I’ve gotten to the point in my Flash studies where it’s time to start planning how a story will express itself through text, image, animation, video clips, and interactive paths, working with interactivity through actionscript. Here’s the first part of the story (John will know this story because it’s been on the hypertext backburner for some time now). It’s called Stoning Field.

The authorities outlawed dodge ball at Ignacios school. A kid got hit in the cheek with a hard foamrubber ball and his parents complained to the school board.

Why didnt he dodge? I asked Ignacio, whos eleven years old.

He did, Ignacio said, but the wrong way.

In a lot near the school are collections of smooth, round stones, perfect for throwing, perfect for targets. I hear through whispers that the children will meet there some undisclosed day and play dodge ball the way the gods meant it to be played.

The story makes use of games, vulnerability, youth and children, and time to play out the structure. One of the things that keeps calling me back to the story is its potential for incorporating visual effects and choice in the running textual narrative, so it’s not hard to envision a timeline that would play up or play down forshadings, open opportunities for alternative reading paths, and give imagery an added complexity in a rich spatial field. But this is where the planning comes in. In Flash there are so many ways of accomplishing a goto and frame action that visualizing how a work will be experienced often leads to the buffet table problem.

Should paths be conceived as layers or in frames or as scenes or as a combination, and how? They would all work. The symbols and clips will be accessible everywhere. A small video clip can be masked, placed anywhere to play on the canvas, looped in any number of ways. They can be dragged onto the viewing space and can appear if this, then or if, else, then. The story will have to decide. Just too cool with this aggressive program.

From NYT on Philly’s broadband plans

If Mayor John F. Street has his way, by next year this 135-square-mile metropolis will become one gigantic wireless hot spot, offering every neighborhood high-speed access to the Web at below-market prices in what would be the largest experiment in municipal Internet service in the country.

City officials envision a seamless mesh of broadband signals that will enable the police to download mug shots as they race to crime scenes in their patrol cars, allow truck drivers to maintain Internet access to inventories as they roam the city, and perhaps most important, let students and low-income residents get on the net.

Experts say the Philadelphia model, if successful, could provide the tipping point for a nationwide movement to make broadband affordable and accessible in every municipality. From tiny St. Francis, Kan., to tech-savvy San Francisco, more than 50 local governments have already installed or are on the verge of creating municipal broadband systems for the public.

The article articulates various issues that make sense as questions to raise. Since information is physical–it’s made of something–what holds it, makes it, carries it, or spins it can take mucho forms. But such a move on the part of a city “reveals” something about the nature of communications, technology, and the science of information. Does the means of distribution reveal value?

So, we took our son to his first movie today. Pooh’s Heffalump Movie. I thought it was pretty good. Had a good time.

As we left the theater, all of us a little too full of popcorn, my son said, somewhat critically, “We have a TV at home.”

Then, at bed time, Susan asked if he’d enjoyed the day at the show. He said, “Yes, but I want to see zero more movies.”

From Wired News via Ludology

“The weird thing was that last night in my half-sleep, half-awake haze, I thought I was playing Katamari Damacy, too, and I kept trying to roll Kozy up in my ball,” said Dan Kitchens. “I think I got this just from watching Kozy play the game for hours.”

I only link to this because I’ve played KD. I’ve had no urge to roll over anything when I’m out and about but the game is curiously immersive. The music is also fantastic. I’m sure Susan Gibb will be tickled by this article.

And Coonce-Ewing will understand a little better the link between game immersion and the classroom and why I’m so interested in it. And if Jordan White’s reading, it’s for you too.

Susan and I finally got the chance to watch Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation this weekend. I thought it was a wonderful film, brilliantly edited, acted, and crisply told. I find that I like Bill Murray because he’s the kind of guy everyone thinks they know and he’s great at grabbing the audience, but in this film he “went beyond” what I’ve known of him. Scarlett Johansson grew on me too although it took a while to ground her in the story. We wondered, however, how the film would go over in Japan, since “language” and the alienation of space and self plays such a role in the film’s conflict.

Bob and Charlotte are in bed together, two strangers not so strangers, one young, the other mid-life, met by chance. They talk. She asks about her future, wondering if things get easier. He reflects on irrevocable change: what happens when the children come and more. Their brief time in Tokyo is sleepless until this moment. He touches her foot. They sleep. The story comes together in this scene like a soundless explosion. Bob and Charlotte meet “by chance” and that’s all that matters.

Jim’s wiki is up and he’s doing some interesting things on the communication side with story. It’s fun, smart, and smooth.

Susan Gibb writes in a comment on this post:

This reminds me of conversations, and the way one thought expressed verbally inevitably “triggers” another in the listener that leads to another trail or narrative. This is sort of where I was heading in my own postings the other day about the brain being the working model behind new media ideas. The paths are there, the clues are there, the options are open, and the layers appear upon cue.

I think this is a dead on metaphor. As a relevant note, as we read through Watchmen in CF we’re noticing how panel reading in that work maneuvers the reader in all sorts of directions as we seek the paths, the clues, the narrative, and the connections that make sense, just as Laurie, Dan, and Osterman do, as well as the other characters, just as the you and I and Reader of Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveler does. Which, of course, recalls Borges and the Aleph. Watchmen, The Garden, and Continuity. Mirrors.

Flow, problem, sequence, narrative, organization–all catch words. One of the things that digital space has accomplished is to make people more aware of the progression of tasks and visualizing process (see Novamind, for example, and Mark Bernstein’s Tinderbox, which makes the PC user perhaps wish for a Mac, but the wait will perhaps be worth it). Drawing lines on paper works fine too but lacks flexibility, cross work, digital stitching, and infinity.

Visualizing human action is always complex, such as planning for future assessment at the college level. Where does history meet British Literature, hypertext meet Biology? Consider a story and how it moves from place to place. To isolate the parts isn’t that easy to do because our encounters with them are nearly effortless. The structure disappears into water. In story we’re looking for something else. It’s always an incredible experience teaching Sir Gawain to sophomores because the alienness of the text forces the structure out into the open and we can work into the storyspace slowly.

Mind is spatial and discrete yet wefted, nowhere but everywhere. In poetry we can talk about an image, such as these: “I have seen days when the clouds rolled in / thick and black as the desert night” and “I can remember the stench of stale cigarettes, / Lingering on us from the pub in Boston.” Organized “mind.” Thus the poem is a city, a city a poem.

To put a story onto a page or into Storyspace is an incredible thing. The hypertext story extends the tradition. Now to put the city in hypertext.

Spinning always impresses with her “reaching” into the unkown. An excellent thing because a lot of what she does is of her own devising, a reaching out of the cube of the classroom.

This leads me back to considering how we make progress. The students are taking the text version of Little Red Cap and manipulating it into a visual version which plays with representation, presentation, and effects. What will they learn is the question. The common concepts we want to know, such as new media’s elements of modularity, media ecology and topology, programming, interactivity, and complex structure are coming along, but one of the more interesting and exciting issues is what the students are teaching each other and teaching themselves. Riveting.

We are working in experimental space. Thinking beyond what’s in line, going behind Milton.