Interactive Narrative Blog

Interactive Narratives are designed to capture the best of online visual storytelling.  The goal of interactive narratives is to highlight rich-media content, engaging storytelling, and eye-popping design in an environment that fosters interaction, discussion, and learning.  The Born Magazine is an experimental venue site that combines literary arts and interactive media.  Original projects are brought to life through creative collaboration between writers and artists.  It includes several motion and moving images and sound within its pieces.  It is especially interactive with the viewers, as many parts of the site such as the “Shirtless Others” portion of the site, require the viewer to “click the Mako shark and drag the butcher knife to read the story.”  Once the viewer does so, a story about people who are near the ocean and catch one of the biggest sharks in the competition is displayed.  It is a very cool piece, which uses a lot of artistic and creative factors.  It is very original, and it displays the words of the story sentence by sentence, so as the viewer keeps dragging the butcher knife up the shark’s belly, more blood leaks out and more of the story is released and presented to the viewer as well.  It is an interesting tactic and technique, as it keeps the viewer interested and engaged in the site.  Therefore I find this technique to be an artistic merit, which deserves praise and reward, because it is highly successful in that it makes the viewer impatient and want to keep reading on by following the interactive do-it-yourself steps that the site incorporated into its stories.  It is very creative and makes it fun for the viewer to read the story.  It also provides a visual and sound for a better understanding of the story that is being told.  This interactive narrative site consists of several types of rich-media content and includes images of people, animals, places, objects, etc.  It also includes music in the background.  For example, in the “Shirtless Others” story on The Born Magazine, there are seagulls and waves crashing in the background to correspond with the visual beach scene that describes the story.  The software that was mainly used in this interactive narrative site was flash.  The narrative form that is used is extremely interactive with its viewers and readers.  As technology has advanced, digital and distributed interactive narratives are becoming more and more popular.  I think that digital interactive narratives, thanks to new media and digital technologies, allow individuals to approach storytelling from very unique perspectives.  I would say that this piece, “Shirtless Others,” absolutely pushes the limits of traditional narrative and media, as it is very different from any other piece I have seen.  It is very creative and interactive, and uses new technologies and advanced media that traditional narrative and media does not use.  I hope to eventually be using some of these techniques in class, such as creating digital narratives that are interactive pieces with the viewer, which tell a story using flash player.

Here is an upload of an image that illustrates the unities and use of distributed media.  It displays the story about the shark at the competition with the people around as it shows them all standing there by the water with the shark.  It also shows how when you slide the butcher knife up the shark’s belly, more of the story is presented.