I've been reading a lot about narrative for my dissertation recently and came across 2 examples this morning that illustrate some of the ideas I've come across.

Oatmeal on Game of Thrones

The first simple example is from the Oatmeal. It says it's about Game of Thrones but is actually about media companies completely misunderstanding the web.

One way of looking at storytelling is that it's a way of framing complex, abstract concepts in a way that is both engaging, memorable and helps understanding. Some authors say that story is the primary way we understand the world.

So, with the Oatmeal example we have a simple depiction of an individual trying to do the right thin, being thwarted and finding, as the author sees it, a reasonable solution to the problem.

So, it takes some abstract points about the piracy debate, uses narrative to contextualise them, keep our interest, create an emotional response and hopefully make it more "sticky".

Why is being in the digital domain important? As a static image it could have been published in a magazine or on a notice board. By being digital it give an audience a way of interacting and responding. At the most basic level it had over 6k likes and 2.5k shares on Facebook as well as 18.4k retweets. This helps the people that come across it incorporate it into their own personal and social narratives about piracy, IPR, SOPA, ACTA or whatever.

The Tale of the Invention of the Incredible Folding Plug

This is more of a distributed bunch of content telling a story.

Now the invention is plainly awesome in a why-has-this-not-been-done-before-it-could-transform-my-life way so I can immediately relate to it.

But what you also have around it through Rory Cellan Jones' interview, the business's website, the product demo (embedded above), and all the other mentions in the media (traditional and social) is a story about the product.

We have a cast of characters, a macguffin (the invention), a plot, setting, triumphs, hurdles to be overcome, quite a clear timeline and perhaps the possibility of a sequel.

Somehow, just watching the product demo (embedded above), although it contains some elements of story, doesn't quite have enough of the human content to make it properly engaging.

My own reaction is that I'm thinking about the product in a much broader way, seeing how it would fit into my own life but also having it humanised by the story of its inventor and his business partner and how it fits into the wider narrative of startups and innovation in the UK.

Just saw this on the Neiman Journalism Lab blog...

A collaboration between Condition One and The Guardian it's a slightly more interactive approach to video where you have an element of control over where the camera is looking.

Is it more than just interesting? It would make some intriguing digital stories where the viewer is more actively selecting what elements of the story to view.  

Is it a flavour of AR where the "reality" can be displayed independent of location (picture it with points of interest embedded into the video)? 

Could this be what Google Streetview looks like in a few years' time? 

Updated 09/12/11 - 16:30: @sboneham pointed me towards this BBC Click podcast where they discuss the Highrise project. Section starts at around 4m 50s.

bbc_click_podcast_highrise.mp3

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Hat tip to @theokk for this one. Highrise:1 Millionth Tower is an interactive documentary on how a community of high rise residents in Toronto see a possible future for their neghbourhood. 

This project, according to the site...

... is a concrete result of a community collaboration between residents, architects, documentarians and animators to re-imagine the particular spaces around these particular highrises.

This innovative approach to documentary making uses HTML5 and WebGL (Web-based Graphics Library).

Rather than play the documentary as a linear video, you are placed in a dynamic 3d environment (the light and weather change based on live data from Toronto) where you are free to explore the different pieces of media. It requires a browser compatible with HTML and WebGL - worked well on Chrome for me.

It reminds me quite a bit of the ground breaking Inanimate Alice, an early use of interactive storytelling.

Image - Lilian Chan, Howie Shia and Kelly Sommerfield, courtesy of the NAtional Film Board of Canada

1. USB - plugging stuff into other stuff and it (mostly) working.
2. RSS - possibly the greatest thing on the web?
3. Mobile connectivity - stood on a beach in Wales, downloading a program that knows where I'm standing and can tell me what the surface and underlying geology is. For example. Awesome.
4. Digital video - anyone can make a movie. ANYONE!
5. Blogs - everybody publishing
6. A state and corporations that don't restrict my access to info on the web. This one I'm fearful for.
7. Exchanging ideas with people I'll probably never meet - for an introvert, this is like prosthetic social confidence.
8. Open source software - hours have been dedicated to producing things like Audacity and Gimp and nobody got rich doing it. [stands and salutes].
9. The creative commons - small C and big C.
10. What's the thing you hope you never get used to?

We've been talking about infographics a bit at Netskills towers recently and one of the discussion points was the difference between clarifying data by presenting it in particular ways and spinning data to get across a message.

This came up on the Information Aesthetics blog today.

Read the post for a bit of background. 

