Back to basics

And a bit more research on interface design for PDA's. Still having trouble with it...
Interesting article on "Guidelines for handheld mobile device interface design here.
Obviously some more research into Shneiderman's "Goldon Rules of interface design" however this is very limited. For my head here is the list of rules that are applicable to mobile devices:
* Enable frequent users to use shortcuts
* Offer informative feedback
* Design dialogs to yield closure
* Support internal locus of control

Enable Frequent Users to Use Shortcuts
As the frequency of use increases, so does a user's desires to reduce the number of interactions
and to increase the pace of interaction. Because time is often more critical to a mobile device
user. Reducing the number of operations needed to perform regular (i.e., repetitive) tasks is a key factor in the ease of use of mobile devices.

Offer Informative Feedback
For every operator action, there should be some system feedback, such as a beep when pressing a key or an error message for an invalid input value. (This also relates back to reserach carried out a while ago on the timing of page changes. Too long and the user gets bored too short and the user doesn't realise that anything has changed.)

Design Dialogs to Yield Closure
Sequences of actions should be organized into groups with a beginning, middle, and end. Users
should be given the satisfaction of accomplishment and completion, no matter whether they areusing desktop computers or mobile devices.

Support Internal Locus of Control
Users want to be in charge of the system and have the system respond to their actions, rather than feeling that the system is controlling them. Systems should be designed such that users initiate actions rather respond to them. This guideline is applicable both to traditional desktop
applications and mobile device applications.



The limitations of mobile design
"Mobile device interface design is more restrictive than desktop interface design because of relatively limited computing and communication power, smaller platform sizes, an always-changing context, and smaller amounts of user attention" I did at one point reserach Holland and Morse investigated on audio interface that leaves a user’s eyes and hands free for other purposes. However this is going against my need for visual design.

"It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes."

Douglas Adams

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Back to the problem of design. Now I have sorted out the interfaces - well in that they work... and should do the trick and I've spent the week trying to make them look asthetically as pleasing as possible. And as I'm sure were all getting bored of hearing, and I'm certainly bored of typing/thinking/pondering; the screen size, this is the problem. Again. Its just too small to work with. When designing a web page, or an illustration, or whatever, you make the window size whatever size you want, size is no object (over the constraints of the screen size obviously). I keep getting drawn back to how I would design this piece in a perfect world. First off the general design I would make the background fancier - a Victorian style border, torn edges, different papers, materials, animated elements. I would use animated transitions between pages and use more illustration to show this. For the user input screens I would use a typewriter, and have the input sections as an old book - make the paper fly away when you submitted your answer. I would have the question screens with the animated elements also in a book - instead of blunt page changes I would make the viewer turn the pages of the book (yes its been done and is slightly 'passe' but still.. I like it)I would use a time machine a bit more - could have it flying around or teleporting through the pages. Maybe a Doctor Who effect - fuzzy blending with some interference to the picture. The possibility's are endless. I need to think this through more........

Conversation between me and I (Well more like an argument)

So I’ve just come back after having a cheese and tomato sandwich and a cup of strong instant foreign Nescafe coffee (It’s cheaper but I’m sure stronger) after writing the last post. To save time and wastage of worry time, I’ve tried to put into words or thoughts what I’m worried about and tried to resolve them.

So what’s your first worry?
The structuring of the flash document. Up until now I wasn’t quite sure how this worked. As it is Tom’s job to put together the final programme on the IPAQ’s I’ve kind of left this thought behind however it keeps coming back usually late at night. The reason it came back this time was after writing about the hourglass animation.

So how does it work?
Well to begin with I assumed that there would be one long continuous flash document which would work like a normal one with buttons and a navigation system, using Action Script etc. However it came to me while getting the components of the sandwich together on the chopping board – Bread, cheese, Tomato, Pepper that this is not the case. Each hotspot that you walk into will obviously call up a separate SWF, JPEG, WAV, file. There is no need to panic about the programme navigation or coding as it is actually very simple.

So what’s the problem then?
This got me thinking about the remembering part of the game. The toolkit does have simple programming, whether we use this or HTML I am not sure, however the programme does need to remember certain parts. For example did you get all the clues right, did you even try them all, were have you been, etc. It then needs to store the information obviously now in a database. I am not a database kind of person. Especially not making flash work with a database system…… And if this is the case I will also have to make some of the SWF’s have multiple versions. If you have solved this this and this then you get this if not you get this etc.

And what else?
My original idea of the drag and drop for the clues might have to be abandoned also. When you make text an object you are essentially making the text a picture. A picture can no longer have words read out of it. To explain: In Photoshop when you flatten or rasterised text you are essentially flattening it. When you put the text cursor over it you can no longer edit the text; it is now a picture. It works on the same principle as Flash. To allow the letters to be dragged and dropped into the right position you have to make it an object. Therefore Flash will no longer be able to read what it says. IE we won’t be able to put it into a database because there won’t be anything there. Or can it?????

