Ceremony of Innocence and the Subversion of Interface: A Case Study in Interactive Narrative

There is a potential inconsistency between the experience of story and the process of interaction. Many interactive narratives ask the interactor to switch between an immersive state of immediacy and a hypermediated awareness of process. This oscillation has the potential to disrupt the narrative experience. The presentation examines the interactive CD-ROM Ceremony of Innocence (an adaptation of the Griffin and Sabine trilogy) with this disruption in mind. The presentation highlights the design decisions that are used to suture the potential disjuncture. Two broad strategies are reviewed. The first is the saturation of narrativity throughout the entire work. Analogies are drawn to both expressionism and expressivity in cinema. Expressionist filmmakers used the exaggeration of film craft (such as lighting, set, costume) to portray and elicit emotion and mood. Filmmakers in general rely on a subtler and more hidden use of craft to enhance the medium’s expressivity. The careful selection and combination of visual and auditory elements saturates the cinematic experience with a pervasive narrativity. In the same way Ceremony of Innocence uses graphics, layout, font choice, sound effects, and music to systematically reflect and amplify narrative concerns such as character, mood, and theme. The other strategy employed in Ceremony is more specific to digital environments. The interface itself is subverted to reflect similar narrative concerns and to enhance the experience of story. In the process the graphic user interface is remediated, and narrativity is situated at the heart of the interactive experience. The methodology that underlies the argument is a close reading of Ceremony of Innocence that combines quantitative data with subjective impressions. Interaction and Suspension of Disbelief In 1994 I organized a series of discussions with Vancouver filmmakers about the creative possibilities to be found in the emerging interactive form. My colleagues and I asked each filmmaker to play with current examples of story-based interactive CD-Roms (including Myst, The Seventh Guest, Under a Killing Moon, Freak Show). Afterward, we explored their reactions to these works. The filmmakers had many observations about creative possibilities for this interactive medium. However, most felt that there was a basic contradiction between a state of narrative immersion (the classic suspension of disbelief) and the process of interaction. 1 Jim Bizzocchi, Justine Bizzocchi, Birth of a Notion, in WRITE conference proceedings. (University of British Coumbia, 1994)