Metalinear Story Agents - an Exploration in Construction and Delivery Interface

Our concepts of story and storytelling have popularly been represented through linear mediums such as books and films. Only in traditions such as theater and oral storytelling, where an author has direct, instant feedback from the audience, has story been able to achieve a more malleable form. The present is pivotal because the evolution of interactive media technology has created new forms of digital expression which enable more reactive, computational ways of constructing, arranging, and presenting stories. Into this context, Kevin Brooks' 1999 Ph.D. work created Agent Stories, a metalinear narrative authoring software tool which employs a software agent-driven engine to produce one or many possible linear accounts, thus creating multi-linear stories which are especially well suited for our new interactive mediums. Java has further extended this system onto the widely distributed environment of the Internet, and the possibilities for collaboration open new dimensions to the art of computational story writing and storytelling. Thesis Supervisor: Glorianna Davenport Title : Principal Research Associate, Director of Interactive Cinema