Narrative and Information

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January to April 2010, Faculty: Brad Bartlett

I was given two words Narrative and Information, in the beginning I approached it with most common understanding but as I progressed through experiments in various mediums, my understanding of the two words matured. I was challenged with their co-relation and at the same time explored how the two words differed from each other.

Narratives are not only stories but pervasive in our environment. Every object that transforms has a narrative to tell. Transformation happens over time and with each passing moment we create a history thats embeds in our memory, practices, rituals forming a culture and society. Narrative is not just spoken word or written document. Our learned and perceived associations also help us see narratives in things around us.

Information is the result of making the unknown known. Like narrative is pervasive information is also pervasive however, information has to decodes and translated for comprehension but narrative are poetic fabrications of our mind. Information reveals patterns of knowledge that can be use to acquire further knowledge.

For the following experiments I gave my self a constraint of creating narratives and pattern within the same form.

Time Based Medium

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The brief was to express narrative by only using visual and no sound. In this I continued to explore the how our learned association to prevalent cultural practices create a universal narrative. The of picking rose petals and throwing it on either side is associated with pondering about love.

The rose petals when gathered and analyzed create an information. It also made me contemplate on how movies build narrative by giving us continuous information, thus not only expanding our knowledge and simultaneously triggering our imagination.

To express the word narrative through time-based media and using both sound and image in a way that the two compliment each other to express the idea. To express the word narrative through time-based media and using both sound and image in a way that the two compliment each other while communication the meaning. For this I adopted the idea of memory and narrative, I asked one my classmate to narrate her recently undertaken road-trip and then I took the photographs she had taken during that road-trip. I formed a narrative by overlaid the two to provide a more enriching narrative. While narrating her road trip she recalled experiences incidents and moments but there were moments she didn't narrate but could be seen. The exclusion of the two left room for interpretation for someone seeing the narrative. I realized that all narrative told through combination of sound and visuals exploit this gap and leaving room for imagination and interpretation.

Similar to the experiment above I asked the same person to capture a day in her life. But this time I created some constraints. I asked her to click at every an interval of every 30 minutes a photographs of the environment or objects around her. She had the freedom of choice of frame but constraint of time and space. While taking the photograph she was also asked to document the time and action she had captured in her frame. Thus a data was gathered over the day. This data when combined presented us with variety of information. Interestingly I observed the tonal change in the two expressions. The road trip was narrated in a different way than documentation of the moments within a day. This in itself expresses a qualitative difference in presentation of information and narrative.

Interactive - Narrative

Interactive - Information