Storytelling Theory and Practice

“Professor Brian Sturm presents storytelling as a way of organizing information, conveying emotions, and building community. A model of storytelling as altered state of consciousnes..”

you know what I just realized  – when I was little if I wasn’t outside, I was listing to Audio cassettes all the time, over and over again for hours and hours, playing and drawing… whatever this adds to my whole thing… strange that my adopted words when I first came into the MDP where “NARRATIVE” and “INFORMATION” … there are more things that are starting to make sense and where I am starting to see patterns… I’ll tell you as soon as I know more about these patterns – my pattern

fragmented storytelling

Something new to think about, which really excites me:

Telling stories and allowing people to alter / play / individualize these stories = every person walks home with a different story / experience.

Maybe my whole search is not about objects but rather about

GESTURE / PSYCHOLOGY / MATERIALITY / TACTILITY – which might end up in some kind of object…

maybe it is about DREAMS ,not the dream where you wake up all sweaty in the morning, but rather your personal dream of the impossible – the magical – the bizarre – super natural powers -giving you this special kind of feeling, power, thrill – that brings something unexpected. (maybe by taping into peoples dreams one could evoke some kind of narrative and imagination)

but not in a cheesy way  – the words that come to mind are – charming / humble / playful.

fragment / fragmented / fragmenting

– reduced to fragments
– existing or functioning as though broken into separate parts; disorganized; disunified: a fragmented personality; a fragmented society

– A small part broken off or detached.

– An incomplete or isolated portion; a bit: overheard fragments of their conversation; extant fragments of an old manuscript.

– To break or separate (something) into fragments.

– To become broken into fragments: After the election, the coalition fragmented.

Just came across this workshop, whatever this mean and they are doing but I like the description:

“Describes four storytelling activities which help students learn a skill and develop their personalities: (1) guided imagery, (2) fragmented storytelling, (3) creative dynamics, and (4) drawing. All techniques appeal to the students’ emotional and imaginative potential, evoking a highly emotional and affective response, thus overcoming students’ silence and boredom. (Author/PJM)”

another article:

Confusing story telling with narrative

An interesting article I found by  Dave Snowden on June 4, 2007 10:28 PM | Permalink

http://www.cognitive-edge.com/2007/06/confusing_story_telling_with_n.php

“In effect this is a form of story-telling within the tradition of scenario planning. If people tell a story, they construct a sequential account of history or a hypothesis about the future, they tell a story. They will start to own that story, it will represent their perspective on what is happening, it will be fundamentally influenced by their hopes and fears and the cultural patterns of the people they live and work with. The group is likely to norm their response to the story even when asked to challenge it, any challenge is limited. Its a known problem with Devils Advocates and Blue/Red teaming. The challenge takes place within the range of what is considered possible to the participants in the process. The more complete the stories, the more it is context bound to the limits of their imagination. Such approaches also entail massive cognitive bias, the patterns of past experience of the participants will determine the way in which they construct the scenario. Giving them libraries of material to place in the story is even more scary as it restricts what they use again. This type of approach came from the attempt”

Behavioral Storytelling Theory

David M. Boje

New Mexico State University

December 24 2005; last revision December 28 2005

http://cbae.nmsu.edu/~dboje/690/behavioral_storytelling.htm

“Behavioral Storytelling Theory is a revolution in storytelling organization concepts, methods, and practice. Behavioral Storytelling focuses on the behaviors of storytellers, and how they consummate stories, as well as collective memory (Boje, 1991). A behavioral approach to storytelling is not about folkloristic or narrativist collections of story-objects, like butterflies pinned in an album. The focus is on studying in situ story behaviors, patterns of intertextual storying and counter-storying intertwined with organizational storytelling complexity. The thesis is it is time for story to be released from narrative and folklore’s prison. For example, our living-stories intersect in our class meetings with expected petrified narratives of what ought to go on in a graduate seminar, with institutional demands about what to do and say, and how we record it for the files and transcripts. There is an epic serial, an epic-story. Yet there is no whole story, only an interplay of our living-stories which are not wholes either.”

How can I stimulate / activate / play with someone’s senses

For the past view month I was tinkering with the idea ‘how a third object can change family conversation, body language, gestures, and spatial relationship’ and turning its interface into some kind of provocation / rebel.

‘Provocation / Play / Interaction’
We made “the third object” which was acting as a rebel inside but its skin was all nice and soft. Also it had bad behavior our family members wanted to hug it – in order to control it again. We thought they would get mad at the object for taking over their telly, but instead they got mad at each other.  Was it because the object’s good looking and soft skin or do we in general rather get mad at each other instead of objects…. Would the whole scenario have changed if the ‘rebel object’ would have looked ‘horrible’ and ‘unfriendly’ from the outside, but then would you still want to engage with it. It would loose its appeal, wouldn’t it? How can the skin of an object change our behavior, trick us, and most importantly provoke everything but a picture-book situation? Playing around with this concepts and these questions I ended up with this main focus ‘HOW CAN AN OBJECT CONNECT OR DISCONNECT TO THINGS OR PEOPLE?’
I created the ‘two people interactive phone’. It looked like a phone and partly acted like one, but its constrain was that two people had to operate it together in order to make it work…

For now I am starting to look at a lot of things that a controversial and play with peoples mind, are literal, and have a twist to it, playful, engaging, interactive, and strange.

