User-triggered narratives and the [murmur] project

Developing a non-linear, user-triggered narrative presents many more complexities than were originally apparent to me. While the task, as introduced in class — to design and shoot a video sequence whose shots are coherent in any order — seemed challenging unto itself, the additional discipline of having said sequence work as a “user-triggered” piece, presents a whole new set of design issues. To examine some of these design issues, for now let’s set aside the fact that, from a purely technical standpoint, the Max/MSP patch we are currently working with only allows for video clips to be displayed in either linear or random order; exactly how to make the video-playing mechanism respond to user input is clearly beyond what we have learned thus far.

First off, many video sequences could be said to make sense in any order, but this does not necessarily imply that they would be coherent in a non-linear, user-triggered situation. Take, for instance, a simple montage sequence in film; often, the various images edited together to reinforce an idea could be re-ordered without any loss of intelligibility (and indeed, this creative re-ordering of actuality footage in post-production is at the core of traditional documentary practice: see Janis Cole’s Documentary Manifesto, whose eighth point asserts, non-controversially, that “Documentaries are written in the cutting room.”). But do the constituent shots in a montage make good raw material for user-triggered works? Likely not, I would think.

So, what type of shots work best in user-driven narratives? Taking a look at Ms. Dewey, Microsoft’s clever but somewhat demeaning “search assistant,” it is clear that there is something mesmerizing about her use of direct address (something documentarians from Dorothea Lange to Errol Morris have understood), and that, following the filmic injunction against jump cuts, the constituent clips tend to achieve a fairly seamless continuity by beginning and ending with Ms. Dewey in a fairly neutral, standardized pose. It seems that user-driven narratives should also require a large amount of content to be effective; if repetition or sparseness of content allows the user to perceive the limited extent of the database, his/her sense of personal discovery (and experiential uniqueness) is diminished and they will probably lose interest.

(A similar user-triggered narrative on the web is Burger King’s low-res, webcam-based Subservient Chicken, in which visitors have total control over a man in a chicken suit, and can command him to do anything — within reason, of course. The subservient chicken, unlike the green-screen-backed Ms. Dewey, is situated within a space [a gloomily furnished apartment] adding a measure of context and limiting the user’s reasonable command choices. As such, the user’s expectations are lower, and thus, the chicken is less likely to disappoint.) 

Putting aside these web novelties, which inevitably become tiresome, it dawned on me that an excellent, documentary example of a user-triggered narrative — and one situated in physical space, no less! — is Toronto’s own [murmur] project. I had always known about the initiative, but last year in Doc Studies 1, Rob Lendrum made a strong case for its value as an innovative form of documentary. In [murmur], users wandering the city discover green, ear-shaped signs affixed to lamp- and sign-posts, and can dial a telephone number to hear a story about that location. These stories can either take the form of a historical narrative about the place’s “official” significance or of a more personal and idiosyncratic tale as recounted by a local inhabitant; some guide the listener on a little walking tour through the space. [murmur] is non-linear in that users do not experience a single, unchanging narrative, nor do they absorb it from a fixed vantage point; they build a narrative based on their own trajectory of movement through the urban environment (it somewhat reminds me of those “Choose Your Own Adventure” novels from childhood.) And they can even contribute their own urban stories to the project’s database, a big plus.

Of course, [murmur] is not without its own issues — for one thing, the storytellers on its website do not seem to reflect the cultural diversity of their respective neighbourhoods; for another, the density of green ears in some places suggests a rather competitive, territorial view of urban memory (I’m looking at you, Kensington Ave.), in which contributors lay claim to the privilege of assigning significance to a particular house, signpost or streetcorner. That said, [murmur] is a wonderful, local, and relatively low-tech example of a user-triggered narrative deployed creatively in public space to give a sense of the multi-layered, non-linear histories existing in the pavement beneath our feet.