
misunderstandings
to happen. If the
interactivity of the interactive fiction becomes
normative, then the interaction is no longer
happening; the shift of agency has gone too
far back to the programmer. It is easy to see
that with an interactive fiction’s limited
vocabulary it can quickly become normative.
However, that is a limitation of the interface
and not of the theory. The idea of theory is to
question what interactive fiction is capable of if
the interface can be made to match the
theory. Thus, I am avoiding questions of
limitation of the interface here.
Desilets is perhaps the bridge between
the understanding of interactive fiction as a
game and the understanding of it as a literary
experience. Desilets sees interactive fiction as
a tool for getting students to think critically and
comprehend what they are reading. Andrew
Wolfe – 140
Bond has what seems to be a less moral
approach, but one that is also easy to equate
with early ways of approaching literature.
Bond, in “Player Freedom,” argues that
interactive fiction is an art and should be
appreciated as such. Bond implies that
interactive
fiction
(the
work
of
the
programmer) is art and “art isn’t about catering
to your audience; it’s about taking sides,
expressing an opinion, climbing to a podium
and shouting ‘here I stand!’”(Bond, 2007) This
is to suggest that the moves the interactor
makes are predetermined by the programmer
and programmed for the interactor to interpret
on the terms of the programmer, enjoyed as
art in that way. The agency of the interactor
then is limited to trying to figure out what the
programmer was expecting, and experiencing
the interactive fiction in that manner. Bond
argues that “to experience art is to submit to
another ego. It’s to entertain someone else’s
vision” (Bond, 2007). Bond is here fulfilling the
other side of Barthes’ binary. He is suggesting
that the program be given all of the agency in
much of the same way Barthes was offering
all of the agency to the reader. Bond proposes
that “a text’s unity lies” in its origin. And that
unity is meant to be admired and adapted, not
changed or affected.
Emily Short counters Bond, though, in
“On Stephen Bond on Player Freedom” and
suggests, instead, that “offering the player a
moral choice in interactive fiction is not the
same as offering the player co-authorship”
(Short, 2007). For Short, co-authorship is the
goal, and co-authorship does not happen
merely when an interactor is given a decision.
In co-authorship, “You have to be free to try to
solve the problem, because otherwise the
failure to solve it cleanly is meaningless”
(Short, 2007). Thus, Short’s definition of
interaction is not about letting the interactor
make choices in the narrative, but also to
make choices not to make choices. If the
interactor is only choosing from a menu of
options, then interactive fiction is nothing but
what Montfort and others refer to as hypertext
fiction; however, if the interactor is able to
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
bypass certain decisions altogether and
decide to not make choices, then interactive
fiction is not just a group of different preplanned options, but rather an amalgamation
of the work of both the interactor and the
programmer.
Nick Montfort makes a very similar
distinction: Monfort holds that there is a difference between “input” from the user and
interaction when he says “pressing the space
bar in response to >MORE is an input, for instance, even though it normally provides the
interactor no opportunity to influence the
course of the narrative that is being produced”
(Monfort, 2003, p.33), which suggests that the
definition of “interaction” includes having influence on the narrative product. Monfort also
suggests the definition of interactive to be
“works of fiction which explicitly call upon the
reader to interact with them by means of queries or replies” (Monfort, 2003, p. 8). “Queries”
and “replies” suggests that the player is,
again, doing more than choosing from a dropdown list of actions or responses. Instead, the
player is asking specific questions and offering
specific responses that the system then works
with. The system, however, is still responsible
for the mediation of the information, the
accepting of some responses, and the rejecting of others.
The essays of other authors appearing
in the IF Theory Reader presuppose the
reader’s agreement that interactive fiction is to
be considered a program producing literary
fiction and continue from there to theorize how
interactive fiction should be created in order to
best make this model of interaction. In “Crimes
Against Mimesis,” Roger S.G. Sorolla makes
no qualms about placing in binary opposition
the “real world” (or a real world created fictionally) and a “trivial diversion” (Sorolla, 2011, p.
