How do people interact in a networked artificial space to create a contemporary, shared narrative?

Our concept will explore how people interact within a networked artificial space, collaborating to create a shared narrative and account for their shared experience. The central themes for this project are the notions of interaction and collaboration.

A key motivation for this project is the work of Aaron Koblin, where he looks into relationships between humans and technology, and the role of a collaborative interface as a means of communicating a narrative. In his words, telling narratives stemming from “real world and community generated data”.

In Koblin’s TedTalk, 2011, he quotes Lev Manovich, saying “19th century culture was defined by the novel, 20th century culture by cinema, the culture of the 21st century will be defined by the interface”. This concept is becoming much more widely acknowledged and integrated with contemporary narrative types. For example the recent Johnny Cash Music Video Project, The Wilderness Downtown, The Sheepmarket, The New York Talk Exchange, and Flight Patterns, works. All of these projects involve visualizing collaborative data to tell a story.

As we move through life we are all part of many narratives, individual and collective. Whether we see these patterns or not, choose to interact, or passively walk on by, we are all part of the story. For our project we will try to capture a part of this tapestry and portray a little slice of the evolving journey of contemporary humanity.