Right…. Well you need to think about that then.
Yes….

So what’s this about the hourglass then?
Well, as I have previously mentioned the hourglass will be on the screen when ever there is nothing else. Originally I wanted it to be true to time at the beginning of the game the sand is all in the top and as the game goes on the sand falls down. As I said there are already problems with the coding, in that I can only do it using JAVA. No idea how this all works on the IPAQ’a, I should but I don’t… However while congratulating myself on the realisation that there will be separate SWF files it dawned on me that to have a consistent time lapse ie one hour, the hourglass would have to be running constantly. Now I might be able to allow the SWF to know when it has being turned off, and therefore re-start at the same point however I do not know how to make the SWF think it has being running the whole time.

Oh dear….
Yes. However this got me thinking that maybe Mobile Bristol can be playing a file the whole time, yet does not display it on the screen the whole time???? I DON’T KNOW………………………………………………..
Ah ha! Tom has just come back and informed me that you can be playing files constantly without them showing. Now I just have to work out how to make the Java work……………………….

Right well what else?
The map. While thinking this through and pondering how to show it on screen I started thinking about how it shows you where you have being. This will all have to be done using multiple flash files. The Mobile toolkit will then have to do all the leg work in knowing where you have been and directing the right SWF to the screen. So I started to think how many SWF files this will entail and I worked out about 25. This does not cause problems in itself; however I’m beginning to worry about the Toolkit that is going to be directing them. Will we be able to do this? Basically without being able to work out Databases and Flash, and the programming on the toolkit were screwed.

Current Investergation

We have decided on a few aspects of the game which is my chosen route of investigation over the next few weeks:

* We need a map for the player to be able to see at any time, or at least some of the time. Due to the constraints of the screen I need to find a way in which the viewer can just view segments of the map. Need to think about the best way in which to achieve this segmentation. As there is no keyboard the usual method of pressing minus and plus cannot be used.
* The screen of the IPAQ needs to be looked at. The size 5.5cm/7.5cm does not leave much to be worked with. The colours will be important as well the contrasts. As the game will be played at night (to reduce sunlight problems, reflections etc) this is also something which might possibly cause issues.
* All of the clues will have to be entered into the programme by the player. This means setting up a ‘password’ style flash page. This in itself is not a problem however the way in which the player will do this is. Again lack of keyboard means that there will have to be another way around this. First thoughts are drag and drop, but then there’s the screen limitations etc.
* The Hourglass animation which will be on the screen when nothing else is, to show the passing of the time and to remind the player that there is a limited time span. Have figured out how to time it so it can last an hour however it relies on JAVA which I’m not sure the mobile Flash can support. Have no idea where this information can be found. Another way would be to not use JAVA and find another way around the time issue. A clock would be simply, however the animation of the sand running out is causing me sleepless nights. I might have to resort to just using a simple timer/clock which is going against the original design. Or simply having an animation of the hourglass which bares no resemblance to the actual passing of time. Every 15 minutes a ‘real’ timer will flash up as well as a voice file telling you that you only have such and such time left.
* Illustrations of the ‘other reality’. Due to the screen being so small, and the design verses sound issue which I will go into again at a later date, there is only going to be a few drawn illustrations. Although I agree with this (The viewer can hardly run around and be staring at the screen at the same time) I would have preferred less movement and more design and narrative but that’s just me! Most people will be interested in the puzzles and not how it looks (How people disappoint me…) However going back to the main issue; these will be drawn from taking the surrounding landscape and changing the buildings and the way it looks. I need to research this and decide what is going to be in these drawings. Preferably I would take my inspiration from the narrative, but the narrative is not going to cover aspects like this. So for example we want an illustration of the docks while you are walking along. The river will be there and the walkway but everything else can change. Have being toying with a few ideas. Pirate ship on the river, boats coming and going (easy to animate) People walking past etc (Mostly using stop frame animation – Simple drawings put in a sequence to represent time passing) Anyway need to research this.
* Film aspects: we won’t be filming the people speaking for a while however I want to look into effects to make them blend in more with the illustrations. Was very very briefly toying with the idea of rotroscoping them, which would be great, but having already done this before, and nearly driving myself mad in the process, plus there simply isn’t enough time, this has being abandoned. But like I mentioned I would still like the style to be vaguely similar. The original idea was to have them filmed on a mobile phone. This was to give the viewer the sense of the urgency in which they were made and the general DIY feel of the game. I would still like to keep this idea- however make slight changes so it can fit in more with the general design. Possibly just a Victorian border or simply a ‘browning’ or sepia mask to keep the colour schemes generally the same.

This is where I have got to. All this work, apart from the illustrations will hopefully be resolved in the next few weeks. Once I have gathered rough SWF files of all my ideas I will try them out on the IPAQ and see how it all works.

I will report my findings.

