Departure: Research

All media, for thousands of years, rely on carefully designed "spaces between" to tell stories. –Norman .M Klein-

We started "Narratives in Space" with concrete two interests, physical space and storytelling. We were interested in how interaction in a physical space can have meaning to users and change their experience. Through many discussion with Norman Klein, we found the very interesting aspect of story telling. He said, "All media, for thousands of years, rely on carefully designed "spaces between" to tell stories". We agreed that the illusional space between fact and fiction has power to merge the reader into the story. ­Therefore, we decided to apply this idea of "space between" into our project.

As a beginning, we researched historical aspects and examples of embedding narrative in a space such as a stage set, an amusement park and a pop up book. Also, we researched what kinds of methods are recently attempted and how they shifts from traditional methods such as interactive storytelling, . The traditional methods focused on delivering an exact story that has linear story lines. On the other hand, most of new methods choose non-linear stories because they more consider whether "reader" can experience the story through the space and recreate the story of their own. Non-liner story is more flexible to interact while liner story is easily broken if the user tries to interact or change it. These difference came from what a role of reader takes in. For example, in a play, "reader" takes a role as an ­audience. She participates in the play very passive way. However, "reader" takes a role of author in many of interactive storytelling projects. The reader chooses her own path and creates a story. We questioned how the reader is able to interact with liner story not a passive way but more an active way without breaking the narrative. Therefore, we want to experiment converging these different approaches.

2.5D Space
Book is originally designed for text and it is based on two-dimensional space. However, in 18th century, removable book invented for children and it changed a traditional aspect of book. The space that the pop up book creates is not 2-dimensional but also it is not 3-dmentional yet. It is in between. This illusional spaces in pop up book– the buildings, the birds, the people that pop out are tangible, yet not real. Similarly, The 20th Century they envision exists as a story, but is not the real 20th Century. Pop up book is also almost first book that designed to interact with the reader. The reader can move or open the tab to change images or see behind stories. Because of these similarities with our project, we brought elements from pop-up books into our exhibition in telling the story from the book.