Narrative As Process: Subject, verb , predicate

1. Narrative As Process: Subject, verb, predicate

2. What is a Narrative in the context of research? • Facts/events organized to create meaning • Basic form: Some event is transformed into something else • Usually something meaningful must occur, otherwise no reason to report the event • In research, the areas of interest may be in: a) The topic (its structure), b) the procedure (how the topic is handled/ transformed), or c) the outcome process • So narrative is about giving something form and/or a context

3. Inventory as narrative • What are the elements/components of a system? (Cosmic Thing, Damien Ortega, 2002) • Presentation of Disassembly: Represent the system through its parts • Let the parts express themselves • Can the parts be re-organized in new ways? • Can something new be re-invented through exploration from unintended, unexpected perspectives?

4. What about processes? • Create an extended list of multiple approaches • Consider previously identified errors, discarded solutions, as potential resources • Do research while developing (who else has addressed the topic and how) • Design prototypes/model

5. Iterative Approach • Repeat the process • The more often you repeat, the more you will push your self-imposed boundaries beyond their limits • Redesign: Leads to cohesion & resolution • Genotype: Generic condition of a system • Phenotype: Any observed quality of an organism (variation)

6. Transformational procedural experimental rules • Modify the elements or the process • Magnify, condense, re-arrange • Transpose, reverse opposites, inside/out • Substitute, combine, blend, distort

7. Project Presentation • Consider the results • Project is a “work-in-progress”: • (Let the data speak for itself) • Create Closure: • Re-format to fit presentation expectations • (sometimes not!)

8. Now Back to Time Based Narrative Definitions

9. Narrative Structure (Todorov) Most basic narrative consists of a stable situation that is disrupted (transition) eventually ariving at a final stable situation which in some way is different from the start • Start: Situation definition • Event: Event, transition, action, verb, etc. • Closure: Creating meaning through closure • Narrative normally evolves in time: Time often represented in space (graph) • But there are other forms: (proposition, inventory, etc.)

10. Literary/Cinematic Narrative (Gérard Genette) • Order: Temporal-order of the narrative • Duration: Timing structure of the narrative • Frequency: relationship between event and its retelling • Mood: Distance and perspective • Distance: Is it told in direct, indirect mode? • Perspective: point of view • From a fixed position • Outside the action • Narrator knows less then the characters • Voice: What kind of narrator implied?

11. Organizing the Image: Visual Narrative Tools • Sequence: impliesplot development • Divided screen: subsections imply sequence • Shape: Horizontal implies time length • Spatial proximity: object placed next to another signifies relationship • Direction: left-to-right, or reverse • Scale: signifies hierarchy • Repetition: Rhythmic emphasis

12. Bibliography • Conceptual Blockbusting, Adams • Poetics of the Prose, Todorov • Narrative Discourse, Genette