Results 1997

Module 1: 30 May – 5 June 1997
Module 2: 17 October – 23 October 1997

Programme 1997 | Results 1997

Contents

1. Lectures by Jay David Bolter and Michael Joyce
   1. Interactive Fiction: Origins in History and Various Presentation Media
      1. MUDs (Multi-User Dungeon, MultiUser Dialogue or Multi-User Dimension) or MOOs (Object-oriented MUDs)
      2. Virtual Reality Systems
      3. Augmented Reality Systems
      4. World Wide Web
      5. Cinematrix
      6. Interactive Cinema Environment
   2. Remediation
2. Presentations
   1. Jonas Grimas: The Interactive Stereo Drama
   2. Jean-Baptiste Touchard: Multimedia Producing in Europe
   3. Rich Tackenberg: The Episodic Web Drama 1
   4. Greg Roach: Interactive Films 1 and Game
   5. Robert Rockwell: Interactive Worlds and Avatars
   6. Christopher Hales: Interactive Films 2
   7. Grahame Weinbren: Interactive Films 3
   8. Rene Swetter & Willem Capteyn: Interactive Films 4
      1. The Case of Sam
      2. Desiree Dossier
   9. Andreas Mokros: The Episodic Web Drama 2
   10. Michael Hoch & Jens Piesk: The Interactive Film-Planning System
3. Exercises – Developed by Jay David Bolter and Michael Joyce
   1. Fundamental Exercises
      1. The "Four-Part" Exercise
      2. The "Forward/Backward" Exercise
      3. The "House" Exercise
      4. The "Cinematrix" Exercise
   2. Jay David Bolter & John Tolva: Advanced Exercises*: "Seven & Seven" or "The Chinese Menu"
      1. Group 1: Interactive Cinema I
      2. Group 2: Interactive Cinema II
      3. Group 3: MOO
      4. Group 4: World Wide Web
      5. Group 5: Augmented Reality
      6. Group 6: Cinematrix
4. Appendix: Biographies
   1. Jay David Bolter
      1. Biographical Description
      2. Selected Publications
   2. Michael Joyce
      1. Selected Professional Experience
      2. Selected Academic Honors and Fellowships
      3. Major Publications

1. Lectures by Jay David Bolter and Michael Joyce

Contents

1.1. Interactive Fiction: Origins in History and Various Presentation Media*

Jay David Bolter and Michael Joyce introduced their subject by tracing its origins in history.

They agreed that the notion of telling a story interactively has existed since the beginning of storytelling itself – and suggested that oral epic poems like Gilgamesh or Odyssey are prototypes of interactive storytelling: with the poet getting up in front of a huge theater audience and telling the story differently each time, depending upon the expectations and the reactions of his audience.

This tradition also includes such 19th century novels as Laurence Sterne´s Tristram Shandy or E.T.A. Hoffmann´s Die Lebensansichten des Kater Murrs, in which the text is an interface; seemingly simple, it suddenly begins to suggest other dimensions. During the reading of these books, a "subversive text" surfaces – alternate beginnings in the middle, several stories told in one – countering all expectations toward a linearly told story unfolding.

In the oral epic we have an interactive context (of audience expectations). In Tristram Shandy there is a suggestive interface. In Ulysses, James Joyce actually subverts the interface by layering language; and at the end of each chapter in Hopscotch, Julio Cortazar gives the reader a choice of which chapter to read next.

The mid-70s mark the appearance of the prototypical computer adventure game "ADVENT"/"ADVENTURE", first designed by Will Crowther, and expanded by Don Woods at Stanford, in which the player has to search through the space of the computer in order to find a set of attributes, pieces, jewels: all sorts of things that will put the world, created by the author, back together. In "ADVENTURE", we finally had a new variety of text – cocreated by the reader/user and the author/programmer – implementing the theorist´s old metaphorical notion that reading fiction always involved "creating the story as you read it".

In the late 1970s this collaborative relationship is advanced by Infocom´s The Zork Trilogy, in which the dually written text already reaches a conjunction in the form of the expectation that, at some point, one violates the interface, moves out of the story being told, and tries to interact with the program. This is implanted in the program itself: you either decide that the program is tricking you and try to pull out, or you see this new relationship as a co-operative dialogue where you listen to the double voices and make your way through the space.

Projects on "story generation", e.g. by James Meehan and Roger C. Schank, also deserve mention. Despite the expectations of the creative authors, however, the question remains whether those initiatives toward developing an "artificial intelligence dream" were actually about interaction. They seem more focused on using the computer to create an artificial intelligence which does not really need any human user intervention whatsoever.

Michael Joyce´s hypertext fiction afternoon (1987) might be considered an attempt to show that interactive fiction involves more than just "versions of a story", but that the story itself is all of the dimensions, all of its "contours". afternoon demonstrates the nature of this narrative closure, in which the world is not revealed the first time you read a section, but that you may be taken elsewhere, if you so select when you encounter that section again – thus creating the notion, as it were, that the text somehow learns from you – a result futilely expected from the "artificial intelligence" experiments.

Still quite far from so-called classical artistic results yet already creating their basis, the following presentational media manifest some of the current possibilities of non-linear storytelling.

Contents

1.1.1. MUDs (Multi-User Dungeon, MultiUser Dialogue or Multi-User Dimension) or MOOs (Object-oriented MUDs)

Interactive games structured as chat-forums played by several people via the Internet. They have multiple locations like an adventure game, and may include combat, traps, puzzles, magic... MUDs have also evolved into 3-D virtual reality sites.

The typical procedure is as follows:

• the user is asked to sign in and give a name;
• once allowed in, he or she enters into an environment (i.e. a house or a castle), characterized by a number of places (most often rooms) and may move from place to place;
• if the MOO is fictioned, he or she can assume a persona which then very elaborately guides him in the creation of appropriate dialogue and descriptions – thus making him or her a character in an ongoing fiction shared with other users;
• in the event that there are various objects in the MOO, he may order the objects to do something – another element of programmed interaction through which he can play a role;
• if he chooses, he may save the file and then read it back as a story;
• and finally, depending on his progress throughout the specific MOO, as well as on the MOO´s internal rules, he may even be allowed to create new objects or new rooms.

