A technique for the extempore live composition of (sung) tales or narratives, traditionally evolved over many generations by performers who do not know how to write, but also used in the present day by storytellers and folk singers. A repertoire of formulas, often using quite small formulaic expressions as well as larger arcs, are combined and recombined according to themes or storyshapes to build the narrative, taking into account the response of the audience. This recombinant technique can be used very effectively in computer-handled narrativity, where the medium is closer to orality than literacy.
Published in Chapter:
Transposing, Transforming, and Transcending Tradition in Creative Digital Media
Phillip Andrew Prager (IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark), Maureen Thomas (University of Cambridge, UK), and Marianne Selsjord (Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Norway)
Copyright: © 2015
|Pages: 59
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-8205-4.ch008
Abstract
How can digital media technologies, contemporary theories of creativity, and tradition combine to develop the aesthetics of computer-based art today and in the future? Through contextualised case-studies, this chapter investigates how games, information technologies, and traditional visual and storytelling arts combine to create rich, complex, and engaging moving-image based artworks with wide appeal. It examines how dramatist and interactive media artist Maureen Thomas and 3D media artist and conservator Marianne Selsjord deploy creative digital technologies to transpose, transform, and transcend pre-page arts and crafts for the digital era, making fresh work for new audiences. Researcher in digital aesthetics, creative cognition, and play behaviour Dr. Phillip Prager examines how such work is conducive to creative insight and worthwhile play, discussing its remediation of some of the aspirations and approaches of 20th-century avant-garde artists, revealing these as a potent source of conceptual riches for the digital media creators of today and tomorrow.