Outfront/Inbehind: Telling a Story with Fluid Interactivity

Due: Monday, April 5, 2004

Weight: 25%

The Theme

You have the option of working with a partner for this assignment. You must notify your lab leader if you are working with a partner before your proposal is due.

For this assignment you are to construct an interactive narrative based on a personal perspective, idea, experience, or story. The content of the work, the story, is to be told using fluid interactive techniques that combine graphics, sound, video, and/or QTVR in an interactive context. The ways in which one interacts with the work must be integral to how the meaning of the story is communicated.

To get some ideas for content of your narrative have a look at the CBC programme Outfront. Have a look at the audio archives and the web features. The web features are well done but many are not to be used as examples of interactive techniques for this project.

In a traditional narrative context, stories are told to you. You look, listen, and/or read. In this assignment you will build on and extend these traditional techniques so that what the person using the work does, through interacting with the work, constructs the story. As they say, actions speak louder than words.

From a technical perspective, use this assignment to explore fluid interactive techniques not point and click interaction. You can have some point and click interaction but you need to focus on exploring fluid interaction. For examples see Puppet Motel and Ceremony of Innocence.

The space you create should not be static but should change as one wanders through. Interacting with an object in the space the second time could be different than the first.


Requirements

In this assignment you are to explore fluid interactive techniques and video/QTVR.

Required:

Cheat Sheet

The cheat sheet has the same due date as your A3.

If you are handing in your entire A3 late, please email to let your TA know that you will be late so they don't try marking your assignment when it is not finished and mistakenly give you a bad grade. When you finish your A3, email your TA to indicate that it is done. We will assume you have already finished the cheat sheet and put it on the server.

If your cheetsheet is not done by the time you hand in your A3, you will receive partial marks for the cheat sheet if you hand it in before 48 hours have passed since you handed in your A3 (partial mark period is from when your A3 completed to 48 hours after your A3 is completed).

If your cheetsheet is not done until _after_ 48 hours after your A3 was completed, we will certainly appreciate receiving your cheat sheet, but you will still lose the marks for it being late.

Your cheat sheet should be handed in as a plain text file called cheatsheet.txt directly within your A3 folder in your Sites folder. Or, alternately, if you'd really rather make it into a web page, hand it in as an html file called cheatsheet.html directly within your A3 folder in your Sites folder.

Finally, please answer all 5 cheat sheet questions completely. We need to know where things are so if files are in subfolders then state their paths. eg. area1/apples.html

Please state:
1) the location (moviename, frame# or marker name) of one (or if you have more than one, a few) example(s) of fluid interaction with visual elements
2) the location (moviename, frame# or marker name) of one (or if you have more than one, a few) example(s) of fluid interaction with video/QTVR
3) the location (moviename, frame# or marker name) of one (or if you have more than one, a few) example(s) of fluid interaction with sound
4) the location (moviename, frame# or marker name) of one (or if you have more than one, a few) example(s) of video/QTVR integrated into the rest of the screen
5) A - the location (moviename, frame# or marker name, AND channels numbers of applicable sprites if any) of one (or if you have more than one, a few) example(s) of global variables being used to change the narrative environment in some way as the user wanders through
B - state the name(s) of the global variables used

Submitting the assignment

The end result will be a set Shockwave file, video, and sound. These files will reside in a folder called A3 in your Sites folder. The opening page should be called default.html. You will also need to make your Director source file(s) available. These files should reside in the same folder as your .dcrs.

Proposal

due: week 19 (labs 1-3 as your slog entry, lab 04 submitted on webct)

The A3 proposal is meant to be part of the process of coming up with and refining your A3. It helps make sure you have done enough conceptual and execution planning by the proposal due date that you should hopefully be able to execute your final A3 on time. It also gives us a chance to give you feedback on your A3 direction before it's absolutely too late to do you any good in terms of the quality of your art-piece (and hence the mark you will receive for your A3).

The Six questions:

  1. What is the narrative are you exploring in your assignment? Your piece should be about something specific (your content and theme(s) that you are trying to bring out). You are creating a space for people to explore your narrative. When the user re-examines elements in the narrative space the elements will change. Subject matter can be thought of as the topic your work is about. Themes can be thought of as what you think or feel or want to explore about the subject matter. Not only must an art piece have a topic, but it must also convey some of the artist's insights, questions, opinions, feelings, and/or thoughts about the topic in order to rouse the desired response from the audience.
  2. How will you use fluid interaction with visual elements as an integral part of your narrative? Describe the visual elements you will use and the interactive contexts in which they will be placed. Relate how the interactive contexts support your narrative and its content/themes.

  3. How will you use fluid interaction with video/QTVR as an integral part of your narrative? Describe the videos/QTVRs you will use and the interactive contexts in which they will be placed. Relate how the interactive contexts support your narrative and its content/themes

  4. How will you use fluid interaction with sound as an integral part of your narrative? Describe the sounds you will use and the interactive contexts in which they will be placed. Relate how the interactive contexts support your narrative and its content/themes

  5. How will your video/QTVR be integrated into the rest of the screen? Describe how the videos will look and work in context with what else will be on the stage.

  6. What things about the narrative will change as the user wanders through your A3 and/or re-examines its parts? How will this reflect the content/themes? (Executing this in Director will require the use of global variables to track what the user has done, and the use of if statements for Director to decide what to do as a result ~~ if you have already worked on how you would script this, feel free to include some of that scripting here. However, you are not required to include any scripting here.)


Valid for Fall/Winter 2003-2004

The material contained in this site is copyright and owned exclusively by Don Sinclair and members of the FACS teaching team.

Last modified on 27-Mar-04 at 9:26 PM.

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