Interactive
Telecommunications Program, NYU 1999
Project
Description: This is an experiment with interactive
narrative. Many conceptions of interactive
narratives ask the audience to direct the course or change elements of the story.
These run the risk of breaking the audience’s spell as the action pauses,
turning off writers who don’t want to learn how make decision trees, and bankrupting
producers who have to shoot many alternate versions of each scene.
Using panoramic narratives allows one
to always construct one linear flow but allow the user to construct a different
story depending on where they focus. Writing
for this would be more like writing for the theater but possibly with a greater
feeling of immersion because the fourth wall is intact.
Technical
Notes: This project was shot with an array of digital cameras.
Synchronous frames from each camera were then stitched together.
I did the automation of this process in Applescript and the stitching
in QuickTimeVR Authoring Studio. The
playback was programmed in Macromedia Director/Lingo and was originally an installation
using a panning television set constructed for my earlier LampPost piece.