A new way to look at interactive storytelling
It’s an open secret among my friends that I’m a total narrative nerd. The structure of stories fascinates me and lately my research into interactive storytelling methods has been fueling some serious creative fires behind the scenes.
In a recent volley of off-hour writing and research I came across a YouTube video that left my mouth open as I sat stunned at its simple brilliance.
A group in Japan called Mobile Art Lab came up with this concept and I couldn’t be more thrilled by it. The thought of combining interactive software with visual art and the written word in this way had never occurred to me. Seeing it in action — illustrated below with an iPhone and child’s picture book — was like holding a lighter to the fuse of my imagination.
Somebody, please give these people a whole bunch of money and possibly a Nintendo DSi. If I had a kid and this were a completed product, they’d have fifty of my dollars in a heartbeat.
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WOW. That’s so cool. Could be a good reading tool, too, right? How’s it possible this app and product isn’t already available?
Hhmmm … don’t mean to be a wet-blanket, but aren’t books and the stories they house already pretty cool? I’m not so sure it’s such a great idea to move our narrative interactions from imagination to our fingers. I’m sure it’ll catch-on, and I’m looking forward to the yield from your off-hours writing, but I smell lost stories as well as lots of cool moments.
Of course they’re cool, albeit outdated. How long has the “book” existed without innovation? Not a knock, but I think we of the tech-savvy graft are capable of producing a more engaging narrative type that will fundamentally change the way people perceive fiction.
I’m interested in blending media-types to tell a multilayered, interactive story that requires the reader to become a participant, or at least believe they are somehow personally connected to imaginary events. In short, that’s what I’m working on in my spare time with what little funding I’ve secured.
As I researched work others have done to forward interactive storytelling theories, I came across this video and thought my True/Slant friends would love it … Wet blanket and all. :O)
In response to another comment. See in context »Innovation to its presentation, I meant to say.
In response to another comment. See in context »I like this app.. it’s cool..but books outdated…hahaha..your joking right?
Old and unchanged for years maybe..Or maybe the user experience of READING a book is hard if not impossible to improve upon.
Basicly this is not a book!
In response to another comment. See in context »Hard, but not impossible. I’d explain, but it would involve giving away something that I’m working on. ;O)
In response to another comment. See in context »… and I do love it, and can’t wait to see what your creativity weaves from the “little funding” you’ve found–if only it were more. I actually think you, or someone–I hope its you–, will succeed and produce a more engaging narrative type. While I anticipate finding it thrilling, I also feel a loss as our narratives (the roots of self?) get evermore embedded in technological interactions and severed from old-fashioned imagination and traditional cultural practices. I was lucky enough to have Jerome Bruner as a mentor in grad school when he was doing all his narrative work. Instead of “actual minds, possible worlds,” (the title of his mid-80s book), we just may end up with “possible minds, actual worlds;” what you’re doing is both totally cool and kind of scary.
But don’t the anxieties of people like me get in your way! Your job is to build it, mine to worry about what you’re building!!
In response to another comment. See in context »so, why would they want to use an iPhone here in this book? It seems that all you need or want is the use of a touch screen. If an important call came in,, i’d have to rip the book in half, just to get back to the phone.
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