Interpreting Shapes: Further Thought for the Final Project

     Considering the final project, I came across these pages of the journal, which asked you to look at the two shapes and write something that each could be. This gave me inspiration for another part of my idea: multiple interpretations. While the main objective of the project will be to highlight the things I gained and missed during my years in college, I would now like to write it in some way that is more open to interpretation and less black and white, "this was fun, this wasn't" type of a narrative. How this will be done is still being thought out, but there are several possibilities.
     For example, I could come at this addition from a literal standpoint or an emotional one. With a literal interpretation, it would simply mean that the narrative could literally be interpreted in a multitude of ways, simply based on how the pages are written. The reader would be meant to take it at face value and interpret based on text alone. On the other hand, an emotional appeal would be more satisfying to me. Instead, the way I write each section would be based on the emotion I want the reader to feel. It would still be open to interpretation, but would be more heavily influenced by the reader's own experiences with college. Either way, I feel the multiple interpretations addition would bring a beneficial addition to the final project.

For the Final: A Consideration for the Last Project

     In my college career, I have made several digital stories in a variety of different platforms. I feel as though this has given me a lot of experience in this form of storytelling. So as I was looking through the journal this week, I really wanted to challenge myself to think about my time here at UPJ. The page, "10 Things I Could've Done But Didn't" seemed to fit the bill. I could think about all of the things that freshman me had planned on doing during my college career but never got around to for one reason or another. The list was a little longer than I had hoped.

     This list inspired my idea for a final project: a "walkthrough" of unfulfilled dreams, a tour of things not finished, or a look back at unrealized potential. I could see this manifesting in several ways: a nonlinear, hypertext story where the links are comprised of words that express a "should've done more" attitude. For example, if somebody had wished that they had studied more in college, perhaps the hyperlink would be something along the lines of "when I failed that test." I plan to use examples of my past projects from other classes and remix them to fit this narrative, the only thing I'm currently unsure of is how they would tie together. This would also be partially location-based, since it would take place on the UPJ campus for the majority of the project.
     In the end, I hope to create a mixture of fiction and nonfiction that persuades the reader to achieve their fullest potential. I want to stress the idea that your college career is short-lived, and your life won't ever be the same once you leave it. I want to create a warning for the future, yet a hopeful look back on the past.

Location-Based Narrative: Welcome to Downtown Johnstown!

     For my narrative, I wanted to design an online "then-and-now" tour of Johnstown, featuring several of its famous landmarks. It is meant to resemble a feature that many museums now offer: an interactive addition to exhibits which gives small pieces of information about the display it's near. Combine that with a search for key words pertaining to another location and clickable links that take you to those locations, and Welcome to Downtown was born. Users start on a welcome page that has links to all of the pages hidden in the paragraph of text. When a user clicks on one of the words (for example, "shopping") they will be directed to the corresponding page (Glosser Brothers, which involves shopping). I kept the links only slightly lighter than the rest of the text because I wanted users to read for the information, and then notice the words they thought might stand out based on their own knowledge of the city. Each page includes a brief write-up of facts about the location, both what it was and what it is now. My hope is that users will see a glimpse of character and hope in a city plagued by drug use and economic downturns.
     This assignment was plagued by several difficulties over its development. For one, it was more difficult to find information on the locations in question than I had imagined it would be. Many of the locations don't have their own websites, and those that have one don't include much on the history of the business or service. Historical websites, such as JAHA, offer as much information as I may have included in my write-ups. This led me to want to explore the locations in person, in order to gain first hand knowledge. However, and much more unexpectedly than lack of information, I was hit with sudden serious illness near the beginning of this project. This left me bedridden and unable to concentrate or stay awake when attempting to research or put the project together. As previously mentioned, I had planned to visit at least a few of the locations in my project in order to get original photographs and firsthand knowledge, which would have made the project much longer and fleshed out in terms of information included. In the future, I would love to continue this search of my city, and put this location-based walkabout to the test.

