2. HYPOTHESIS: The personal narrative has lost the power to hold attention and to communicate emotion because it has become ubiquitous. By taking the traits of flow and presentation from traditional narratives and combining them with the relationships and media of the modern narrative, I aim to develop new tools for individuals to create immersive stories. Author Narrative Audience
3. PERSONAL NARRATIVES Stories people tell - a wedding video, a series of pictures and tales from a vacation or a tweet about a humorous incident at the bar last night. Events and emotions are related, the author is not a professional storyteller.
4. IMPORTANCE -Ubiquitous and easily recordable, they describe a cultural history. -They connect us with new or distant experiences -As a designer, I have the opportunity to invigorate a form of communication. Author Knowledge, Experience, History Narrative
5. LOSS OF POWER Changing modes of production and new media have put the personal narrative in a position where it is less expressive and more difficult to follow. Three factors have contributed: Ubiquity Purpose Format
6. 1: UBIQUITY Content creation and publication have become democratized “Print extends the human body into the space of material production and self representation.” -Marshall McLuhan + +
7. 2: PURPOSE They are created with the knowledge that they will be published. The line between personal story and amateur publishing is blurred.
8. 3: FORMAT New personal narratives take advantage of new media, and are found on many platforms. Length and content are no longer limiting.
9. TRADITIONAL NARRATIVES Homer’s Iliad , is exemplary of the qualities that make these stories immersive: There is narrative flow and a presentation structure .
10. “ ... I use Twitter for really personal things … moments from my love life or … my cats or my family. And it engages lots of different people, so when these people are following you and suddenly you are talking about a torture case … they would suddenly be engaged in this as well.” Mona Seif Egyptian Tweeter, Protester NEW PERSONAL NARRATIVES
11. PROFOUND VS. MUNDANE @jazzon104 it’s the violin track I think :) I love it Sat Apr 2 :2519:15 2011 via web in reply to verdend @MayaGowaily did she have a ponytail? :) Sat Apr 2 19:18:11 2011 via web in reply to MayaGowaily U keep on asking me abt role of women in revolution. My mother & young sister r sleeping #Tahrir after bloody attack of #Egyarmy yesterday Sat Apr 9 19:33:28 2011 via Twitter for Blackberry Blood on the street, #Tahrir square last night SHAME ON THE #EgyArmy Sat Apr 10 10:06:22 2011 via web
12. I aim to adapt the attributes of flow and presentation of traditional, professionally authored stories and combine them with the relationship and media advantages of new personal narratives to produce tools for the creation of immersive personal stories. IMMERSE Re-imagining the personal narrative
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
Notas del editor
My thesis will present the hypothesis that the personal narrative has lost its powers of emotional communication and connection because it has become ubiquitous, And that by taking the traits of narrative flow and presentation structure from the traditional narrative and combining them with the relationship building abilities and multimedia advantages of new personal narratives , I can create new tools or methods for the creating of engaging and immersive personal stories.
What is a personal narrative? They’re stories people tell – a wedding video, a series of images and anecdotes from a vacation or even a tweet about a humorous incident at the bar last night. The purpose and the author are important. They are stories shared primarily with closely related individuals, and they draw from the personal experiences of the author, who is not a professional storyteller.
Why does the personal narrative matter? Well, what could once have been considered idle chatter, or unimportant words between unimportant individuals, can now form a published historical record. Even brief exchanges can cumulatively show new views of events, act as indicators of social conditions, or provide an intimate view of experiences that were once distant from us, physically or emotionally. As a designer, I see an opportunity to take a holistic approach towards improving how stories like this can be communicated.
I say that this form of narrative has lost its power to hold attention and communicate emotion because of three changes in the methods of producing and consuming the personal narrative: Ubiquity, purpose and format.
Ubiquity is a result of the demo-cratization of production and publication tools. Whereas once only important works were printed or disseminated, and it took skill and education to produce them, personal, everyday narratives can now be created and shared with ease. This quote from marshall mcluhan, a professor of literature, shows how the advent of new production tools allowed individuals to represent themselves in new tangible ways.
Secondly, the purpose of the narrative has changed, and this is because these stories are now created with the knowledge that they will be shared, that is, with an audience in mind. This moves the author of the personal narrative closer to the realm inhabited by the professional writer, in which case there is a need for clarity, and the ability to be engaging.
Finally, while they were once limited in format, new narratives take advantage of media such as photography, video, and sound. These works now have few boundaries on medium, length or quality. From the concise (twitter) to the verbose (limitless blog posts), many of these works are now easy to ignore
This recording is of a narrated epic attributed to Homer, The Iliad. It is exemplary of the qualities of immersive traditional narratives. There is a narrative flow, which provides pacing to the story – this relates to how information is arranged within the story, and the sequences of alternating frantic action and quiet lulls. There are contrasts between important events and non-important descriptions that fill out the tale. The presentation is also important, and shows a similar flow, with the formal properties of volume, speed and inflection being modulated. This emphasizes and creates interest through calls for attention and through a manufactured suspense.
