I didn't really mean unrelated. I meant more that they would be related
on a thematic level rather than directly intertwined. This in contrast
to, say, a mystery novel, in which each element of the plot has to have
a very specific relation to every other element or the plot doesn't work.
This is true regardless of the order in which the plot is traversed.
>Even a carnival has an implicit linear narrative. You enter, and in
>no particular order, you go on all the rides. You pay a fee at each
>one, and you have a pre-specified interaction with each one. Then,
>when there are no more rides, you leave. The amount of interest value
>generated, is linearly proportional to the number of short stories you
>write up.
The narrative of a carnival isn't linear in the sense that an author
(designer, whatever) plans for the user to view a carnival as a whole
in a particular order. By contrast, this is the way a movie employs a
linear narrative. Each sideshow may have a planned linear narrative (or
it may have a loose approximation of one that is fleshed into a
specific narrative based upon the response of users).
>What I'm after, is something that exploits the _recombination_ of the
>elements, so that a truly non-linear plot is developed
>_in_the_viewer's_mind_. The viewer is the one who will create the
>narrative, because the viewer will automatically attempt to relate and
>narrative-ize what is seen in order to make sense of it. The
>non-linear VR author's job is _not_ to provide narratives, but to
>_direct_ the process of the viewer's free-form associations.
I like this notion--a _post facto_ narrative, rather than an authorially
planned one. I was sort of hinting at this, but you've described what I
was looking for. That's a better analysis then what I was saying about
*not* having a narrative.
>This is what I meant by attempting to understand the Surrealist
>relations between objects. Steve suggested a theorem, that the
>"semantic distance" between objects is related to their Surrealistic
>impact. While it's not a complete explanation, it's a good start, and
>a direction we need to pursue. We can't simply rely on random
>collections of objects to do our work for us. I suspect that there is
>some form of Surrealistic narrative principle underlying all of this,
>whether it be the "dialectic of the Absurd," or the "paranoic-critical
>system," or whatever. Once I've dug through a few more Surrealist
>texts, I hope I can elaborate further on this.
The idea of a "dialectic of the Absurd" as a narrative principle is
interesting, but I'm not sure how it holds up. If it's the
juxtaposition of objects with semantic distance that generates the
impact, then it seems like any kind of Hegelian structure would weaken
it: you don't want to show the thesis and the antithesis prior to
synthesis, only the synthesis itself.
The issue of what a surreal narrative structure could look like *is*
really interesting. You're right that randomness isn't really a
surrealist notion--it belongs more in Dada. Perhaps instead "semantic
distance" needs to be applied to narrative structure itself: follow the
disjointed-but-somehow-connected structure of dreams. In this sense,
all the events of the narrative are connected, but not in the traditional
A-leads-to-B fashion you get from semantic similarity in a non-surreal
narrative.
How does that sound for a jumping-off point toward surreal narrative?
--andy
andyn@texas.net