7). He offers six criteria upon which the scale
from “fictional coherence” to “a rambling
munchhausenish charm” (Sorolla, 2011, p. 5)
is fixed: coherence among objects and contexts, the purposefulness of a puzzle, the logical solving of puzzles including logical locks
and keys, and the correct invocation of the
Wolfe – 141
interactor as reader. Sorolla suggests that the
reader with agency is the one who gets to
read the interaction as a coherent piece of fiction. Furthermore, he suggests that this is
agency which should be afforded to the
“model reader” who is “a late 20th Century person armed with a reasonable knowledge of
contemporary Western life and literary
conventions” (Sorolla, 2011, p. 4). This suggests a reasonable limit to what the program
is able to interact with, but it also suggests
that the programmer has the right to require
specific knowledge of his or her reader in order to make interaction, and thus the continuation of the story, possible. While Monfort and
Short balance out the definition of interaction,
so that the desired agency can be shared between the program and the interactor, Sorolla
offers some real limits about who the interactor can be and what the program can do in
order to suggest what interaction should look
like.
Victor Gijsbers’ “Co-authorship and
Community: An Essay on Innovating Interactive Fiction” offers the most radical definition of
interactivity when he suggests that “[allowing
the player to change the world] would allow
completely new ways of interacting with a
piece of interactive fiction, new ways which
would allow the player to freely use his
creativity for the first time, and which would
allow the player to be a real co-author for the
first time” (Gijsbers, 2007, p. 6-7). This seems
like a good, viable way to grant the player
agency. As Gijsbers argues, it will give the
player real agency. He argues that the trick to
implementing this comes in three things. The
first is opening the play up to a larger community of people for each run-through of the
game. The second is in having a way for the
player to be able to change the game, but to
protect the game from being irreconcilably ruined. The irony of this “radical” suggestion is
that it seems a lot like the system that exists
now: we play the games, comment on the
games through publication, suggest changes
to the game, and engage in conversation
about the game. This radical suggestion
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
resembles how people interact in discourse
communities already, because it opens up all
of the agency to the interactor. When the interactor can help change the programming,
they become the sole creator of the meaning
of the text. Then, interactive fiction is no
longer interactive because the agency of the
program is limited. The interactor is then just
the creator of a different piece of interactive
fiction; the interactor is switching roles from
interactor to programmer.
Aaron Reed’s Whom the telling changed
Now, I am going to turn to Aaron A. Reed’s
Whom the Telling Changed in order to show
more specifically that interaction in an interactive fiction means to limit the agency of the
reader and give more room for shared agency
with the program. It is possible to argue that
Reed’s Whom the Telling Changed is not a
typical interactive fiction. Reed himself states
that it is “an experimental piece of interactive
fiction designed as an exercise in exploring a
conversation or story space rather than a
physical space” (Reed, 2006). Furthermore,
that “Whom the Telling Changed is very different from an average interactive fiction. It has
only four rooms, no puzzles to speak of, uses
a keyword-based conversation system and a
single-word shorthand for examining items”
(Reed, 2006). All of these variables have an
effect on the interactive process, but there is
not enough interactive fiction to clearly categorize it into what is typical and what is a-typical.
Because the base number of interactive fictions created is so low, every difference from
one to the next is going to look like a major
difference in structure. A reason, however, for
using Reed’s interactive fiction is that he wrote
Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform 7. If
Reed is the authoritative figure to look to for
explaining how Inform 7 works, the open
source software used to create many interactive fictions, then he must have influence over
and insight into the world of interactive fiction.
So, what he is doing is worth noting.
Whom The Telling Changed by Aaron A.
Reed starts with what literature would call an
Wolfe – 142
epigraph that says: "He found the knowledge
at the heart of the universe; Returned, and cut
his story into stone" (Reed, 2006) and claims
to be taken from The Epic of Gilgamesh. This
appears off-center on an otherwise white
screen with no further direction. Inside my
memory I first venture to the room that holds
the knowledge of The Epic of Gilgamesh,
maybe I pull up a new window and link to it on
my computer. Then I move to the left and stop
in the part of my memory where Plato lives,
because anything that is written or sketched or
recorded automatically links to Plato and his
discussion of the unknown, outside force of
writing. Then I meander into the part of my
memory that knows that “Returned, and cut
his story into stone” is not a complete sentence and should not be proceeded by a semicolon. Or these are all of the places I would
visit if this had been an epilogue at the beginning of a novel. The otherwise blank screen
gives me literal space to think about these
things while the fact that it is off center gives
me an urgency to think these things. If the text
had been centered, it would seem that it was
enough for the page, it was all that was supposed to be there. Since the text is off-center,
it encourages me to keep trying to fill (even
metaphorically) this page with information.