There are basically two types of MOOs: "text" and "visual" MOOs. In the "text" MOOs, conversations are somewhat constrained by the fact that the locations are described textually on the screen, whereas in "visual" MOOs they are realized in the form of images (plus the user may assign props to his avatar).

Why should MOOs be considered a new medium? One could say that all conversation is a type of fiction, yet a MOO is a much more conscious attempt to do so – precisely because the interface is entirely a representation.

Contents

1.1.2. Virtual Reality Systems

The VR experience seeks to provide total immersion in an entirely computer-controlled reality. At present, VRSs offer two basic interfaces: "headsets" and "caves".

• With the "headset" interface, the user wears a helmet, donning two fitting eye-pieces, into which he then looks. They both show identical computer-generated graphics. A tracking-device built into the helmet follows the user's head movements in relation to the environment created, causing the computer to make corresponding adjustments in the POV. The user can also use a glove-tracking device that allows him to control his hand in the space he sees: to point with his finger if he wants to "fly" through this space, or perform other tasks with other gestures.
• In the "cave" interface, the user enters into a physical space with one or more of the walls mapped under computer control, and is able to walk around in it, seeing different things happening. Frequently, however, technical inadequacies prevent the space from adjusting to the user´s POV. Sometimes the interface can refer to itself, as the user walks on panels showing different sides of reality, depending on his moves.

The VR world still has a cartoony look. It does not resemble reality 100% because the computer does not adjust quickly enough in real time. In VR environments, narrative is therefore not a necessity. They are more suited for use as performance areas than as narrative ones " also because of the strong similarity of VR space to that in "visual" MOOs, due to the fact that the user can move around and explore it. Present VRSs are usually so designed that people are alone, but sometimes robots may be programmed into the system, or two or more people may be in it simultaneously, seeing and communicating with each other.

Contents

1.1.3. Augmented Reality Systems

The ARS is a way of merging reality and virtuality and has been used a lot lately – but mainly for pragmatic rather than aesthetic purposes. (In Boeing aircrafts, for example, when technicians have to figure out how to connect the right plugs for thousands of wires running through the airplane, the computer assists by projecting a wiring diagram or a textual database over their field of view.)

The most common interface is again a "headset", which does not completely occlude the user´s view of the world. It allows the computer to display graphics, text or other types of information over the field of view, at the same time allowing the user to see beyond and through that field into the real world. In a similar fashion as in the VR helmet, an attached tracking-device follows the head movements, so as to display the proper information at the right time. A pointing-device can also be attached, if needed.

Thus, two environments exist side by side, and a narrative (again not a necessity) can emerge from the contrapuntal relationship between those two worlds.

Contents

1.1.4. World Wide Web

The WWW is actually only semi-interactive, as its interface does not allow the user to change what is taking place. Instead, it merely allows the user to choose his or her path through the narrative by pointing to and clicking on either portions of an image or underlined phrases or graphics, which if clicked on then take him or her to another page. Other basic constraints upon the WWW are:

• there is no way to specify a condition or qualify the links in any way – the procedure is simply "click and go" and not "click, and if you have been to here or there, then go";
• there is no way to safeguard a link from being used by another users;
• as the user moves from one web page to another, he or she has no guarantee that there will be a return link;
• and, finally, there is no memory except the history list of the browser.

Contents

1.1.5. Cinematrix

The Cinematrix can be realized only through group interaction. It seeks to teach people how to apply their collective efforts (usually through some sort of "voting system") toward the creation of some kind of projected narrative.

Contents

1.1.6. Interactive Cinema Environment

The distinctive difference between a film and an interactive film is that the possibility the viewer is able to shift points of view. In a conventional film this process is ordinarily controlled by the director/editor, while an interactive film allows the viewer to do this on demand, thus creating his own version of the narrative. The interaction is realized through the activation of implanted "temporal" or "spatial" links. They differ in the following ways:

• a "temporal" link is not anchored to anything in the clip, and to interact the viewer clicks anywhere in this same clip for a certain period of time;
• whereas the "spatial" link is connected to a certain space (represented by a character, object or whatever) and the viewer simply clicks on this specific space.

Depending on the type of existing links, there are also two basic interfaces: a "single windowed" one (where, when in use, the viewer is informed whether he point-and-clicks on spaces or on the whole frame) and a "multiple windowed" one (in which only the frames can be chosen).

Contents

1.2. Remediation

Jay David Bolter pointed out that the nature of new media cannot be successfully explained without referring to the principle of "remediation", i.e. the act of borrowing/refashioning elements from a well-established medium in order to validate or re-validate the value of a new or a declining medium. According to Jay David Bolter, there are two separate strategies of remediation: the honorific and the rival.

Within the new media, the honorific strategies are found in:

• CD-ROM applications with no programmed interaction, e.g. "museum collection" presentations like Le Louvre – the Palace & Its Paintings.
• "textuals" which take acknowledged works of literature, digitize their text and make this available via the Internet or on CD-ROM;
• electronic encyclopedias, to which the user can add his own notes, or search through crosslinked articles.

Note: It should be pointed out that the latter actually claim to be better than the original, whereas the first two only intend to make great works of art available to a larger audience.

Whereas the rivaling strategy can be found in:

• the artistic works, such as "Electronic Behavior Control System" from the CD-ROM Telecommunication Breakdown, Emergency Broadcast Network, TVT Records, 1995), in which refashioned forms, images and sounds, taken from music, television and film, are visibly assembled and synchronized, thus establishing the notion of a control of the post-modern over the traditional media;
• the more commercial works, such as the CD-ROM computer game "Myst" – a remediation of both the cinema and the book (though without any acknowledgement of where its remediations come from)
• or the World Wide Web which actually competes with television (e.g. in the form of "news websites" where the user can get news at any time, whereas on TV, he has to wait for the 6:30 broadcast).

On the other hand, it cannot be claimed that remediation entails only linear progression: with photography remediating painting, film remediating photography, television remediating film and the computer remediating film and television. Reverse remediation also occurs; quite frequently, in fact: e.g., both film and television, and even photography use computer graphics.

