Re: Introduction/Griffin+Sabine

[Wally <wally@sub-zero.mit.edu>]

> Wally, I am most uncomfortable with your suggestion that we rely on
> small-scale interactivity to touch up non-interactive stories. While there
> is certainly some profit to be made by this approach (remember Seventh
> Guest!), it appears to be a dead end in that there is little further room
> for creative development (remember Eleventh Hour!). And while I have no
> objections to any artist exploring his or her own muse, I suspect that in
> that direction lies oblivion. I feel fairly certain that it will not lead us
> to anything that, in the distant future, will be called interactive
> storytelling.

Oh, I don't propose to replace research in structured/partially-scripted
'interactive drama' with things like the extant CD-ROM literature. Indeed,
my work at the Media Lab was wholly in the other direction -- fully
autonomous creatures which could nonetheless react in 'animal-like' ways
to human interactors.

But the lessons of cinema and today's computer games (and the great games
of the last couple of decades, from Zork to Grim Fandango and onward) can
serve to create immersive experiences that don't require some illusion of
true 'improvisation', some computational substitute for 'irony' or
'subversion' (which I've never seen, and I'll burst if I do). Maybe at a
fundamental level I don't think today's machines could ever create a story
like 'Pale Fire' or 'Ulysses' or even 'Harry Potter' (if only because a
machine can't know what it's like to attend boarding school, or resent a
mother's death, or want to reinvent itself through the work of another [a
loose interpretation of Nabokov to be sure, but whaddaya want?] -- if
only, in other words, because a computer can never *imply*, at least not
yet).

The next step in storytelling, I think, will rely as much on making the
reader/player/interactor *feel* that he's experienced a story, as it will
on actually telling a straightforward narrative. If the transformation of
the reader is the goal of a work of literature (wonder what I think of
that notion...), then a still image will do. A film will do. A book will
do. All are 'interactive' experiences, because all play on the way we
(mis)understand what we experience, on the links we draw between concepts,
events, desires. A digital avatar needn't *act*, really -- it's an icon,
it should suggest a story. Hmm. I think I ended up disagreeing with
myself, but may as well send this on...more thought, more words, more
possibilities and all that. :)

Cheers,
W.