Story World Research Articles

Reconstruction of cultural memory through digital storytelling: A case study of Shanghai Memory project

Abstract This article analyses how digital storytelling (DS) is applied to a digital humanities (DH) research project. It considers the purpose of storytelling and illustrates its use to help to democratize the wider project by including diverse voices and helping to reconstruct cultural memory. How can DS be used as a critical research method to help develop a robust methodology in DH research, particularly for organizing historical and cultural resources to form a story world and addressing biases in the established archival collections? This initiative is the latest phase of the Shanghai Memory project, adding an important additional dimension to the established showcase, A Journey from Wukang Road. Wukang Road, with many historical buildings going back to the colonial era, has important cultural significance as part of the former French Concession. Originally known as Rue de Ferguson, the name was changed in 1943, at the time of the Japanese occupation, seemingly as part of anti-colonial sentiment while China was being encouraged to resist her occupiers. Participation in the storytelling project is facilitated by user generated content and promotion in the Shanghai Library. The aim is to present a clearer storyline about the evolution of Wukang Road, explore its historical context, use the stories and reflections of the ordinary people to balance that of the elites, importantly encouraging inclusion of the vernacular Shanghainese dialect as part of wider movements to protect local languages.

Convergence of Theatre, Cinema, Amusement Park, and Video Game Design to Explore Parallel Interactive Narratives in Cinematic Virtual Reality

Table for Two is a short parallel interactive narrative in cinematic virtual reality. This virtual reality experience is a creative artefact that has adopted screen production enquiry as a practice-based research. This research aims to explore alternative narrative possibilities in virtual reality. Virtual reality is one of the latest disruptions in cinema that has challenged filmmakers with new methods for 360-degree storytelling. This challenge has led to several studies recommending grammar to guide the users’ gaze toward intended areas in the virtual environment. However, it is argued that this aspect limits the full potential of virtual reality. This study on parallel interactive narratives in virtual reality addresses this limitation. Here, the user is addressed as a navigator of the experience. Table for Two offers navigation freedom to look anywhere they desire in the virtual reality environment. A number of studies on virtual reality narratives suggests that theatre, cinema, amusement park and video game design techniques are relevant for virtual reality productions. This research describes how the fusion of these research fields and art forms contributed to new methods for exploring cinematic virtual reality and interactive 360-degree video narratives. Several studies suggest that virtual reality experiences have similarities with theatre, and therefore knowledge relating to theatre experiences can benefit virtual reality production. For this reason, the casting talent of Table for Two was selected from the local theatre group. It was observed that their experience with improvisations and performance for long takes significantly contributed to the virtual reality production. This paper refers to Linda Aronson’s description of parallel narratives in the context of cinema. Parallel narratives have been present in limited quantity through artistic experiments in early cinema. However, the rapid growth of interactivity in narratives has increased in parallel narrative forms in mainstream cinema. It is observed that parallel narratives are gradually emerging in virtual reality experiences. However, there is a lack of knowledge of the design and development processes. While there is a difference between cinematic and VR narrative, Aronson’s parallel narrative forms in cinema, such as tandem, multiple protagonist, double journey, split screen and consecutive narratives, can be applied in cinematic virtual reality. Additionally, space design in amusement parks reveals the significance of infusing the narrative into the set. One key feature called embedded narratives has been incorporated into the set design of Table for Two. Furthermore, interactive narratives for video game design played an essential role in shaping the navigation experience in Table for Two. Along with the influence of these mediums, Table for Two encountered unique challenges with the performance from multiple 360-degree cameras, customized script writing methods, integrating all filming material into the set design, and navigation interactivity, which does not alter the outcome of the story world. This paper discusses the challenges and considerations for creating a parallel interactive narrative in cinematic virtual reality. The theoretical discourse presented in this paper suggests how the convergence of various mediums contributes to new narrative possibilities in virtual reality.