Illustration style: experiments

The Hourglass: Has been made into an animation, although is not time set as the only way I can figure out how to do that involves Java and I'm not convinced the hand held can accomidate this....


Illustration style of people: I have currently being messing around with the levels of colour, in the next few days I will put them on the IPAQ and determine which ones are the easiest to see at night time, the effect of street lights of the screen (reflections etc).

LIFE A users manual: Georges Perec

The ultimate truth of jigsaw puzzles:

"Despite appearances, puzzling is not a solitary game: every move the puzzler makes, the puzzle maker has made before; every piece the puzzler picks up, and picks up again, and studies and strokes, every combination he tries, and tries a second time, every blunder and every insight, each hope and each discouragement have all been designed, calculated, and decided by the other."

A wonderful book and its made me cross. Such an amazing idea and although the idea is not a new one its still blows my mind! It uses the 'Knights Tour' which I did look at last year for my fairy tale project. I'm still at the moment looking into this as it is how I plan to write my interactive novel but more about that when I finish this MA. The Knight's Tour is a mathematical problem involving a knight on a chessboard. The knight is placed on the empty board and, moving according to the rules of chess, must visit each square exactly once. There are several billion solutions to the problem, of which about 122,000,000 have the knight finishing on a square from which it attacks the starting square. Such a tour is described as closed. Otherwise the tour is open Many variations on this topic have been studied by mathematicians, including Euler, over the centuries using:

• differently sized boards
• two-player games based on this idea
• problems using slight variations on the way the knight moves.
  

The pattern made by a Knight's Tour has often been used as a literary constraint. The earliest instance of this is found in Rudrata's Kavyalankara written during the 9th century. (Wiki)

Obviously Alice through the looking glass is a fine example although I'm not sure if it would be under the rules of the knights tour. Alice is simply a chess game played out with narrative, I did recently recreate the game to see if it would work and it does. Another idea which I'm jelous of....And along the same lines as Alice, Italo Calvino The castle of crossed Destinies - My favourite of Calvinos (Apart from his short stories) Which is written using tarot cards. The narrator of the book is a traveler who arrives at an enchanted castle where all who enter are struck mute. After a silent dinner, the host spreads the Visconti-Sforza Tarot deck on the table and the guests lay out cards as a means of relating their adventures and telling their life stories. The Tavern of Crossed Destinies is Part 2 of this book. The device is the same - mute travelers who tell their stories with tarot cards, this time using the Tarot de Marseilles by Grimaud. Instead of laying their cards out in rows, they arrange them in irregular blocks with much overlap from one story to the next. As you can see there is scope for this to be made into an interactive narrative or at least use the idea of the cards - tarot or not tarot. Amazing.

The Hourglass

As the game is an hour long I have been thinking of how to show the players time running out. I came up with the hour glass - known as the hour glass as it was difficult to make one that could go on longer then an hour! Weirdly after a bit of research they were actually invented the same time as the mecanical clock. They can only be used as a basic means of telling the time. If you were to mark off five minutes on the hourglass each time you ran it, it would be slightly different. They can only tell you when the hour is up.

"Two technologies, one simple, one complex, running side by side -- the clock making a continuum of time, the hourglass segmenting it -- the clock speaking of timelessness, the hourglass showing us finality -- the clock evoking things celestial, the hourglass reminding us of base earth. They are Yin and Yang"


The hourglass, whose sands run out, was a thing of this base earth. It became a metaphor for the running-out-of-sands we all inevitably face. It became, and it remains, a universal symbol of death. This is interesting because I've been thinking of using one in the mechanical heart also. The persons life expectancy dependent on your class, IQ etc is all set when the heart is first placed inside the person. This can be terminated at any time - a simple flick of a switch and thats it your gone. Within our story the rebals have infiltrated there hearts they are no longer on the system.

Drawing of the mechanical heart - research

Am currently trying to design the mechanical heart. I envisage cogs, hammers, levers pulleys some sort of clock work or maybe an hour glass? Victorian obviously! Would like to animate it in Flash to have as part of the introduction while the GPS is loading. Really need to have the narrative now to be able to start properly.... Designing when you don;t fully know what your designing for is tricky. But I can work on aspects of the animation which I know will be in there. Have started on the logo design as well as the general design. The characters will have to be done at a later date when the narrative is fully constructed and the relevant parts are split up into their relevant sections. How many drawings will there be? How many animations? How much written text? How much video? How much will need to be on one page or screen? Audio how much written text will images go with this also - will they be imperative the story or merely an extra should the viewer take the time to find them? Hidden parts? Extra bits of information for the more enquisative? The website? How much back information? The list is endless....

