Reweaving Community

...through Stories

::narrative::narratemes::oral vs. written::non-linearity::hypertext::syntagm/paradigm::cut-ups::

Narrative and plot

“The king died, and the queen died,” we have a narrative, but if we write, instead, “The king died, and the queen died of grief,” then we have a plot.  The second assertion has established a link of cause between the two events. - EM Forster

• Key concepts in Remix Manifesto

Vladmir Propp, 1895-1970

• Russian Formalist

• During his time, Formalists were analyzing the structural elements of sentences, called morphemes. Propp did the same thing with Fairy Tales

• Narrateme: irreducible elements of plot.

Vladmir Propp

• There are 31 Narratemes that may comprise a fairy tale.

• http://www.units.muohio.edu/technologyandhumanities/Propp.htm

Narrative• orality - fluid, constantly changing

• bardic tradition

• relies on repetition and themes

• theme (related to oral traditions murray 191)

• written - fixed

• author tradition

• hypertext

• some elements of both

Narrative

• narrative vs. database

• recall Manovich, Soft Cinema

• narrative vs. game

• Michael Mateas (Facade)

Narrative & Database

Tristan Tzara’s Recipe for making a poem:– To make a dadaist poem:– Take a newspaper.– Take a pair of scissors.– Choose an article as long as you are planning to make

your poem.– Cut out the article.– Then cut out each of the words that make up this article

and put them in a bag.– Shake it gently.– Then take out the scraps one after the other in the order

in which they left the bag.– Copy conscientiously.

William Burroughs on Cut-ups

– And photographers will tell you that often their best shots are accidents… writers will tell you the same. The best writing seems to be done almost by accident but writers until the cut-up method was made explicit — all writing is in fact cut ups. I will return to this point had no way to produce the accident of spontaneity. You can not will spontaneity. But you can introduce the unpredictable spontaneous factor with a pair of scissors.

– Cut-ups are for everyone. Anybody can make cut ups. It is experimental in the sense of being something to do. Right here write now.

Example Cut-ups

– William Burroughs, excerpt from Naked Lunch http://ubu.wfmu.org/sound/dial_a_poem_poets/big_ego/Big_Ego_12-burroughs.mp3

– William Burroughs,“Origin and Theory of the Tape Cut-Ups” (3:43) http://www.ubu.com/sound/burroughs.html

Experiments in Narrative

Oulipo (1960)

Queneau

Experiments in Narrative

ELIZA

Narrative

• Turns

Hypertext• Hyper: “over and above”

• Janet Fidero in her essay "A Grand Vision"; "Hypertext, at its most basic level, is a DBMS that lets you connect screens of information using associative links. At its most sophisticated level, hypertext is a software environment for collaborative work, communication and knowledge acquisition"

• Xanadu (1960) level of software - as envisioned by Ted Nelson

• MBCBFTW (1998) level of story - Oli Lialina

• remixed

Examples

Michael Mateas, Facade

UCSC’s Expressive Intelligence Studio

Key decisions in digital narrativegesture

repetition

direction

objects

who acts, who speaks

Two Building blocks of computers can be though of

as two building blocks of narrative

switches: a steering element that can combine multiple signals into a single signal

connectors: the connecting element must have the ability to branch , so that a single output can feed many inputs.

see w. daniel hillis, the pattern on the stone: the simple ideas that make computers work (especially “chapter 1: nuts and bolts”)

Exampleswhat’s the difference between a text and a hypertext?

is it possible to do “creative thought” or creative writing using methods of hypertext?

on selection and combination as the two operations of writing

how might Propp’s research figure here?

structure and modularity of narrative

AssignmentIs your narrative coherent or incoherent? Purposefully or accidentally? Does it come in and out of focus? Does it fail or succeed? How? Which is more interesting?

Does the voice, theme or tone that is applied (through css, image) to the narratemes help shape the overall gestalt?

Try using this link to choose your narratemes:

http://www.stonedragonpress.com/vladimir_propp/propp_generator_v1.htm