This is exactly how the interaction would work
if I was reading a book. However, I would
know what to do next. I would know that when
I was ready, I flip the page, scroll down or tap
the page if it’s an e-text; knowing what to do
next would encourage me to take my time. On
this first screen I get panicked because I
clicked to the link for a game and I don’t know
what to do next. How do I move past this
page? All it takes is hitting any key, but I become singularly focused on how to get to the
next screen and am no longer encouraged to
take my time in reading/ thinking about/
exploring the “epigraph.” In this way, the timing of the story is being guided by the
programmer. The agency is now split between
the interactor who can interpret the words in
any manner desired and the programmer (via
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
the program) that is pushing the interactor to
continue on in the story.
As Reed points out, there are key words
that are highlighted as the story moves forward. These key words work to make explicit
a part of interactive fiction that is often
problematically implicit: the fact that the program has to be spoken to in very specific language and can only accept commands of a
certain style. The keywords in the interactive
fiction function in the same way that many
commands do, they take the reader to something that is pre-programmed to continue the
story in what may seem like an arbitrary manner. The other commands function as typically
binary options. If the interactor is to look at the
“symbol of your (sic) occupation,” the interactor is asked: “Which do you mean, the medicine bag or the copper dagger?” (Reed, 2006).
Depending on which the interactor chooses,
the lover will take the other. Another example
of this is that the interactor is approached by
two other players and told “As you approach,
your enemy grows silent. Your love turns to
you with a look of relief and reaches out a
hand” (Reed, 2006). When the interactor
reaches for the hand of his/her lover, the interactor is asked: “Which do you mean, Sihan
or Saiph?” (Reed, 2006). The one who is not
chosen gets mad and walks away. The key
words acting more as interactive than the
commands shows that the work is sharing
agency with the player: it is helping the player
see what is important to it. And, it seems, the
interactive fiction is going even further to comment on how interactive fiction is working in
order to show its awareness of itself.
The type of narrative that this interactive
fiction and others can create has a lot of positive implications, ranging from being a new
producer of a creative product that relies on
the programming of a system and not the actual creation (which I see as being the most
important), to educational benefits, to fun in
solving puzzles. However, one of the implications is not heightened agency for the interactor/reader, but rather heightened agency for
the program and the author of the program.
Wolfe – 143
Interactive fiction – at its best – offers a very
highly structured, though always changing,
way of experiencing a text that can be very
fulfilling and beneficial in certain circumstances. What needs to be further discussed,
however, is the way that interactive fiction, as
a model for future production of digital media,
limits the reader’s ability to misunderstand the
text and all of the productive rabbit holes that
get
explored
via
the
accidental
miscommunication.
References
Works of interactive fiction:
(2006) Whom the Telling Changed. Developed in
Inform 7.
Other Works:
Barthes, Roland.(1998). The Death of the
Author. In Eric Dayton (Ed.), Art and
Interpretation: An Anthology of Readings in
Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art. (pp. 383386). Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview.
Bond, Stephen. (2007). Player Freedom. URL:
http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/whatsif.ht
ml
Crawford, Chris. (2005). On Interactive Storytelling.
Berkley,CA: New Riders Games
Desilets, Brendon. (1999). Interactive Fiction Vs.
The Pause that Distresses: How ComputerBased Literature Interrupts the Reading
Process Without Stopping the Fun. Currents in
Electronic Literature. 1.1(1999): np.
Gijsbers, Victor (2007) Co-Authorship and
Community: An Essay on Innovating Interactive
Fiction. URL:
http://lilith.gotdns.org/~victor/innovationcomp/In
novation.pdf
Montfort, Nick, Twisty Little Passages (MIT Press,
2004).
Lanham, Richard A. (1989). The Electronic Word:
Literary Study and the Digital Revolution. New
Literary History 20: 2, 265-290.
Reed, Aaron A. (2011). Creating Interactive Fiction
With Inform 7. New York: Cengage Learning.
------. Whom The Playing Changed: An Analysis of
72 Player Transcripts. URL: www.aaronreed.net
Scott, Jason, dir. Get Lamp. 2013.
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
Short, Emily. (2007). On Stephen Bond On Player
Freedom. URL:
<http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/whatsif.h
tml> May 25.
Sorolla, Roger S. G. (2001). Crimes Against
Mimesis. In Jackson-Mead, Kevin and J.
Robinson Wheeler(Eds.). IF Theory Reader.
Boston, MA: Transcript on Press.