Agency and Intra-textual co-creation in Punchdrunk Enrichment’s Immersive Story Worlds for Children

AbstractRecent immersive theatre practices being developed by UK theatre companies invite children to believe that a book story has come to life and is really happening to them within their school environment. The thrill of being able act within a story motivates children’s embodied agency to physically explore an immersive set installation and acts of creative writing performed during the story experience, which allow children to co-create the narrative alongside the adult practitioners. These acts are fictionalised into the narrative frame of the children as heroic story writers, offering new perspectives on how child co-creation of adult narratives can be enabled intra-textually, within the bounds of the adult-initiated story, rather than extra-textually after it has finished, as is the case with fan fiction. However, it raises questions about the nature and limits of this co-creative agency the experiences purport to elicit from their child participants, especially in terms of their critical agency to manipulate fictional devices presented to them through such a hyper-real aesthetic. Drawing on theories of children’s literature and participatory performance, this article argues that it is the way these immersive productions uncannily overlay real and fictional temporalities that enables the child participants’ critical agency within them. Approaches for further participatory, practice-based research in this understudied corner of children’s reading universes are suggested for harnessing the potential of immersive story worlds to generate research data from within children’s first aesthetic engagement with stories.

1900년대 외국어 기술 설화집의 지형도 연구

This study focuses on a collection of Korean tales written by foreign languages published in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: to analyze the dual aspects of translation and to examine the translated Korea embodied in the tales. When conducting oral literature research centered on the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it is still a major problem to specify the scope and methodology. One of key feature of this period is the publication of collections in foreign languages other than Korean and Hanmun. This is a clear indication of the heterogeneity of the period, but it also proves the need for the finalization of the field and the diversification of methodologies. In this study, I will interpret these texts from the perspective of Korean literary studies. From a perspective distinct from that of Korean tales, foreign language tales are described in another language, and the concept of their description, or translation, must be examined. This can be seen as a process of dual translation, in which Korean tales described in foreign languages first undergo a semantic and discursive shift in which Korean texts are transformed into foreign languages, and at the same time, a process of universal transformation based on the identity of the orality itself. Based on this, the related foreign language tales can be chosen and categorized, which is not only a classification of texts but also a possibility of categorizing the research area. Also, in this essay, translation encompasses the rewriting of tales. It is through the rewriting of tales that the intercommunication between Korean tales and the early 1900s context that surrounded them is revealed. Focusing on one of the most prolific tales in the collection, The Rabbit and Turtle, I will examine how Korea has been translated through the story world.

The Pragmatics of Fiction: Literature, Stage and Screen Discourse

The Pragmatics of Fiction: Literature, Stage and Screen Discourse

Re-defining the Character Arc through Berger and Luckmann’s The Social Construction of Reality

Although a prominent characteristic of western cinematic narratives, the structure of psychological transformation known as the Character Arc remains ill-defined. Currently popular models based on value judgements demonstrate significant shortcomings, particularly the inability to account for the relativity of such judgements from one narrative context to the next. To rectify such issues, this article proposes a re-definition of the cinematic Character Arc using concepts obtained from Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s book, The Social Construction of Reality. This new definition reframes the Character Arc as a dialectic between the ‘subjective reality’ of the protagonist and the ‘objective reality’ of the primary sphere of diegetic action. Through environmental friction and the acquisition of new knowledge, a protagonist’s initially incongruent mental model undergoes a process of re-socialization, creating a more objective comprehension of the demands or necessities of the story world and its social phenomena. The drama of a Character Arc is frequently informed by a clash of multiple ‘realities’, producing various complexities in form.

How can a foundation be outlined for a successful serious game to increase reading engagement

This study aims to support a mandatory reading of a novella for high school students by a serious game. The study includes 41 students. The first class is included in the experimental study, which uses a serious game to read the novella. The second class served as the control group and engaged only in analog reading. The evaluation is based on a questionnaire with reading, user, and narrative engagement items. Furthermore, the assessment consists of in-depth interviews with teachers and students. The findings positively affected students’ engagement in the experimental group. Primarily focused attention and reward are higher in the experimental group. However, there was no difference in the narrative engagement between the two groups, indicating that the story (digital or not) is well explained. The qualitative findings revealed positive comments, especially for the reading engagement and the story world. The novelty in this study is the outlined game design process, guided by elements in the foundation, game design, prototyping, and implementation. For the game design, we outlined how to transform the principles from Sweetser and Wyeth to applied design implementations. An important aspect was to illustrate the protagonist with schizophrenia.

