intro
Two of the readings for this week inspired me to delve into categorization of story themes and titles. For example, this was the first time I’d heard of the ATU Index, a catalog of folktale types used in folklore stories. I also explored 18cadence, a user-generated storyline within a digital spatial structure. I combined these ideas to create a mashup of storylines between ITP classes and reality tv shows within a spreadsheet. Here’s the link!
narrative structure
With the ATU Index, there are seven large categories with subcategories and so on. In this blog post, the author discusses spending hours reading about the different variations of Cinderella by browsing through the categories. She also highlights unique story descriptors such as ATU 570 “Bunnies Beware the King”. It seems you could be aware of the story you are looking for (e.g. Cinderella), but through the categorization of the ATU, go down a different path of finding your Cinderella story.
I also looked at 18cadence, a user-generated storytelling by clicking between tabs of names and rooms and choosing a narrative based on the items in a room. It was choose your own adventure within a digital space.
I wanted to combine themes from both examples – the use of space and tabular direction within 18cadence and the category/subcategory rabbit hole and unique descriptors of ATU. A classmate, Na also told me about JK Rowling’s spreadsheet she used to plot out Harry Potter, which solidified my idea to utilize a spreadsheet.
content
From the ATU Index, the idea of unique descriptors stuck with me. As classes are starting, I’ve taken quite a few looks at the ITP syllabus. Also, I’ve been recently watching more reality shows than I’d like to admit, so I thought it would be a fun exercise to mash the two together. Users can mash the titles together and create either their own ITP class with course description or a TV show with the synopsis. Similar to the ATU Index, I created subcategories, so it wouldn’t be such an overwhelming list. For the subcategories, I mapped out ITP class tags (Design, Performance, etc.) and for shows, I mapped out genres (comedy, drama, etc.).
With the mashup, similar to the ATU Index, you have the original category you are looking for and can create a variety of different classes/shows based on the unique title. Once you create the unique title of your class or show, you also write the narrative. Since there are a variety of classes/shows to choose from, each time you look at the list you can determine different combinations of classes/shows.
reflection
In this case, I chose the structure before I chose the content. I wonder if that helped or hindered the possibility of the content itself. Would I have arrived at this end point if it were reverse? Another way to way to add to the narrative is to make this multi-player and make it more game-like. One user can write the class/show description, while the next person only sees the description and has to create a title and so on and so forth.
ABBY LEE - ITP BLOG 