Wolfe – 144
INTERACTIVE NARRATIVES
NEW MEDIA &
SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT
October 23‐25, 2014 | University of Toronto |ISBN: 978‐0‐9939520‐0‐5
TELLING THE STORIES OF LEFT‐BEHIND CHILDREN IN CHINA:
FROM DIARY COLLECTION TO DIGITAL FILMMAKING
Janice Hua Xu, PhD, Assistant Professor of Communications, School of Arts and
Sciences
Holy Family University, Philadelphia
jxu@holyfamily.edu
Suggested citation: Xu, Janice Hua (2014). “Telling the Stories of Left-Behind Children in China:
From Diary Collection to Digital Filmmaking.” In Proceedings of the Interactive Narratives, New
Media & Social Engagement International Conference. Eds. Hudson Moura, Ricardo Sternberg,
Regina Cunha, Cecília Queiroz, and Martin Zeilinger. ISBN: 978-0-9939520-0-5
This article is released under a Creative Commons license (CC-BY-NC-ND).
Abstract: The issue of “left-behind children” in China has been widely recognized as a significant
social problem, as more than 61 million children are living in villages away from their parents,
who have migrated to large cities to seek employment opportunities. There is a very limited
number of media products depicting left-behind children in rural China as central characters with
individual personalities. As Stuart Hall states, representation is the process or channel or medium through which meanings are both created and reified. This paper analyzes how stories and
voices of this underprivileged group are presented in recent years to the public in different nonfictional media forms, particularly documentary films. Through content analysis of selected samples, the paper examines how narratives are weaved about the lives and emotions of these children, and how the stories make sense of their family experiences. The paper discusses the
power of digital narratives and visual-based expressions. It also examines how the products of
representation are mediated by different types of storytellers, who are often motivated by a
sense of social engagement to raise awareness about the plight of these children to appeal for
support, but addresses the issue from their specific perspectives.
Introduction
‘Left-behind children’ (LB children) refers to
rural children under 18 who are left at home
when both or one of their parents migrate to
urban area for work. Across China, more than
61 million children – nearly a quarter of children in China – live in rural villages without the
presence of their parents, who have migrated
in search of work to provide a better life for
their families. Recent findings showed that
left-behind children were disadvantaged and
suffered from developmental, emotional and
social problems (Su et al, 2013). Researchers
found that due to a lack of family protection
and educational opportunities, there have
been growing signs of serious mental health
problems and an increased criminal record
among this vulnerable group (CCRCSR,
2014). Because migrant workers rarely get to
spend time with their children, children often
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
feel lonely and helpless, and sometimes have
the fear of being abandoned. They are more
prone to skipping class, fighting, and even
dropping out of school, as their caretakers are
often unable or unwilling to monitor their study
habit. It is also found that left-behind children
had lower scores in health behavior and
school engagement than rural children of nonmigrant worker parents (Wen & Lin, 2012).
This paper analyzes how the situation of
this underprivileged group is presented in recent years in platforms outside mainstream
media, specifically in documentary films. It examines how narratives are weaved about the
lives of these children by different storytellers,
and how the stories make relate their unique
family experiences with absent parents to the
audience. As Stuart Hall states, representation
is the process or channel or medium through
which meanings are both created and reified.
Culture depends on giving things meaning by
assigning them to different positions within a
classificatory system. The marking of “difference” is thus the basis of that symbolic order
which we call culture. As Corner (1995, p.
143) proposes with respect to the documentary, media scholars need to “develop closer
and better micro-analysis, of the language and
image of the media.” Silverstone points out
that the study of media mediation of reality
requires giving attention to both the institutions
and technologies through which the circulation
of news discourse takes place (2004). Also,
mediation can be seen as a public-political
process, a process that sets up norms of public conduct, shapes the spectator as a citizen
of the world, and carries important ethical
power of contemporary public life (Chouliaraki,
2006).
Traditionally, Chinese media rarely use
children as the main subjects of reporting except for programs produced for children, with
content that usually emphasizes “childishness”
and “prettiness” (Donald, 2005). In 19992000, CCTV produced a series on children in
the Western provinces in connection with the
national campaign of “opening up the West,”
Xu – 146
portraying these children as “clever, decorative, and different,” but their problems such as
poverty and lack of media access were not
foregrounded (Donald, 2005, p.9). Media reports in China about LB children started to appear in 2002, and increased in numbers in
2006, when a legislation was proposed at Chinese People Consultative Conference by 24
members to establish a mechanism to safeguard these children’s healthy growth. More
media reports have been addressing this matter since 2010, when a few provinces passed
laws to protect the rights of minors, with decrees referring to the LB children (Zeng,
2013). However, media representations of
these children in news reports were often
stereotypes, usually as targets of charity or
protective policy, or as “problematic children.”
