Our project work responds to multiple characteristics of online screen making. The first being interactive. It is interactive as it relies on the user to participate to advance the narrative, by choosing from multiple options that are presented to them. Secondly, it is non-linear. However, through reflection, I have decided a much more appropriate term is multi-linear. The definition of non-linear is “Not arranged in a straight line”, or “Not sequential or straightforward.” The truth is, our project is made up of multiple straight lines, that are actually sequential. There are multiple narratives that can be achieved, and hence there is a degree of linearity to the project. The project is also multi-faceted– it contains text, videos (that are embedded from YouTube), pictures, and links to external websites. It takes from different sources and collects them onto one platform.
Through conducting this test, I learnt that making truly interactive online media (where the user has some degree of control in the narrative) isn’t as easy as I thought it would be. This is due to multiple things- firstly, because of the idea that you can not make any old story interactive, nor should you. While all social media is interactive, this is a different kind of interactive than I have been focusing on in my development posts, as there is no central project or work that is interactive, rather everyone just interacts with each other. There should be a reason for a project to be interactive. It can be simple, but interactivity shouldn’t be pointless.
I also learnt that interactive media isn’t necessarily simple to make. I’m fairly confident this is just because we made our project ‘manually’ so to speak, rather than using software (like Twine) that is purpose-built for making interactive stories. We went through a painful process of collecting and presenting our project on a WordPress blog.
First, we had to decide how to present our project. We could have done it on YouTube (as our main content is video), with the user linking from video to video. That posed problems though, as we wanted to include other media types that we couldn’t on YouTube. Also, we wanted a specific home for our project, where all the pathways could be easily stored and accessed. Next, we decided on a blog. This is where we started hitting technological problems that had no easy way out. I’ll spare the specifics, but it was a fiddly process of making new blogs, trying different websites, having to work out how to make new pages on blogs, so on and so forth. We had to take videos on our phones, send them to the computer to upload onto YouTube and then embed them into the WordPress posts. It just took a lot longer and was more complex than we had initially expected.
As I have already briefly mentioned, the process of making this project has caused me to reflect on the different types of ‘interactive’ media. I have spoken previously about my concept of the no limits/extremely limited interaction spectrum of media, and through making, I have decided to elaborate on this. It may be a separate spectrum, but there is also an element of how much you give to the project by interacting with it. Are you adding to or expanding the project by participating? Or is it giving you more than you are giving it? An example of the former would be the Are You Happy project that anyone can interact with or actually add to. Our project is an example of the latter- users are not adding value to the work by experiencing it.
Another question that I have been dwelling on throughout our class discussions and the making of my project is, are non-linear and interactive co-dependent? I feel like a lot of theoretical discussions both online and within our class, tend to pair them as if they can’t be separate. There are books that are non-linear but certainly aren’t interactive, and games that are interactive but are completely linear. Maybe people are just speaking loosely and refer to both when either is mentioned, but I think it’s important to consider each of their unique meanings and impacts.
My main desire moving forward is to create something (or at least conceptualise it) that has actual value, that uses creativity and meaning mixed with the tools of the internet to come up with something genuinely enjoyable.