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You can donwnload the Slides for a summary about Recombinant Fiction or to read the short introduction in the text below.
It's available a workshop proposal about this topic.
Introduction:
Media are changing, growing and multiplying. The way they are used also
alters continually, creating new ways of producing fiction and
spectacle. In previous ages, media such as theatre, literature, cinema
and TV have defined languages, models and formats; each new development
provided an expressive shift that helped transform the way we
understand and interpret reality.
Recently, new kinds of models, languages and formats have entered the
media environment, radically shifting and influencing modes of behavior
and thought. We are beginning to realize that new media are not simply
networks and digital machines, but a hybridizing of all types of media.
Digitally networked media are able to work simultaneously, allowing
audience and producer to interact with speed and ease.
Our contemporary media environment era can be thought of as defined by
‘Convergence Culture’ which is characterized through the explosion of
pervasive personal media, interactive communication in public spaces,
large quantities of amatorial content published online, the rising of a
culture of participation, and a new kind of sociality generated by the
mass of identities on social network platforms.
We should consider experiments of new forms of Fiction in the context
of our current hybridized, multiplied, convergent, Rhizomatic (pace
Deleuze and Guattari) and mutable use of media. The rise of ‘Transmedia
Storytelling’, ‘Alternative Reality Games’, ‘Transfiction’, ‘Dispersed
Fiction’ and ‘Viral Marketing’ is a clear sign of an important
phenomenon that is also changing language and interpretations of
meaning as well as contributing to the increasing engagement with
audiences.
Finally, the theory of The ‘Performative Matrix’ of the ‘Recombinant
Theatre’ studied by the ‘Critical Art Ensemble’ collective in the
middle of the nineties helps to define ‘Recombinant Fiction’ - a label
that tries to merge the above practices into one phenomenon.
As such, Recombinant Fiction becomes an official new form of fiction:
an interactive narration that uses the real world like a theatre with
immersive aesthetics - the spectacle becomes pervasive. This mode of
storytelling utilizes multiple forms of media and stages, which are
recombined in order to absorb the spectator in a story of a real world.
The fluid Recombination of identities and of their interpersonal
connections in non-linear time allows for Recombinant Fiction - a
multi-platform, multi-channel and cross-media form of storytelling.
This new method blurs the boundaries between reality and fiction, swaps
the roles between actor and spectator and plays with the idea of
time-bound performances. It reverse-engineers the process of
storytelling. Linguistically nothing is simulated; the medium consists
of transformed patterns of real-world actions.
Some theories which connect points of Recombinant Fiction :
" Recombinant Theatre " by Critical Art Ensamble
" Theatre of the Oppressed " by Augusto Boal
" TransMedia StoryTelling" and "Convergence Culture" by Henry Jenkins
" Dispersed Fiction " by Jason Nelson
“ TransFiction” by Alok Nandi
Notes, and examples :
Recombinant Theatre
http://www.critical-art.net/books/ted/ted4.pdf
Cross Media:
http://www.christydena.com/Docs/DENA_CrossMediaObservations.pdf
http://www.vexappeal.com/mashup
Transmedia StoryTelling and Convergence Culture :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmedia_storytelling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Jenkins
http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=74685&videoChannel=5
ARG:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_reality_game
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Zero_(alternate_reality_game)
http://hopeismissing.blogspot.com