Academic research papers usually focus on
sociological and psychological issues caused
by absent parents and present these children
as one abstract category. It is very rare to
have their own voices heard or individual personalities represented in the media.
In 2012, a collection of the diaries of 26
"left-behind children" in China’s remote
Guizhou province was published in the form of
a book. It unveils for the first time the inner
lives of these young people. Their 34-year-old
teacher Yang Yuansong, who initiated the project by compiling diaries, letters, and pictures
of these children whose average age was 9,
explained his motivation: "People tend to have
a stereotype about left-behind children, seeing
them as pitiful kids who live in poverty and
isolation. People think all they need is something to eat and wear. But they are so much
more than that." He traveled to Beijing and
Shanghai to look for publishers but was refused 10 times before finally securing a publisher in Jiangsu province. With an initial print
run of 15,000 copies, the book sold more than
100,000 copies in a few months (Sun, 2013).
While there is a lack of in-depth reports
on the LB children issue in mainstream media,
news reports about shocking events, such as
children’s deaths from accidents caused by
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
lack of supervision, or arrests of rural elementary school teachers molesting LB children,
have brought more attention across the nation
to the precarious condition in which some leftbehind children live, as well as the long-term
consequence of having absent parents working far away from their hometowns. In 2013,
Phoenix Satellite Television Company made a
5-episode documentary titled The Left-Behind
Children in China, with interviews with residents at various locations in China as well as
scholars and education experts. CCTV also
made
public
service
announcements
encouraging volunteers to contribute to the
growth of these children, and covered this
topic in talk show programs.
Outside the programs produced by Chinese mainstream media, there have been a
few dozens of films or “minifilms” made on LB
children. These documentary films can be divided into the following categories: corporate
public affair mini documentary, films by independent filmmakers, and films by volunteer/student teams. Although they share the
general theme of raising awareness about the
LB children and calling for love and care for
them, each has its unique strengths in telling a
story, and tends to take narrative structures
that reflect the implied messages of the film.
Corporate public affair mini documentary
Western corporations conducting business in
China have engaged in various public relations initiatives to build a brand image among
Chinese consumers, including making public
affair mini documentaries. The issue of LB
children can appeal to a wide audience and is
politically safe, unlike many other problems
facing Chinese society such as pollution, food
safety, corruption, and so on.
Coca-Cola and PR agency McCann’s
Shanghai branch created a 4-minute
documentary entitled Love and Care for
China's left-behind Children which launched
across China, and which was shared on social
media and shown on taxi screens before the
2014 Chinese New Year holiday starts. It was
Xu – 147
viewed more than 2 million times on video
sharing website todou.com. It draws people’s
attention to the vital question of how the children cope without their parents, and how parents cope without seeing their children,
focusing on the hope and joy of reunion at
Chinese New Year (see Figure 1).
In the film, an 11-year old boy says he is
older now and has stopping crying at night for
missing his parents. A 7-year-old girl says
she's not sure her mom can tell her apart from
her twin sister. It's been too long since their
mother, a migrant worker, has come back
home. A 7–year-old boy wants to see his parents, and for them to bring him a bike as gift.
The film also shows scenes from the parents’
workplaces in the cities, with one father wearing a helmet in a construction site saying he
really misses his children, but this year’s work
was particularly busy. The narrative focuses
on the question of whether the children will be
able to see their parents this New Year. Later,
the viewers see the parents of the three families arriving at their homes in a red Coco-Cola
van, driven by a uniformed driver, reuniting
with their children and the grandparents, and
then sitting at the New Year banquet table
where Coke bottles are placed next to the
abundant food. The red Coke mingles well into
the red colors of New Year celebration around
the house. The problem and solution is visually represented by contrasting images of
separation and reunion, with emotional moments such as the mother arriving at home
and asking her daughter, “Who am I?” and
getting the reply, “You are Mommy!” Aired
right before 2014 Chinese New Year, the message of “going home” echoes with millions of
people making their way home from cities
across the country to celebrate the Lunar New
Year with family.