Due to constant competition – with media nearly always claiming to offer users something more real than what they had before – the necessity arises to distinguish two strategies of mediation in terms of their depiction of reality: immediacy and hypermediacy.

• Immediacy is the strategy by which the medium effaces itself and leaves the viewer totally immersed in the content. It can be traced back at least as far as Renaissance linear perspective painting, in which the canvas becomes a window; it can be seen in the development of photography; and it can be found in certain manifestations of new media like 3D computer graphics and virtual reality.
• Hypermediacy uses the very reverse strategy: it acknowledges the medium and revels in it. The authenticity of the viewer's experience is that of the medium itself. He even has to interact to some extent if he is to grasp the content. Moreover, hypermediacy has always existed in the history of Western art as an "evil twin", whether as demonstrated by Bolter in the "17th century Dutch cabinet", consisting of 50 different pictures painted on its panels, or in the form of the 20th century modernist art of collage and photomontage.

After elucidating the theoretical framework, Jay David Bolter and Michael Joyce presented several other examples of immediacy and hypermediacy in new media.

Using the printed and the web versions of the newspaper USA Today, Bolter underlined that the World Wide Web is probably the new media best displaying the hypermediated style – a style highly dispersed and fragmented, consisting of a lot of different media images, text and video, broken up. Michael Joyce then offered three more instances of web versions of this kind of multiple programs: Laurie Novak´s Collected Visions; Arnold Dreyblatt´s Who's Who in Central & East Europe 1933; and Joseph Squier´s The Place.

But if one is looking for the best representation of the aesthetics of immediacy in new media, Bolter stressed, one should definitely begin with 2D computer graphics, with their "photorealism", (which uses the model of the single POV in linear perspective, established in Renaissance painting); then focus on 3D graphics; and especially on Virtual Reality in which the POV is controlled by the user, as he is totally immersed in the experience. Because it is exactly the question of the changing use of point of view in new media which should be discussed in connection with the question of how new media are related to film and TV.

To illustrate the shift, Bolter analyzed the futuristic film Strange Days (Kathryn Bigelow, 1995) in which a man sells video tapes of sexual or violent experiences that people might want to have. Whenever the director wants to show an experience being recorded, or being felt by putting on the "wire" (VR helmet), she switches to a subjective camera to show what the character is seeing.

According to Bolter, Strange Days thus becomes an instant reference to another very important and influential Hollywood film: Hitchcock´s Vertigo, in which there is this same first-person POV when the protagonist has one of his vertigo attacks. The shot used for the depiction of those situations, though, is a "distortion", with a simultaneous zoom forward and track back – yet it evokes the same kind of sense of immediacy.

Strange days thus looks back into the history of cinema, reflecting the way POV is represented in earlier cinema – where, even in the very best of the Hollywood style, hypermediacy is seen as an equivalent of insanity. At the same time, though, it also takes us ahead for a look at a future where the VR experience would be normal everyday life.

Another example, shown and analyzed by Bolter as an extension of this line of thought was the Acrophobia Project (codeveloped by the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University in Atlanta). Its initial idea was to test whether VR could be substituted for actual "progressive exposure" (a medical approach in which people afraid of heights are progressively exposed to heights to overcome their fear). The significance lies not only in the proof provided that fear could be diminished with repeated usage of a VR device, but also in the very existence of fear – as it actually justifies and validates the concept of "presence" in VR. (That someone is scared in such a reality being quite a strong argument for "presence".)

Fear in VR, Michael Joyce suggested, in turn, opens unexplored zones for the possible drama of identity:

First, there is the drama of the "viewed viewer" – since in most VR applications there is also an audience watching the person in the space. So the writer may, as it were, exploit the viewer´s sense of seeing himself within the frame;

• Another area is the one of mutually created spaces, where the viewer is aware of what is around and changes his attention – also inducing the others to join him and create the space;
• A third area which might be called "interskin" instead of interface is particularly clearly demonstrated by Monika Fleishmann´s work "Skywriter" where navigation is performed by rearranging one's body through the "principle of virtual balance";
• Finally, there is the "real experience of dimensioning space" which exploits the actual experience of finding yourself in a space in which you yourself are dimensionless, or the space is dimensionless. This is demonstrated in the Cinematrix project "A Journey into the Living Cell" (developed at Carnegie Mellon University), where the planetarium audience has to react collectively in order to take a virtual look into a human cell.

Contents

* Main subjects of the more theoretical parts of the lectures by Jay David Bolter and Michael Joyce during SAGAs Writing Interactive Fiction 1997/ module 1 and module 2. For a more explicit description of the principle of remediation see: Jay David Bolter, Richard Grusin, "Remediation", in Configurations, 1996, (John Hopkins University Press and the Society for Literature and Science, 1997) 3:311-358. (Back)

2. Presentations

Contents

2.1. Jonas Grimas: The Interactive Stereo Drama

The 8-episode TV romantic comedy "Noodles and 08-TS", presented by Swedish film director Jonas Grimas, is the story of a boy wanting to become a director and a girl wanting to become an actress and their unlucky relationship, told simultaneously from the viewpoints of the two main characters and shown simultaneously on two public channels in Sweden (in 1996). This concept gave the viewers at least three options, Grimas pointed out:

• to watch the whole story from the viewpoint of one character;
• or to put two TV sets side by side and watch them simultaneously.

Around 60% of the scenes are the same for both tracks, but shot from different angles, rousing the viewer´s identification with each of the characters. The potential audience also had the opportunity to check the Internet for a daily updated version, plus the chance of winning a competition for the "best home-video edit of the series".

All those features made the experience interactive but also provoked the question why the audience wasn´t permitted to have a small-screen version of the other track running at the same time?

Jay David Bolter and Michael Joyce offered two explanations (using the concept of immediacy and hypermediacy):

• It would have distanced the viewers from the illusion that they were watching a real event by providing a more emphatic reference to the medium, the interface, making it more difficult to appreciate the time-shifting created by editing (= when it takes a few seconds for visual synchrony to be re-established).
• On the other hand, ironically, the filmic conventions of parallel editing (or even channeling) lead the audience to a sense of time that is psychologically quite unrealistic. So hypermediacy still exists, but only on a very basic and inconsistent level.