Receipts in Location-Based Narratives

     This week, I added a receipt to my journal, detailing everything I remember from the day I went to that store. I feel like it would be interesting to see what this could become in a location-based narrative. To start the narrative, perhaps users are given a certain receipt from a local store that can only be found in a certain city, such as Press Bistro in Johnstown. From there, the user would search around in Press Bistro until they found another receipt for another restaurant. Maybe there would be a receipt for Lambcakes on a bulletin board. Then the user would go to Lambcakes, and the game would continue in this fashion, with the player searching the new business for the next receipt. This would allow the user to explore the city and learn about its culture, while possibly bringing more business to small local businesses.
     This could function with smartphones as an application. As users find the receipts, they might take a picture of them in their locations. Once the receipt has been found, the app would check it off the player's list, and set a new checkpoint on a map at the next business to continue the narrative. Players could interact with one another as they get within reach of each other by joining in group searches for new receipts. Users could even add their own receipts or businesses to the game at will by adding the business's name, the name on the receipt, and where in the business the receipt could be found. I feel as though an app like this would have a positive impact on the community in much the same way as the short-lived Pokemon Go, by getting people out and enjoying a past time together when they otherwise would not be so inclined.

Interactive Fiction Project: Harmony! (or Death)

     This project was based on a combination of the Space Quest games from the 1980s and '90s, and the "Letter to the Aliens" page from Steal Like an Artist. Space Quest is a short-burst, text-based animated adventure game that is known for it's random, misleading deaths when you make a single wrong move. I attempted to emulate this in a "choose your own adventure" type format by incorporating brief passages of text before every life or death choice. I attempted to make each "game over" death humorous, as in the example photo at the right from Space Quest 5. In addition to these deaths, I included four different possible endings to achieve, plus two "joke endings", depending on the choices you make (or if you survive, of course). This enhances replayability in an otherwise short experience, keeping the player thinking and engaged throughout.

     In Harmony! (or Death), you are tasked with heading the greeting party for a recently discovered alien race, known as the Estrons. Your choices will lead to peace with both of your races, or a war for domination. The story is full of B.S. deaths (13 at my last count, which was totally unintentional), humor, and a surprise ending. My biggest challenge was honestly just following all the strings to make sure I had a decent body and an ending for every pathway. I knew the story I wanted to tell, but each pathway started to blend together with the others after working on the bigger picture for so long. It would've been much harder to track if Inklewriter didn't highlight loose ends in red! I had a blast working with this story and interactive fiction in general, and feel like this project allowed me to create a "game" even though I have no background in game design.

10 Questions I Have

     This week, I completed another piece of the Journal, and decided on my Interactive Narrative topic.
     The pages I completed relate to questions I think about. I got a little comical with them towards the end, and probably went into slight meme territory with the Chef Boyardee and Dr. Pepper questions. These pages immediately made me think of a Magic 8 Ball. I often asked stupid questions like these to my Yoda Magic 8 Ball when I was younger, and the toy would respond back with "Later, you must ask," or another similar Yoda-like phrase. Although it's probably already been done, some sort of interactive narrative centered around asking questions to a Magic 8 Ball could be interesting. Perhaps your questions or its answers could unlock new areas of the narrative.
     Speaking of interactive narratives, I've decided to use a previous journal entry as the topic of my project: writing a letter to an alien. The story will be a mix between Zork and Space Quest, and will make you the ambassador to incoming alien visitors. You will start the adventure with several items, which you may use throughout the story. Much like Space Quest, the game will focus on a variety of stupidly punishing deaths and "wrong place at the wrong time" mechanics. Bad endings will lead to your death or the aliens leaving, while one good ending will make the aliens live in peace with humans.
     I will more than likely be using Inklewriter for this project, due to the easily developed branching path system. I haven't yet determined the total amount of possible endings, but it will be at least five (four bad and one good). I hope to create an entertaining and challenging puzzle-solving quest by the time users are able to play around with the story.

Remix Project: Bat-Cage!

   
     My remix was born out of a comedic love for Nicolas Cage quotes. I had originally planned to take a cartoon and a Cage movie, and have Nic and a cartoon character have a "conversation" with only lines they had spoken in the show and movie. Unfortunately, my already tight schedule didn't give me enough time to download, search through, and edit multiple different videos together, and so I had to rethink my plan. I obviously still wanted to use funny Cage quotes, but how? One day it metaphorically hit me in class: Batman/Cage memes! Partially inspired by Cage's character in the film Kick-Ass, I would take Batman comic pages, erase the words in thought or speech bubbles, and replace them with well-known Nicolas Cage lines to change the meaning of the artwork.

