Monday, January 14, 2008

Jill Golick is trying to use the full Internet for storytelling. Story2Oh is an attempt to tell a story through Facebook pages, Twitters, Youtube videos, etc. ... which you, the reader, can access in whatever order you choose. It's like peeking in on your friends' lives as they unfold, only hopefully, more fun and scandalous.

One of the most moving theatrical experiences I ever had was when I was in college. I went to see an adaptation of THE REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST into a sort of play. The creators basically took all the naughty bits out of Proust's very long novel and put them on their feet in a (temporarily empty) house on Hillhouse Avenue in New Haven. The exciting thing artistically was that several scenes would be playing at once, so you could wander around the house and see different things each time you went to the play. (I went twice.)

The difficulty with Alternate Reality Games is there's no narrative, as such. People like to be told a story; it takes more work to discover the story yourself, by poking at the Net. Most people want to watch the detective, not do the detective's work.

But it can be fun to imagine yourself into a world. I was once foolish enough to mount a one-night live-action role-playing game set the night before Camlann, the final battle of the King Arthur saga. Camlann Eve was a month's work for me to put it together, not counting what the thirty or so players did to put together their characters. But I'm glad I did it. It was fun to inhabit that world, just for a night. (Now if only the Wandering Jew had bothered to tell anyone where the Grail was stashed...)

Check out Jill's site, and let us know what you think!

Labels: distribution technology, media

9:57 AM

2 Comments:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3TEG9KbHSU&feature=related

Let's hope you weren't as bad as them.

By  Anonymous, at 3:38 PM  

Never mind my last comment, this tops the cake:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_ekugPKqFw&feature=related

By  Anonymous, at 3:40 PM  

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