Contents

2.2. Jean-Baptiste Touchard: Multimedia Producing in Europe

Jean-Baptiste Touchard focused the audience´s attention on the aspect of financing, producing and distributing of new media products.

The multi-media product producer (MMPP) should always bear in mind that his constant awareness of changes in current world marketing developments in his field is a major prerequisite to success.

For example, according to the latest statistics from Screen Digest (1996), there are currently over 12 000 000 active multi-media PCs (MMPCs) in Europe, over 80 million in the world, and roughly $1,2 billion in software sales per year. If the "magic curve" theory is applied to this data, during the next 5 years the MMPP can expect a tremendous rise in sales of both hard- and software products.

NOTE: The "magic curve" theory suggests that during the first 5 years of a product´s market presence, it gains less than 5% of its potential share. The next 5 years raise the percentage to 25%, and the following 5 years bring it up to 75% and more.

At the same time, the MMPP should also closely monitor rapid changes in the development of media, as they have a crucial impact on the market´s orientation ad hoc. As good evidence of how "important" this is, one might take the latest declaration by leading CD-ROM manufacturer Voyager, that given the success of digital video discs (DVD´s) prototypes – which guarantee 20 times the quality and length volume of CD-ROMs – the company is already fully restructured for the production of DVDs.

Finally, any MMPP aspiring for success must also be an expert in cultural, technical, legal and financial matters, such as budgets, investment returns, project proposal elements, distribution possibilities, etc. Just as an example, he should be aware that:

• less than 5% of all titles produced sell over 10,000 copies;
• it is always the best to share investment risk with large producers of electronics or computer products, with members of the telecom and media industries or different authorities;
• distribution can be handled through various channels, such as mail order, catalogues, telemarketing, Internet promotion, retail, etc.;
• it is a must that a project proposal include a synopsis; a treatment for the specific interactive genre; ideas for publishing/marketing the product, as well as for assets acquisition; a technical analysis; a budget; planning schemes and a team list;
• what customers expect from MM products is not only good fun, pleasure, surprise, suspense and seduction, but also qualified, in-depth information;
• the star system and "packaging" also work in the MM business; etc.

Contents

2.3. Rich Tackenberg: The Episodic Web Drama 1

The episodic web drama, as started in The Spot and continued in GrapeJam, was introduced by Rich Tackenberg (LightSpeed Media, Culver City, CA).

LightSpeed Media unites the creators of The Spot, who left their former employer to start their own company. This was the direct result of, among other things, the evolution of "The Spot", the first episodic web drama. It started out as the experiment of a Los Angeles film student, who collected her friends' diary entries and put them into the net. These entries began to develop a fictitious life of their own, as authors took over the different characters – young men and women of the early Nineties – and developed their stories into an elaborate 'soap'-type tale. This all started in a rather playful vein. The authors were not 'staffers' but people doing this on the side, maybe in their lunch breaks or at night. What happened then was that The Spot got more and more attention (page hits) of the web community.

They turned out to be people that working with computers, some continuously online – browsing the World Wide Web for relaxation and entertainment during work time or breaks. They identified with the Spot characters (having their same ages and preferences) and were eager to find out through the daily diary entries what they were up to.

The increasing page hits made The Spot site attractive for advertisers; the whole venture became a growing business of its own.

One feature that attracted audiences the possibility of contacting the characters via e-mail: to suggest what they should do or refrain from, and even get an answer from the characters addressed. By this time, the team of authors were processing around 500 e-mails daily: by answering them and working suggestions into the further plot of the stories. The overall storyline was planned in story conferences and – enhanced with audience ideas – more or less adhered to.

Sometimes the audience was invited to chat rooms to confer with the characters. In these online conferences, the authors would respond immediately (as 'their' characters – occasionally, a single author would express several characters) to audience questions, often improvising details, which thus became part of their characters' biographies. As a visual representation of the characters in The Spot, the photographs of actors were used to illustrate the daily sites.

The episodic web drama The Spot, now known as one of the most significant milestones of internet programming, attracted the attention of North America's major television network NBC, which intended to adapt it as a TV series with World Wide Web accompaniment.

This raised the question of ownership: who had the rights to The Spot? In the end the authors founded their own company (leaving The Spot with their former employer) and created the sitcom serial GrapeJam according to the same recipe.

The episodic web drama as presented by Rich Tackenberg is a child of the internet and its possibilities. Neither planned nor conceptualized, it simply grew out of the ways of dealing with a new medium. 

Contents

2.4. Greg Roach: Interactive Films 1 and Games

Greg Roach (Hyperbole Studios, Seattle) began his presentation with a demonstration of three of his early interactive works on CD-ROM, which use mainly textual interfaces and explore the rather semi-immersive experience options for a user playing the role of an editor:

• in In the Breach of Centuries, the user can follow the progress of a hurricane´s destruction simply by freely viewing the existing material (documents, photos, or fictional characters´ moments of extreme crisis) without any possibility of making changes;
• in The Madness of Roland, all the participating characters tell the same story – but from different POVs and in different ways (the "Rashomon" effect) – forcing the user to choose between these versions of the truth and assemble for himself the one he believes actually occurred;
• and in The Descending Armies of Light, an abstract painting is synthesized by the database, created based on the user´s answers to certain questions.

As a next step in the progression from representational interfaces acting as a mediating player to immersive interfaces based on the experience of the content itself, Roach showed two other works:

• the short film The Wrong Side of Town, in which (like in The Madness of Roland) the viewer is able to jump back and forth between the perceptions of each character as the story progresses, and in which the entry points for interaction appear at any close-up;
• and the documentary Just a Few Friends, in which the viewer is able to take moments from the film (appearing in miniature alternate spaces around the margin), expand and explore them.

As a further move towards an "interactive cinema" in which the user participates in the actor's role, Roach presented his project Ten State Spree and, as an even stronger example, the interactive X-Files CD-ROM currently in production.

