Cultural Interactive Narratives: from Data to Script

Angeliki Chrysanthi, Assistant Professor, Department of Cultural Technology and Communication, University of the Aegean, Mytilene, Greece

Course Type: Humanities and Social Science-focused 

Keywords: theory and practice; project-based; cultural representation; data ontology; interactive scripting.

University Department Level Credits Length Medium
Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain Audiovisual Communication and Advertising Undergrad 6 15 weeks In-person

Course Description

The term cultural narrative is defined by certain cultural representation practices pertaining to the identification, documentation (and/or creation), transmission, and presentation of a corpus of cultural data. Such data, originating from a specific context, are interpreted to acquire meaning in a different context through the formation of a narrative. In this course, the latter takes the form of an interactive digital narrative which students are encouraged to explore both on a theoretical and a practical level, while they are equipped with the appropriate methodological and digital tools so that they can create complex and compelling scenarios for diverse applications encountered in the contemporary landscape of digital culture.

Weekly Outline

  1. Introduction to Cultural Representation: theoretical principles
  2. Structuring and Presenting Cultural Data
  3. Cultural Representation, Interpretation and Storytelling
  4. Omeka workshop
  5. Introduction to Interactive Digital Narrative
  6. Complexity in IDN
  7. Spatial, visual and collaborative narratives
  8. Bitsy workshop
  9. Narrative Games, Serious Games, Persuasive Games and Culture
  10. Twine and Stornaway workshop
  11. Non-fiction, place-based and documentary narratives in Cultural Heritage
  12. Final project progress
  13. Final project peer review

Course Objectives ​

  • Understand the meaning of cultural representation and the concept of reusing cultural resources as well as their practices.
  • Know the basic principles of structuring, managing and interpretating digital cultural heritage resources.
  • Understand the theoretical foundations of interactive digital narrative as well as the basic forms and structures of digital storytelling.
  • Demonstrating creativity in combining archival and newly created materials to convey cultural narratives.
  • Analyze critically examples of interactive digital narratives.
  • Acquire the skills for designing and creating interactive scenarios.
  • Apply methods and use digital tools for the development and production of interactive digital narratives.

Reading

  • Cultural Representation (Politistike Anaparastase), Papageorgiou and Iliadis (PDF) 
  • The Field of Cultural Production, Bourdieu (Excerpts)
  • The Architecture of Information, Dade-Robertson, M. (PDF)
  • Interactive Narrative, Ryan (PDF)
  • From Narrative Games to Playable Stories: Toward a Poetics of Interactive Narrative, Ryan (PDF) 
  • Interaction and narrative, Mateas and Stern (PDF)
  • Towards a specific theory of interactive digital narrative, Koenitz (PDF)
  • Complexity and Interactive Digital Narrative (INDCOR).pdf (White Paper)
  • Interactive Digital Narratives as Complex Expressive Means. Bellini (PDF)
  • Point of equilibrity. A narrative video game on decision-making during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. Chrysanthi et al. (PDF)
  • The Ethics of Virtual Digital Games as History: How Videogames Represent the Past and Offer Access to Historical Practice, Chapman (Excerpts)
  • Reality Interactive Digital Narratives in Cultural Heritage, Barbara, Koenitz, Bakk (PDF)
  • Place-Based Digital Storytelling. The Interplay Between Narrative Forms and the Cultural Heritage Space, Chrysanthi, Katifori, Vayanou, Antoniou (PDF)
  • Applying Interactive Storytelling in Cultural Heritage: Opportunities, Challenges and Lessons Learned. Katifori et al. (PDF)
  • Interactive Digital Storytelling in Cultural Heritage: The Transformative Role of Agency, Petousi et al. (PDF)
  • Twining. “Why Twine?”, Salter and Moulthrop (Website)
  • Making Games in the Classroom: Twine and Harlowe 2 (PDF)
  • Video Game Narrative and Criticism: Playing the Story, Thabet (Excerpts) 
  • Creating a Playable History: Digital Games, Historical Skills and Learning, Lawler and Smith (PDF)
  • A guide to interactive documentary: Structure, Tools and Narrative (Website)

Viewings

  • Patchwork Girl (YouTube) 
  • The Stanley Parable/Videogame (Playthrough video)
  • Seven Digital Deadly Sins/Interactive documentary (Website)
  • Bandersnatch (Netflix Show)
  • 1979 Revolution (You Tube)
  • The Brabant Remembers App. Netherlands (You Tube)
  • Svoboda 1945: Liberation (YouTube)
  • 11-11: Memories Retold (YouTube)