Good aspects to reflect on might be:

• What is the impact on the viewer of pairing the video clips with the data? What happens when you see them in isolation?
• Why were these types of graphics chosen? Also, consider the type face, colour scheme etc of the graphics framing the data.
• What's the provenance of the data? (Sources are shown on the accompanying Flickr image)
• What alternative data might be included?
• What are other ways of presenting the same data in different ways that communicate a different message?
• What range of factors are at play that might contribute to the changes shown here? 
• To what extent is any US president responsible for these types of data?
• How persuasive do you find this?

Also, who is presenting this information? Following the embed back to YouTube you find it's a group called the Minnesota Majority, "a non-profit grassroots advocacy group working to promote traditional values in public policy" (from their YouTube channel About Me section). What else might we want to discover about this group?

I'm not interested in the political debate here. It's just a great starting point for a discussion about stories, data, politics and persuasion.

What other open questions would you want to ask students about this video?

One of the hardest parts of creating decent digital stories has been picking music that's OK to use for most situations. There's a lot of Creative Commons music out there but it's difficult to find and/or poor quality.

Step forward the Vimeo Music Store. 

It's an easily searchable music library intended for use with video projects with pretty high quality tracks and available under a range of licenses (including CC and payed for personal or commercial use).

Some tracks lack a little polish in production but unless you're really pushing the production values boat out they are perfectly listenable.

Here's a couple of examples - quirky classical and minimalist electronica.

Go see.

Also, see the Video School for another reason to love Vimeo.

Some other options

Aside from making your own music (from scratch or using Garageband or Aviary's Roc, for instance), you're likely to be looking Creative Commons licensed material.

There's plenty of sites. Jamendo and Soundcloud have loads of CC licensed tracks but I've had problems using both sites which would make me hesitate recommending them to people just starting out with digital storytelling. 

With Jamendo, you have to look hard for music that's of a decent quality in their CC section. There's nothing like shoddy music for ruining the look of your movie!

Soundcloud has some reallly interesting stuff on there but the styles tend to revolve around electronica, not great if you;re looking for something with a world-music vibe or a wee bit classical. Also, searching is a pain. Some users choose some wilfully obscure tags for their tracks (granular cameltronica's a fave).

I do feel a little cheap dishing out those criticisms as they're both great ways for musicicans to get community exposure for their work.

Alternatively, dispense with music altogether. Freesound has gazillions of CC licensed sound FX. try layering these together with a voiceover track to add some classy ambience.

More stuff on digital storytelling

You can find some more information and ideas about digital storytelling on my other blog, Electric Chalk.

Image - Wakalani - BY-SA

"..and routes around it" - John Gilmore

This article from the Chronicle of Higher Education article is a case in point. (was tweeted by @acalderon52  via @fredgarnett):

Fear of Repression Spurs Scholars and Activists to Build Alternate Internets

It's a fascinating piece about building technologies to circumvent attempts by repressive governments to block internet activity.

It put me in mind of the John Gilmore quote above.

But if governments and corporations treat the unfettered flow of information as a leak and block it, and the internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it - what happens next?

What does happen when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?

image - jonycunha - BY-SA

Scott Adams, creator of the awesome Dilbert strip, has blogged about why the best way to kill creativity is to encourage it. The creative impulse will out, usually as a response to discomfort or insecurity. Creating an environment which is "condusive" to creative ideas is counter productive.

It reminded me of the wrath of Jeremy Clarkson at the fact the Top Gear offices were painted purple by the BBC in an effort to stimulate creative thought! It did make him quite cross.

Then it made me realise that I'm not sure Adams' point reflects my personal experience.

I'm not a massively creative person, in that I don't write poems, sculpt or paint, I don't dream up massively revolutionary schemes for changing the world around me. But I enjoy being creative. I get a buzz from coming up with innovative ideas, trying different approaches to things and just having the freedom to play.

But all that stops when I'm under stress, or if I'm in an environment where I feel I have to fight to keep my head above water.

The jobs where I feel I've been at my most creative are the ones where I've felt most secure and encouraged. In the job that I hated the most, I could almost feel the creativity and joy in new ideas leaking out of me like a slow puncture.

I think Scott Adams is right in that some creative people will be productive no matter what, and an office with brightly coloured walls, extra money to indulge in ideas or whatever is not how you guarantee creativity.

But I think there's a large population of people that will be more creative if the social environment is right; if they feel that new ideas will be welcomed and built on, challenged in a way that refines them rather than killing them.

I once took a course in improvisational acting (I wasn't great at it) and one of the things we were encouraged to think was to take a "yes and..." attitude during a scene. 

