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Imagine the stories we would tell, if we could construct video movies as easily and playfully as we now use spoken language. The Story Networks group explores storymaking principles and technologies that enhance cinematic story creation and sharing as activities of intelligent play and seeks to discover the empowering and framing constraints of designing these experiences for digital delivery over emerging networks in contemporary social contexts. Research complements, informs and is informed by research on Media Fabrics at the Interactive Cinema group at the MIT Media Lab.

A Flickr group on storytelling

In the 21st Century, readers will turn on and interact with literature that is displayed on affordable, book-sized computers. Electronic fiction forms will include "narrabases" (nonsequential novels that rely on large computer databases); "narrative data structures" that elegantly organize fictional information on eye-pleasing computer screens; complex narrative investigations based on the adventure story model developed in computer games; and stories told collaboratively by groups of writers in online communities. Computers may even store their own observations and use them to tell their own stories in their own words.

Russell's disappointment in LinkedIn implies that the term 'social networking' makes little sense if we leave out the objects that mediate the ties between people. Think about the object as the reason why people affiliate with each specific other and not just anyone. For instance, if the object is a job, it will connect me to one set of people whereas a date will link me to a radically different group. This is common sense but unfortunately it's not included in the image of the network diagram that most people imagine when they hear the term 'social network.' The fallacy is to think that social networks are just made up of people.

A year ago, I wrote about how we needed to reclaim the phrase "transmedia storytelling" as a community from the plague of buzzworditis that was surrounding it. Sadly, that effort failed: more and more practitioners are future-proofing themselves by moving away - either subtly or explicitly - from the word. Even Creepy Wonka has been getting in on the action. "Transmedia" is on the downward slide of usefulness as a term and it is time to have a frank discussion about why, so that whatever label rises to take its place doesn't suffer from the same excesses and failures. Consider me Brutus in the court of Caesar: I've come to bury transmedia, not praise it.

This graduate level module will be of interest to new media practitioners/writers/artists as well as those hoping to leverage aspects of new media technology and thinking in their creative practise.  Note: You don't need to be a U of A student in order to take this course. See the information on Open Studies at the end of this module outline.

Transliteracy and polyphonic narrative: a case study "Judith Aston is a specialist in cross-cultural communication and digital media practice. She was a pioneer in the emergent multimedia industry in the mid-1980s, working with the BBC Interactive Television Unit, Virgin Publishing, Apple Computers and the Soros Open Society Institute. Based in Bristol, she now divides her time between teaching and practice-led research in the Creative Arts Faculty at the University of the West of England. " Judith Aston "Using Digital Media to Create a Multilayered Associative Narrative "