IDN Artifacts

  • The British Library Simulator (Bitsy IDN)
  • The Legend of Stoodley Pike Standing Stones (Bitsy IDN)
  • Darkness over Beacon Island (Twine IDN)
  • An interactive interpretation of “The Birthday Party”, by Harold Pinter (Twine IDN)
  • Modistes and ladies of the early 20th century in Mytilene, Lesvos (Online IDN)
  • Point of Equilibrity (PC IDN)
  • At the Hawk’s Well (VR IDN)
  • What Remains of Edith Finch (PC IDN)
  • CHESS Cultural Heritage Experiences at Çatalhöyük, The life of Building 52 (PC & Mobile app IDN)
  • Her Story (AR mobile IDN)
  • LINGERING: playing with the dystopic surrealism of Zdzisław Beksiński (PC IDN)
  • οpen AiR Tériade: Daphnis and Chloe (Mobile AR IDN)

IDE and IDN Authoring Tools

  • Twine (IDN Authoring Tool)
  • Bitsy (IDN Authoring Tool)
  • Omeka (IDN & Cultural Resource Publishing Platform)
  • Stornaway.io (IDN Authoring and Publishing Tool)

Major Assignments (being assignments whose value is of 25% or more)

Cultural data documentation and storytelling

  • Platform: Omeka
  • Purpose: This assignment consists of two parts involving: a) the documentation, creation and structuring of a set of cultural data/archival material based on the preferred topic, and b) the presentation of the preferred topic in the form of a storytelling site. The aim of this assignment is to introduce students to methods and tools of cultural content documentation, creation and structuring as the first building block of creating a basic cultural interactive narrative. 
  • Requirements:
    • Project Length: 10-15 minutes
    • Project Size: At least 2-3 tabs with 3-4 content passages/links/interactions each 
    • Project Aesthetics: The use and combination of archival and newly created material, such as images, 3D models, sounds and text reflect the topic of the story. 
    • Coding Proficiency: The use of at least one feature beyond the basic omeka functionality (e.g. use of short codes). 
  • Evaluation: 
    • Data Ontology: The project includes a tree diagram depicting the documented, created and structured entities for the chosen topic. This diagram is separately presented through a graphical representation tool such as Cmap.
    • Interactivity: Overall, interactivity aligns with the project’s objectives (e.g., portraying a historical character, illuminating a past event, enhancing a heritage collection presentation through storytelling). The project effectively leverages and balances the affordances of the medium, combining narrative text with digital media to offer insightful cultural interpretations. 
    • Story and narrative: The project structures exhibit items and presents them as story snippets woven into an overarching narrative in a cohesive and compelling manner. 
    • Production values: The project adheres to the highest professional standards, in line with the examples showcased from the GLAM sectors during the class. All cultural resources are thoroughly documented.

Final Project: Non-fiction Interactive Narrative

  • Platform: Twine or Stornaway
  • Purpose: The aim of this assignment is to integrate all theoretical and methodological lessons of the course into creative practice. 
  • Requirements:
    • Project Length: ~15-20 minutes.
    • Project Size: as many as necessary to complete the aims of the narrative project.
    • Project Aesthetics: Use images, fonts, sounds and colors according to the purpose and style of the narrative.  
    • Coding Proficiency: Use conditionals and macros to create a complex and playful narrative. 
  • Evaluation: 
    • Interactivity: Overall interactivity serves the purposes of the project (e.g. to portray a historical character, to shed light to an event of the past, to enhance a heritage collection presentation through storytelling). The project ideally pushes and at once balances the affordances of the selected medium for interactive narrative text with digital media and game mechanics to offer a rich cultural narrative experience.
    • Story and narrative: The project uses all necessary story and narrative elements such as setting, plot and character development to create a compelling and engaging experience. The narrative form and style depend on the aims of the project which is clearly defined in the creator statement and the reflective report. 
    • Production values: The project is submitted to the highest professional standards as per the examples from the GLAM sectors screened in the class. Students who choose to use stornaway.io must have prior knowledge of film production.

Course Best Practices

  • The course is designed for weekly sessions of three hours each. The course initiates with a face-to-face crash course of two sessions while the rest of the course runs as a synchronous online class. Lectures precede and inform the practical work that follows during the workshop sessions and the major assignments. 
  • The online lectures are recorded and made available for offline studying in the open eclass platform used by the host institution. 
  • In order to encourage discussions among students and strengthen a participatory culture in the online teaching environment, the lecture offers such opportunities by posing critical questions after screening sessions and making use of relevant platform tools such as “breakout rooms”. 
  • Three out of thirteen weeks are allocated for workshops. Also, major assignments are broken down into smaller conceptual exercises whose progress is peer reviewed in allocated sessions before or after the weekly lectures. The two final sessions are arranged for monitoring the progress and peer reviewing of the final project. 
  • In the first major assignment cultural data are provided, and students focus their work on a topic of their choice. In the final project the students suggest a topic and are responsible for acquiring the data. 
  • The course material provides a broader understanding of the area of IDN while the assignments focus on cultural representation practices through IDN. 
  • Major assignments are submitted in the designated space of the course’s open eclass platform.