Posted by Dennis G. Jerz on June 19, 2008 9:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) ~
Steve Ersinghaus started the creative hypertext workshop by playing Changing Key: A "video hyperdrama" by Charles Deemer.
In the introduction, Deemer notes that the audience in a play is passive, and conjures up the idea of a family Thanksgiving in which multiple groups interact in multiple rooms, with the audience inserted into the drama like ghosts who can follow different stories.
[My note: A ghost audience who can follow different characters is not a full participant, like the payng audience who performs dramas with professional 'ractors in Neil Stephenson's The Diamond Age... Each of Deemer's videos is a separate, linear narrative... we're still watching Bobby Meadows wait for his ride, in a scene that's doubtless providing various hooks into the other scenes in the corpus. The audience's attempts to put the story together is an active intellectual effort.
There's a trilogy of plays that are designed so that when a character exits in one play, he or she enters in another play. Can't recall the title of that trilogy...]
After watching Bobby's scene, Mark Bernstein asks the question -- is this scene a story? (We didn't have the chance to discuss his question before Steve started the next clip, but I think that's like asking wether an individual ant is an organism -- an individual worker ant can't reprotude, and the male ants don't even have jaws so they can't eat...)
Now we're watching Kate's story. Kate speaks directly to the camera (which I'm pretty sure is visible in the reflection of a window at one point). An intersting cinematographic detail -- during a confrontation between Kateand Dennis, both actors deliver their scene in an unbroken shot, with the shot of Dennis overlayed slightly over Kate's image (with the focus therefore on Kate).
After just watching two clips, and noting the ways the hooks in these two stories, begin to intersect, I'm intrigued by the complex authorial process necessary for creating an ensemble drama (like a soap opera or epic TV show, such as Babylon 5 or the last few seasons of Deep Space 9).
More.
And another.
HYPERTEXT: Hypertext 2008 Begins
Off to a great start with Charles Deemer's Introduction to his hyperdrama Changing Key. The idea of a passive audience asked to break through the fourth wall to "mingle with the actors." It is a live performance on stage, yet can allow the flexibility of interaction by hypertextual choice.
We begin with Bobby's story, which looks to be a nearly eight minutes segment of one character's event. He gets a phone call, and then addresses the audience, bringing them immediately into a world that up to now was not considered enterable--though by choosing to view this particular segment the viewer was indeed a part of the story.
The camerawork is up close and personal, following and focusing on the actors as if we are within their touch, which adds to the personal nature of the film.
And ...
Charles Deemer presented his work “Changing Key” as an exploration of interactive narratives. “Changing keys” is a story of a group of characters who surround a jazz musician struggling with addiction. We experience their stories by choosing to watch videos from their individual points of view. Deemer shows his master hand at direction here — turning a low budget production into an engaging set of scenes, well intertwined.
His talk is here: “Changing Key” the talk.
Deemer’s two: Hyperdrama: Live and on video. Deemer has been producing what he calls hyperdrama since 1985. His use of the term largely relates to works that afford opportunities for encountering a drama by pursuing the performances of a variety characters in different order.
“Changing Keys” is an example of the video. Audience members have the opportunity to search through the videos. Comparisons were drawn to Babel, Rashomon, 11:14 and others — but the largest question was is this fundamentally different when accessed via a web page.
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