Madia Fabrics: The Problem of Time in Personal Media Making

Storytelling is an activity of intelligent play generated by humans for the benefit of humans. Qualities of intelligent play reflect the intentions, processes and tools that are available to humans for the purpose of story construction. Personal media collections speak to intention. They als serve as a tool to help us better communicate who we are and who we would like to become. Augmented by computer readable meta-data, computers can help us navigate these collections. However, if computers are to become collaborators and provocateurs, they need to better “understand” story mechanisms. In particular, the computer needs a model that allows it to reconfigure the temporality in the narrative. In this paper I focus on how mental models formed by the observational filmmaker during image capture and editing can be used to realize a multi-variant approach to temporal representation of media segments. This type of representation lends meaning to our interaction with the media fabric.