Queer Psycho and the He Circus: Applying Queering, Magic, and More-than-Human Theories to Immersive Visual Story Worlds as an Antidote to Late Capitalism

Abstract Two immersive visual story worlds (IVS), Queer Psycho and HE Circus, are at the center of this article, one made by each of us. Individually we found our works necessitated the development of new frameworks for IVS construction, namely (1) Brechtian a-effect and queering, and (2) magic and more-than-human theories. These new framings were needed to realize our desire to use IVS to create spaces of active resistance from psychological harm imposed by political and ableist structures designed with rigid ways of seeing the world through straight/neoliberal lenses. When both story worlds and their frameworks are viewed side-by-side, they lay bare the prejudices and normative framings of IVS software and industries. Thus, the outline of these new framings with this article makes an original contribution to the field by calling into question those who are designing IVS software and typical frameworks by asking who and what they are benefiting, and proposing alternatives to illustrate how neither should be considered fixed. Finally, the topic of each IVS, that of Hitchcock's Psycho and neoliberal structures of contemporary higher education, offer critiques of systems which serve to highlight our arguments.

Cross-Media Narratives of City Image: The case of Chongqing, China

In the era of media fragmentation, a story world mode brought about by multiple media platforms is on the rise. Cross-media narratives become the core force of city competition by catering to the audience’s preferences while generating rich experiences of different media, promoting the efficient communication of city images to promote city tourism. This case study is based on the cross-media narrative theory, the general narratology theory, the interaction ritual chains theory, etc. It investigates how the contents are produced according to the characteristics of Chongqing city resources and how the image positioning matches different media to complete the common narrative process. Through reviewing previous literature and exploring some cross-media narratives of city image in Chongqing, the main findings of this paper are:1) demonstrative narratives interpret Chongqing’s image artistically and metaphorically to present the contradictions and need in the social space of Chongqing; 2) non-fictional narratives employ multiple combinations of typical city symbols in an enumerative design of narrative symbols to exhibit the superior tourism resources and displays its spirit in the construction and development of the Chonqing city; 3) participatory interactive narratives make the abstract, stereotypical city image that was reflected in traditional film pieces become more modern, urban, and fresh through interaction ritual chains. These results provide great value for the construction of the city image, which can contribute to providing future research a reference.

Cinematic collage as an ethical response to the abject: Sang-mi Choo’s The Children Gone to Poland

ABSTRACT In The Children Gone to Poland (2018), Sang-mi Choo employs different narrative styles not to faithfully present public history on North Korean orphans who were moved to Poland during the Korean War but to rewrite different groups of subjects who underwent painful experiences during the Cold War, such as North Korean war orphans, the Polish teachers who cared for them, and a North Korean refugee who risked her life during the 1990s. To create their dialogic engagement, Choo uses her personal experience and weaves them into her cinematic narrative. Her filmic endeavour, however, is often conflicting as her audiences encounter a non-linear story world in terms of editing. In addition, she experiments with her filmmaking by having a porous nexus among images capturing disparate spaces and times. Audiences become defamiliarized from the film narrative as historical truth and are instead aware of it as a careful construction creating a dialogic space. To explicate Choo’s cinematic project, this article employs the philosophical concept of gesture elaborated by Giorgio Agamben. Choo’s construction of an unconventional film narrative is an ethical response to the miserable subjects who still have painful memories and urgently seek to be heard.

