visual narrative

Confinement Spaces is an existential visual narrative of living in the United Arab Emirates under lockdown from March-August 2020. The initial days of the lockdown, when work turned to Zoom-time and simple actions like grocery shopping became an exercise in epidemiology, created a mix of anxiety and ennui that led to scanning the environment with an iPhone and 3D scanning software, creating beautiful, glitched dreamlike landscapes. As time passed and restrictions eased, other spaces, like the Cultural Foundation and Louvre Abu Dhabi opened again, and the artist went out to progressively scan the pandemic landscape. Eventually restrictions eased to allow travel to the other Emirates, and sites in Dubai, Sharjah, and the legendary airplane from the movie Lord of War (in Umm al Quwain) were captured as an allegory for the universality of the isolation being experienced in the UAE and around the globe.

The result is a visual narrative of the glitched landscape of the pandemic UAE, six months collapsed into a single experience (following the author's work in Spatial Form), as a series of twelve interactive spaces rendered as pastiches of the 82 scanned spaces made during this time. The project proposed is an initial version created for The Foundry in Dubai, and the ELO version will incproporate deeper narratological structures in text, spoken word and video.

Source: exhibition documentation

A new installation for the Arts Festival for the 2017 Electronic Literature Organization conference that speaks to the translation of player story into a visual narrative in a tangible artifact. The installation “Loominary” invites the reader to interact with a text-based Twine game through a digitally augmented physical tabletop loom. “Loominary” was created as a reaction to the impermanent nature of player’s choices in games. Player choice is the basis for interaction and the decisions made are the building blocks for stories players retell about their experience with the game. These player narratives are frequently more interesting and important to the player than the story created by the designers. While players create their own narratives, their choices are rarely captured by the game in a form that exists beyond the end of play, and instead rely on the player to memorize or capture the details of their choices. With “Loominary”, each choice in the game is color-coded and the player makes their choices by weaving with the appropriate color on the loom. Throughout play, the player’s choices are translated into a visual and tangible narrative artifact that can be worn as a scarf when the game is completed. Every scarf is unique to each player’s set of choices, and can be used as a way to visualize and remember their decisions within the game.

Presentation format: The setup includes a Raspberry Pi, a monitor, and a 13” wide x 18.5” long loom and base for stability. Optimal format would be the loom in front of a large desktop monitor. Ideally the monitor should be large enough to read from a small distance given the loom’s size. Alternatively, the loom to the side of the monitor could also work. Materials and Equipment: Request an HDMI-capable monitor. Technical notes: The user interacts with the work by weaving on the loom. Tools for weaving, yarn, and all electronics will be provided, except for the monitor.

(Source: ELO 2017: Book of Abstracts and Catalogs)

My work with visual narrative has included installation form, book works, diptychs and billboard presentations. Using the web has allowed me to continue to expand my preoccupations with constructing rules for reading, methods of pacing and continue to explore image/text relationships. I am interested in the space between language and image.

Trilogy is comprised of 3 image/text narratives whose themes are concerned with survival. Locale and characters are suggested by cropped fragments from mass media imagery as well as map fragments. While the images may allude to time period by photographic style or content, their function (protagonist, action, location) is directed by the text.

Trilogy is a collaboration with Los Angeles fiction writers Rod Moore and Katherine Haake, both of whom have allowed me to reconfigure their texts.

(Source: 2002 ELO State of the Arts gallery)

"The Madeleine Effect" is a digital story project, an artistic look at ways to incorporate a creative text based story in the linear format and language styling of a novel into the game world. I believe that when a primarily text-based fiction story is created in a visual narrative medium, it can be utilized to prompt the user to act as a character. The user therefore may be guided to perform through a narrative. I am interested in looking at interactive fiction from the perspective of a writer aiming to invite meaningful interaction leading towards playful behaviors, or acting, on the part of the player. "The Madeleine Effect" is a fiction story that is experienced through both digital and print media. The story interface aims to be interactive through the player's performance, which is demonstrated by inputting text into the story while playing a defined role. The interactivity in this project is focused at this time so as to more easily observe the ideas I am exploring. My hope is that this project will spur thought and conversation about ideas for increased interactivity and a more intelligent technical structure.

(Source: Author's description, 2008 ELO Conference)

A young man experiences a recurring dream about a labyrinth in such high detail that he is able to draw a detailed map of it. Rendered as a 3D world in WebGL and best experienced in Google Chrome, 'R' explores the story of the dream - both past and present - through a series of on-screen narratives, puzzles and text-sculptures. A regularly written short story also accompanies the work.

The scrambled, fragmented diary of a man going slowly insane, featuring cinematic cut-sequences and interactive texts. This project was the very first online project by 'Dreaming Methods' - a fusion of writing and new media.

An emotional and complex narrative carved into a scan of the authors own face.

Leishman's playful retelling of the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale makes use of comic book vernacular, limited forms of explorative interaction, optional narrative paths, and a jazzy soundtrack. RedRidinghood is the type of Flash piece that suggests the potential for complex forms of interactive storytelling without typographic text.

(Source: Electronic Literature Collection, Vol. 1)

Deviant: The Possession of Christian Shaw is an animated interactive graphic based on the historical story of Christian Shaw and her demonic possession. Set in 1696 amongst the witch trials, this project explores new ways of experiencing a story — harnessing the allure of mystery and uneasy tensions and plucking the participant's sense of social responsibility. (Source: Author description, Electronic Literature Collection, Vol. One.)

It’s a visual game and almost non-textual. You play by clicking on the active areas. It’s not always easy to see the areas so you need to click around and just try for a while. There are sounds when you click on different areas. The game takes place in something looking like a small town, and smaller images pops up when you click on items.