Chapter 8, 9 & 10 Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace

Eliza’s Daughters Chatterbots Julia – MUD agent that provides information as well as entertaining conversation –Not very believable –More imaginatively present by demonstrating dramatically appropriate behavior –Fails Turing test Self-absorbed, evasive, and obsessive characters are easier to author Temporal model of character (salesman) Modeling inner life (PARRY and neurotic woman) –Paranoid person that was convincing enough Interviewers intent : Evil, kind, or neutral

Goal-based Behavior Intelligent agents (scripts, plans and goals) –(oz group’s) Lyotard house cat– goals change over time Cognitive simulation combining goals and feelings Challenge of purely mathematical models to create believability –Ad-hoc rules and glitches enable most human/intriguing actions –Lyotard biting interactor –Shrimp banging head on ground

Multicharacter Environments Simple joining of chatterbots –Zippy meets Eliza – 0Qhttps:// 0Q Each should know in advance the kind of things the other was likely to say and had a repertoire of ready responses –Coherent activity from independent actions of multiple agents

Multicharacter Environments Woggles –Difficulty of interactor to focus on important activity –Too many things are going on once without staging aimed for focusing attention –Fore more interactors, need for staging collectively or individually

Multicharacter Environments Lessons from commedia dell’arte, Italian theater tradition –Predictable formulas of interaction –Stock characters –Set of potential scripts/schemas for action Clear entrance, exits and paraphrase of each scene –Improvisation (simulation) for instantiation

Multicharacter Environments Stock comic stage business – lazzi –As soon as a lazzi is initiated by one player, all of the other players must fall in, so that performing a lazzi requires every member of the troupe to know the routine as well as great teamwork. –Lazzo of the shoes –Lazzo of the fly –Lazzo shut up

Digital Puppet To what extent do we allow digital actors to pull their own strings and to what extent do we put them in hands of a plot controller? –MIT ALIVE Project Silas T. Dog –Plot controller prod him into action by command –Plot controller could change silas perception of the environment

Emergent Behavior How autonomous we would want a fictional character to get? Autonomous agents, particularly in combination, can walk away from plot Interaction is complex and unpredictable –Ambivalence and the comically neurotic wolf

Emergent Behavior Flat vs. round characters –Flat are more likely to stay in character –Random – flat pretending to be round –Round characters exhibit revelation, learn and grow –Eliza? Silas, Lyotard, Wolf? Consciousness as emergent behavior –Minsky’s meat machines

Emerging Formats (Chapter 9) Star Trek holodeck –remains improbably distant, but Digital storytelling has aroused appetite for participatory stories that offer, –more complete immersion, –more satisfying agency, and –a more sustained involvement with a kaleidoscopic world.

Emerging Formats Combining broadcast and participatory formats –Viewer digital participation moving from Sequential (watch, then interact), to simultaneous but separate activities (interact while watching), to merged experience (watch and interact in same environment) The serial drama archive and hyperserial On-demand, substantial development of minor characters and storylines Other ideas: Branching video, thought track, –Point of view influences the information they receive

Emerging Formats One problem of delivering a multibranching story over TV would be the conflicts of who controls the remote –Take turn of story narrative – broadcast several times –Adults, women, teenagers point of view Right balance of common and divergent experiences with same central situations

Emerging Formats Consensus narrative –For stories that define the concerns of the society and present the received wisdom about these concerns Commentary space –More psychologically believable

Interacting in Virtual Places MUDs (to MMOGs) to VRs Moving from immersion and navigational agency to transformation? Tension between author and participants? –Multiuser world without external authoring run into trouble in establishing boundaries of the illusions

Hamlet on the Holodeck Conclusions Narrative beauty is independent of the medium –It helps us understand who we are and what we are doing here Procedural authorship is key –Need to move from individual to social authorship? Narrative formulas must be refined for great work in a new media –Juvenalia stage is necessary to explore formulas The computer is chameleonic –Theater, town hall, unraveling book, animated wonderland, sports arena, potential life form –A representational medium