Interactive Digital Multimedia
ARS 361, Spring 2005
Instructor: Barbara Lattanzi

A narrative interactive work authored in Macromedia Director.

Assignment due Tuesday April 12

Concept:

The concept of this work is derived from Zoe Beloff's discussion of interactive media as analogous to a "philosophical toy" (see the course outline for week 9), and from CD-ROMs, games, and other cited works viewed in class and on your own.

You will produce a narrative work that explores and exploits the capacities of digital media to produce events, situations, image "behaviors" that extend the past-tense of story-telling into the present-tense of the viewer.

Parameters:

Inclusion of interactive elements that structure the narrative around path choices, or (as in Graham Harwood's "Rehearsal of Memory" cdrom) around discrete, parallel experiences of a story (text objects, sound objects, video objects embedded in a body as interface)

Inclusion of both diegetic sounds (minimum of one sound from the narrative world) and interactive sounds (minimum of one sound responding to the viewer's interactions). Note that ambient, nondiegetic sound (such as background music) is optional.

Any appropriated sounds or videos from archives must be identified (in credits or "readme" text file accompanying the project).

Use of a minimum of one video element. This can be original or archival video.

Compile the project as a "projector" file (similar to a freestanding Flash project).

Store the projector and any external "linked" files - such as quicktime videos and Flash files - on a CD-ROM or DVD, depending upon the combined size of all components. (A CD-ROM can store just under 700MB.)

Experience of the project will be a duration of approximately one minute or more.

Note that these parameters are meant as a guideline. Individual projects may modify these guidelines through discussion with the instructor in advance of the due date.