The video and computer game market, without which it is no longer possible to imagine the field of entertainment, has today a greater sales volume than the traditional film market. Its economic success proves that "inter­action", with the possibility to (re)act to what is happening in a game or even to influence its conditions, is appealing. Meanwhile, approaches to designing these games have become diversified, and they are now much more complex than the "Pong" game which flickered across TV-screens at the beginning of the Eighties. There are games which are based on advanced programming techniques, offering users a spectrum of experiences depending on their mood and in which they can determine the conditions themselves, as e.g. in "Sim City". Then there are games which contain elaborate video sequences, that are in no way inferior to film production, and which create a different impression of interaction: for example, the "Wing Commander" series. These two games represent the two poles which have to be balanced in computer games (and other new forms of media): storytelling with the imaginary participation o f the user in predefined events with characters, settings, etc., and interactivity with direct participation, in which the outcome of the "story" depends on the user's actions. It is a tightrope walk between a mediated, self-contained dramatic experience, and the openness of a game with many parameters. This situation gives rise to several questions: Does a story still exist when the user can interact with figures, etc. ? To what degree is an interactively open dramaturgy possible, i.e., can a story be told multilinearly? "True" interactivity is supposed to differ from mere choice-making: the criterion is to what extent unique experience can be successfully induced by interactivity. This entails the designing of a process: between different players, as well as between player and machine. The ideal of interactive entertainment is the dialogue. Hence, new interfaces re to be developed which are the "partner" for users and which allow them to produce their own stories at the very moment they are experiencing them. It is obvious in this context, that the media requires great "elasticity" to be able to fulfil these expectations. Irrelevant to whether such experiments with multilinear storytelling and interactive interventions succeed, it means generating a freedom of design, which allows the viewer's thoughts to move freely. The user has a "set" of elements at his disposal that he can combine at will. And then there is the dimension of content: to what degree are stories attractive that to all appearances do not follow conventional plot rules? An example of such a CD-ROM game Is "Myst", in which the user enters an unfamiliar world, to which there is no introduction and no "explanation" of plot. Gradually, by groping his way through this strange scenery, the user learns his way around. Can this form be described as a kind of "meta- dramaturgy"? It is rather the representation of moods and atmospheres, scenes to which each user can associate according to his interests, and which pools diverse elements from older media. Emphasis is on the creation of an imaginary space in which there is no prescribed meaning, yet which does indeed cite elements of meaning. The question is how stories change when the forms of social communication are re-linked. Some claim that in times of increasing social confusion, in which culture is ever more entangled in technologies and global phenomena, storytelling (in literature, film etc.) is needed more than ever to achieve a picture of reality. Storytelling is, so to speak, a basic prerequisite of communication, required to arrive at common meaning. Others believe that it is precisely this era o f epic narration which is over and done with. New generations are influenced by different aesthetic qualities, for instance those of music videos, and they pay more attention to effects than to contents. Are storytelling skills influenced in any way by these new technologies? Are attempts being made in the media arts to arrive at new means of narration and expression that do justice to the audience's altered perception and to an altered cultural situation? It is becoming increasingly difficult to find artistic representations for the highly structured, technically mediated contexts, which are not directly perceptible. The literature of (post)modernism is, for example, "meta-fictional": it no longer tells just one story with a plot which unfolds causally, but puts together a text out of bits and pieces, in which narrative viewpoints vary and motifs run through the fragments without ever been executed. Different kinds of new dramatisation are emerging that increasingly bear in mind a meta-level, a structure. In a new manner, the user is integrated into spaces which allow for new stages of fantasy. The interactive media will certainly develop its own methods of entertainment, but these are at present not foreseeable. And these methods may have implications for a communication which goes far beyond the playing of games, and may gradually penetrate cultural consciousness. Wolfgang Neuhaus. "The Telepathie Motion Picture of THE LOST TRIBES" will be an electronically produced feature length narrative work, making use of advanced computer-based production and post­ production techniques to tell a complex, multi-threaded story. The film will depend upon an ensemble of actors, who will be injected into an emotional, fantastic, and graphically synthetic mental reality. "The Telepathic Motion Picture of THELOST TRIBES" will be a historical narrative, though set in a world with a history and physics somewhat different than our own. I will be organizing the narrative around the conventions of
the alternate history story, a common form in science fiction and mystery writing. In this new production, I will be paying strong attention to the narrative possibilities of internal montage provided by new computer technologies. A multimedia version of
the project, for both portable and networked media, is under parallel development. David Blair. Interactive storytelling is rather like playing chess. You only experience the fun and excitement if you are integrated into the process as a player and have to act yourself to propel the plot forwards. Inevitably, this forces the linearity of the classical narrative plot to yield to a multilinear scaffolding built of plot components whose time sequence is not always pre-determined. The craft of the multimedia author or director is to devise an intelligent mechanism of rules, planning in advance as many different permutations as possible, all of them with a logical development and appropriate dramatic enactment, enabling the spectator or player to identify action targets and join the interactive game.
Compared with chess, however, the outcome of a story with consistent content will usually be confined to a manageable number of variations. Imitating the radius of action we expect of our real environment is no doubt only one way to introduce inter­ activity into the game, although in itself it does not produce a story. Inter­activity and logical storytelling are diametrically opposed modes of conduct. This fact cannot be ignored when seeking to tell entertaining interactive stories. Eku Wand. I have a background in directing and produdng Dance fiims, specially for TV. This work bas explored notions of "narrative" in the context of Contemporary Dance's and Ballets facsination. More recently, I have encouraged a group of choreographers to link with digital artists to form collaborations to make "digital dancing" using interactive media. Unsurprisingly, notions of narrative are central to these new projects - in particular - how the interactive user "passes through time" in interacting with a digital dance piece. This means that I can look at the work in the context of strategies and infra­structure. We can talk all we want about new media opportunities - but where are the professional possibilities? When we have an idea to make a TV programme or film - we have a shared sense o f context and expectations, in terms of: professionalism, status, legal procedures, contracts, rates of pay, the appropriateness of one TV genre versus another, public expections of technology, etc. etc. However, in Interactive Media none of that exists (yet). So I ask: How do we establish such an infrastructure? Who are the participants? Is this new baby called interactive media the child of TV? Does it need to be more independent - leave the nest and find its own way? and if so, how will it survive? Terry Braun. For economic and technical reasons, we have only just begun to find out how to tell multimedia stories convincingly. Until we understand the specifics of this type of narration, it will be no more than a modest repetition and adaption of familiar elements from videoclips, cinema and television. Through necessity rather than virtue, the user is offered material for do-it-yourself assembly. What is the advantage of dividing a story into episodes and leaps, rather than telling it in linear succession, and why turn the user into a dramatist? The question has been raised in the Internet, too (see Eastgate hypertexts or Ilya Troyanov's "Highway World"). Ingolf Bannemann