The Story Arcade

The Story Arcade discovers and celebrates new forms of storytelling, beginning with 20 exhibits at the Future of StoryTelling 2012. We’d love to hear of your favorite new kinds of stories—email us at storyarcade@futureofstorytelling.org.


StoryPress

Have you ever wished you could permanently capture your grandparents’ memories? Or save your great-aunt’s amazing suffragette story for your children to hear? Collect your own oral histories using your iPad with StoryPress, an app that makes it easy to record, organize, and archive spoken stories. After recording, you can organize stories into audiobooks, interactive tours, audio diaries, and share them with whomever you wish. StoryPress puts the spoken word—the lowest-tech, most traditional form of storytelling—front and center, with technology only serving to enhance its power. The software suggests that at least part of the future of storytelling may lie in ways we can augment and amplify our oldest techniques. 

StoryPress is currently running a Kickstarter campaign to produce version 2.0 of the app. Learn more here.

Times Haiku

Can computers be poets? Times Haiku makes a pretty good argument for the case. Jacob Harris, senior software architect at the New York Times, has programmed a bot to find haikus in the front page of the newspaper. The algorithm counts syllables and finds naturally-occuring 5-7-5 combinations within articles, and while you might expect (and get) pure randomness, the results can also be surprisingly poignant (“There is pleasure to/be had here, in flares of spice/ that revive and warm.”) Times Haiku represents one in a growing field of algorithmic storytelling and art—also in this category are Quill by Narrative Science and Scape by Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers. The ability of Times Haiku’s mindless algorithm to find its poetic gems demonstrates just some of the exciting potential for generative and code-assisted creativity.

Recalling 1993

The New Museum’s show “NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star” elevates that year, two decades ago, to a pivotal moment that shaped the art and cultural zeitgeist of the city and the world. With work from artists such as Mike Kelley, Cindy Sherman, Matthew Barney, and Kiki Smith, the show is a vivid evocation of the ferment of the early 1990s. ReCalling 1993, created by Droga5 and The New Museum, enlists payphones to transport you back to the New York of 1993. Call 1-855-FOR-1993 from any of Manhattan’s 5,000 payphones and you’ll hear what was going on in that phone’s location 20 years ago. From a phone on 42nd Street, porn icon Robin Byrd recalls the then-seedy neighborhood’s high spots (“it was a great time!”). From outside the Whitney Museum, critic Walter Robinson recalls the fake vomit in the year’s Biennial. Taking you out of the confines of the New Museum and into the bustling city streets, ReCalling 1993 is a fascinating exploration of time, space, technology, and one of the most dynamic cities in the world.

Recalling 1993 from Droga5 NY on Vimeo.

Gallery One at the Cleveland Museum of Art

You enter the room and are greeted by a 40-foot-wide screen filled with 3,000 glowing images inviting you to touch, swipe through, and explore. As you tap each one, the images reconfigure, grouping similar images together and highlighting trends in art and relationships between objects. If you like what you see, you can save the images to your iPad, take them home, and create customized collections for yourself.

This is Gallery One at the Cleveland Museum of Art, developed by creative firm Local Projects. (The President and Founder of Local Projects is Jake Barton, who some of you may recognize from FoST 2012!) These images represent all of the items in the museum’s collection, and as you and others browse the giant touchscreen you can view infinite configurations of images and create a personalized tour for yourself. Once you are exploring the museum, a companion iPad app, ArtLens, provides additional content, such as behind-the-scenes installation videos or historical context. Gallery One represents one of the most successful and well-integrated examples of technology in a museum context to date, as it serves to enhance the pieces and deepen our engagement with the artwork. At the Cleveland Museum of Art, futuristic technology serves to showcase classical art, bringing objects from the past to a modern audience.

This Wednesday April 3, we are hosting a Google+ hangout with Jake Barton, President of Local Projects, who will be discussing this and other innovative experiences. For more details and to RSVP for this exciting conversation, click here.

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The Monster That Won’t Let Children Go To School

At the beginning of The Monster That Won’t Let Children Go To School, all seems well—the titular children travel happily through charming landscapes, backpacks on. However, it’s not long before each group of children is besieged by a monster that sends them running back home. Finally, at one critical moment in this interactive film and fundraising campaign by Unicef, ING Direct, and Ogilvy Spain, the viewer is able to send the children a text message in order to save them from the monster. What they choose to text changes the ending of the film—letting the viewer become the hero of the story. Cleverly, each text sent via this experience automatically donates 1.20 Euro to Unicef, which go towards real-life philanthropic initiatives that help children attend school. In a little over a month, the campaign raised 197,000 Euro. In addition to being an engaging instance of participatory narrative, The Monster is an inspiring example of how technology and storytelling can come together to involve the viewer, inspire action, and engender real change.