     The most difficult part of the process was finding short enough quotes that would fit the tiny speech bubbles, yet still carry a laugh. Many of Cage's famous lines are long, and, taken out of context, don't convey the same comedic gold, in my opinion. To get around this limitation, I often had to make the font size very small, which may be a hindrance to the project as a whole for anyone with poor eyesight. Another setback was the cohesion of each comic page. Would these bizarre and insane movie quotes possibly work together in a single plot? I think my final product assembles a plot nicely in each individual photo, but it may require a certain amount of "turn off your brain and laugh" appeal to fully enjoy the work. These Bat-Cage pages work like memes, so on one hand there has to be cohesion, but on the other hand, a certain sense of stupidity can abound in the words.
     "Bat-Cage" taught me a lot about the puzzle piece nature of creativity, and not just in the "taking someone else's work and reworking it in your own style" way. The puzzle pieces didn't always fit together for me, so while I may have thought a certain line worked best with a certain picture, I often had to sacrifice that laugh in order to make the rules I had set forth in my project work out. For instance, in the comic page with the armed robber (top-right photo at the bottom of the post), there were MANY Cage-worthy lines I wanted to use from his film, Ghost Rider. In the end, however, the lines were too long, and didn't flow well to make the punchline.There's a lot of sacrifice that goes into remixing pre-made content, sometimes meaning a change in your original idea altogether.
     I honestly wish I had even more time to continue this project. I had a blast sifting through quotes and matching them to panels, and had some pretty good laughs out of many possible combinations I toyed around with. This is definitely one project I would consider expanding upon in the coming final project.

To view a larger version of each Bat-Cage image, please click on the image.

#UPJremixed: Class Memes

     Artistry is totally collaborative, especially in the modern age of the Internet. With the ability to easily share, download, and edit from almost any computer, tablet, or smartphone, how do you track the "original" artist? So much of what we have been exposed to in this time has been copied or redesigned in some way, that I think it's safe to say that original thinkers are very difficult to come by. Not that this is a bad thing, far from it. Collaboration can help our creativity in ways that couldn't be expanded if we were left by ourselves to make something new. For example, I was greatly influenced comedically through my classmates' photos and captions. Putting words to photos in a way that was funny to me helped me to think outside of the typical meme: a stupid picture with a quick one-liner. My "found contributions" were used in the photo of the skeleton at the bottom-right, which used words that I shared, which I heard in a song by Marilyn Manson.
     I'd say the only way to maintain originality in memes is in your ability to "put the pieces together." That is, you're using your own logic to put the text to picture. The critical thinking seems to be the main original content in many art forms today. We see it in movies, music, and games: the same basic story or premise, with a few bits here and there to "make it new" or differentiate it from the rest. In this way, creativity is "maintained" through familiarity. Is this still creative, though? That may be for future scholars to decide.

Nerd Calculator: 1+1=3

     What if stories could be made with a calculator? No, not the "5318008" type of calculator story.
     I chose a journal page that involved breaking down something into the parts that created it. For example, Austin Kleon gives the idea of "Jaws + Space = Alien," which is essentially what the film Alien is about: a singular creature setting out to kill the humans in space. Thinking about films, technology, and daily life activities that I'm familiar with helped me to really consider the small things that are molded and mixed together in order to create a new idea or innovation.
     This gave me the idea for a Story Calculator, which would work sort of like Mad Libs to help users create stories based on numbered buttons. Each number would correspond to a certain character, place, verb, or object that would be inserted in between linking words to create a sentence, and, ultimately, a story. It might even be tailored to fit a fandom. If you like Harry Potter, have a number board with owls, wands, Quidditch, and Severus Snape. Make a Star Wars board with Tatooine and R2-D2. The possibilities could be endless, and might be worth a second look in the future when designing my projects.
   
