Today i read the thesis “Narrative Elements in Digital Media” by Cristian García (1997) There where some basic structures that text needs to be a story. And some differences en resemblances with the way interactive story telling could / would be.

A Story in new media consist of events, as in linear media but their length, development and arrangement in time are not decided by the author. In my opinion, the cause and effect chain turns to be the user as a cause-action and the computer makes an effect-reaction. The suspense, the curiosity for the next happening is now the curiosity for the effect the computer can generate: what happens if i do this? (st: Perhaps the “dont push the red button effect”)

A small description is given about the iris writher James Joyce (born 1882) who introduced in his last Books Ulysses and Finnegans Wake a technique of represents the human mind; the stream of consciousness. But further than the intern monologue he writes down all the thoughts we have in our head: associations, reminds, anticipation, visual and auditional impressions. In such a way that a single day takes 400 pages.

Another intresting thing is the description of some basic rules of a virtual character: “A character has to be prominent and individual, has to be noticeable and cannot be eliminated from the story without provoking a important change in the plot”

Conclusion
So how does these thesis mix with my interests? Well yesterday I wrote: “In the future you might consider your online being as a really second me. How do you create such a thing, and how do you keep it in control?” And today I thought: what if the future is now, and people are creating second me’s already. Than my examples of Personal Portals would still remain their value. And can even be considered as being a story about a person (or perhaps more a documentary, is there a word for it, cyberdocu?) Lets go trough the quotations I made and compare them to Matt Brett. reading (or using) his website is almost like a new media story, what will happen (or will I learn) when I push this link? I don’t know if you can call it suspense but it evokes at least my curiosity.

And when you compare his site to the writings of James Joyce you get almost an likewise story, I can follow his bookmarks on the internet, I can see his photos, I can hear his music, I can read what he things and I can build a mental picture of this character. So for me he is a real virtual character. If you consider the internet as a story and Matt as a character than he indeed applies to all the qualifications that a virtual character needs to be real (or believed to be real).

Some questions could be: what is knowing a character, do you know a story or a movie character. What defines a real person and how does it differ from a virtual character.

A possible project could be: creating a virtual character that is a real person on the internet (like a fictive documentary)

(note: I’m in no way a specialist on Narrative, so its possible that I made some misinterpretations, please use the comment link to point me on that)

(note2: thanks to Maarten for reminding me of virtual characters)