• In Ten State Spree the user becomes an escaped convict on his way from Florida to Mexico, accompanied by two fellow escapees and his girlfriend, who constantly try to convince him or draw him toward their way of thinking. According to the choices he (or she) makes, the narrative branches again and again, till the end(s). This is realized with the help of an "over-narrative engine", which constantly monitors the psychology of the user´s input, at the same time keeping track of the story.
• In X-Files the user enters different "nodes", i.e. fixed periods of fictional time. Within these temporal-spatial structures, there are three classes of events: "growing food", "candy" and "triggers". "Growing food" are what he has to gain in order to advance the story. "Candy" is the stuff in the environmental character interactions that helps him bring the world to light and give the experience depth. When he exits a node he may have pieces of "candy" or may have missed them, but he has to have gained all the "food" in order to move forward. "Trigger" is any event which, when hit, transmits the message "I´ve been set off!" to all the other objects within the virtual space. The objects in question then know whether this has any significance to them. A "trigger" could be "candy", "growing food", an object, a character or an interaction. An "over-narrative engine" surveys, adapting the perceived psychology of the experience, the relationship with certain key characters and elements found within the environment. The only thing that does not change is the overall plot.
  

The discussion raised several basic questions:

• What is the future of CD-ROM-based projects?
• What are the budget figures for Greg Roach´s products and ones similar to his?
• What would a "universal" interface look like?

The answers can be summed as follows:

• The future of CD-ROM: despite reports to the contrary, the CD-ROM business is actually anything but dead. Products with highly intellectual content may continue to have difficulty finding a market. But sales of entertainment products are exploding.
• The budget range for products of Greg´s type is comparable to that for an average independent feature film.
• The most important feature of interfaces is that they are textually self-explanatory and maintain consistency. Once a user has learned an interface´s affordances he doesn´t have to think about them anymore. If we take someone out of the jungle and put him in a room, at some point he would open the door and know how to operate it. So why should we need a "universal" interface?

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2.5. Robert Rockwell: Interactive Worlds and Avatars

In his introduction Robert Rockwell (Blaxxun Interactive, San Francisco/Munich) argued that society´s development depends on an appropriate shift in the understanding of cyberspace´s characteristics. He finds it surprising how, instead of trying to optimize the existing software, people keep thinking about how to make the hardware faster. An example is the current use of the World Wide Web, which is still mainly seen as a new publishing device, instead of a revolutionary communications medium. To illustrate his company´s attempts, he presented:

• the first academic conference on interactive technology InterAct´96, organized and held exclusively in cyberspace, in which all participants met in the form of avatars;
• and the first worldwide virtual trade show Interop´96, held a couple of months later in Frankfurt, in which real participants communicated via Internet with other participants, attending only as avatars.

Note: The term "avatar" comes from the Sanskrit word, used for naming the form
that God assumes when wandering among His creatures on Earth. In cyberspace avatars may be either live human beings or software robots.

Proceeding to explain his latest projects, concerned with creating software tools for the authoring of social spaces, Robert Rockwell drew parallels with J.R.R.Tolkien´s Lord of the Rings, in which a "whole new world" with rules and circumstances was created. Rockwell then underlined the two factors of paramount importance for the success of such a fundamental technological platform:

• the implementation of mechanisms defining the roles and rules of software robot avatars, making it easier for the writer to invent stories involving some interaction with software-based characters; and
• the clarity regarding the nature and necessary elements of the future community platform – giving people a sense that the particular cyberplace is theirs together.

To support this appraisal, Robert Rockwell then showed various avatar-based software products, (custom developed for such companies as Intel and Black&Decker), detailing such basic problems as:

• how dialogue is affected by a visual difference in the design of its common cyberspace: i.e. when one of the participants sees it as a bar, and the other – as a church;
• how a non-authoritarian solution might be found for cases of "robot pollution", i.e. offensive appearance of avatars in cyberspace due to improper programming; and
• how sizes and gestures of avatars affect human perception in cyberspace; etc.

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2.6. Christopher Hales: Interactive Films 2

Describing his personal achievements in the field of interactive filmmaking, Christopher Hales declared that he envisions them more as auteur experiments, linked to visual poetry and documentary, than related to the concept of cinema as a storytelling art. Underlining his belief that the major philosophical question of interactivity should be: "What is it we get from it and what is it we lose?", he began by presenting two of his early works:

• Jinxed – a story about a born loser, whose life is effectively made even more miserable through the interaction of the user,
• and Messed Space – where a notorious TV-watcher is harassed by all kinds of mishaps.

In both cases, the visual interface allows interaction at all points where the objects are visually deformed; Christopher Hales suggested a comparison with some of his later productions, in which the "narrative" goal is life unfolding, without any dramatic construction. In all of these, the user´s intervention can only activate different facets of the depicted world, without in any way leading to a pre-determined ending:

• The award-winning documentary The Twelve Loveliest Thing I Know shows children talking about the twelve loveliest things they know. The interface has become much richer; now enabling the user to click words, colors, etc. – thus changing the Pods at any given point.
• In Lagoon focus and viewpoint are used as a metaphor for interactions. The user has to explore the sophisticated network of events. Les Mysteres du Chateau de D... - a companion piece to "Lagan" – is a portrait of a castle and its inhabitant, requiring the user's persistence to reveal sufficient information about the protagonist.  

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2.7. Grahame Weinbren: Interactive Films 3

Grahame Weinbren startet off by clearly stressing that his interest in interactive media began when he understood how interactivity connects with his goal in filmmaking: the portrayal of human experience as a parallel process. He also underlined that, ever since, he has not been interested in the "choice-making" paradigm – allowing the user to change the overall content – but in one where the software only registers the user´s response and responds back – only allowing him or her to shift points of view (POVs). Correspondingly, this credo left a strong mark on Weinbren's subsequent design of interfaces:

• in Earl King, inspired by the dream described under this name in Freud´s Interpretation of Dreams and based on folktales, works by Goethe and Freud, etc., the user can simply touch parts of the screen and get different images that link with the audio track, giving the story various contrapuntal or sometimes illustrative dimensions;
• in Sonata, based on Tolstoy´s Kreutzer Sonata and the biblical story of Judith, (both dealing with obsession) the user is able to see at a chosen touch either the different POVs of the characters and the author himself (in the first case), or the different POVs of the interpretors of the material – artists, filmmakers, writers, etc. – (in the second case);
• and because of his desire to preserve the cinematic feeling, even when a community of viewers experience the same emotions together, for the public installation of his next piece – A critical documentary on the Gulf war – Weinbren designed a 3x4 meter ramp (with a monitor on top), where people have to walk around and collaborate with each other by speech, or gestures, or else, in order to change what´s on the screen.