Neptune/Poseidon

Prehistory

In Greek mythology, Poseidon (Greek: Ποσειδών) was the god of the sea, as well as horsesearthquakes. He figured as Rodon in Illyrian, Nethuns in Etruscan, and Neptune in Roman mythology. and, as "Earth-Shaker", of

In Mycenean culture, Poseidon's importance was greater than that of Zeus. At Pylos he is the chief god, if surviving Linear B clay tablets can be trusted; the name PO-SE-DA-WO-NE (Poseidon) occurs with greater frequency than does DI-U-JA (Zeus). A feminine variant, PO-SE-DE-IA, is also found, indicating the existence of a now-forgotten consort goddess. Tablets from Pylos record sacrificial goods destined for "the Two Queens and Poseidon" and to "the Two Queens and the King". The most obvious identification for the "Two Queens" is with Demeter and Persephone, or their precursors, goddesses who were not associated with Poseidon in later periods. Poseidon is already identified as "Earth-Shaker"— E-NE-SI-DA-O-NE— in Mycenaean Knossos ^[1], a powerful attribute where earthquakes had accompanied the collapse of the Minoan palace-culture. In the heavily sea-dependent Mycenean culture, no connection between Poseidon and the sea has yet surfaced; among the Olympians it was determined by lot that he should rule over the sea (Hesiod, Theogony 456): the god preceded his realm.

Demeter and Poseidon's names are linked in one Pylos tablet, where they appear as PO-SE-DA-WO-NE and DA-referred to by the epithets Enosichthon, Seischthon and Ennosigaios, all meaning "earth-shaker" and referring to his role in causing earthquakes. Poseidon was a major civic god of several cities: in Athens, he was second only to Athena in importance; while in Corinth and many cities of Magna Graecia he was the chief god of the polis.

According to Pausanias, Poseidon was one of the caretakers of the Oracle at Delphi before Olympian Apollo took it over. Apollo and Poseidon worked closely in many realms: in colonization, for example, Apollo provided the authorization to go out and settle from Delphi, while Poseidon watched over the colonists on their way, and provided the lustral water for the foundation-sacrifice. Xenophon's Anabasis describes a groups of Spartan soldiers singing to Poseidon a paean - a kind of hymn normally sung for Apollo.

Like Dionysus and the Maenads, Poseidon also caused certain forms of mental disturbance. One Hippocratic text says that he was blamed for certain types of epilepsy.^[2]

Homeric Hymn to Poseidon

The hymn to Poseidon included among the Homeric Hymns is a brief invocation, a seven-line introduction that addresses the god as both "mover of the earth and barren sea, god of the deep who is also lord of Helicon and wide Aegae^[3], and specificies his two-fold nature as an Olympian: "a tamer of horses and a saviour of ships."

Role in society

Sailors prayed to Poseidon for a safe voyage, sometimes drowning horses as a sacrifice. In his benign aspect, Poseidon created new islands and offered calm seas. When offended or ignored, he struck the ground with his trident and caused chaotic springs, earthquakes, drownings and shipwrecks.

In art

Poseidon's chariot was pulled by a hippocampus or horses that could ride on the sea. He was associated with dolphins and three-pronged fish spears (tridents).

He lived in a palace on the ocean floor, made of coral and gems.

In Rome

Neptune was worshiped by the Romans primarily as a horse god, Neptune Equester, patron of horse-racing. He had a temple near the race tracks in Rome (built in 25 BC), the Circus Flaminius, as well as one in the Campus Martius, where on July 23, the Neptunalia was observed

Have been doing some research on Neptune. Am currently working on the logo, and design of the piece. Wanted to know what he was excitly. Obviousy taken from Wikipeda so not the most reliable but its somewhere to start.

Images will be posed soon

I'm not shallow

Thought I should mention what I intend this thing to look like. It being my main concern.
So Victorian. Maybe a bit of Edward Gorey thrown in, in that I mean maybe keep traditional dress or some aspects of tradictional dress so I could have a skateboarder drawn in a victorian style with a cap on but still keep aspects of Victorian-ness.

I want to look into Victorian typography and also there graphics. Due to my interest of books this is where I started.



The black and white line drawing that cunjures Victorian in mind was mainly down to the cost of producing in colour. "As printing developed from a hand craft to a technology during the Victorian era, so book illustration also changed to satisfy the demands of a growing readership eager for 'thousands of copies to be multiplied without any deterioration'." Images in books became a central feature of Victorian culture, and today we still learn from there typography and design. They were at once prestigious and popular, a kind of entertainment, but also a place for pondering fundamental questions about history, geography, language, time, commerce, design, and vision itself.



By the late nineteenth century the process relief line block could achieve a deeper black and purer white than any obtainable previously in the hand press era. Its often easy to forget the different styles that they used. The problem is, is that I want people to instantly recognise that it is Victorian. It will play a large part in setting the scene for the game - Victorian England, Fog, Haze, Smoke, Industry, Slavery, The Rich vs the Poor etc.

