Ryan + Bogost

Ryan’s reading regarded the semantics of a narrative, with the suggested definition: “story is an event or sequence of events (the action), and narrative discourse is those events as represented.”

The following dimensions were also suggested to define what a narrative is:

I like to think about narrative and story because I enjoy reading and writing both fiction and non-fiction, so this reading is interesting to compare these two genres, but I’m unsure of the importance of this reading in regards to what we’ve studied so far in the course. Previously we have discussed in lectures that definitions by definition are inherently wrong and there are always exceptions to the rule, and that we shouldn’t waste time thinking about which box our work fits in to. On the other hand, I have felt strangely liberated by the constraints of the constraint tasks, so perhaps this reading can fit in to the course this way, but I’m still unsure. Ryan mentions the ‘do-it-yourself’ toolkit for definitions based on her eight conditions, so maybe we are able to satisfy ourselves with only a couple of these factors and ultimately define things individually.

Bogost’s reading about lists and literature made me ask myself if our sketch tasks are the film equivalent of a written list. For example, here is a ten second clip of things that define me: guitar, laptop, a candle, etc. It’s quite reminiscent of Barthes’ list of likes and dislikes mentioned in the article.