Background
Developments in interactive media technologies have created
a new role in broadcasting, the programme designer; a cross
between programme maker, artist and author. We were commissioned
by the BBC television series 'The Net' and Illuminations television
to design a programme which was a hybrid between a website
and television documentary.
What we did
We made an experimental website which uses simple graphics
to construct a virtual skyscraper
– the framework for an evolving, multithreaded
narrative that occurs when authors of interesting and slightly
exhibitionist web sites are invited to 'move in' to the web-building
and contribute their stories.
After the building had been 'live' and populated for a few
weeks, we made an animated
documentary about the lives of the building's inhabitants.
The project grew out of an equal interest in both in the content
– exploring ways of generating interactive narratives
– and in form – how you could use the things
that are easy and fast to do on the web, such as block
graphics, in elegant and effective ways. The website,
which was intended to be self-generating, in fact needed a
lot of cultivation – it needed weeding and fertilizing
with encouragement if the tenants were to be persuaded to
keep contributing. There were several strands in this project:
one was to try to understand what made things engaging, what
made people want to contribute their stories initially, and
then to continue or to stop. Another strand was to try to
make a self-generating interactive narrative which, because
it was being generated by many people might have qualities
of surprise and interest that it would be difficult for one
person to generate. The structure needed to be light enough
to allow variety and invention but strong enough to give coherence
to the potentially very disparate contributions. A third strand
was to do with craft: of the web graphics, carefully tuned
to the web's limitations, and the final animated film – with
its own contrasting set of conventions and possibilities.
Project team
Ben Hooker with Chris Downs
Other information and links
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