Stories and fairy tales - the importance and role in the instructional - educational activities in the kindergarten

"act: For many children, kindergarten is the place where they first come into contact with the wonderful world of stories. Through their richness and diversity of thought, they contribute to the development of thinking, memory, imagination, concentration, language, and to the moral and aesthetic education of children. The role and importance of stories and fairy tales in instructive-educational activities are obvious, as they enrich the vocabulary, develop the ability to communicate and relate, influence intellectual development and will. Stories play an essential role in the formation of the human being because of their ""discourse"" of order and meaning. They are those who, through the beauty of words, bring children into a world of values where good always triumphs over evil, constituting a wealth of meaning and educational value."

КОНТАКТИ Й ТИПОЛОГІЧНІ ЗБІГИ МІЖ "СЕЛЯНСЬКИМИ ПОВІСТЯМИ" ЮЗЕФА КРАШЕВСЬКОГО І ПРОЗОЮ ТАРАСА ШЕВЧЕНКА

The prose output of Taras Shevchenko, in which, with a certain degree of conventionality, one can see traces of creative processing of foreign literary models, constitutes the most rewarding material for comparative studies. Polish literature occupies an important place in the artistic world of Shevchenko's stories, though not a leading one. Based on the study of the recollections about Taras Shevchenko's list of readings during his exile, the author proves that Shevchenko read literary and critical publications about Józef Ignatius Kraszewski's novel "Ulana" (1843) in the Russian periodicals in the 1850s. The author also discussed the possibility of Shevchenko reading the novel "Ostap Bondarchuk" (1847), in addition to the abovementioned work. Both literary works are mentioned in Shevchenko's novel "A Walk with Pleasure and not without a Moral" (1855–1858), written in exile in Novopetrovsk in which they are actualized in the intertextual field by an alternative development of events. The stories by the Polish writer logically fit into the reading list of the character of Shevchenko's work - an older woman with a difficult fate, the mother of a landowner who sincerely accepted a recent serf into her family circle, having become attached to her with all her heart. Applying traditional methods of comparative studies in combination with intertextual approaches, the author investigates the semantic richness of references of the Ukrainian prose writer to the works by his Polish contemporary. The echoes of the novel "Ostap Bondarczuk" are noticeable in Shevchenko's prose works "Twins" (1854 or 1855) and "The Artist" (1856). In the Polish intertext of "A Walk…" the author points out to the likely echo of Kraszewski's work "Master Twardowski" (1840). The typological parallels can be traced between Kraszewski's "The History of a Thorn in the Flesh, Compiled and Written Down According to Verified Sources" (1860) and Shevchenko's short novel "The Musician" (1854–1855).

Research and analysis of the development of news film and television based on the integrated media environment

The expansion of the digital integration mode of contemporary digital cinema from creation to projection and the change of cinematic language both herald the breakthrough of technology once again and the opening of a new era of digital cinematic art. From the aesthetic point of view, digital cinema has overturned and dismantled some of the theoretical essentials and important concepts of traditional film aesthetics about film ontology, and the changes and progress of digital cinema’s generation principle, audiovisual environment and media properties have profoundly influenced film art creation and audiences’ aesthetic approach. Digital reproduction and regeneration can realistically simulate reality and transcend reality to construct the story world in film, forming a higher level of aesthetic composition and aesthetic concept. The innovation of film media and the transformation of digital film machines enable audiences to develop an embodied experience at a super close distance or without distance, thus falling into the “immersion of the here and now” and “playable story”. The digital anthropomorphic film phenomenon experience and the immersive viewing mode of multimedia sound and image have perfectly realized the freedom and transcendence of digital film aesthetic experience and become an important force to promote the development and evolution of film aesthetics. It is the original purpose of this dissertation to explore the relationship between digital film technology development and film aesthetic discourse under the new digital technology conditions, to sort out the aesthetic implications and aesthetic characteristics of digital films, to explain the film concepts and aesthetic issues in the digital era, and to try to complete the systematic construction of contemporary digital technology film aesthetics.

