Revisions required

"The GRIOT computational narrative system utilizes techniques suitable for representing meaning and expression such as the thoughts in the paragraph above. GRIOT is a computer program developed to implement systems that output narratives in response to user input."

"In algebraic semiotics the structure of complex signs, including multimedia signs (e.g., a film with closed captioning), and the blending of such structures are described using semiotic systems (also called sign systems) and semiotic morphisms (mappings between sign systems).

This does not imply a belief that meaning can be reduced to mathematical formalization; on the contrary, the underlying theories in cognitive linguistics assert that meaning is considered to be contextual and dynamic, and has a basis in embodied human experience. This means that meaning is "actively constructed by staggeringly complex mental operations" such as conceptual blending (Ibid., 8). Furthermore, meaning depends upon the fact that humans exist "in a world that is inseparable from our bodies, our language, and our social history" (Varela, Thompson and Rosch 1991). These underlying assumptions about the nature of meaning and the use of formalization are some of the characteristics that distinguish GRIOT from other work in poetry and narrative generation."

"My longer-term project involves using this technical and theoretical framework as a basis for creating further computational narrative artworks where in addition to textual input, users can interact with graphical or gamelike interfaces. This user interaction will still drive the generation of new metaphors and concepts, but along with text will also result in blends of graphical and/or audio media."

All quotes were directly rewritten from the essay.

"The personal computer has been with us for twenty-five years now, and it has revolutionized the world around us. But in the arts, the computer has yet to approach its potential."

"Yes, the computer has dramatically changed the execution of ecisting artistic fields (...). These, however, are matters of applying the computer as a tool rather than exploiting it as a medium of expression."

"Yes, many artists have attempted to express themselves directly through the computer, but their efforts, while laudable extensions of existing artistic media, do not begin to use the computer as a medium in its own right."

All quotes were directly rewritten from the essay.

The quote defining the "player character":

"In interactive fiction, the "player character" is that character who the interactor (or player, or user) can direct with commands. The first example of interactive fiction, Will Crowther and Don Woods's Adventure, instructed the interactor: "I will be your eyes and hands. Direct me with commands of 1 or 2 words." In Adventure this I may seem to be the same as the narrator (Buckles 1985, 141-142), but the development of later interactive fiction has made it clear that this entity - the "eyes and hands" that focalize the description of the interactive fiction world and the narration of events in it, and the agent that the interactor can direct or command, through which the interactor can influence the simulated world - is best considered as a separate entity, the player character."

"For interactive fiction to succeed, the player character must, in some sense, fit within the interactive fiction, and the interactor must fit within the player character."

All quotes were directly rewritten from the essay.

"Shade is an interactive fiction (IF, or "text adventure game") - an object-oriented story simulation in which a command line is used to interact with a text parser. The parser prints text describing the situation to the player ("You are sprawled on the futon") and the player responds by typing ("> EXAMINE FUTON") to receive a response ("The futon is definitely on the downhill side of life's rolling knolls."). By convention, IF descriptions are generally written in the second person, while player responses are imperative statements."

"Throughout Shade, you inhabit two worlds. In the first world, a vision of the apartment invites you to reflect on choices in your former life that lead to the second world, the reality of the desert and of the player's death. Although your apartment is brightly lit by a bulb, it is also a shadow world, the hallucination of a dead or dying shade. The question is not whether this death will happen, but when and how bad news will arrive."

All quotes were directly rewritten from the essay.