   

Collaborative Narrative: Feet of UPJ

     My group decided to create a blog titled The Feet of UPJ, inspired by Danny DeVito's own obsession of taking photos of people and places with his feet. Our aim was to document the daily life of a UPJ student through the things that take us to our destinations: our feet. We believed that a narrative would form itself as enough photos were submitted to the blog; the more frequently a foot is photographed in a certain area, the more likely it was that that location was a part of the students' daily lives. We found that it was most natural for us to take pictures in dorm rooms, cafeterias, and computer labs, simply because we spend so much time there anyway. This made it easy for us to archive "a day in the life," so to speak. Consious participation was utilized, since everyone had to willingly put their foot in view of the camera for the photo to be taken.
     The most difficult decision for us as a group was the formatting of each blog post. In the end, we decided on a simple format: names of photo participants, the date the photo was taken, and a "fun fact" about the interaction. The title of each post would be the location in the photo. This way, it would be easier for viewers to search through and see how many times each location is featured on the blog. The hardest challenge for myself personally was the extroversion. As someone who generally hates interacting with strangers, it was a challenge for me to try to ask people outside of my friends to collaborate on this project. Add to that the fact that the project needed me to ask these strangers for pictures of their feet, and the interactions became even more awkward. However, I feel like it led to some interesting conversations, such as with Brad and the nonfunctional computer. I enjoyed the project and hope to see feet continually added to grow the "college roadmap."

"Lights weren't enough to escape darkness"

     Lights weren't enough to escape darkness. We hid our beams of fire in broken jars, waiting for the right time to finish the cracks in their surfaces. Peaking glimmers of hopefulness pierced a night sky that was blank, save for the lone stars fading as morning drew near. This lofty game of hide and seek we played with ourselves only took us further from the light we so desperately hid. In trying to push back the darkness, we welcomed it even closer.

     This is not to say that we weren't tempting fate in bringing the dark to us. Far from it; we knew the risks we faced. There were no dangers unknown to we fateful two who stared at the riverbank in the blinding darkness. We stood frigid in our shoes, cracked jars so close to our hearts we could feel the fire coming from the wick and wax it held inside. It was quite a contrast, the flame near our chest compared to the frigid, peeling red bridge our feet had planted themselves on since early dusk. We never looked at each other, her and I, as we stared off across the blackened sky dotted with white specks. Not a word was said to one another. Our jars were too fragile for small talk.

     Time passed, and I could feel my flame starting to grow colder in the tiny jar. I turned ever so slightly to catch a brief glimpse at her own jar, still burning as bright as I remembered it. Why? What did her jar have that my own didn't? She didn't look much different than me, didn't act strangely compared to my own personality. Yet her jar was warm. I could tell just by looking at it. Her jar had something coming soon, something that I wasn't sure I had in return.

     Dawn was beginning to appear now. In my peripheral, I saw her smiling, her jar reflecting her face. I turned to face her just as my own jar sputtered to stay alive with the warmth of the dying embers inside of it. She opened her mouth, gasped in air, and paused. She seemed timid and shy, yet curious and pondering. What was she thinking?

     She opened her mouth again, and I knew. The words rushed out, and with each syllable the jar grew even brighter than the pink morning sun. She didn't seem afraid or anxious at what she was telling me. I was a complete stranger just mere hours before, and yet she spoke to me as if she had known me since we were six. She was alive, and, I assumed, she had never felt so alive before. She kept talking at such an excited pace about her hopes and skills and future plans. I doubt she even noticed the jar finish breaking in an unassuming crack. Her hands naturally grabbed for the candle inside as if it had always been in her hands, or within reach. She stopped talking, faced me, and embraced me. We hugged for what felt like minutes, but what must have been seconds. Finally, she released me, and, candle in hand, left the red bridge to continue on down the road.

     I turned my gaze back to my own jar. Funny, I hadn't noticed that particular crack in it before. I smiled. She had something now, some optimism or warmth that had only been undercover before. That knowledge was out there now, and she had loved every second of the experience. I stared deep into my own jar, wondering if I would ever have the same chance as she had. I could barely feel the rising heat between my two hands. Lights weren't enough to escape the darkness, but the darkness sure couldn't put out our lights. I smiled out over the bay beneath the red bridge before I turned to watch another one like her approach me, flawless jar in hand.

