Short description
Here, Murray shows how the computer is reshaping the stories we live by and discusses the properties and pleasures of digital environments and connects them with the traditional satisfactions of narrative.
Long description
Here, Murray shows how the computer is reshaping the stories we live by and discusses the properties and pleasures of digital environments and connects them with the traditional satisfactions of narrative. She analyzes the dramatic satisfaction of participatory stories and considers what would be necessary to move interaction fiction from the formats of childish games and confusing labyrinths into a mature and compelling art form.
Review
Stories did not come into being with the printed book, and the computer is no threat to their survival. On the contrary, each new medium brings different insights into the human condition through its particular expressive possibilities. Murray's optimism about the cyberdrama of the future is amiably and persuasively argued. She is a book lover conversant with the world of interactive multimedia, a US academic who displays a jargon-free willingness to communicate. Can art grow out of arcade games? She points out that 'the Greek word agon refers to both athletic contests and dramatic conflicts, reflecting the common origin of games and theatre'. There are many good observations: the shared fantasy world of the Brontes resembled a MUD (multi-user domain); the abstract game Tetris 'is a kind of rain dance for the postmodern psyche'; the bards of oral traditions and actors in commedia dell'arte alike relied on recombinations of stock elements, not unlike a computer storytelling program. And remember, it's early days yet for digital civilization. (Kirkus UK)
Table of contents
- Part A new medium for storytelling
- Lord Burleigh's kiss
- Harbingers of the Holodeck
- from additive to expressive form
- Part The aesthetics of the medium
- immersion
- agency
- transformation
- Part Procedural authorship
- the cyberbard and the multiform plot
- Eliza's daughters
- Part New beauty, new truth
- digital TV and the emerging formats of cyberdrama
- Hamlet and the Holodeck?