The basic question raised during the discussion was whether such a story-telling approach, which reduces the user´s possibility of identification, helps him or prevents him from wholly grasping the content?

To properly answer this question, one has to distinguish that two types of identification are always simultaneously possible for any work of art, and that it is the author´s choice to decide which one to accentuate:

• the emotional one, in which the user identifies with a character (or with the author);
• and the rational one, in which he has to identify with the content itself.  

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2.8. Rene Swetter & Willem Capteyn: Interactive Films 4

Rene Swetter and Willem Capteyn (The Netherlands Film and Television Academy) showed two interactive films created by their students in the Program Development for Interactive Media (PIM), a line of studies established in 1994.

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2.8.1. The Case of Sam

• The authors realized their aim of inventing an organic visual interface by making Sam, the detective, color-blind – so when the user looks through his eyes the world is black-and-white. Plus, there are points when the shots are "on hold".
• Interactivity is structured using the adventure game matrix, in which the user has to collect assets to advance the story. If he does not make a choice, the story continues by itself.
• The production budget is extremely low, (roughly $4,000), and there is almost one hour of initial video material. The major problem is that the end product is on CDI, so that it cannot be watched on a normal CD-ROM drive.

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2.8.2. Desiree Dossier

• The plot again is a detective story, with a murder, a detective and five suspects, but the interactivity options are a lot richer. The user/detective freely decides how to conduct the interrogation, but a counter installed in the system counts how many times the suspects are visited, in what order, what questions they have been asked. Thus bits of information are lost each time. As a prerequisite, the user is instructed that the case must be solved according to what the people say and not by what the user thinks of them.
• The author would have preferred ten different interfaces, but ended up with six: photographs, little pieces of paper, doorbells, etc. The user can either click the mouse during those shots, click the first letter of the suspect on a keyboard, or even go to a pop-up window with a menu: to choose who he wants to arrest.
• Screen-time is sixty-seven minutes of video, and the budget is around $35,000, not including sponsoring of the programming company and waivers of all salaries. The end product has around 300 MB but still fit on a normal CD-ROM.  

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2.9. Andreas Mokros: The Episodic Web Drama 2

Andreas Mokros (BAVARIA FILM Interactive, München) presented the weekly episodic soap-opera "face to face"/"Island in the Town" developed for The Microsoft Network GmbH:

• To be connected, the user has to fill in a simple application form, which immediately gets him the first three episodes (numbered 0.0, 0.5 and 0.8) containing the exposition.
• The plot is structured around the conflicts between four people sharing a flat. The overall graphic design of the surroundings is inspired by the photoplays appearing in TV magazines – trashy, old and a little comic. There are also 12 real photographed scenes with the characters per episode.
• The four-writer team used various dramaturgical tricks to rouse viewer curiosity:
  • diaries can be browsed for information about the character's past;
  • chords and lyrics allow the user to play and sing along;
  • the user can compare the differences between what they "think" and "tell";
  • finally, the user can link into a fake TV-set with three channels offering "side" programming.
• The interface is menu-based and, at this stage, interaction is more or less limited to mail contact by users interested in contacting the characters or authors. There is a special MOO in development, however, for those who wish to meet their favorites in cyberspace;
• The targeted audience is around 6 000 user-hits per day. The production is low-budget (around 0.5 million DM per year). The initial idea for financing it through subscription fees was abandoned in favor of "product placement financing".  

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2.10. Michael Hoch & Jens Piesk: The Interactive Film-Planning System

The first part of the presentation of the Kunsthochschule für Medien, Cologne, was carried out by Michael Hoch. It focused on the practical results of a program, established in 1993 under the above title, dealing with the creation of an "intuitive interface" to help artists unfamiliar with computers feel at ease when working with them.

It is based theoretically on the ancient ars memoriae technique through which speakers would memorize long texts by 'walking around' freely in an imaginary house, connecting specific portions of the text – or the things referred to – to existing locations. In the modern version, there is a rear-projection screen in a lab, with two cameras watching the user, and an image-processing system which identifies the user-in-the-camera´s images, gestures and speech.

Two major applications are possible:

• any kind of information units can be managed and maintained in real space, i.e. text files, sound files, web pages, etc. can be retrieved simply by asking the computer through speech or gestures to show the current selection of links stored in a specific area; and
• any set could be cheaply tested, planned and calculated – including camera movements and lighting conditions, the movement, addition or removal of objects, etc.

Three major problems still need to be solved:

• a huge library of 3-D models should be installed in the computer;
• the computer level of speech and movement recognition is still a very generic one;
• the present control achieved over the movements of static figures is inadequate when it comes to controlling the movements of live actors on a set.

In the second part of the presentation, Jens Piesk focused attention on the possibilities of connecting "virtual actors" to text, as well as on the major stages in producing performance animation, i.e. virtual characters in live interaction.

Its culmination was the VISTA (The Virtual Story-Telling Actor) concept and practical results, in which 3D character animation is combined with natural language-processing. The system contains a text module for the analysis of the user´s textual input in the interaction process; and an animation module with the nine basic psychological emotions (shame, interest, grief, anger, joy, disgust, surprise, fear and contempt) implanted for the depiction of the computer-generated character, plus a library of 36 facial, gesture and posture movements to fit with that depiction

3. Exercises developed by Jay David Bolter and Michael Joyce

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3.1. Michael Joyce: Fundamental exercises

Illustrating the theoretical lectures, Michael Joyce suggested several exercises from his own teaching practice, useful for screenwriting teachers offering courses in interactive writing in their schools.

3.1.1. The "Four-Part" Exercise

As an introduction to interactive hyperfiction, this exercise is aimed at introducing beginning authors to the notion that there are only three possible narrative links in any story.

The author is instructed to:

• write four parts of a story;
• go back to one of them; and
• decide where your reader would want to go from that point.