BioShock Infinite

BioShock Infinite, the third installment of the enormously popular BioShock franchise, comes out today to the delight of its many fans. From the beginning, BioShock has owed much of its success to the unusual depth of its in-game narratives and the sophistication of its themes. Perhaps owing from creator Ken Levine’s background as a screenwriter, plots were complex and rich, featuring morally ambiguous characters, elaborate world building, and philosophical questions. BioShock Infinite follows in this trend of sophisticated storytelling. The game is set in Columbia, a city that floats in the sky and is based on the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. You play as detective Booker DeWitt who must rescue the herione Elizabeth from Columbia to take back to Earth. Though at first Columbia appears to be a wonderful place, you soon realize that it is plagued by xenophobia, racism, and growing class tensions—all inspired by real, ugly American history. BioShock Infinite becomes a pointed comment on American exceptionalism, and represents one of the most sophisticated, mature examples of video game narratives to date. More than your typical first-person shooter, BioShock Infinite argues for games as the next great medium for high caliber storytelling.

The Talking Shoe at Art, Copy, & Code

Google’s Art, Copy, & Code is “a series of experiments to re-imagine advertising.” Where the last revolution in advertising in the 1960’s brought Art and Copy together, today we are witnessing the unprecedented creative intersection of Art, Copy, and Code.

The first experiment is a talking shoe—“an experiment in connected objects.” A custom pair of Adidas trainers senses your level of activity, sends the data to your phone, and generates encouragement and some snark (“I love the feeling of wind in my laces!”). Via Google+, your shoes are also your personal storyteller, broadcasting your activity. The data also allows for custom ads that take your shoes—and your movement—into account.

We admire the perspective that storytelling is at the center of the best advertising—and its future. 

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Year Walk

You set off from your cabin into the night. Tentatively, you move to the next screen, not sure what kind of unsettling omen might await you…this is Year Walk, an iOS game by Simon Flesser and Magnus “Gordon” Gardeback of the gaming studio Simogo. The game takes you through a vision quest ritual whose object is to catch a glimpse of the future. However, by going on a year walk you risk great danger and encounters with powerful supernatural entities. Full of atmospheric details like an eerie soundtrack, a beautiful but disorienting navigation system, and cryptic runes, the game immerses you in its mysterious world. The puzzles you must solve to move forward make clever use of the iPad’s capabilities including multi-touch and orientation sensitivity. You drag at the edge of a screen to reveal clues, listen for the sound of water to orient yourself, and brush aside obstacles in your path. These interactive gestures encourage you to engage deeply with the game, literally turning and touching it, which in turn engages you with the narrative and makes the scary moments that much scarier. The result is a thoroughly creepy, satisfying experience which reminds us of the power interaction has to immerse us into a story.

Hello Again

Weren’t able to make it to Beck’s live performance of David Bowie’s ‘Sound and Vision’? No problem—you can experience it just as well in Chris Milk’s interactive recording of the concert “Hello Again.” Using technology like state-of-the-art 360 degree cameras and binaural microphones, Chris Milk has created an immersive virtual experience where you can “move” around the concert venue and view the stage from any spot or angle you desire. If you put your headphones on, the sound will change depending on where you are in the space, and if you turn on your webcam, the sound and video react to the direction you turn your head. “Hello Again” shows us the potential of technology for immersion, and we’re just as inspired by the incredible virtual sensory experience as we are by Beck and Bowie’s music.

Cart Life

Cart Life by Richard Hofmeier is a “retail simulation for Windows” where you play as one of three down-and-out food cart vendors, each trying to make their way in the world and create a thriving business while dealing with personal problems. Gameplay involves tasks such as selling coffees, making bagels, and taking the bus. Deliberately immersing you in the mundanity of these characters’ daily lives and the difficulty of their personal concerns (one is recently divorced and fighting for custody of her daughter), this game is not your typical special-effects laden blockbuster. But something interesting happens as you complete the same game tasks over and over: you develop an empathetic bond with your character and become invested in their personal narrative. You want them to overcome the monotony and hardship of their in-game circumstances to reach their goal, and every small step forward or back becomes cause for great celebration or despair. Through asking you to experience first-hand the life of someone else, Cart Life elicits unusually deep investment in its characters’ stories.

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