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The metamorphosis of the storybook
CULTURELAB Storytelling 2.0
Morphing the storybook As stories migrate from print to screen, novel narrative possibilities are transforming the art of telling a story and ourselves with it, says Amanda Gefter
STORIES have become synonymous with books so it is easy to forget that books are just one technology for storytelling. With digital technologies ubiquitous and growing more sophisticated will the book simply fade away? It’s hard to say, but storytelling is certainly undergoing a dramatic makeover, with socalled electronic literature paving the way. Over the next six pages, writers, scientists and artists consider the future of the story. You might think electronic literature comes in the form of an e-book you download onto your iPad or Kindle but e-books are just print texts reproduced in digital form. True electronic literature could not exist within the pages of a printed book. Indigenous to the computer, it is often written in its natural language of computer code. The Electronic Literature Organization describes writer Talan Memmott’s work, for example, as “a creole of human language and code... a work in which the functioning and malfunctioning of the interface itself carries as much meaning as the words and images that compose the text”. Hypertext fiction, for instance, is a nonlinear story that the reader navigates through by clicking from link to link, becoming an active participant in the storytelling. Another sub-genre is interactive fiction (IF): in which a computer program narrates the story through text and the reader drives the plot by typing in commands. In digital fiction, hypertext may be embellished with multimedia components such as sound, graphics and animation, creating a unique experience quite unlike traditional genres of literature, music or film. The result is stories that can change over time, written, as electronic writer Andy Campbell 52 | NewScientist | 13 November 2010
puts it, on a “liquid canvas”. Electronic literature even moves beyond the 2D screen, flourishing in so-called Cave virtual reality simulators (see page 55). Inside the Caves, readers equipped with motion-tracking devices can wander through and interact with 3D narratives. These new technologies have the potential to change our understanding of narrative itself. Nick Montfort, an IF writer and professor of digital media at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is creating software that allows IF programs to manipulate narrative in increasingly complex ways. Embedding every possible iteration of narrative structure into computer code requires him to formalise narrative theory in an unprecedented way, perhaps leading to narrative structures we have yet to imagine. E-literature may even change the way we see ourselves. Neuroscientist John Bickle explains how our brains create our sense of self through narrative (see opposite). As cognitive scientist George Lakoff puts it, “Narratives… are instantiated physically in our brains. We are not born with them, but we start growing them soon, and as we acquire the deep narratives, our synapses change and become fixed.” Will new narratives lead to new selves? It remains to be seen how storytelling will change – and change us – as literature inhabits these technologies. But one thing’s for sure: it’s an exciting time to be telling a story. n
Books unbound: freed of paper and print the stories will change, and us with them
Morphing the storybook As stories migrate from print to screen, novel narrative possibilities are transforming the art of telling a story and ourselves with it, says Amanda Gefter
STORIES have become synonymous with books so it is easy to forget that books are just one technology for storytelling. With digital technologies ubiquitous and growing more sophisticated will the book simply fade away? It’s hard to say, but storytelling is certainly undergoing a dramatic makeover, with socalled electronic literature paving the way. Over the next six pages, writers, scientists and artists consider the future of the story. You might think electronic literature comes in the form of an e-book you download onto your iPad or Kindle but e-books are just print texts reproduced in digital form. True electronic literature could not exist within the pages of a printed book. Indigenous to the computer, it is often written in its natural language of computer code. The Electronic Literature Organization describes writer Talan Memmott’s work, for example, as “a creole of human language and code... a work in which the functioning and malfunctioning of the interface itself carries as much meaning as the words and images that compose the text”. Hypertext fiction, for instance, is a nonlinear story that the reader navigates through by clicking from link to link, becoming an active participant in the storytelling. Another sub-genre is interactive fiction (IF): in which a computer program narrates the story through text and the reader drives the plot by typing in commands. In digital fiction, hypertext may be embellished with multimedia components such as sound, graphics and animation, creating a unique experience quite unlike traditional genres of literature, music or film. The result is stories that can change over time, written, as electronic writer Andy Campbell 52 | NewScientist | 13 November 2010
puts it, on a “liquid canvas”. Electronic literature even moves beyond the 2D screen, flourishing in so-called Cave virtual reality simulators (see page 55). Inside the Caves, readers equipped with motion-tracking devices can wander through and interact with 3D narratives. These new technologies have the potential to change our understanding of narrative itself. Nick Montfort, an IF writer and professor of digital media at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is creating software that allows IF programs to manipulate narrative in increasingly complex ways. Embedding every possible iteration of narrative structure into computer code requires him to formalise narrative theory in an unprecedented way, perhaps leading to narrative structures we have yet to imagine. E-literature may even change the way we see ourselves. Neuroscientist John Bickle explains how our brains create our sense of self through narrative (see opposite). As cognitive scientist George Lakoff puts it, “Narratives… are instantiated physically in our brains. We are not born with them, but we start growing them soon, and as we acquire the deep narratives, our synapses change and become fixed.” Will new narratives lead to new selves? It remains to be seen how storytelling will change – and change us – as literature inhabits these technologies. But one thing’s for sure: it’s an exciting time to be telling a story. n
Books unbound: freed of paper and print the stories will change, and us with them