Independent Documentary Film
Since the early 1990s, so-called “underground” and “independent” documentary films
have emerged in the public domain of mainland China, and received attention in interna-
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
tional film festivals (Berry, 2010; Liu, 2006;
Wang, 2005). As digital cameras have become affordable to the middle class,
independent filmmakers use methods of direct
cinema to address “the spectrum of life the
government usually stakes off as taboo:
prostitution, bureaucratic corruption, rural protests against land expropriation, the impoverished elderly and mentally handicapped, a
compromised education system, religious
fervor, homosexuality, and just sexuality,
period (Nornes, 2009, p. 50).”
Independent filmmakers documenting
the lives of LB children usually have close ties
to the area when the film is shot, and are more
or less familiar with the characters in the film.
They tend to structure the film as day-in-life
story, depicting how the children cope with
their parents’ absence living with grandparents
or other relatives. Due to limited funding, the
films usually do not include scenes of the city
workplaces of the parents. The filmmaker captures the moments from the lives of LB
children in a detailed manner that reveals the
challenges of living without their parents. This
could include the material conditions of their
daily existence and their psychological state,
as expressed through their activities in isolation or ways of interacting with others. In this
narrative structure, there is little immediate
challenge or confrontation, and probably there
is no resolution, even though the conditions of
the character could be seen as highly
problematic in the eyes of the audience. For
instance, the child walks alone at night with a
flashlight to return home from school, or escape classes to play pokers.
This narrative structure is utilized in the
work of independent filmmaker Jiang Nengjie,
who was himself a “left behind” child. Jiang
Nengjie was born in Hunan in 1985, and
graduated from university in 2008. He worked
briefly in the city, and spent nearly six years
from 2009 to 2014 to complete a series of
documentaries about his hometown, returning
to the city sometimes to work and raise funds.
These include the mini-films "Road," “When I
Xu – 148
Grow Up,” and a 92 minute-long “Children at a
Village School.” In this remote village in
Hunan Province, 80 per cent of children are
left behind. As a new college graduate, Jiang
started his filming projects after learning that
the school in his home village with 22 children
was shutting down. Through temporary teaching at the school, working on and off in the city
and fundraising, he managed to create several
films documenting the growth journey of several village children, and the decaying state of
his home village. He stated that his motivation
for the projects was to raise concern about the
issue to help maintain the small village school,
and later, to raise funds to get a substitute
teacher and school bus, as some children had
to walk three to four hours a day to go to
school. The films also raise questions about
the fate of these children and the effect of their
upbringing. Jiang’s films were watched by a lot
of viewers online, and appeared at
Songzhuang Documentary Festival in Beijing
and Guangzhou International Documentary
Festival in China. In 2014, through public support, “Children at a Village School” was being
screened at Guangzhou, Changsha, Wuhan,
Beijing and other large cities. While the children have grown up in the years between the
different films, their classroom is still shabby,
and their dreams of love still unfulfilled, even
though the village school managed to receive
donations and visits from volunteers and a
BBC filming crew (see Figure 2).
One of the appeals of the documentary
films of Jiang Nengjie comes from the visual
depictions of the living environment of the LB
children, which can have a strong impact on
the audience from urban regions. The children’s stained and bulky clothes, unwashed
faces, the muddy road in front of the house,
the smoky kitchen where firewood is used for
cooking, the fence made of split bamboo, and
water basin for washing clothes with, all offer
vivid details of the daily lives of the children
and their struggle for survival. While the images might represent a typical rural household, sometimes among them there is an ob-
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
ject which seems to be surprisingly fancy,
such as a brand-new schoolbag with foreign
cartoon characters, which is probably a gift
from their absent parents. These images bring
to the audience in urban areas visual evidence
of the theme of the film, reflecting the reality of
widespread loneliness among the left behind
children. Different from the corporate
documentaries, the independent filmmaker
does not intend to create an “upbeat” mood or
avoid showing embarrassing moments in their
film, including moments when parents returning from the city could not recognize their
children. As they see different sides of the
lives of their subjects and the odds they face,
there is often an ambivalent attitude toward
the future of these children, even when some
progress is seen in the films.
The University/NGO Team documentary
Another type of documentaries about LB children is made because of the arrival of outsiders at the rural village, for instance, School in
the Depth of the White Cloud, a 2012
documentary about 40 volunteers from Shanghai visiting the mountainous region Jiangxi
Province during the traditional Lunar New
Year Dragon Boat Festival. In this story line, a
team of volunteers or college students arrives
from the city to a rural village or school for
short-term teaching or aid activities. Usually
shot from their point of view, the film narrates
the undesirable conditions they see, the local
children they encounter, and the efforts and
activities they engage in to help the locals. In
the process the two sides coming from different background and age groups discover
about each other and challenge each other in
unexpected ways, and find their existing views
about the world somewhat changed because
of the encounter and the eye-opening experience.
