Book, Film, and Interactivity, was:Introduction/Griffin+Sabine

[Kenneth Lu <kenlu@MIT.EDU>]

At 15:46 -0800 2/6/01, Chris Crawford wrote:
>Wally, it would appear to me that you have defined our problem out of
>existence. If indeed still images, films, and books are all interactive,
>then we are wasting our time trying to figure out how to get a computer to
>do interactive storytelling.
>
>You might want to consider my own definition of interactivity, to be found
>at

Chris,

While I'm also personally interested a lot in interactivity as you 
define it.. mainly because it's so underexplored, I don't think that 
we should rule out stuff like what Wally was talking about.. I think 
it's just another KIND of interactivity.  We hardly want to restrict 
our definitions in the same way that some closed-minded IFers do! ;P

I do think the difference between book and film is a very interesting 
one for research into interactivity of all kinds.  After all, when we 
read a book, we do create our own images.. our own words.. and that 
is surely "interactive" in some sense..

When we want to create more explicitly interactive fiction, I think 
it'll help us to think about the ways in which interactivity ALREADY 
plays a role.

I guess I'm particularly interested in this interaction because I 
personally react so much more strongly to images than I do to words. 
I can vividly remember images from even rather mediocre movies, but I 
often can barely remember even the basic gist of the plots of my 
favorite books!


For me, images have a much more direct emotional effect.  For some 
people, books have a more direct emotional effects.. perhaps because 
they can better relate to the images they themselves create in their 
minds?

Take Photopia <http://adamcadre.ac/photopia.html>, for instance. 
It's an example of using more explicit interactivity to make the 
reader relate to the characters more.


I think there are a lot of parallels, and it'll serve us well to 
examine interactivity in all its forms, rather than to narrowly 
define it as what we're most interested in at the moment.

-ToastyKen

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| Kenneth Lu - kenlu@mit.edu - http://www.mit.edu/~kenlu/ |
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| "Life is far too important to be taken seriously."      |
|                                                         |
|                                          -- Oscar Wilde |
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