Alice: Madness Returns gameplay Demo.

The History of Choose Your Own Adventure Story Fiction

"Choose Your Own Adventure's 'you' centered decision making, and exciting pace, has been cited as an influence in numerous games and media that followed the series. Examples of Choose Your Own Adventure's reference in the gaming world includes Japan's popular Bishoujo video games, which combine narratives with gameplay and mark the beginning of 'the trend in modern gaming toward using technology to allow players control over their stories... taking on characteristics of highly detailed Choose Your Own Adventure novels,' Choose Your Own Adventure is credited with partial responsibility for the heightened popularity of Role Playing Games, including Dungeons and Dragons. Other games which have been referenced as inspired by Choose Your Own Adventure include Mass Effect II which has a narrative-based adaptive difficulty setting where potential gameplay is altered by a player's decision-making early in the game and FormSoft's Adventure Player, a portable memory stick for PlayStation that allows players to build narrative-based games. The Interactive Fiction community has also credited Choose Your Own Adventure as being a major influence of their works."

(Chooseco LLC)

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Tabitha Soren: in-between narratives capturing stories in flux

"Sometimes it's simply looking at a particular behavior in a new way that evokes a range of emotions. Photographer Tabitha Soren has created a series of photographs, Running, that stir up feelings of panic, tension, curiosity, and concern. Tabitha's photographs have power in their simplicity, and it's as if one edge of her photograph is the past and one is the future, creating an in-between narrative that captures a story in flux. As viewers, we are caught in a pivotal moment of cinematic tension, requiring us to imagine what came before and what comes after each image. The photographs become a series of short stories that seem to shout 'get me the hell out of here.'"

(Aline Smithson, 23 May 2012, Lenscratch)

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The Future of the Book: design speculation

"The Future of the Book is a design exploration of digital reading that seeks to identify new opportunities for readers, publishers, and authors to discover, consume, and connect in different formats.

As more people consume pages in pixels, IDEO designers wondered why we continue to discover and consume the written word through the old analog, page-turning model. We asked: what happens when the reading experience catches up with new technologies?

The team looked at how digital and analog books currently are being read, shared and collected, as well as at trends, business models and consumer behavior within related fields. We identified three distinct opportunities - new narratives, social reading with richer context, and providing tools for critical thinking - and developed a design concept around each one.

The first concept, 'Alice,' turns storytelling on its head by making narratives non-linear and participatory. With Alice, the story world starts bleeding into the everyday life of the reader. Real-world challenges, like acting on a phone call from the lead character, or participating in photo based scavenger hunts, unlock new aspects of the story, and turn other readers into collaborators or competitors. Alice is a platform for authors to experiment with narratives, to allow their stories to transcend media, and to engage fans in the storytelling process.

The second concept, 'Coupland,' makes book discovery a social activity by allowing readers to build shared libraries and hear about additional texts through existing networks. Coupland makes it easy for busy professionals to stay on top of industry must-reads. Businesses can assign book budgets to their employees and build collective libraries through a group-licensing model. Personal recommendations, aggregation of reading patterns, and the ability to follow inspiring individuals and groups help ensure that Coupland users always are tapped into the latest essential content within and outside of the organization.

The third concept, 'Nelson,' connects books to commentary, critique, and contextual information, letting readers explore a topic from multiple perspectives. Nelson reinforces the role of books as carriers of knowledge and insight. Readers can explore polarizing material and see whose word currently has the greatest impact on popular opinion and debate. Layers of connected commentary, news, and fact-checking augment the core book content - providing greater context and encouraging debate and scrutiny.

Each concept features a simple, accessible storytelling format and a particular look and feel. We believe that digital technology creates possibilities, so our solutions truly adapt to the new environment, rather than emulate analog qualities onscreen. For example, we resisted any temptation to move books closer to the bite-sized character of other digital media, because longhand writing encourages immersion (deep reading) and reflection."

(IDEO, 2010)

Jean Cocteau: la Belle et la Bête

"La lumière brillante et surnaturelle qui avait dominé toute la scène du château (flamme des chandeliers, feu, reflets étincelants de l’argenterie) s’estompe pour laisser la place à la lumière naturelle du jour [plan 9] [9]. Ces rayons lumineux rappellent ceux des dernières gravures de la Belle au vois dormant. D’autant plus que cette lumière naturelle n’est pas légitimée par la présence d’une fenêtre, comme c’est le cas chez Doré. C’est une lumière naturelle, la lumière du jour, mais elle semble toujours éclairer le personnage de manière surnaturelle : comment la lumière extérieure peut-elle pénétrer à l’intérieur sans la présence d’aucune fenêtre ? Les flambeaux s’éteignent un à un, le personnage traverse un grand pan de lumière blanche, la porte se referme toute seule, l’escalier apparaît en plongée : la scène semble se rejouer à l’envers, ce qui souligne la structure circulaire et la clôture de la séquence, mais aussi l’influence de l’œuvre de Gustave Doré. Le dialogue des contes et des illustrations se poursuit jusqu’à la dernière image de la séquence puisqu’elle se termine sur les ronces qui envahissent l’escalier du château de la Bête, comme celles qui envahissent les gravures du château de la Belle au bois dormant."

(Estelle Plaisant Soler, 26 juin 2006)

Fig.1 Jean Cocteau (1946). "la Belle et la Bête"

2). PDF of 100 Cult Films (Screen Guides).

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