The "yes but" attitude was a block to the development of ideas on stage, it stifled instinctive creativity. Thinking "yes and" in response to someone else's idea meant that all sorts of possibilities arose, some of which were rubbish, but occassionally something great came out of it. It enabled collaborative creativity.

Hat tip to @dajbelshaw for tweeting the Scott Adams post.

Image: thekellyscope - by-nc-sa

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The Digest

Fieldwork is an essential part of the learning experience for the geo, geosocial and life sciences that needs protecting given current squeezes on finances. We saw how mobile learning is enabling a blurring of the boundaries between field, lab, library etc. People are more interested in QR codes than I expected. We got wet.

The Detail

We had 2 days based at the Margam Discovery Centre, near Port Talbot where a wide range of people presented what they had been doing in relation to technology enhanced fieldwork. It was an entirely appropriate venue with fantastic facilities and a feel that you were in the field even when you were in the building. It was run by a project team  funded by the Higher Education Academy.

I was there mainly out of my interest in digital mapping and geolocative stuff and also because I'm a geography graduate so it feels like home turf. I was also presenting a short presentation on how QR codes can be used to enhance fieldwork by creating easy access to extra layers of information.

I Audioboo'd my reactions to the main activities here...

...and made a short video of some of the stuff we did here...

Enhancing Fieldwork Learning from Chris Thomson on Vimeo.

Incidentally, both Audioboo and the Vimeo app are great ways of easily creating digital media content in the field. The video was filmed and edited on my iPhone without any need for connectivity.

This was the session I delivered (without the running around in the fresh air bit). 

For the practical activity I placed 10 laminated sheets with 2 QR codes each on around the site. One QR code linked to a Google Map of a significant UK location where the participants had to guess the connection. The other QR code was a one of the Top Tips from slides 11 and 12. I figured it was more fun to make them hunt for the advice than just spoon feed it to them!

I was a bit worried I'd picked a topic that people would already be familiar with but in the end it was new ground for a good number of attendees and a few people were fomenting their own fieldwork plans involving QR codes by the end of the weekend.

Main learning points from the weekend:

• Everyone there was a passionate advocate for fieldwork as an effective learning experience and there was plenty of discussion about the uncertainty facing departments with squeezed budgets. How assured is the future of fieldwork in institutions? 
• There was a determination that technology should be there to enhance the field experience and make it accessible to all students. It shouldn't be there to replace it.
• Fieldwork should be fully embedded in curriculum planning with a clear sense of progression of skills development from one year to the next, gradually building students up into independent field researchers.
• Technology allows us to do the current things better (thinking about the collaborative spreadsheets mentioned in the Audioboo) as well as creating new opportunities.
• Access to devices is complicated and relying on students to use their own isn't the easy answer. What if they object to effectively subsidising someone else's fieldwork because they have a device and the other doesn't? Poorer students who can't afford a device are at a disadvantage.
• Best tech experiences
  • Seeing ipads used in conjunction with Twitter and Flipboard for students to co-create field guides for New Zealand prior to visiting. Carina Fearnley (Aberystwyth).
  • Using iPads to layer GIS, satellite and maps imagery while in the field, then using GPS to help students contextualise that information with their current location. Apparently it's difficult for many students to do this. Peter Bunting (Aberystwyth)
  • Wifi. In a field! Trevor Collins and John Lea demonstrated their portable wifi network that can extend over kilometres thanks to a series of relays 
  • Gigapan, which you can see demonstrated by Ian Stimpson (Keele) in the last few clips of the video, takes multiple images of a location, zoomed in and in hi resolution that can be stitched together to create interactive panoramas with gigapixel levels of detail. Here's an example. Great for pre-field trip familiarisation, giving students with mobility issues a chance to see inaccessible locations or simply having an "if wet" option.
  • Students in Singapore conducting surveys of a mangrove swamp, entering their data onto a shared spreadsheet on a tablet over wifi, enabling the group to analyse their data and discuss it all within the context of the site (Julian Cremona, Field Studies Council)

Reflections

Thinking back to the fieldwork I undertook as a student, they were transformative experiences not just because of what I learnt but also because they were important milestones on the way to becoming a geographer; it helped dismantle the boundaries between staff and students. It was an essential part of my student experience and I think it would be a shame if fieldwork was squeezed out for some courses.

Also, fieldwork is a multi sensory experience. I'm keen to discover more about using things like AR, QR codes, and mobile digital media but if it means less being part of the landscape and more staring into an LCD screen we'll have lost something.

Lastly, I'm sorely tempted to investigate whether I could make the Netskills geolocation workshop a residential event and run it at a field centre like Margam Park. It would certainly be more challenging but a much more fulfilling experience to mix computer lab activity with field work [ponders].