     

Photo Credit: W. Eugene Smith, Monongahela River from Mount Washington, 1955-1957

6-Word Story Credit: @KiriMcCoy

Artificial "Intelligence": Search Box Autofills

     I decided to type a single word into the search bar of my Internet browser, and learned that somebody is obsessed with football (hint: it's not me).
     Google bases its autofill settings on what you personally search for, as well as what people in a radius around you are searching for. The idea that you could learn more about the area you live in based on what people in that area are searching the web for could be an interesting idea for a digital project. What if there was a Chrome application that allowed you to change words on webpages, just for fun? It wouldn't change the page itself, just how you personally see it based on your Chrome settings. You could set it to single words (e.g. change any instance of the word "balloon" to "puppy"), phrases, or themes (e.g. hide all words dealing with politics). While similar filters already exist on Chrome, I am not aware of any that lets the user set their own limits and keywords.
     While some of the returned autofills surprised me (You really have to Google what the time is? You can't just look on the right side of your screen?), it could be interesting and downright comical if users had a way of changing filters themselves. Imagine the office pranks, changing a coworkers's browser to keep changing the word "job" to "you're fired!" It might not be the most inventive or revolutionary idea for a web app, but it would be fun nonetheless.

Closing Note: Letter to the Aliens

     This week, I decided to take a comedic approach to the "we come in peace" mantra of alien contact. This prompt asked me to write a letter to alien explorers who are exploring a long-gone Earth. I explained to the visitors what I suspected to be the cause of the apocalypse, and I gave them a request for the rebuilding of humankind.
     I feel like this prompt could take the form of a text-based adventure game, similar to Zork. The player would interact with an alien command ship, who is intent on destroying the planet. The player's goal would be to convince the alien ship that destroying Earth is not a good idea, and persuading them that humans can be a beneficial ally.  The game could focus a lot on humor, such as in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. Certain key words and phrases would progress the game along, while other words would take away "health" from the player and make it harder for them to save the planet.
     Text-based games don't receive the attention they should, especially from new game creators. However, as a precursor to modern graphics, it's important to appreciate their storytelling style, as the "world's first playable e-book."

Recognition Natural Craving: The Backward Quote Page

This week, I decided to write a quote from my favorite book in reverse:

“But no artist, I now realize, can be satisfied with art alone. There is a natural craving for recognition which cannot be gain-said.”

     Coming from the novel And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie, the quote comes from the villain of the story, talking about why he commits his crimes. He believes people need congratulations or a pat on the back for their work, or else they would not do the work. I feel like this idea would work well in a short film. It's a great quote that shows two different types of artists: those in it for the creativity, and those in it for fame.

 

     The film could be created as if in reverse, allowing the events of the story to unfold backwards to the audience. Viewers would see the climax of the story before the details leading up to it, which I think could be interesting if it was enveloped in a mystery of sorts. The concept could possibly unfold similarly to this early trailer from the 2011 game, Dead Island. Despite the lackluster game itself, the trailer was an emotional story in itself. Perhaps a video set on the UPJ campus of a class day in reverse?
     I have also attempted to do something similar with one of my own films, One Last Time. I would be interested in trying to do something similar to this again, but with more of the emotional backdrop of the Dead Island trailer.  

10 Things Not in Use

I feel the beginning of a Toy Story rip-off coming from these objects. 

     Searching for these objects reminded me of the I Spy books I read as a kid, searching for the tiny red bicycle or the party hat hidden in the mass of objects on the page. As such, I think it would be interesting to do a hidden objects game with a backing story to tie the objects together. The story would involve searching a static image and clicking on certain objects in the image, such as those listed in the page from Steal Like an Artist. The player wouldn't see this list and would rely on a small amount of trial and error to scroll around the photograph searching for clickable items. When an item is found and clicked, a small story about inanimate objects coming to life would appear. Each of these mini stories might tie into a bigger overall story involving all of the hidden items.
     Each entry in the overall project would require a separate posted story per item. Therefore, I think it would be easiest to create a separate blog, so that the story posts wouldn't get mixed in and accidentally uncovered on my main blog. The main page of this new blog would be a brief list of instructions and the photo of the room itself. The photo would have links over top of each item in question, which would send the viewer to each hidden blog post containing the story for that image. Utilizing hyperlinks, the stories would be interconnected with each other without the need to return to the image if desired. For example, if the word "bag" appeared in the post about the pennant, then "bag" would link to the post about the pink backpack. This will not only keep players engaged, but will keep them from getting stuck on a page.