New forms of personal narratives have their own advantages too: This quote is Mona Seif talking about the importance of her twitter posts. I use Twitter for really personal things … moments from my love life or … my cats or my family. And it engages lots of different people, so when these people are following you and suddenly you are talking about a torture case … they would suddenly be engaged in this as well
With Mona, we have two kinds of communication – the profound and the mundane. The mundane moments are excerpts of day to day life and take very little time to absorb; they elicit only brief comments from people who know Mona personally. But protest and torture, these generate a more philosophical and heartfelt discussion, where individuals who may not have been following Mona are now drawn to her through a relationship established by friends of friends. When taken in aggregate, these posts form a published personal narrative and also a historical record of culture, politics and war. Notice that narrative flow of the sort produced by Homer is lost because of the time between distinct ideas and the lack of connections between posts. Furthermore, the presentation is also one-dimensional, showing little modulation in form and emphasis. In a traditional narrative such as homer’s, profound ideas are woven through trivial moments to create an immersive experience…but narrative media like this create a RELATIONSHIP with the audience through trivial moments over time, and then suddenly become important with brief moments that are profound. In addition, there are advantages to using different media in providing a more comprehensive story.
By adapting the narrative flow and presentation structures of the traditional narrative and combining them with the personal relationship building advantages and multiple media of new personal narratives, I aim to enable the creation of personal narratives that connect with audiences more intimately while encouraging profundity.
To develop this concept, I aim to tackle multiple approaches I want to consider how the vocabularies and narrative styles of books, movies and recordings can be applied to personal stories, consider perhaps a thesaurus designed specifically for narratives I want to see how non-linearity in long format personal narratives such as social feeds can be made sense of by categorization or by exploiting hypertext to create structure Interleaving different media into one seamless experience will form part of my solution, as a means of creating a continuous, integrated stream of information. I want to consider location specific experiences – new services such as broadcastr allow people to consume audio and text targeted at their current position, and audio tours have long followed this approach to engaging people. And finally, I will consider redesigning methods of showing multiple forms of information simultaneously, in a manner that uses visual cues such as scale, contrast and color to accompany changes in the content of the information itself.
To develop this concept, I aim to tackle multiple approaches I want to consider how the vocabularies and narrative styles of books, movies and recordings can be applied to personal stories, consider perhaps a thesaurus designed specifically for narratives I want to see how non-linearity in long format personal narratives such as social feeds can be made sense of by categorization or by exploiting hypertext to create structure Interleaving different media into one seamless experience will form part of my solution, as a means of creating a continuous, integrated stream of information. I want to consider location specific experiences – new services such as broadcastr allow people to consume audio and text targeted at their current position, and audio tours have long followed this approach to engaging people. And finally, I will consider redesigning methods of showing multiple forms of information simultaneously, in a manner that uses visual cues such as scale, contrast and color to accompany changes in the content of the information itself.
To develop this concept, I aim to tackle multiple approaches I want to consider how the vocabularies and narrative styles of books, movies and recordings can be applied to personal stories, consider perhaps a thesaurus designed specifically for narratives I want to see how non-linearity in long format personal narratives such as social feeds can be made sense of by categorization or by exploiting hypertext to create structure Interleaving different media into one seamless experience will form part of my solution, as a means of creating a continuous, integrated stream of information. I want to consider location specific experiences – new services such as broadcastr allow people to consume audio and text targeted at their current position, and audio tours have long followed this approach to engaging people. And finally, I will consider redesigning methods of showing multiple forms of information simultaneously, in a manner that uses visual cues such as scale, contrast and color to accompany changes in the content of the information itself.
To develop this concept, I aim to tackle multiple approaches I want to consider how the vocabularies and narrative styles of books, movies and recordings can be applied to personal stories, consider perhaps a thesaurus designed specifically for narratives I want to see how non-linearity in long format personal narratives such as social feeds can be made sense of by categorization or by exploiting hypertext to create structure Interleaving different media into one seamless experience will form part of my solution, as a means of creating a continuous, integrated stream of information. I want to consider location specific experiences – new services such as broadcastr allow people to consume audio and text targeted at their current position, and audio tours have long followed this approach to engaging people. And finally, I will consider redesigning methods of showing multiple forms of information simultaneously, in a manner that uses visual cues such as scale, contrast and color to accompany changes in the content of the information itself.
To develop this concept, I aim to tackle multiple approaches I want to consider how the vocabularies and narrative styles of books, movies and recordings can be applied to personal stories, consider perhaps a thesaurus designed specifically for narratives I want to see how non-linearity in long format personal narratives such as social feeds can be made sense of by categorization or by exploiting hypertext to create structure Interleaving different media into one seamless experience will form part of my solution, as a means of creating a continuous, integrated stream of information. I want to consider location specific experiences – new services such as broadcastr allow people to consume audio and text targeted at their current position, and audio tours have long followed this approach to engaging people. And finally, I will consider redesigning methods of showing multiple forms of information simultaneously, in a manner that uses visual cues such as scale, contrast and color to accompany changes in the content of the information itself.