Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. Where to start?
Most of this is a mess. Be warned, intrepid explorer.
For those who kinda sorta remember me from past threads.
Passions, they are as fleeting as the seasons. I’m almost done with University and I might finally take my gap year. We’ll see about re-opening that crazy ‘Academy of Arcana’ thread someday. I solemnly swear it’s still a dear child to me, but right now this consumes my thoughts and I simply must indulge.
For Everybody: The Basics
My fascinations lie with performance art, mathematics, languages and storytelling. I’ve veered a lot of my studies towards Game Design and Storytelling, trying to marry mathematics and performance into an unholy union - something my Acting Degree simply didn’t like, but I made do.
Recently I’ve put a lot of effort into understanding how narratives and audiences interact, and how exactly we, as creatives, can get safely experimental. A consistent ideal I’ve applied is to simply suck all the passion out of it and get analytical (that’s bad a joke, don’t mind it), and I’ve tried looking at storytelling in spatial context.
and then those consequences amend:
Its purely conjecture at this point, but if we suppose that stories can be spatially constructed, we can insinuate what they might look like.
Primary dimensional storytelling follows a linear progression from event x to event z, with events y(n) happening in between as consequence of preceding events. Take The Sycophantic Fox and the Gullible Raven as an example:
- Event x: The Raven has a piece of undetermined cheese. The Fox observes this.
- Event y(1): The Fox compliments the Raven as a means to an end.
- Event y(2): The Fox coaxes the Raven to sing and the cheese drops.
- Event z: The Fox gets the piece of cheese and the Raven says a dirty word.
This is a basic story plotted along a single axis, which describes what is observable in the story.
The 2nd dimension follows the progression of observable events and implies observable inferences on second axis.
- The story parameters are established.
- Insight is given to the reader about the nature of the participants.
- The reader can infer a universal moral outside of the observable story.
When we introduce a 3rd dimension, it becomes recognisable in spaces we are familiar with. Given that traditional mathematics observes 3-dimensional space with vectors and directions, it becomes appropriate to describe it in terms of what we are so akin to here on COG. We nudge stories. At certain points we nudge them along, changing direction, altering the topology of the story itself. Our interaction is how the story progresses.
If we were granted the option to play the part of the fox, with choices we make changing the outcome of the story, and consequently what we learn from that, then that is a psuedo-3-dimensional story, yes?
The crux of the matter is: Where do we even begin with trying to define what the fourth dimension in storytelling could be? What else could possibly be observable and how would we interact with it? Why would we want to do it?
To that last question - We are pioneers, hooligans of the arts and crafts, and we like to see what happens when we do crazy things. Or maybe that’s just me?
and then these darkest dreams conceive:
Laid out, what are our options?
IF uses a second party to alter the storytelling process. In terms of exploring from a solid foundation, we’ll stick to Interactive Fiction. Here are just a few things I could come up with. Any more suggestions are welcome, even if it’s just a mash up of foreign words in Russian.
- Cross platform narratives (Eh, it’s been a thing for a long time, it’s been done, it was interactive, it was fun. Moving on.)
- Player interacting with some primitive AI (But that’s already an established thing, so it’s not really exploring untreaded vistas, is it?)
- Paradigm shifts - and fold – and rotations (What does this even mean? I’m kinda interested, but I think it comes down to merely a storytelling technique more than an actual extra dimension of storytelling. I’ll keep an open mind.)
- Tesseracts and cells, maybe even prime numbers? (all fancy math words that are utterly meaningless to me.)
A Mirrored Hallway of Inconceivable Proportions
I really like this idea - Imagine a player standing in an infinite hallway lined with mirrors that they can reach through. They can see themselves, and even reach out and touch themselves, but all their reflections do the exact same thing.
If a player were to grab a hold of their own arm through the mirror and tug, they’d be tugged backwards as well. If a player were to hold hands with themselves in an infinite string, and try to turn, they’d have to change the layout of the mirrors to make that possible.
The concept plays on the idea that the player creates a self affecting story - something I’m very keen to try out in CS very soon.
- 4D topology ( a very weird interconnected mess in which all things happen at once and simultaneously nothing happens at all - Thank you, Douglas Adams.)
I’m exceptionally receptive to ideas, critiques or even death threats. Feel free to post your thoughts, whether you think I should just get off the internet or a while or whether I should invest all my time and effort into this. Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
Have a nice day.
