Storyboard: An Emergent Narrative

THE PROJECT Storyboard explores the idea of emergent narrative: what kind of narrative results when it is created in a self-organized, bottom-up fashion? Would the product really be considered a narrative? Would the process result in some kind of discernible macrobehavior that could be considered emergent? Can narrative -- typically a linear, rule-laden construct -- be created "by footprints, not fiat"? In response to Steven Johnson's Emergence, we created a story-space using objects, a model landscape, and a set of rules to test these questions.
		THE PROCESS The ITP community is a complex system that uses the main public space as a source of information exchange through daily interaction. Storyboard came about as the result of conversations about the mechanics of that complex system and whether or not it could be indirectly pushed toward a goal, thereby making it a complex adaptive system. Could community feedback alone cause the undefined space of Storyboard to blossom into a more orderly structure?
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THE PLAYERS The Storyboard players seemed to embrace the exploratory nature of the game, establishing a dialogue through the movement of the objects. Their interaction was documented with stop motion photography, examples of which can be viewed from the "Players Slides" link above.		THE PRODUCT Storyboard did result in a narrative, although certainly an atypical one. The members of the ITP community created a portrait of place on the game board, documented by the Polaroids they took and the narrative they wrote. The final product can be viewed from the "Product Slides" link above.
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