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  1. Piecing Together and Tearing Apart: Finding the Story in afternoon

    This paper is a reading of a classic of hypertext narrative: Michael Joyce’s afternoon, a story. Several writers have discussed afternoon previously. However I have chosen to explore afternoon from a different angle by using theories of narratology, especially Genette. In this reading, I explore ways in which the text confuses the reader but also the many stabilising elements that aid the reader to piece together a story.

    NB: Published under author's unmarried name, Jill Walker.

    Jill Walker Rettberg - 14.01.2011 - 12:40

  2. New Narratives: Stories and Storytelling in the Digital Age

    Just as the explosive growth of digital media has led to ever-expanding narrative possibilities and practices, so these new electronic modes of storytelling have, in their own turn, demanded a rapid and radical rethinking of narrative theory. This timely volume takes up the challenge, deeply and broadly considering the relationship between digital technology and narrative theory in the face of the changing landscape of computer-mediated communication.

    New Narratives reflects the diversity of its subject by bringing together some of the foremost practitioners and theorists of digital narratives. It extends the range of digital subgenres examined by narrative theorists to include forms that have become increasingly prominent, new examples of experimental hypertext, and contemporary video games. The collection also explicitly draws connections between the development of narrative theory, technological innovation, and the use of narratives in particular social and cultural contexts.

    Scott Rettberg - 14.10.2011 - 12:52

  3. Narrative as Virtual Reality: Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media

    A broad narratological discussion of immersion and interactivity, not only in digital media but in print fiction. Includes a chapter fully devoted to a close reading of Michael Joyce's Twelve Blue.

    (Source: ELMCIP)

    Is there a significant difference in attitude between immersion in a game and immersion in a movie or novel? What are the new possibilities for representation offered by the emerging technology of virtual reality? As Marie-Laure Ryan demonstrates in Narrative as Virtual Reality, the questions raised by new, interactive technologies have their precursors and echoes in pre-electronic literary and artistic traditions. Formerly a culture of immersive ideals—getting lost in a good book, for example—we are becoming, Ryan claims, a culture more concerned with interactivity. Approaching the idea of virtual reality as a metaphor for total art, Narrative as Virtual Reality applies the concepts of immersion and interactivity to develop a phenomenology of reading. 

    Jill Walker Rettberg - 15.10.2011 - 21:11

  4. Event-Sequences, Plots and Narration in Computer Games

    Opening with the debate between ludologists and narratologists this essay tries to show that there is a narrative aspect in computer games that has nothing to do with background stories and cut scenes. A closer analysis of two sequences, taken from the MMORPG Everquest II and the adventure game Black Mirror, is the basis for a distinction between three aspects of this kind of narrative in computer games: the sequence of activities of the player, the sequence of events as it is determined by the mechanics of the game and the sequence of events understood as a plot, that is as a sequence of (chronologically) ordered and causally linked events. This kind of narrative is quite remote from the proto- typical narrative serving as a source for most narratological considerations. All media and not only computer games therefore actually need their own narratology.

     Source: author's abstract

    Kristine Turøy - 06.09.2012 - 18:55

  5. Generating Narrative Variation in Interactiv Fiction

    A general method for the generation of natural language narrative is described. It allows the expression, or narrative discourse, to vary independently of the underlying events and existents that are the narrative’s content. Specifically, this variation is accomplished in an interactive fiction (IF) system which replies to typed input by narrating what has happened in a simulated world. IF works have existed for about 30 years as forms of text-based computer simulation, instances of dialog systems, and examples of literary art. Theorists of narrative have carefully distinguished between the level of underlying content (corresponding to the simulated world in interactive fiction) and that of expression (corresponding to the textual exchange between computer arnd user) since the mid-1960s, when the field of narratology began to develop, but IF systems have not yet made use of this distinction. The current project contributes new techniques for automatic narration by building on work done in computational linguistics, specifically natural language generation, and in narratology.

    Scott Rettberg - 13.12.2012 - 20:01

  6. The Heuristic Value of Electronic Literature

    What makes electronic literature interesting for researchers?
    Maybe not its artistic and literary value, but rather its heuristic value.
    Indeed electronic literature not only permits previous media to be reexamined (paper for instance), but it also allows several well-established notions to be questioned (cf. figure above) such as:
    - narrative in narratology;
    - text in linguistics and semiotics;
    - figure in rhetorics;
    - materiality in aesthetics;
    - grasp in anthropology;
    - memory in archivistics;
    - literariness in literary studies…

    Exploiting the heuristic value of electronic literature has two consequences:
    - an evolution of some notions in certain scientific disciplines, and maybe of the disciplines themselves;
    - a revealing effect regarding both digital technology and interactive and multimedia writing.

    Audun Andreassen - 14.03.2013 - 15:51

  7. Analysis of Fitting the Pattern

    The objective of this communication is the application of ideas and tools encountered in the field of study of narratology and its consideration as a narrative genre so that the chosen work, Fitting the Pattern, may be analysed and differences seen that may arise when approached from a different frame of the print. It is hoped to show with this approach, how in order to be studied, digital narrative works require new concepts and how more investigation is needed into how the reader receives the work. For example, after analyzing the work of Christine Wilks it was seen to be necessary to deepen the skills required by the reader in order to enter into the work, to establish functional guidelines for the reader, so as to remain within the orientation of the text, etc. It is not just a question concerning only in how the work is received, but also how space and the other approaches to the work need concepts and approaches which are more adequate for the reality presented by the digital narrative. As has been shown in the analysis of Fitting the Pattern, it has not been possible to capture all that is contained in the text using the type of analysis used up to now.

    Audun Andreassen - 10.04.2013 - 11:42

  8. Engineering stories? A narratological approach to children’s book apps

    With the rise of smartphones and tablet pcs, children’s book apps have emerged as a new type of children’s media. While some of them are based on popular children’s books such as Mo Willems’ Pigeon books or Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit, others were specifically designed as apps. This paper focuses on examining book apps under the aspects of implied user strategies and narrative structure. Using a narratological framework that also takes into account the unique characteristics of the medium, a terminology for the analysis of book apps will be sketched out. Furthermore, an exemplary analysis of iOS book apps for pre- and grade school children comes to the conclusion that, far from offering the child users room for individual creativity, a large number of apps rather train their users in following prescribed paths of reading.

    (Contains references to more creative works than currently registered:

    Jill Walker Rettberg - 29.04.2014 - 06:24

  9. Shapeshifting texts: following the traces of narrative in digital fiction

    We have been referring to electronic literature as a corpus of texts with dynamic and
    multimodal features. A digital text can change during reading and assume the form of a
    collage work, a film or a game. Additionally, the text as a whole (Eskelinen, 2012),
    because of its own transient nature, might never be presented to the reader. The text
    can be played at such a pace as to be partly or completely ungraspable. Due to the range
    of forms assumed by the text, it might also be unable to return to an early state. This
    means that the reader might not be allowed to reread or replay the text in order to achieve
    a final or coherent version of it. This also means that there might be no original state to
    return to.
    Shapeshifting is the ability of a being to take the form of an object or of another being.
    This has been a common theme in folklore and mythology and it continues to be explored
    in games or in fantasy and science fiction films, as well as in literature. Since digital
    fiction is created through a computer and this tool can show emergent behavior, texts can

    Daniela Côrtes Maduro - 05.02.2015 - 14:48