Where Did You Go Today? A Brief History of Narrative Space. Where Will You Go Tomorrow? The Future of Narrative Space
Abstract
Whilst location and setting, mise en scene, have always been key elements of moving image, since the advent of computing, space has become a more prominent feature. This paper will consider the spaces in which moving image narratives play, the fictional spaces they conjure and the effect of technologies on the construction, delivery and reception of narrative space. Manovich’s characterization of the digital experience as, ‘spatial wandering,’ (2001, p49) echoed Murray’s declaration that, ‘Digital media are spatial.’ (Murray quoted by Ryan, 2016, p100). Narrative has always been immersive. The transporting nature of narrative provides one of its key pleasures. ‘Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade,’ Calvino, (1979, p3) invites his readers to lose themselves in his novel, If On A Winters Night A Traveler, beginning a journey into a narrative that explores the very idea of immersion. Like the first establishing shot of a film, Calvino instructs his readers to imagine a train station, positioning them in a scene created in their minds eye. ‘Arguably the best stories are those which you are lost in.’ (Weedon, 2018, p50). Millennia ago, sitting around the campfire, storytellers would ignite the imaginations of their listeners, conveying them to fantasy spaces, historical landscapes, fabled events, carried there by their own visions. Successive technologies have separated storytellers from their audience, through the alphabet, print, photography, film, and computer screens. This paper will look to a future of narrative space, when stories spill out of the screen, providing embodied experiences, in headsets, projection mapped onto locations, in mixed and augmented reality scenarios, mediated by artificial intelligence. Are we moving into a new narrative age following Manovich’s ages of the frame, proscenium arch, cinema and computer screen, one in which we leave the frame behind and step into the narrative space? This paper posits that the introduction of digital processes in the production and consumption of moving image afford new experiences of narrative space for both producers and consumers of moving image culture.
Keywords: narrative space; storytelling; virtual reality; virtual production
Downloads
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike International License (CC-BY-SA 4.0) that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
Copyright without Restrictions
The journal permits the author(s) to hold the copyright without restrictions and will hold distributing rights without limitations.
The submitted papers are assumed to contain no proprietary material unprotected by patent or patent application; responsibility for technical content and for protection of proprietary material rests solely with the author(s) and their organizations and is not the responsibility of the Ultimart: Jurnal Komunikasi Visual or its Editorial Staff. The main (first/corresponding) author is responsible for ensuring that the article has been seen and approved by all the other authors. It is the responsibility of the author to obtain all necessary copyright release permissions for the use of any copyrighted materials in the manuscript prior to the submission.