I am giving myself little assignments. I have no idea right now where this will take me, but I just need to go for it and out of my experiments maybe I’ll find the answer and something else will come up that I have not thought about. Maybe looking at my “related work” and my “inspiration” might help.

My assignments 1:

Find 5 everyday objects

– alienate their skin but leave their original interface (very abstract, out of its content and with different materials)
– alienate their interface but leave their original skin (change its personality)

during this period I will research materials and their behaviors.

constrains:

– the object need to be

1. playful

2. allow interaction

3. tricky / mischievous / little frustrating

AND somehow the objects need to have a story

Once I have this I’ll take the two most successfully once and build them out / test them / put them in different places / locations / environments

5 Interactions…

… that communicate a story with crazy, different materials, but at the same time allow people to create their own stories or add to it.

“ambiguity creates imagination – the less influence there is the more imagination will be” Phil Van Allen

– every idea needs to be different – every story needs to tell something else and a different behavior

– try to stimulate – touch / hearing / sight / smell / taste

~ maybe it asks you to play and make things possible that you normally can’t

~ travel in time

~ wake up lost memories

~ associate smells with a history

Diana Brinks SS09

I found this again the “what’s wrong with the zoo“. I think I am intrigued by the poetic aspect, the atmosphere, the camera, and the play with her form, shapes, and time. Something to think about. I wonder if the music was created for the video or vice versa?

ROSE “Ciao Bella”

I came across French artist ROSE when I was looking at Francois Hardy. This example is not about the Rose’s music but rather her music video “ciao bella”. I don’t know how I feel about it, just putting it out there.I think the playful idea – this transition of time – could be explored and taken a little bit further.

Levi van Veluw – Landscapes

a post on “whats wrong with the zoo”

“Show from Levi van Veluw, March 1st-April 5th, Ronmandos Amsterdam.
Levi van Veluw´s photo series are self-portraits, drawn and photographed by himself: a one-man-process. His works constitute elemental transfers; modifying the face as object; combining it with other stylistic elements to create a third visual object of great visual impact. The work you see therefore is not a portrait, but an information-rich image of colour, form, texture, and content. The image contains the history of a short creative process, with the artist shifting between the entities of subject and object.”

Photo credits: Levi van Veluw/Artnews

“…his latest series ‘Landscapes’. This 4-piece series reinterprets the traditional landscape painting, removing plots of grass, clusters of trees, babbling brooks from their intimate 2 dimensional formats and transposing them onto the 3 dimensional contours of his own face. Thus a fresh twist is given to the obsession inherent in the romantic landscape of recreating the world and simultaneously being part of it. The romantic landscape and self-portrait genres are combined as a means of re-examination.”

Brazilian street artists Os Gemeos

I came across this artice on the COOL HUNTING website.

“The world of Brazilian street artists Os Gemeos (aka identical twins Otavio and Gustavo Pandolfo) is a slightly surreal, colorful and wildly-patterned one, populated with people and animals, boats and pyramids and cars and music. In this video we visit their world, interviewing the brothers at work on an installation that took place earlier this year at Deitch Projects in downtown Manhattan.

MEl Kadel

I came across Mel Kadels work and I really enjoy his illustrations so much that I have them as a screen saver. But the images togehter with his words are even more rewarding – again this brings me to the point  – play with vizuals and words. Go check out his great work – it is truly darling!

I also just saw that I bought a post card by him a really long time ago and just made the connection.

Maybe I like it so much because it is a literal in such a delightful and whimsical way!

http://www.melkadel.com/

rolling with the punches

hearts don’t break

tree house

smell the pillow

my only way out is straight ahead.

Honoring the softness of wool

Honoring the softness of wool – Great campaign photographed by Vincent Fournier

found on “what’s wrong with the zoo“

“Created by TBWA Paris and photographed by Vincent Fournier this campaign is for sure one of the most inventive ad series, we´ve seen for a long time from the detergent branch. It was Pieter from today and tomorrow who has seen the campaign at first.

Photos via Vincent Fournier“

I love this!!! But go check out the other campaigns /examples. Like the Absolute Hangover one – shock advertising or mixing messages (like Ellen Lupton shows in her book – mixing messages, graphic design in contemporary culture)

83 original ways to successfully waste your time

83 original ways to successfully waste your time

again I found this on the page “What’s wrong with the zoo”

start a business               go the distance                stay true to your colors   do your anatomy homework

This is a the campaign attending the adidas-diesel denim collection. At first I thought this is a joke, but it is actually a real campaign, juggling two powerful brands and “communicate values like individuality, creativity and originality was passed with flying colors.” It reminds me of THE JAN FAMILY’s

and the book “ONE HUNDRED AND ONE THINGS TO DO. by Kesselskrammer” I am really intrigued by this words-image-twist-play thing. I need to explore this more!