"Start at the beginning"

Right need to start doing something first off we need to decide what needs to be done and then in what order, will be making a Gant chart as instructed, but this is different if you don't know where to begin.
Things to be done}
GAME:-
Narrative
Interactivity
Interface
Design
Gaming
Codes/puzzles
Location
IPAQS
Sensors, GPS, RFID, Infa Red
Speech

WEBSITE:-

Design
Structure
Content
Separate puzzles?
Links to games
Databases/HML
Flash?
Interactivity
Video?
Speech?

After talking through things today we've got to start on the structure. Once we have this we can move onto the other parts. Obviously my concern is the narrative. Breaking it up so that it works. One thing were thinking of is IF statements. However I kind of feel that this cheating. This isn't working out the interactivity, its simply programming to make it all work. The structure works in triangles. Each point of the triangle is a part of the narrative or a clue. You have to make up the triangles in order to make the final shape. The viewer will be shown there path as they walk around. This will become clearer once I post the map with the triangles on it. The problem were having is that depending on your path you might complete three or four triangles at the same time. This will mean that your bombarded with narrative and clues. We don't want this.

Notes to start things off

Right things are going to be differ rent this year. No point thinking that this blog can be used to show my research mainly, and politely because people don't have time to read it..... So it will be used for me to write on and get my ideas across to myself. This way I can cut and paste when I need something for my sketch book, or essays or reports. Also to keep websites that have been and will be again useful. Will also keep notes to myself on it, rather then sticky notes which fall off things and get stuck to the bottom of my shoe, and generally get ignored, or my diary which again gets ignored..... Or my various "Things to do" notebooks.... Or my Calender......

Conversation between Me and I

So what have you been thinking about?
I've been thinking about the problems that a joint project might create

In what way?
The problem of basically creating 2 separate projects essentially from one. I'm worried that were both be doing the same things.... It will get messy and will be hard for us to prove or differentiate which parts or sections that we personally have done.

Any ideas on how to get around this?
Well, I need to talk this through with some people, but I'm thinking that Tom gives me a brief. I'm basically being Sub-contracted. The project is Tom's idea - I will be visualizing the idea.

So you won't come up with any ideas?
No, this is the problem. I've got ideas to help with the narrative. I've studied interactive narrative/modular narrative/non linear narrative/ hypertext narrative. It is in fact my primary interest and reasons for doing this MA

So why aren't you doing an interactive narrative then!?!
Well there's a reason for that! I did an interactive narrative for my first year project which I thoroughly enjoyed. However I'm no writer... I used fairytales last time which really worked.. What I'd like to do is use the work of Madeleine De Scubery but what with it being about 72 volumes, in French and only available at the Bodleian Library this can't happen not at the moment anyways. But going back to this project I want to feel like I've accomplished more then a website essentially. Combining narrative and a new technology is exciting and will stretch me more then a website could.

So why this project?
I can combine narrative, illustration, design, web-design yet stretch myself on a technical level using databases, GPS and IPAQS.

So why not do the project yourself, in that I mean on your own?
I consider myself a designer I'm interested in aesthetics. When I started this course this was my aim - to work on a joint project, let someone else worry about the nitty gritty and I can draw and illustrate things! This way I get to use an interesting technology, learn how to design for a new medium but not let my slight lack of technical skills hold me back. I always find with new technology's that there made purely to use a new technology, they have great ideas but to put it simply look crap.... As I mentioned on a review on the bath abbey exerpition the idea was great you walked in front of screens and videos would play - the characters would turn and look at you etc. This was all very well but the design was awful, The idea behind these videos was awful, in sort the whole concept of the project was.. Awful. We want to make something which yes is playing around with a relatively new process and medium but how it looks will be just as important.

Starting things off - 2nd year final project.

Neptune’s Trident: The project title
Brief Overview: 120 years ago inventor Moses Nebo (anagram) invented a time machine which went wrong. Splitting reality into three. A group in the other reality is trying to bind ours. This would lead to our reality slowing down, stopping, and then running backwards. There are spies in our reality, but also a group of us in the other. There are 1 hour windows to communicate/ help. Clues, puzzles, anagrams feature heavily.
Group Project: Myself and Tom Bennet
What it is and Aims: To create a fully functioning interactive game to last for one hour/or series of one hour games to be played in the centre of Bristol on IPAQS. Also to create a website/interactive novel linked to the game.

Websites

Never- ending story

Assignment six:

Make a proposal for the future development of your practise in which you identify the following:

Key themes and interests.
An articulation of the domain in which you are working with reference to selected practitioners.
Proposed strategies for the development of your work
Bibliography


"A book is more than a verbal structure or series of verbal structures; it is the dialogue it establishes with its reader and the intonation it imposes upon his voice and the changing and durable images it leaves in his memory. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships."