Diasporic Subjects in Multicultural World in Mukharjee's Stories

The present paper argues that globalization has created diasporas subjects among immigrants communities as they go through a number of adjustment in the host culture. As recorded by Bharati Mukherjee in her story collection Middleman and Other Stories the protagonists have to constantly adopt and adapt new forms of hybridity in the US. With an advent of globalization, people started migrating into first world in search of better opportunities and social security, but the cultural differences always played a role in determining their identities. In other words, globalization opened the space for multiculturalism, and multiculturalism, in turn, bore diasporic subjects. This immigrants thus lived with an identity that they can’t claim to be their own. They always struggle, constantly adopting and adapting a newer and newer form of identity negotiated heavily in a cross cultural setting.

АВТОРСЬКІ ОРІЄНТИРИ ТА МЕХАНІЗМИ ВПИСУВАННЯ В НОРМАТИВНИЙ ДИСКУРС (НА МАТЕРІАЛІ ТВОРЧОСТІ КОСТЯ ГОРДІЄНКА)

The scientific research examines the issue of author’s guidelines and mechanisms of inclusion in the normative discourse on the example of Kostya Gordienko’s work. The critique and the theory of literature determining the logic of constructing social realism and substantiating the specifics of social-realistic myth-making and representing the problems of the domestic literary and artistic process of the 20-80s of the twentieth century have been actualized in the work. The schematic ways of reproducing the world in stories and novels «about the commune» are characterized by the imitation / stylization of political demands imposed by party criticism. Attention is drawn to the fact that the social-realistic myth-making element in K. Gordienko’s prose of the «mature Stalinism» period was combined with sporadic attempts to express concealed feelings and experiences Ukrainian village’s events in the period of dekulakization and collectivization. Features of the author’s modeling of the Second World War’s events in small epic genres have been determined. In particular, it has been found that the stories and essays give an understanding of the experiences, the emotional turmoil of the characters much more than reflecting the events of the war. It has been found that the horizons of the writer’s critical thinking resonate with current problems of Ukrainian literature and artistic creativity. The movement of the author’s thoughts revolves around the issues of the language culture, its stylistic and intonational resources, the imaginative system of folk thinking and so on. Fiction memoirs relate to memories of the 1920s literary process, the influence of the literary environment on creative growth. Despite the presence of stereotypical approaches and ideological algorithms for the depiction of reality, the works present the creative atmosphere of the Ukrainian literary life of the 1920s.

Commensality and Togetherness in Becky Chambers’ The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

Food in literature is always part of a symbolic act, as the characters within do not eat to stay alive as humans do, but rather, this depiction of eating is always a symbolic process. Food, especially in science fiction and fantasy fiction, works on an even grander scale by being an integral part of the world-building process. It operates on a two-fold scale by serving as a familiar anchor in futuristic and fantastical settings, while also functioning as a defamiliarizing agent that adds to the strangeness of the story world. Food is an incredibly complex motif to be explored in literature, but what will be concentrated on here is the aspect of commensality that is related to food and food practices. Commensality, often seen as related to conviviality, is the practice of sharing a table and consuming food together. This practice has connotations of the deeper meanings vested within food practices in a communal and social sense. These practices promote harmony and feelings of belongingness and togetherness. This paper looks at The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (2015) by Becky Chambers through the lens of food to explore how commensality works to create a home and promote the feeling of togetherness amongst an inter-galactic space crew that consists of multiple alien species from radically different cultures and communities.

Narratives of Enfoldment: Multi-linear and Parafictional Storytelling in Media Art

