Video Assignment #2: The Database Narrative

Due December 4

In this project, we will be exploring the narrative structures associated with database narrative, a new field of theory and practice in new media. You can work in small groups or alone to create a video, interactive multimedia work, multiple monitor installation, website with multiple videos, interactive DVD, or audio piece which explores this expanded narrative structure. It can be functionally interactive or not.

Above all, tell a story you are invested in, on that embodies your unique voice. If you are having problems creating a story, revisit Finding Your Writer’s Voice and use the exercises to help you.

Along with the narrative elements and structures we have been studying in class, here are some additional basic concepts we will discuss in class to help you understand the concept of database narrative:

"Run Lola Run-Film as Narrative Database", Jim Bizzocchi

• Richness of plot: “multi-variant (more than one variation), multi-level (more than one plot, parallel plots) plot structure which extends traditional concepts of cinematic continuity, causality and narrative…to encourage and support multiple screenings of the film”. (pg 2)
• Compels the viewer to examine different iterations of the plot events (pg 4, 6)
• Allows for mental interaction, not necessarily functional interaction (pg 5)
• Innovative plot structure is not just a clever way to make a film, but is a metaphor for the film’s meaning; for instance, life as relationship of choice and chance or free will and fate (pg 5, 6); the endless loop of desire (pg2, 3); the inability to achieve resolution. Or in Memento, the plot structure supports the film’s theme of memory.
• A highly structured set of parallel plot events (pg.4)

From the Labyrinth Project (http://www.annenberg.edu/labyrinth/about/about1.html)

All Labyrinth projects are what Kinder calls "database narratives." This term refers to narratives whose structure exposes the dual processes of selection and combination that lie at the heart of all stories and are crucial to language: the selection of particular narrative elements (characters, images, sounds, events, and settings) from a series of categories or databases, and the combination of these chosen elements to generate specific tales. Although a database narrative may have no clear-cut beginning, no narrative closure, no three-act structure, and no coherent chain of causality, it still presents a narrative field full of story elements that are capable of arousing a user’s curiosity and desire. This desire can be mobilized as a search engine to retrieve whatever is needed to spin a particular tale or to provide a rich array of sensory and intellectual pleasures. These works frequently have a subversive edge. For, in calling attention to the database infrastructure of all narratives, they reveal a fuller range of alternatives. In this way, they expose the arbitrariness of so-called master narratives, which are frequently designed to appear natural or inevitable.

Immerse the viewer in the story:

Narrative as Virtual Reality, by Marie Laure-Ryan, outlines the poetics of narration as "the imaginative transportation of the reader into the scene of events.to invite the reader to relocate to the inner circle of the narrative." Although this quote is taken out of context of her writing on virtual reality, I believe that it can be applied to any narrative, whether it is virtual and interactive, traditional and linear, or oral and recombinant. Possible approaches:

• Create characters with conflicts with whom the audience can identify
• Create and project characters with whom you identity (you can create new identities)
• Create plots in which the viewer has to reconstruct the narrative as they progress through the story (also a form of interactivity)
• Story which invites interpretation
• Utilize techniques to create an intersubjective experience for the viewer (internal subjective viewpoint)
• Graphical approaches to composition which might include important depth cues (think of how images in “Summer of the Serpent” were used to give you the girl’s p.o.v. across the pool and place us with her mind)
• Surround sound audio

Approaches to interactivity and/or non-linearity:

• Allow information to be understood from different perspectives
• A functionally interactive model may allow someone besides the author/director to change, choose or affect the plot
• Create a situation where the viewer can embody a character—virtually or actually
• Employ the generative use of metaphors that make us look into new angles and dimensions of a given subject. New perspectives in the world come into existence.
• Interventions and digressions which shift the point of view or time or space (for instance, story within a story) (flashback or flash-forward)
• Using the “context-driven” image in an installation—for instance a large projection of wringing hands paired with worried eyes suggests a narrative context with which we are all familiar.
• Interactivity can be selective (clicking on a link) or productive (participating in a narrative through gesture and dialogue)
• A collaboratively created narrative performance (in cyberspace for instance, or through real-time closed circuit video)
• Spatial montage: Present more than one image on the screen at a time using compositing methods, split screen, green screen, etc.
• Use angles or chapter markers in DVD Studio Pro which are up to the viewer to choose to reorder the narrative
• Create an installation that uses multiple monitors or projections for simultaneous video