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November 14, 2005

Dave Miller

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It's an Online Soap Opera

Corrugation Street--by Dave Miller--is an experiment in collaborative storytelling and networked narratives. It’s a soap opera that you can help write. Get involved in making the story. Be a co-author, co-illustrator or a researcher. Change the subject of the story, the mood, or the look and feel. Create your own unique version of the story, told in your own personal way.

Your selections decide how each scene in the story will look. The subjects and search terms you choose decide which pictures and RSS feeds are pulled in live from the Internet. It’s impossible to predict what results you’ll get, but your choices will have a big effect on the story.

Add your own RSS feeds if you have particular subjects you’d like to add to the stories, and you know the RSS link. If you’d like to add your own image, whether on the internet or on your own computer, add the URL or file path to include it in the story. When you click the ‘Make my story!’ button, the generator script gets busy. Text and pictures are pulled from the Internet, processed and mixed in with my story.

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Chinese Cocklepickers is an interactive narrative which deals with the tragedy of the chinese migrant workers who died in Morecambe Bay, in the tragic events of February 2004. There are many separate and interconnected strands to this story: the experience of the workers who drowned, the bosses exploiting their cheap work, the reactions and feelings of the local people, the families in China and their reactions, and lastly the media/political reactions and economics behind the story. These strands are presented as parallel narratives through the story. Each one is small view of the bigger picture, each giving a different perspective. Users can choose their own path through the separate strands, so that they can affect, choose or change the plot. The result, we hope, is that each user experiences the story in a different way, and gains a unique perspective of the story. Design/story: Dave Miller; Programming: Kalle Kormann.

Dave Miller is currently studying a Master's Degree at Ravensbourne College, Kent, UK. His focus is on exploring new interactive story possibilities using networked technology. He's set up a blog to help develop his project and dissertation.

Posted by jo at November 14, 2005 05:05 PM

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