Narratives have been witnessing a state of enfoldment within the virtual world(s) since the proliferation of transmedia story worlds and new media art works. The aesthetics of enfoldment are discussed by Laura U. Marks within different trends in media art. She follows a genealogy of media art that has its roots in premodern Islamic concepts. Enfoldment is therefore situated as the broad framework of this paper’s discussion. Since the prevalence of the concept of transmedia storytelling, coined by Henry Jenkins in 2007, different franchises (be it in entertainment and others) have adopted certain narrative tropes to create a transmedia presence or universe. One of these tropes is the usage of multi-linear storytelling. Multi-linearity is one of the forms narrative storytelling that liberates a story from its temporal structure, making the consumption of narrative open to the end user. Parafiction, on the other hand, denotes instances when the lines between fact and fiction become blurry creating contemporary artworks where story worlds are essential for the dissemination of the works themselves. According to Lambert-beaty (2009) “the slew of recent writings trying to describe or explain this condition ranges from philosophical explorations of ‘the ethics of the lie’, to moralist warnings about our entry into ‘the post-truth era’” (Lambert-beatty, 2009). The following article aims at disseminating past scholarship on multi-linear and parafictional storytelling in trans and new media art in an attempt at shaping the theoretical framework of my doctoral thesis project; a podcast series intended for online dissemination that features conversations between a fictional character and non-fictional historical figures.

Синтетическая матрица переводного рассказа И. Бунина «Юный пилигрим»

The paper is devoted to the analysis of Ivan Bunin’s translated short story “The Young Pilgrim” (1931), which was included in the book “Provençal Tales Retold”. The research is undertaken in order to comprehend the role of folklore in the formation of the poetic world of the Bunin text created as a translation (more precisely, a “retelling”) of a novella by the French writer Frédéric Mistral (1830-1914), Nobel laureate (1904). The authors of the paper identify the main dominants of the folklore world of the short story, differentiate between the translated and original components of the text, trace the trends in the embodiment of the Western European space and the features of central characters’ personality and behaviour through the lens of folklore fairy tales, parables, legends. In particular, the authors draw attention to the “mixing” of the strategies of folklore and literature, the secular and religious texts, the principles of visual and verbal art in the text of the translated short story. The research is original in that it is the first to analyse the short story “The Young Pilgrim”, which has not previously attracted critics’ attention, and to emphasise the heterogeneous, different-style components of the source and translated texts. As a result, it has been proved that the “weakness” of Bunin’s translated short story is primarily due to the dependence on the artistic world of F. Mistral’s novella, which is based on folk legends and tales. It has been shown that Bunin’s knowledge of the basics and principles of Russian folklore helped the writer to ensure the compatibility of heterogeneous stylistic strategies proposed by the primary source.

‘Tears flowed from his eyes unceasingly’: weeping and total devotion in Egypt in late antiquity

ABSTRACT The article discusses the practice of weeping in Pachomian monasticism as a performance of absolute devotion. Theories about radical religion and approaches to emotions are used as a theoretical lens. Pachomian sources show a religious society in the making. Its emotional practices, including weeping, reflect a form of total devotion toward the divine, the monastic father, and the religious group. The article looks into how weeping was performed, what its scales were, in which ways it reflected religious excellence, and what sort of emotional regime it supported. Weeping interacted with a hierarchical organization and an authoritarian leadership intent on control. Leadership issues were set in a context of intense weeping, founded on the submission of the monastic son to the monastic father and on the son's total devotion to the monastic father and the divine. In the monastic story world, weeping and tears are strong textual signals and a pull factor in radical religion.

From Painters to Pirates: A Study of Non-Binary Protagonists in Young Adult Fiction

Non-binary gender is a marginalised queer identity increasingly receiving mainstream media representation, a subject that warrants investigation. Non-binary is an umbrella term under which many experiences of gender fall, a factor that necessitates a nuanced variety of narrative representations to avoid perpetuating or creating static and singular archetypes. This article examines a sample of young adult novels with non-binary protagonists published between 2017 and 2020, exploring the various ways these texts express and explore their central characters’ gender identity. My findings reveal thematic commonalities between these novels, with particular focus on the language used to describe these characters’ felt sense of gender, their experiences with dysphoria/euphoria, their relationships to broader queer communities within their story worlds, and the intersections of queer gender and speculative elements. I argue that this subset we might call ‘non-binary YA’ serves as an emblem of the development of queer YA overall, its rapid expansion through various genres and narrative types providing a microcosm of the growth of the literary field and pointing to its future.