Borges -- Essay: "A Note on (toward) Bernard Shaw"


“One of my key interests is what happens to texts when they are put on the Internet and “The effect of new media on the transmission of various narrative forms.” For example Fairy Tales, Comics, and ghost stories - the list is endless. Within narrative, the Internet represents a return to the manuscript style (or even oral culture) where the reader is expected to interact rather then just be a passive recipient. The examples I gave previously are all forms of storytelling that require a certain level of interactivity, for example when reading comics you navigate your way through them, in an almost intuitive way. Fairy Tales and Ghost Stories started as an oral form of storytelling and weren’t in fact recorded until the late 18th century when obviously their style, and therefore meaning, were changed and subverted. New Media and the enhanced ability to interact with the piece in front of you has again changed meaning and context, and imposes questions on whether these ‘new’ versions have dramatically changed these examples as well as questions on the best way in which to demonstrate and transcribe these narrative and illustrated texts.”

This was and is my proposal for future research and practise. Along the way I have researched various practitioners in the field of narrative, immersion, hypertext, digital storytelling, and illustration with symbolism. Narrative has been my key field of interest for reasons I’m going to illustrate.

At the start of this project I set myself the afore-mentioned question: “The effect of new media on the transmission of various narrative forms” in particular fairytales, and it was from here that I branched out and tried to see what other subsections I would need to examine in order to answer this question. These became my five criteria and have moderately stayed the same. These are: Narrative, Immersion, Illustration, Navigation, and Design. These five criteria are very diverse and it was hard to focus on one without forgetting the others. As this evaluation is intended to review what I have been pursuing in the last few months, I feel it important to state my dissatisfaction at having to create these criteria. Within all of these words that I have chosen there are sub categories leading off into other categories having their own sub categories.

My first port of call was narrative, this being the densest of my criteria as well as my working practise, one of the subcategories being non-linear narrative or modular narrative or, per say, “normal” narrative. I’ve always found the art of constructing a good narrative a hard one. Maybe, not being a writer, I find it quite overwhelming how people manage to achieve this successfully. To add into the mix a non-linear narrative is particularly difficult and a hard thing to get one’s head around. Writers I have looked at include theorists as well as practitioners including Madeleine De Scuderie, Hester Pulter, Borges, Edgar Ellan Poe, Scott McCloud, with theorists such as Murrey, Manovich, Miller, Hillman Curtis, Susan Miller, Racheal Greene, James Elkins and Christiane Paul. Most of these were just for the non-linear narratives, interesting narratives, and theories on narrative not just non-linear ones, and how to get narrative onto the web, although some were reused for my other criteria. I also had to examine specifically fairytale writers and theorists to help me with my actual working practise. These include: Basile (including various translators of his work), Grimm, Perrault, Angela Carter, Apuleus, Kenneth Graham, Arthur Conan Doyle, Brian Froud his writings, theorists; Marina Warner, Vladimir Propp, and Max Luthi. As you can see, there are numerous writers’ and critics’ works explored, and as all of these have been mentioned throughout my research journal, I do not feel that it is imperative to discuss them here. I will include specifically the artefacts and writings that I looked at in my bibliography, along with any practitioners that I have neglected to mention here.

For my project of creating an interactive fairytale, I used the work of Basile fairly extensively. I looked at various translations of his work, leading me to my navigation and narrative structure. I found four translations of Basiles work, all of them very different in content and meaning. I derived my narrative structure by using a linear narrative combining multiple versions as the way in which the user gets from start to finish. The idea is that you still travel in a linear fashion, however by navigating yourself through the various versions yourself, almost editing the text according to how you feel you would like the story to progress. For example, you might start at a grittier Basile version of a fairytale, and then decide you want something a bit lighter for a while and travel down the Grimms’ version of events. Towards the end of the narrative you might wish for a bit more fantasy and imagination so you travel into Perrault’s version. As you are creating the same fairytale, the beginning is always the beginning and the end is always the end, how you get there is your choice. From reading theorists’ work, as well as reading every single fairytale that I could get my hands on, I began notice the apparent migration of characters from one fairytale to another. For example, the wicked stepmother originally started off as a wicked wife. In the original Perrault version of Sleeping Beauty it does not end when the heroine wakes up but the story continues, with the evil step-mother of the prince trying to kill her to reclaim her son. However, in the preceding Basile version (which is the one Perrault, Grimm, Walt Disney etc. use) it is in fact the wife of the prince who tries to kill her. It is plausible that in later versions it was deemed too risky to have bigamy within these tales, and so this character was changed to a step-mother. But it gets more complicated then that! In the Grimm version we do not see this chain of events as it ends before all of this can happen. But Grimm, liking this ‘evil step-mother’ character decided to put her into Cinderella, in which the original Basile version does not contain. FOOTNOTE: SOURCE

The central idea of the project became to combine Vladimir Propp’s observations on character and storyline, while showing the migrating characters from the various versions. So, you could have all versions of all the fairytales. All the narratives could be based on the characters, where a character changes or metamorphoses into a different one, the current fairytale would change. I decided against this due to its prohibitive complexity but it is an idea I would like to go back to and extend. Not necessarily just within fairytales, but as an idea for another type of interactive narrative. The idea that an interactive narrative can still have a linear structure and be successful is what I am most pleased with, and this idea I will take with me for my concluding practical project, and is what I have gained from this module personally.

