Artists' Statement
The Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) format seemed a little absurd to me as a child flipping through the pages of a CYOA book. "Skip ahead to page 98" only works if the participant is willing to avoid the temptation of seeing what was on the next page, and those who weren't, would find that the out-of-context events diluted the continuity of the narrative for their chosen path. If you played by the rules, the novel would take on a hyper-text format which foreshadowed the hypermedia experiences found online. When deciding how to address the myriad possible pathways that could be chosen by a writer in the last two decades, this hyper-text structure of the CYOA is what was appealing.
In designing the structure for our narrative, the goal was to cover the major transformative processes that have occurred in the publishing industry over the past two decades. Although different pathways produce a different experience, they are not isolated experiences and the changes affecting one pathway are expressed to varying degrees in all of the different pathways. In our narrative, the pathways are largely defined by the use or avoidance of digital publishing formats. While this produces major differences in the pathways, our design emphasizes the inevitability of our current situation: the world of print media has largely lost the capacity of being exclusive of the digital counterpart. Thus, while allowing for individual tendencies to dictate the path, in a stroke of technological determinism, all participants arrive at the same closing scene.
We decided that, with all the opportunities available to us in terms of multimedia environments, there is no reason to make this a text-based Choose Your Own Adventure style story that just happens to be online. Instead we took the opportunity to explore different Web 2.0 tools to create the content on our Weebly site. While most narratives are linear, we decided to take a non-linear approach as mirrored in most media today. With the proliferation of the Internet, video games, mobile devices, apps, and ebooks, interactivity is a particular must if you wish to hook your audience. The larger question, however, is that while the details of this approach have often been explored in fiction, how can it be done successfully with research into a topic? Will the narrative complement the multimedia elements or will the images and video detract from the greater purpose to inform? Will this labor of love prove to be a labor to read? Only you can judge whether we have succeeded or not.
While this choice gave us the opportunity to create a much more dynamic experience, it also complicated the process because the creation of multimedia content, and especially the exploration of new tools that one is no familiar with, can be extremely time consuming. A project like this is extremely large in scope because of the added complication of multiple paths and story-lines to follow and have flow naturally together. The multimedia element of this project allowed us to get closer to understanding the possibilities of narrative and storytelling that are available with the advancements in Web 2.0. At this point in time, we found that despite the availability of tools such as the YouTube Video Editor, which allowed us to use Creative Commons videos and music to create our own videos, there is still a very limited resource base for less technically skilled creators. Additionally, once you publish a video using the YouTube editor, it is not possible to go back to the editor and change something such a a spelling mistake in the video and then re-publish it. In order to make even simple changes after publishing, one has to start all over again. These resources do not allow the same freedom that other video editors do and, as copyright law has not fully reflected the changes that are happening in digital landscapes, the very act of attempting to obey all copyright laws becomes more and more difficult as creators push their creative boundaries further and further from the mainstream.
There were additional problems when one of us tried to make an interactive video using Keynote and then export it to Quicktime. The interactive functionality afforded by Quicktime on one computer was lost when we tried to upload the video to YouTube. In the end, much time was spent exploring new options and tools that didn't always work out.
This project would not be possible without the collaborative authoring environment made possible by using Weebly. The ability to simultaneously work on different pages and incorporate a variety of multimedia elements to make a seamless whole with a minimum of fuss or technical expertise has meant that we have been able to produce a polished piece with high production values. However, there was some frustration when a page was being edited by one person so another person could not work on that particular page - it is not collaborative in the same manner that Google Docs is. Our goal has been to create an enjoyable and entertaining experience for the reader. To that end, the technology should not get in the way, nor should it impose its presence on the reader. Ugly design and a clunky interface would only detract from the underlying goal of this project. We want you to embrace and explore the journey of the writer and to enjoy the beautiful design along the way.
