Presentations in class were particularly interesting, with various examples of visual narratives, using the simplest of tools such as the annotation feature on Youtube, to the most complex ways of using motion capture technology with the Kinect. It is exciting to consider how far narratives have evolved, from the very first form of the verbal passing of folktales, myths, legends and other stories in ages past. One point that struck our group, as we were working on our presentation, is how diverse the mediums for narratives are today. Now, people can interact with the stories in ways they have never done before, may it be through physical means of touching, sliding or zooming props and various articles in a story, or through the way they can make choices in the narrative to affect the way the story goes (like the “Drop the Weapons” example shown in class). A guilty pleasure I have, where interactive narratives are concerned, are Role Playing Games (RPG), video games where you “role play” as the protagonist of the story, and help him or her get to the goal of the game. What makes these games so compelling, is that it introduces to you not only the character, but the world they live in. Combining a good storyline (which contains decision making processes crucial to how the story proceeds) with beautiful graphics of the character’s world, and accompanying music which fits various scenes, the RPG can be a great example of how visual narratives work in a gaming aspect.
One problem I had with the presentations, however, is how in many instances, presentators showed interactive visual narratives without a news-oriented angle. Our group found it difficult finding interactive narratives with a news angle as well; many of the especially eye-catching visual narratives were, as Yazid mentioned, for advertisement or entertainment’s sake. As such, we sifted through a lot of great visual narratives to find only ones which were news-oriented. Morever, the ones which are news-oriented interactive media usually cross over to become infographics; presenting hard facts to substantiate news, rather than a story. While the interactive visual narrative can be particularly useful, news-wise, in archiving and showing collections of stories, shown through The Block example I used in presentation, the exciting and more expansive features of interactive visual narratives like the use of motion capture technology don’t seem to be applicable where journalism and news coverage is concerned. I hope, however, that time and human innovation will eventually prove me wrong.
jennimj 