I’ve continually looked at what is available on the web in terms of interactive narrative and one thing struck me: the type of narrative that is used. Writers in this genre often (and I say this with caution, as not always) use a very ‘poetic’ type of prose, (this could lead me on to a discussion of whether poetry is narrative - something which has always been a bone of contention amongst theorists - but I will resist). The prose can be obscure and/or very confusing (I sometimes suspect, in a hope to make you not notice the bad narrative flow!) and, using a terrible expression, “airy fairy”. I do not like this type of prose (not in books, never mind on the web) and this was something I wanted to work against. I like fantasy, I like to escape, and this was my reason for choosing fairytales, even if it would give me problems later on.

How I am going to progress with this I am as yet unsure. As I have mentioned previously in this journal, Madelaine De Scuderies ideas on narrative are what I really want to research, explore and ultimately “copy”. She used fantasy, and the relationships between the chapters that you decided to read was what led you to your own personal ending. This really fascinates me and if the funding was available, I would like to get hold of a copy to put on the web. Unfortunately, I do not think that this is possible.

Next I looked at “navigation” and I will combine this with my “design” criteria, and as I have already mentioned this I will be brief. The navigation of my piece comes from the narrative, which is how it should be. By researching fairytales, and reading a great deal of them, I came up with my navigation system. Although I am not completely happy with it, and as of yet am not sure if it really works, it has certainly led me into how I will complete my next project. The design came from the structure, generally speaking. I wanted the navigational design to be part of the piece. I didn’t want the way the user interacts with the piece to be an after thought from the design point of view. Again from reading, researching, and looking I noticed that navigation structures were often on the outside of the image or words. In contrast, I wanted and I feel that I have achieved, the design of the navigation to fit with the rest of the illustrations and text. It is an integral part of the piece.

For future study I will go back and look at more ways in which to design navigation, specifically looking at Scott McCloud, whose ideas on interactive comics I did not fully explore. I want to spend time going through his online comics and working out the parts that really work and the parts that don’t. Although he has written a book, which I have read, outlining his theories and ideas, I feel that the only way to implement his ideas into my own projects is by experimenting with what works and what doesn’t. Like Vladimir Propp’s writings on structure, some ideas work in practice and some don’t and I don’t wish to use an idea just because it has been written down: sometimes these ideas work in theory but not in practice. By using these ideas I will be able to see how to progress my own ideas on navigation, design, and navigational design.

Illustration is quite a small part of my research conducted so far. I have looked at artists such as Paula Rego, who specifically looked at fairytales for a series of portraits. I like her rather “dirty” analysis of them, they’re modern yet still true to the tale she is wishing to depict. This was something which I wanted to do on my own illustrations and it was interesting to see how she achieved this through body language and expression. Other artists such as Kiki Smith, Terry Winderling, Brian Froud and Alan Lee also look at myth and fairytales.
Immersion is also a key part of my research, and something which I am going to continue to develop;

Hypertext systems should take about 1/4 second to move from one place to another. If the delay is longer, people may be distracted; if the delay is much longer, people will stop using the system. If the delay is much shorter, people may not realize that the display has changed
Arkinsons Law.

As you can see there is a very fine line in keeping the user stimulated and happy. Came across Arkinsons Law quite late on in my project, and although it was written in 1993 which is terrably out of date I still think its important to look at in more detail. I think this gives me a reason to learn databases and how to impliment them into Flash. Databases can carry much more imformation, and allow you to have a quicker retrieval of the information. At the moment my interactive fairytale runs much too slow and I wouldn’t even wait for it. This is my key problem which has to be addressed for my final project.

My proposed strategies are as follows:-

(1.) To Learn HML and Databases.
(2.) To read more theory on navigational design, as well as experimenting with some of Scott McClouds theorys and ideas.
(3.) Completely finish my interactive fairytale and get it published at the “Eastgate Serious Hypertext” website
(4.) Start to write my own narrative based on ideas by Madeleine De Scuderie and Vladimir Propp.
(5.) Research Mobile technologys and the implications that this will have on the general design of the page.


Bibliography: Key texts and articles that I have looked at. Throughout my online journal I have also stated other sources and images.

