Major Project 1:
Nonlinearity and Choice
Due Dates
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Slice of Project 1 due 10/1. This can be any component of the project, either from the text itself or from the Statement of Goals and Choices. For instance, you could bring in the text of one of your branching paths, or the template/design for your website, or the introduction.
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Draft of Project 1 with the Statement of Goals and Choices due during conferences (either 10/8 or 10/10)
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Final Project 1 with the Statement of Goals and Choices due 10/17, posted to your individual website
Components (Total is 150 points, or 15% of your overall grade)
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Slice of Project 1 (10 points)
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Draft of Project 1 (15 points)
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Process Artifacts (30 points)
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Statement of Goals and Choices (45 points)
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Main Project 1 (50 points)
Goals
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Employ multimodal theory and understanding
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Experiment with text structure and design
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Explore the affordances and constraints of different media and technologies
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Reflect critically on the potential outcomes of composition choices
"The fact that a video game is necessarily interactive means that if we play a game we must make choices. Sure we make a choice to see a film or read a book and each of these are moral choices that say something about us. The difference with a game is that we make choices within the game itself - these choices are the game."
-Ren Reynolds
In this unit, we will spend time exploring the theory behind games and hypertext, and will examine several texts that could be considered “nonlinear.” The Black Mirror interactive film Bandersnatch gives its audience multiple chances to choose between two options that alter the story outcome, and allows you to circle back to see different permutations of the story. In the videogame Her Story, you search and piece together video clips from several police interviews in order to gradually reveal the overarching story. In Porpentine’s Twine story, howling dogs, you navigate links, circling back and back to the main room. In Sharon Daniel’s project Public Secret, you jump between reflections on prison justice and audio recordings of women who were incarcerated.
We often think of stories in terms of beginnings, middles, and ends. For instance, you may have run across the “reverse checkmark” model for story structure:
This model assumes that we’ll navigate the story in a certain way, likely in chronological order. Writers have critiqued this model, arguing that it focuses too much on action over other story elements, like relationships and environment. Similarly, Joseph Campbell’s model, “the hero’s journey,” makes assumptions about the universal elements of storytelling:
Campbell refers to “The Hero’s Journey” as the “monomyth,” because he argues that this narrative progression is consistent across history and culture. However, it has also been critiqued for being overly simplistic and too focused on Western myth and tradition. In addition, writers have argued that "The Hero’s Journey" leads to repetitive story structures--a little too many Star Wars and Matrix and Dances with Wolves reboots for our liking.
So, what happens when we abandon the straight and narrow in our writing? How can we write texts that meander, that loop back again and again, that spiral inwards or outwards, instead of just hiking up a mountain of narrative?
Your challenge for the first major project is to take on that experiment. Tell a story (your own or someone else’s) or make an argument, but don’t make it linear. Instead, consider how you can integrate audience choice and/or construct branching paths so that there are multiple possible ways to navigate or experience your text.
As you create your text, consider the nonlinear texts and choices-matter media that you’ve interacted with in the past. For instance, the Internet is a series of nonlinear texts--if you’ve ever ended up in a Wikipedia article rabbit hole, you’ve seen that in action. We navigate social media in a nonlinear fashion as well, zooming in on profiles and back out again to our feed.
The topic of this text is up to you, but take a look ahead at the projects to come, as you may want to work with the same topic or a connected issue in the future. For instance, you may choose to use this format to shed light on an issue that you’re concerned about, as Public Secrets does for the issue of women in prison and mass incarceration. Or you could create a text that speaks back to choose-your-own adventure concepts, as Bandersnatch does.
Expectations
My expectation for this first major project is that you create a text--or series of texts--that clearly explores the joint challenge of nonlinearity and choice. Your text should have a clear exigence, or in other words, it should address a need in the world. If you are telling a story, then you should think about why you are telling that story. If you are constructing an argument, then you should think about how you are building on the conversation surrounding that issue.
You might develop this exigence by first choosing a media form or technology that you want to work with, exploring its possibilities afterward to help shape what you want to create. Or you might choose your subject first, and then turn to the media or technologies that work best with that topic. Either way, your exigence and the media/technology that you use to achieve it should be complementary. This will be the argument that I will ask you to construct in the Statement of Goals and Choices.
Wondering where to get started? Explore the suggestions below for some example approaches that fit within this theme.
Go the old school route and print and bind your own choose-your-own adventure book. This could be text-only, or comic book style. Consider how you’ll work with the physicality of having readers flip to pages corresponding to their choices.
Build a map (digital, physical, or using augmented reality) that users can zoom in and out on to read different stories or learn about different regions of that space. How could you design the map leaving room for users to choose their own path rather than finding a set route? How could this map cause people to reflect on the way they interact with their locale, or country, or campus?
Make a board game, designing the board, pieces, instruction manual, and guides. Consider how you might accomplish a particular goal with the board game. Is it designed to help new acquaintances get to know each other? To get old friends to cooperate? To reinvent the terms of competition? (Games can make arguments, too! After all, Monopoly was originally designed as a critique of capitalism!)
Use Twine to create a hyperlinked story or research piece that makes the most of this “branching paths” technology. Twine works well as a starting point as well--you can always use it to map your paths and then host your text elsewhere.
Design a videogame (anything from a text adventure to a 3D RPG) where players make choices. As you design, consider how you’ll move beyond good vs. evil binaries, and manage the fact that players often find many “choices-matter” videogames wanting, either because their choices didn’t really matter, or because the endings didn’t feel fleshed out. How will you comment on these concerns, or break this cycle?
Arrange a museum installation that visitors would explore in different directions and orders. Consider how you could create multiple ways of “seeing” a painting, performance, or artifact. How could you get visitors to reflect on how they experience the space in different ways? What is the effect of jumping around in time--skipping from ancient Roman art to modern Japanese fashion?
Film a series of video clips that viewers can rearrange and watch in any order. Consider what the different sequences might offer to the viewer, and how they might change each person’s perspective on a story or issue.
Create a D&D campaign that accounts for player choice and action, and film/audio record a group playing your campaign. Consider how you could go beyond traditional D&D tropes here. Can D&D be used to make social commentary?
Click here for more information and discussion of different ways stories can be nonlinear.