1. Properties of Digital Media From Hamlet on the Holodeck by Janet Murray Aaron Levisohn PHD Candidate School of Interactive Arts and Technology Simon Fraser University

2. Digital Environments are: Procedural Participatory Spatial Encyclopedic These in turn are components of higher level concepts: Interactive – Procedureal & Participatory Immersive – Spatial & Encyclopedic Four Properties

3. The Computer is an engine “The computer is not fundamentally a wire or a pathway but an engine.” P.72 It executes a series of rules. Procedural Property

4. Weizenbaum’s ELIZA It is the cleverness of Weizenbaum’s rules that creates the illusion that Eliza understands what is said. P.72 “Eliza is not a neutral procedural model, but a comic interpretation of the world.” P. 72 “The computer can be a compelling medium for storytelling if we can write rules for it that are recognizable as interpretations of the world.” P. 73 Procedural Property: ELIZA

5. “The challenge for the future is to make such rule writing as available to writers as musical notation is to composers.” P.74 Q: Should this be the goal. Is it possible? What would this entail? What would such a notation look like? Procedural Property: The Goal

6. “The primary representational property of the computer is the codified rendering of responsive behaviors.” P.74 ZORK: “In making a fantasy world that responded to typed commands, the programmers were in part celebrating their pleasure in the increasingly responsive computing environments at their disposal.” P.75 “ELIZA was focused on the cleverness of the machine created world; Zork was focused on the experience of the participants.” P.77 Participatory Property

7. Lessons from Zork Interpreters vs. compilers Murray argues that the new participatory model of Zork was due in part to the use of the programming language LISP which resulted in a “more conversational structure between the programmer and the program.” P.76 Scripting the Interactor “The lesson of Zork is that the first step in making an enticing narrative world is to script the interactor.” P.79 “Constrain the player’s behavior to a dramatically appropriate, but limited set of commands.” P.79 Participatory Property: ZORK

8. “Only digital environments can present space that we can move through.” P.79 Early Examples: The Graphical User Interface (GUI) Video Games (PacMan) CD-ROMs(Interactive Map of Aspen, Colorado) Culminates in Cyberspace : “An environment with its own geography in which we experience a change of documents on our screen as a visit to a distant site on a worldwide web.” P.80 Spatial Property

9. “The Computer’s spatial quality is created by the interactive process of navigation.” P.80 The essence of this spatial property is not in it’s ability to represent geographical space, or even it’s ability to link distant places. P.82 The Dramatic Power of Navigation “The Computer screen is displaying a story that is also a place.” P.82 “The interactor’s navigation of virtual space has been shaped into a dramatic enactment of the plot” P.83 Spatial Property: Navigation

10. “Computers are the most capacious medium ever invented, promising infinite resources.” P.83 Provides the artist with the “potential to offer a wealth of detail, to represent the world with both scope and particularity.” P.84 It offers writers the opportunity to tell stories from multiple vantage points and to offer intersecting stories that for a dense and wide-spreading web.” P.84 Q: Is this the aspect of interactive narrative that we get too focused on? Encyclopedic Property

11. The Expanding Life of Digital Media Bulletin Boards “The internet functions as a giant bulletin board on which long term story arcs can be plotted and episodes from different seasons juxtaposed and compared.” P.85 “Television shows seem to be outgrowing broadcast delivery altogether” P.85 MUDS The MUD itself is a collective creation – at once a game, a society, and a work of fiction– that is often based on a particular encyclopedic fantasy domain…” P.86 Non-fictional references: “Stories can twine around and through the non-fictional documents of real life.” p. 87 Encyclopedic: Contextuality

12. “The encyclopedic nature of the medium can also be a handicap.” P.87 Promotes long-windedness Reader is left not knowing which ending is the “real” end Reader won’t always know if they have seen everything Navigation can require too much scrolling or clicking Hypertext fiction is still awaiting the development of formal conventions of organization that will allow the reader/interactor to explore the encyclopedic medium without being overwhelmed. Q: Murray is very keen on formalizing the medium. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Is it even possible? Encyclopedic: Dangers

13. SimCity Civilization These simulations “seem more encyclopedically inclusive than they really are.” P.89 “The political assumptions behind SimCity are hidden from the player.” P.89 Interpretive Framework “The interpretive framework is embedded in the rules by which the system works and in the way in which participation is shaped.” p.89 “As these systems take on more narrative content, the interpretive nature of these structures will e more and more important.” P.89 Encyclopedic: Simulations

14. “Hypertext and simulation, the two most promising formats for digital narrative, were both invented after WWII as a way of mastering the complexity of an expanding knowledge base.” P.90 Complexity

15. Vannevar Bush(1945): The Memex The infinite web of human knowledge is a solvable maze, open to rational organization.” P.91 Ted Nelson (1960): hypertext The unsolvable Labyrinth: “an emblem of the inexhaustibility of the human mind…” P.92 Complexity: Hypertext

16. Norbert Wiener (1948): System Dynamics ( Cybernetics) “Observed that all systems, whether biological or engineered, have certain characteristics in common”: Intertwining of multiple cause-and-effect relationships Creation of feedback loops for self-regulation (p.92) “The computer has developed…into a versatile tool for modeling systems that reflect our ideas about how the world is organized.” P. 92 The Game of Life (1970) “A simple but elegantly conceived program that seemed to simulate life itself.” p.92 Complexity: Simulation

17. Q: Are hypertext and simulations the two most promising formats for digital narrative? Interactive Narrative

18. T.S. Elliot’s Objective Correlative: “Describe[s] the way in which clusters of events in literary works can capture emotional experience.” P.93 “The Computer allows us to create objective correlatives for thinking about the many systems we participate in, observe, and imagine.” P. 93 Not just games anymore “The more we see life in terms of systems, the more we need a system-modeling medium to represent it – and the less we can dismiss such organized rule systems as mere games.” p.93 Q: Is Murray decrying games, calling for their evolution into narratives, or erasing the lines between narrative and game? Objective Correlative

19. We are overusing the digital media’s novel properties “Current narrative applications overexploit the digressive possibilities of hypertext and the game-like features of simulation.” P.93 The medium will define itself through trial and error “Each time developers create new genres of digital stories or more immersive games, interactors try them our and grow frustrated or enchanted. “ P.93 Q: How far have we come since Murray wrote Hamlet on the Holodeck in 1997? Final Notes