Books:

(1.) “The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm”(Norton Critical Editions). Jack Zipes.
(2.) “From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers.” Marina Warner.
(3.) “The Classic Fairy Tales: Texts, Criticism” (Norton Critical Editions). Maria M. Tatar.
(4.) “The Blue Fairy Book” (Dover Storybooks for Children). Complied by Andrew Lang
(5.) “The Complete Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales”. Brothers Grimm
(6.) “Faeries” (25th Anniversary Edition). by Brian Froud (Illustrator), Alan Lee (Illustrator)
(7.) “Paula Rego” (Paperback). John McEwen.
(8.) “Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace” (Paperback). Janet Murrey
(9.) “Digital Storytelling : A Creator's Guide to Interactive Entertainment.” Carolyn Handler Miller.
(10.) “Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling” Chris Crawford
(11.) “Interactive Storytelling: Techniques for 21st Century Fiction”
Andrew Glassner
(12.) “Digital Art (World of Art).” Christine Paul
(13.) “Complete Tales & Poems (Vintage)”: Edgar Allan Poe


Websites:

New Media Lab:- http//nml.ru.ac.za
Wikipedia:- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
Fad interest:- http://www.fadresearch.com/about.html
Interactivity pdf:- http://dag.idi.ntnu.no/interactivity.pdf
Scott McCloud:- http://www.scottmccloud.com
A 24 hour digital comic:- http://castlezzt.net/24hourcomic.cfm
A 24 hour digital comic:- http://members.aol.com/opheliab/24hour1.html
Online comics:- http://www.webcomicsnation.com
Fairytales:- http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/index.html
Word Power:- http://www.word-power.co.uk/catalogue/0748617701
Illustrated Borges:- http://www.themodernword.com/borges/kernan/kernan.html
Serious hypertext:- http://www.eastgate.com/Guidelines.html
Flash help:- http://www.flashkit.com/index.shtml
Ernest W Adams:- http://www.designersnotebook.com/
Paula Rego:- http://library.thinkquest.org/17016/frames.htm
Janet Murrey Links:- http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/~murray/
Neil Gaimon:- http://www.neilgaimon.com
Madeleine de Scudery’s:- http://www.femspec.org/samples/salon.html
Lev Manovich:- http://www.manovich.com
Kiki Smith:- http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2003/kikismith/
Mark Stephan Meadows:- http://bore.com/
Ed Rusca:- http://www.crownpoint.com/html/home.html
Edward Gorey:- http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/mystery/gorey.html
Vladimir Propp:- http://www.brown.edu/Courses/FR0133/Fairytale_Generator/propp.html
Borges:- http://www.themodernword.com/borges/
Virginia Woolf:- http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb1455/is_200505/ai_n15061943
Doris Lessing:- http://lessing.redmood.com/
Dave McKean:- http://www.mckean-art.co.uk/
Brian Froud:- http://www.worldoffroud.com/index.html
Terri Winderling:- http://www.endicott-studio.com/bios/bioterri.html
Marina Warner:- http://www.marinawarner.com/stories.html
Ted Nelson:- http://xanadu.com.au/ted/
Alan Key:- http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/GASCH.KAY.HTML
HML help:- http://www.3schools.com/index.asp
Databases help:- http://www.oreilly.com/
Macromedia:- http://www.macromedia.com
Six principles of narrative:- http://www.kleene-star.net/sixprinciples/authorship/index.html
Use of narrative in interactive design:- http://www.kleene-star.net/sixprinciples/authorship/index.html
Interactive narrative podcast a look at technology:- http://www.odeo.com/channel/6803/view
The book is dead:- http://www.press.umich.edu/pdf/0472111140-01.pdf
Authoring tool for non linear narratives:- http://www.press.umich.edu/pdf/0472111140-01.pdf
Bad hypertext novel:- http://www.unknownhypertext.com/trip.htm
Network performance:- http://www.maryflanagan.com/articles/navigatingnarrative.pdf
Database of virtual art:- http://www.virtualart.at/common/recentDocument.do
IN-DUCE, INTRO-DUCE:- http://www.in-duce.net/intro/
Designer:- http://www.soulbath.com/main.html
Designer:- http://www.hardcandymovie.com/experience/
The dark crystal official comics adaptation:- http://www.lauraknauth.com/MovieCollectibles/Marvel.html
Fairytale narratives:- http://www.public.iastate.edu/%7Elhagge/newpage3.htm
The Endicott studio journal:- http://www.endicott-studio.com/
Fairytale research:- http://www.skyehidesigns.com/mainbook.html
Tate gallery:- http://www.skyehidesigns.com/mainbook.htmlBasile fairytales:- http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/pentamerone/index.html

Force of totality revisited

Have previously mentioned Poes force of totality but I found this extract of the article particually interesting:


Here then the poem may be said to have had its beginning- at the end where all works of art should begin- for it was here at this point of my preconsiderations that I first put pen to paper in the composition of the stanza:

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil- prophet still, if bird or devil! By that Heaven that bends above us- by that God we both adore- Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore- Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore." Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

I composed this stanza, at this point, first that, by establishing the climax, I might the better vary and graduate, as regards seriousness and importance, the preceding queries of the lover, and secondly, that I might definitely settle the rhythm, the metre, and the length and general arrangement of the stanza, as well as graduate the stanzas which were to precede, so that none of them might surpass this in rhythmical effect. Had I been able in the subsequent composition to construct more vigorous stanzas I should without scruple have purposely enfeebled them so as not to interfere with the climacteric effect.