Points of Departure: narrative research in new media arts practice

Author: Lisa Cianci, 2006

Abstract

ABSTRACT
Internet and database technologies have made it relatively easy for users to rapidly store and develop their own content. These technologies can create particularly useful tools for visual and new media artists to document and research concepts, processes and outcomes, then present that material in a potentially endless number of ways to stimulate further content
creation.

Points of Departure (PoD) is a current Master of Arts research project. It involves the development of an online, database-driven system that is both a keeping-place for digital objects and related documentation, and a workspace (or playground) for developing content.
The research and system in development are informed by current new media theory and the continuum model being used by archival communities to allow preservation and access to records and artefacts in both the short and long term – across space and time.
The ongoing process of documentation and linking of content objects builds and rebuilds complex mappings. Trajectories through this content may be seen as narrative – and these narratives can inform creative process for development of new content.
Areas of research and exploration in this project include:

• database as art-form, rhizome structures and narrative in the “floating work of art”;
• feedback loops – recursive content/metacontent relationships;
• veracity – remembering, forgetting and subjectivity in the archive; and
• the place of the “user” and what this means within the interactive, digital environment

for more information, contact the author at lc_at_mmorphe_dot_com

This paper presented at the Narrative As Research Symposium, Victoria University, April 2006