May 10 & 11 5pm-9pm
Spring Show 2005
721 Broadway
at Waverly Place
4th Floor
South Elevators
New York, NY 10003
For additional
information email
itp.inquiries@nyu.edu
or call 212.998.1880
| Browse-Video | ||
|---|---|---|
| Author(s): | Christopher Cummings | |
| Instructor: | Rushkoff, Douglas Even, Tirtza Sung, Christopher |
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| Class: | Storytelling for Active & Interactive Media Video Art Dynamic Web Development |
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| URL: | http://stage.itp.nyu.edu/~ctc258/spring05/final/ | |
| Keywords: | Kaliedoscopic Narrative, Interactive Video, Story-Space, Soft Cinema, Early Cinema Techniques, Video Games | |
| A system for authoring and displaying interactive database-driven video works. | ||
| Browse-Video is my approach to the challenge of combining the form of a video game to the content of live theater. I am interested in orchestrating video works in which a user-viewer experiences a similar sense of embodiment and control as they do while playing a video game, while also creating a compelling video work where the creative choices are apparent. | ||
| Personal Statement: | For several years, I have been interested in the combination of contemporary forms of entertainment (music videos, games) with classical forms of performing arts (theater, dance). I believe that elements of all artforms can be drawn upon to create new works, but that an understanding and appreciation of all artforms and their conventions as individual entities is necessary to create works that are anything more than simply hybrids or works in one format with elements of another layed upon them like icing, or thoughtlessly imposed onto work that exists just as well in a single format. Some examples of this are Dance pieces where interactive technology is added for the sake of novelty, or a video game that pretends to be an \'interactive motion picture.\' These are works that pretend to be something that they are not, because they only tack on elements of another artform, without consideration for the structural elelments that make a dance piece a dance piece and a video game a video game. I am interested in making small stabs at these divides. | |
| Background: | This project is a continuation of a modest video piece that I developed prior to coming to ITP. My background is in theater, but I have always been interested in how technology can provide ways to enhance not just the shape, but the methods of human expression. | |
| Audience: | Contemporary audiences interested in creative combinations of media and artforms. | |
| User Scenario: | A player-viewer approaches a small enclosure shaped like a music box. A video loop plays on a small screen and a large knob protrudes from the side of the enclosure. The viewer turns the knob, and the graphics on the screen change to reflect their interaction with the device. After experimenting with it, the user realizes that they are controlling the presentation of the video and after accomodating to the interface, are able to navigate through a sequence of video clips that tell a brief story that is best understood through interaction with the device. | |
| Technical System Description: | The system is built using a browser-based interface to a mySQL database that holds information about how the video clips interact based on the user\'s input. The Authoring tool allows a creator to have discrete control of how the clips change over time. The Player is implemented in Director, receiving input from a user, making calls to the database and displaying the video clips. | |
| Project References, Research and Literature: | Readings by
Janet Murray Hamlet on the Holodeck, ideas of \'kaliedoscopic narrative\' and multiform stories Chris Carter (what makes games games and stories stories) Michael Mateas Terminal Time, audience participation documentary http://www.terminaltime.com/ Lev Manovich The term \'soft cinema\', but not much else. | |
| Conclusions: | Director is slow. | |