It is readily understood that there are only three possible choices:

• ricorso: the revisiting of a part previously traversed, looking for some new aspect of the same contents;
• flashback: the leap to an imaginary fourth part we had in mind before we linked back into the sequence (a "metanode") – then resuming the intended course, refreshed by this new look at previous material;
• renewal: the visiting of a completely new part, not out of a simple (often meaningless) love of making choices, but because of a rising desire to experience new story dimensions/POVs.

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3.1.2. The "Forward/Backward" Exercise

The "Forward/Backward" exercise can be considered a helpful expansion of the knowledge gained in the "Four-Part" exercise, as it delves deeper into the linking process by showing how to create connections in parallel storylines.

It involves:

• the writing of two narratives: one moving forward in time, the other backward;
• and then designing an episode combining both.

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3.1.3. The "House" Exercise

The "House" exercise is quite reminiscent of the cinematic "Kuleshov effect", in which a masterfully edited sequence of film takes, shot at different real locations, but showing segments of a story in successive order, gives the viewer the sense that he or she is watching a spatially homogenous scene.

This exercise is structured so that each participant (group) performs three-steps:

• using no more than 200 words, evoke a space describing part of a house;
• identify certain words/phrases in this first space, which can serve as not explicit but evocative links to other spaces;
• create other spaces, and in the same way link them to further successive ones – in such a way that a user interactively exploring them would, in the end, experience a story.

As is reasily apparent, the idea of this exercise is to illustrate the rich potential of basic interactivity technique: there could be numerous (an abundance satisfying any viewer´s requirements) playabilities of different emotional tenures, since different ways of traversing spaces, looping through and revisiting them again, always and inevitably yield different versions of a story.

Note: Escaping endless repeating loops is possible by creating a manual with a list of the links and the options for revisiting spaces.

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3.1.4. The "Cinematrix" Exercise

A sequel to the "House", the "Cinematrix" exercise assumes the existence of an audience able to influence scenes by lifting paddles (or some such device).

The goal is to demonstrate to the beginning author, although on a very primitive level, the potential of narratively interconnecting two zones of virtuality in a single maze.

The participant carries out the following steps:

• the creation and mapping of a space comprising at least nine parts;
• the selection of words in each part suitable for use as headlinks;
• the creation of a second similarly constructed space;
• the linking of both places such that each part has at least one link leading from it.

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3.2. Jay David Bolter & John Tolva: Advanced Exercises*: "Seven & Seven" or "The Chinese Menu"

The original premise behind this exercise was that seven metaphors (A) had to be enacted using seven presentation media (B) in such a way that the media´s constraints could be best explored on an operational level.

• A: house, skin, screen memory, mercury, frames, bridges & tunnels, secrets & lies.
• B: MOOs, Interactive Films, VR spaces, VR systems, AR systems, WWW, Cinematrix.

To concentrate more on the different presentational media, the premise was rephrased: metaphors were eliminated, and a single narrative was proposed for all groups: the story of Faust, as told by Goethe.

With the following results:

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3.2.1. Group 1: Interactive Cinema I

The narrative depicts the story of Fikret (Faust), a Turkish gambler in Germany and Mustafa (Mephisto), a rich man lusting after Fikret´s girlfriend Aysha.

The chosen medium is stereo TV drama; the method is strongly reminiscent of the "Jonas Grimas style". The user´s role is that of a director involved in determining the emotional status, but not the content itself (which, though in a modernized setting, follows the philosophy of the original).

Interaction is only possible once the camera stops moving, for the user is required to watch the content, in order to specify its emotional character. Then the user can choose "Left/Right" (establishing different POVs), or "Angry/Sad" and "Hot/Cold" (establishing different moods) clip-streams. Finally, though, since the authors´ concept does not allow the user to change the causality of the story, he or she always returns to the "Mainstream" with its three mandatory clips, "Showdown", "Lost" and "Solved".

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3.2.2. Group 2: Interactive Cinema II

The narrative of the second Interactive Cinema project group involves a Good Angel and a Bad Angel, audible only off-screen, debating "what would happen if Faust and the characters, tempted by Mephisto, were to commit one of the Seven Deadly Sins".

The medium chosen is film. The method is "Zbigniew Rybcyinski´s Kafka style", in which almost invisible editing creates a more or less constant holistic stream. Planned to be an immersive experience, it focuses on a "small group" audience which would appreciate the complete filling of the field of vision and the rich 'surround sound'.

As the narrative unfolds, the users can choose which storypath depicted by the Angels they would like to see: the "bad" one or the "good" one. They can also choose which characters´ spirits they wish to follow. As in Group 1´s proposal, they cannot change the characters´ destiny.

Interaction is possible by means of a "magic wand" interface (remote-controller) at the editing points, when Mephisto enters close-ups to talk directly to the audience – who then point in the chosen direction.

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3.2.3. Group 3: MOO

MOOs are initially non-linear structures, so in this project the narrative is a sort of preparation for interactivity. It does not adapt the linear play in any form, but creates an open space in the Faustian spirit, where the user´s role is to freely discuss challenging moral topics/situations inspired completely or partly by the play. The overall setting is visual (drawings, photos, etc.) and interaction takes place at five stages:

• at an "entrance gate" the user is informed that in this MOO he can have experiences and make decisions;
• he has to pass through three introductory experiences, derived from "Faust", each leading into a specific room, where he can discuss the respective moral issues with other users, and where he also finds Faust, Gretchen, Mephisto and God, (i.e. curiosity, emotion, lust, and harmony), who then guide him through the journey;
• then, he goes to the "Registration Desk", pays a single entrance fee and identifies himself (members can proceed directly from the entrance to the rooms);
• only now does he reach the main space (the "Forest") from where he is free to proceed to different real-life experiences and to clash with other users´ moral systems;
• finally, after a given number of visited experience spaces, the user is allowed (if he so chooses) to create his own within the same MOO.

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3.2.4. Group 4: World Wide Web

Oriented toward a very young target group, this modernized narrative shows the characters as rappers, and Faust, although still a scientist, is a drug addict. There are also lots of clever gimmicks, including ads which organicly interpret parts of the original.