A recent example of a film with this
narrative structure is Summer of Sangying
Town, which highlights the 20-day experience
of a group of students from Shanghai Maritime
University to address the needs of left behind
Xu – 149
children in a boarding school in Anhui province. The 50-minute film made in 2013 described the reactions of the students to the
living conditions of the children and their efforts in providing psychological counseling and
bringing entertainment to brighten the monotonous life of children in a hot summer. It documented their efforts in utilizing limited resources to launch a moot court, sports games,
music classes, and a carefully organized variety show, eventually forming certain level of
friendship with the children. While the students
fulfilled their scheduled tasks and delivered
help that was appreciated by the local children
and villagers, they also found their power to
help the children really limited. For instance,
upon arrival at the boarding school the college
students tried to improve conditions of the
shabby boarding school dormitory. While they
managed to install mosquito-proof screens on
the windows, they found it too difficult to
change the lighting structure of the room.
Another example of a film with this structure is titled Grass on the Plain, made by 8
graduate students of Southwest University of
China who were assigned to teach for one
year at Wushan County in Chongqing, as part
of their education requirement. The college
students found that the children, whose vision
of the outside world was limited to the Wushan
county center, were mostly introvert and short
in confidence or desire to study, and at the
same time yearning for family love. The film
focuses on their effort to adjust to a life in the
isolated
poverty-stricken
rural
village,
communicate with the children, gain their respect, and help them strengthen emotional
ties with their parents by establishing online
chat facilities, and gradually learn information
about the outside world and build a dream
about their own future. It was awarded first
prize in the Western China international film
festival in September 2013. The film’s director,
Li Jie, later produced another film about a LB
children’s family.
For films of this structure, one of the
theme’s driving story development is how the
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
visitors engage in problem solving to deal with
some material needs of the children, and
through the process develop a relationship
with the local children. These children usually
have different communication styles with city
children who tend to be the center of attention
of the family, surrounded by their parents and
grandparents due to China’s one-child policy.
Another theme is insight and growth. As the
outsiders are young people who grow up in
comfortable surroundings and hold somewhat
romantic notions of remote areas, the encounter with the LB children often raises questions
about their own assumptions, as well as
strength to endure hardship and problemsolving abilities, leading to new ways of looking at their lives in the city.
Conclusion
Documentaries attend to social issues of
which we are consciously aware. They can be
seen as a symbolic form that unites the
argumentative and the aesthetic functions of
discourse. They are not transparent renderings of situations. They are not what postmodernists call discursive constructions either.
Through a variety of storytelling devices and
strategies, a text can make itself believable as
representation of reality. “A slice of life” can
take on the quality of being about something
meaningful and profound. While different
storytellers bring a variety of motivations to the
filmmaking process and may frame the issue
of LB children from their particular angels, the
choices also reflect the fact that families and
villages with LB children vary vastly in their
individual situations.
The issue of children being left behind
can be viewed from many perspectives, such
as their schooling, their psychological and
emotional state, their access to adequate
material resources such as nutritional food,
their interactions with other children and
adults, and so on. While the storytellers engage dramatic forms such as conflict or problem/resolution, the plight of many of these children raises more questions than answers,
Xu – 150
drawing the sensibilities of the audience and
engaging them in a reflection of the human
price paid for modernization. Although the
situations of the children are vastly different
from those of the audience in the cities, the
universal themes of family, love, and dream
make these films appealing with an intricate
manner.
In August 2014, a new documentary
about LB children premiered in Beijing, entitled Stories Through 180 Lenses. It is funded
by Porsche China’s “Empowering the Future”
program and directed by well-known director
Zhang Yimou (CSR News, 2014). The production team distributed 180 digital video cameras
free of charge to children in 72 schools in remote Southwest China. 90 percent of the halfhour film consists of footage shot over six
months by 2,000 children. As the children take
cameras in their own hands, the audience can
expect yet another way for the children’s daily
feelings being expressed, and their emotional
reflections to be captured in a fresh manner.
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
Figure 1
Figure 2
Xu – 151
Interactive Narratives, New Media & Social Engagement 2014
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