Narrative and Technology '09

Tait McKenzie Johnson's Final Portfolio


Reflective Statement

At the beginning of this class I had certain expectations for how stories are created and what makes for quality narratives.  As I explained in my literacy narrative, I was interested in stories that reach beyond the contents of mass cultural media, that are intentional, harmonious across levels, and allow for an interconnection between the stories we tell and our personal lives.  One of the greatest challenges to these expectations for quality narratives was that, though I have struggeled with stories for most of my life, many people have not, and the ability to tell good stories should be available to everyone.  Even still, as I discovered in my Audio Essay, even telling one's personal stories is difficult, and often constrained by the mediums and conventions of the typical forms we tell stories in.  And yet there is still a human need and ability to tell stories.  

Despite my expectation that stories should be wholly novel, I found in creating my Video Essay that anything one could tell a story about in the world has the potential to be quality, changing the focus from what is told to how the telling is constructed.  The novelty is in how we personally intermix the things we want to narrate.  As we saw reading Heidegger's essay on technology, everything we can imagine is waiting for us to tell a story about it, but there was a need for a standing-reserve of the contents of narratives.  This is juxtaposed in my blog post on The Comics of Revealing by Scott McCloud's idea that there is a natural ability of humans to make narrative sense of the contents we are presented with, suggesting to me that there could be a simple technology allowing us to make narrative connections from the vast store of possible story contents.  This question soon developed into the idea to create a deck of storytelling cards.

As we discussed games and other interactive narratives, I was able to return to the question of Authorial Intent in a blog post, which helped finalize how the Unlimited Story Deck might work.  This project became a technology of potential story contents that gives the user interactive and intentional choices for creating narratives, maintaining the enjoyment of being able to make those choices that is essential to quality.  Playtesting the Deck in a variety of situations showed me that stories are more quality when they are cohesive or reflective across levels, but that this convention of cohesive narratives is one that may have to be developed through the process of telling stories.  I also saw that people actually do find a greater quality enjoyment in those story contents that reach beyond their everyday lives, and that people are prone to tell stories that are on some level reflective of their own concerns or understandings of the world.

Hopefully I will be able to continue developing the Unlimited Story Deck for eventual publication, as well as apply what I've learned from this class to my own storytelling and theories about what makes for quality narratives.


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