R2 – Response to Readings

The X, Y and Z of digital storytelling: Dramaturgy, directionality, and design  (2015)

This article didn’t explain itself fully or provide a comprehensive description of the axes of storytelling, especially the Z axis for which the authors had particular admiration. For such a recent article, I was incredibly surprised that it breezed over so much interactive digital storytelling that has arisen in the past few years—to name a few: The Wilderness Downtown, A Way to Go, Clouds Documentary, and the list goes on… Furthermore, certain facts they mention have no specific grounding other than the fact that they feel good to say in our social climate. For example, the authors say “rapturous devotion to any one text seems highly unlikely today,” yet books still remain an engaging source of entertainment—ask any child whether they’ve read Harry Potter and the likely answer is “OMG I LOVE HARRY POTTER!” These facts and others, like “writers no longer sit in the same offices as with designers or developers,” have little grounding and serve only to diminish the reliability of the text.

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How Stories Deceive (2015)

The ease with which Sammy Azzopardi is able to engage everyone around her in falsified narratives makes me wonder what sort of capacity and social intelligence she has that most others do not have and cannot possibly dream of. Does she have integrity? Is it wrong to fabricate identity? Can you find your own identity through the process of attempting to take on others’ personalities? Why do we let our guard down to believe stories? Do we purposely go to whatever lengths we have to such that we can believe them? Why do we feel the need to normally feel rational? What does this say about our current situation? Is gullibility bad? To me, it is an essential part of being human—to be able to share in emotions. I wonder… is Sammy capable of empathy?

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Narrative Visualization: Telling Stories with Data (2010)

Even though this article is 6 years old, it amazes me how accurate it is with respect to analyzing user behaviors and primitives of narrative visualizations. It points out clearly that the form through which a story is told using data is inherently different from more traditional forms of storytelling, and recognizes the fact the job of one who creates meaningful data viz extends beyond the individual realms of journalism and computer science into its own “meta” space where it is essential to draw from both realms. However, this article also attempts to quantize and “fit” the forms of narrative storytelling and to some extent prescribe the components that will make a great story / visualization. In this respect, I find it frustrating for analyzing existing frameworks instead of building upon them, suggesting new ones, and suggestions for melding the narrative with the data.

The most interesting part of this analysis for me was the mention of the different between author-driven and reader-driven visualizations. I feel that the best visualizations leave room for the reader to discover patterns for him or herself and provide an intuitive framework for this exploration. In this way, the reader truly meets the author halfway, becoming a sort of hyper-personal author or “lexical archeologist.”

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The under-appreciated drive for sense-making (2015)

This is a fascinating article on our innate desire to make sense of the chaos of the world, that attempts to formulaically quantize qualitative observations of want and need. Though still considerably abstract, it does a fair job at explaining the causal relationships between sense-making, expectations, value-formation, and more. One of the most meaningful parts for me was the description of the third principle of sense-making: “…we derive no pleasure or pain from the blank walls between paintings because we don’t have any expectations that sense is to be found in these expanses.” Does this mean that art is life expected?