The presentation method chosen is a sort of "Andreas Mokros-style" soap-opera with a vectorized background, painted like comics, and garnished with real photographs. Interaction is possible by clicking on text, painted setups or photos: triggering changes in the POV.

The user´s role is thus limited to a pre-programmed interference – like in the CD-ROM based pieces where he is basically an editor and not a writer, director, or actor. The real advantage of the WWW – which allows direct feedback from the user to influence changes in the story-flow – is not actually explored though.

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3.2.5. Group 5: Augmented Reality

In this project interactivity actually uncovers the narrative, which is split between a "past" world (virtuality) and a "present" world (reality). Like in the computer game "Myst", the user has to find hidden clues to discover what is happening.

The experience begins the moment the user enters the real environment, the "present", and dons a helmet with a built-in screen. Whenever he looks at a wall, the computer image inside his helmet shows segments of a previously filmed story – revealing what has happened behind that wall at some "past" moment.

Meanwhile, walking around in the "present", the user meets characters from the "past". He may talk to them (which is a kind of a personal interaction, in fact), and they respond – but their responses are based solely upon what has happened in the "past".

Note: The computer never projects stories from the same room the user is in, or shows a "past" story connected with the character he is talking to.

What the user finally must come to understand is that he is playing the role of Faust in a story, in which he initially thought his role was to rescue a young girl (Gretchen, the only character he never actually meets in the "present") from a mad scientist (Mephisto). He learns that the girl has all along been "augmented" (virtually created) by the scientist, who wanted to keep him in the game – because it is the scientist´s task to collect time for his master, the Millennium Child. Moreover, upon entering the game, the user has, as it were, "signed" a Faustian contract with the Millennium Child, giving him his time. And that´s the end of the story and the game.

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3.2.6. Group 6: Cinematrix

The target audience of this project is under 17 and not necessarily computer-literate. It is planned to be staged in a science park under the title "Rule or be ruled!" The narrative is only inspired more or less by the Faust theme of the struggle against temptation, and is revealed through the interaction process:

• seated in a theater, two groups of 10-12 people, watch a screen, holding a voting-device equipped with only a single button (the simplest interface);
• on the screen are two islands, each inhabited by 10-12 computer-generated populations (a collective image of the Faust/Gretchen characters), lead by one of their members, respectively called King/Queen;
• the goal of the two populations is to survive – with the computer (Mephisto) making suggestions how to survive, and their voting what choices the King/Queen should make in response to these suggestions;
• the two populations vote in turns, with voting periods of one minute;
• if they are unhappy with the island´s progress, they can vote for another King/Queen; and
• there are three possible final outcomes: each island can be the same as in the beginning (no progress), sunk or deserted (disaster), or flourishing (utopia).

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* Michael Joyce was unable for health reasons to attend the second module of SAGAs Writing Interactive Fiction. Substituting for him, John Tolva (Georgia Institue of Technology, Atlanta) supervised the October workshop sessions together with Jay David Bolter. (Back)

4. Appendix: Biographies

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4.1. Jay David Bolter

School of Literature, Communication, & Culture
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, Georgia 30332-0165
(404) 894-2735

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4.1.1. Biographical Description

Jay David Bolter is a professor at the School of Literature, Communications, and Culture of the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is also appointed to the College of Computing. He authored Storyspace, a program for creating hypertexts for individual use and World Wide Web publication. His work with computers led to the publication, in 1984, of Turing's Man: Western Culture in the Computer Age, a book that was widely reviewed and translated into several foreign languages (including German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Polish and Japanese). Bolter has lectured at dozens of universities and colleges on the social and cultural impact of the computer. Bolter's second book Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing, published in 1991, examines the computer as a new medium for symbolic communication. (Writing Space has also been translated into Italian and Japanese.) Together with with colleagues at Georgia Tech, he is now working on teaching and commercial applications of video and textual annotation systems. He and Professor Richard Grusin are investigating the relationship between traditional visual technologies (such as film and video) and electronic visual media. The resulting book, Remediation, will be published by MIT Press, probably in September 1998.

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4.1.2. Selected Publications

• Bolter, Jay David, Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing. Lawrence Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ, 1991, xiii + 258 pp. A computer diskette demonstrating hypertext is also available.
• Bolter, Jay David, Turing's Man: Western Culture in the Computer Age. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984, xii + 264 pp. (republication in England by Duckworth and Penguin).

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4.2. Michael Joyce

Box 360, Vassar College
Poughkeepsie, NY 12604-0360
Office: (914) 437-5941
Home: (914) 298-9312 Fax: (914) 437-7187
E-mail: MIJoyce@vassar.edu

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4.2.1. Selected Professional Experience

• Associate professor of English, director of the Center for Electronic
• Teaching and Learning
• Randolph Distinguished Visiting Associate Professor, Department of
• English and the library, 1993-94 and 1995-96.
• Pew Visiting Assoc. Professor in Hypertext Media, Technology and Culture,
• 1992-93, Vassar College.
• Coordinator, Center for Narrative and Technology, Jackson Community
• College, Jackson, Michigan. 1975-1995.

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4.2.2. Selected Academic Honors and Fellowships

• Apple Teaching Fellow, Apple Computer (COPS), Chicago, 1991.
• Visiting fellow, Artificial Intelligence Project, Yale University, 1984-85.
• GLCA New Writing Award for Fiction, national competition, 1983.
• Teaching writing fellow, Iowa Writers Workshop, 1973-74.

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4.2.3. Major Publications

• Twelve Blue, Postmodern Culture and Eastgate Systems (co-published),
• 1996 and 1997. World-wide-web hyperfiction.
• Twilight, Eastgate Systems, 1997. Hyperfiction novel.
• Sister Stories (with Rosemary Joyce and Carolyn Guyer), Eastgate Systems, forthcoming June 1998. Hypertext fiction.
• Of Two Minds: Hypertext Pedagogy and Poetics, Univ. of Michigan Press, 1995.
• afternoon, a story, Eastgate Systems, Cambridge, MA, 1990. Hypertext fiction.
• Storyspace (with J. David Bolter and John B. Smith), Eastgate Systems, Cambridge, MA. Hypertext writing environment.
• The War Outside Ireland, Tinkers Dam Press,1982. Novel.

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