This project is an homage to the Choose your Own Adventure books of our youth. Choice being the operative word. Our project is firmly grounded within the belief that knowledge is constructed and that no two learners take the same path to understanding. To that end, this piece reflects the need to have and make choices, and to allow each individual to explore and navigate their own path through a rich and varied landscape—a veritable mélange of text and imagery syncopated by research. It is your task to bring order to the chaos and make meaning from these new experiences. After all, that is what a writer does.
~ Ashley, Ben, & Dan
In designing the structure for our narrative, the goal was to cover the major transformative processes that have occurred in the publishing industry over the past two decades. Although different pathways produce a different experience, they are not isolated experiences and the changes affecting one pathway are expressed to varying degrees in all of the different pathways. In our narrative, the pathways are largely defined by the use or avoidance of digital publishing formats. While this produces major differences in the pathways, our design emphasizes the inevitability of our current situation: the world of print media has largely lost the capacity of being exclusive of the digital counterpart. Thus, while allowing for individual tendencies to dictate the path, in a stroke of technological determinism, all participants arrive at the same closing scene.
We decided that, with all the opportunities available to us in terms of multimedia environments, there is no reason to make this a text-based Choose Your Own Adventure style story that just happens to be online. Instead we took the opportunity to explore different Web 2.0 tools to create the content on our Weebly site. While most narratives are linear, we decided to take a non-linear approach as mirrored in most media today. With the proliferation of the Internet, video games, mobile devices, apps, and ebooks, interactivity is a particular must if you wish to hook your audience. The larger question, however, is that while the details of this approach have often been explored in fiction, how can it be done successfully with research into a topic? Will the narrative complement the multimedia elements or will the images and video detract from the greater purpose to inform? Will this labor of love prove to be a labor to read? Only you can judge whether we have succeeded or not.
While this choice gave us the opportunity to create a much more dynamic experience, it also complicated the process because the creation of multimedia content, and especially the exploration of new tools that one is no familiar with, can be extremely time consuming. A project like this is extremely large in scope because of the added complication of multiple paths and story-lines to follow and have flow naturally together. The multimedia element of this project allowed us to get closer to understanding the possibilities of narrative and storytelling that are available with the advancements in Web 2.0. At this point in time, we found that despite the availability of tools such as the YouTube Video Editor, which allowed us to use Creative Commons videos and music to create our own videos, there is still a very limited resource base for less technically skilled creators. Additionally, once you publish a video using the YouTube editor, it is not possible to go back to the editor and change something such a a spelling mistake in the video and then re-publish it. In order to make even simple changes after publishing, one has to start all over again. These resources do not allow the same freedom that other video editors do and, as copyright law has not fully reflected the changes that are happening in digital landscapes, the very act of attempting to obey all copyright laws becomes more and more difficult as creators push their creative boundaries further and further from the mainstream.
There were additional problems when one of us tried to make an interactive video using Keynote and then export it to Quicktime. The interactive functionality afforded by Quicktime on one computer was lost when we tried to upload the video to YouTube. In the end, much time was spent exploring new options and tools that didn't always work out.
This project would not be possible without the collaborative authoring environment made possible by using Weebly. The ability to simultaneously work on different pages and incorporate a variety of multimedia elements to make a seamless whole with a minimum of fuss or technical expertise has meant that we have been able to produce a polished piece with high production values. However, there was some frustration when a page was being edited by one person so another person could not work on that particular page - it is not collaborative in the same manner that Google Docs is. Our goal has been to create an enjoyable and entertaining experience for the reader. To that end, the technology should not get in the way, nor should it impose its presence on the reader. Ugly design and a clunky interface would only detract from the underlying goal of this project. We want you to embrace and explore the journey of the writer and to enjoy the beautiful design along the way.
This project is an homage to the Choose your Own Adventure books of our youth. Choice being the operative word. Our project is firmly grounded within the belief that knowledge is constructed and that no two learners take the same path to understanding. To that end, this piece reflects the need to have and make choices, and to allow each individual to explore and navigate their own path through a rich and varied landscape—a veritable mélange of text and imagery syncopated by research. It is your task to bring order to the chaos and make meaning from these new experiences. After all, that is what a writer does.
~ Ashley, Ben, & Dan