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1. •  
     CommentAuthorDanieru
   • CommentTimeOct 12th 2006 edited

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   I have a fascination with the borders of fiction and how we draw them. Here we find the relationships between author, reader and characters builds the substance of each fictional world. How much does the author's knowledge reflect that of the reader's? How is tragedy, conflict and enlightenment reliant on knowledge the reader has which the characters do not? Is not the author the greatest of magicians, waving their wand of fiction, using slight of hand to distract the reader, to disguise their characters?
   
   Think of the last book of fiction you read. Where did the power of knowledge lie within this venn diagram:
   

   

   
   I submit to you that most fiction plays with relationships which fall inside 3 of the 4 crossover points:
   
   

   1. The author and reader share narrative knowledge which the characters do not: Tension, tragedy and comedy may arise.
   2. The author forms the inner life of the characters, but this knowledge remains largely hidden from the reader: Creates mystery, disbelief and relies on slight of hand.
   3. The Unknown!
      
   4. Author, reader and characters have same knowledge: Tends to occur at the resolution of a traditional text. The illusion of this knowledge is another powerful tool the author may wield.

   
   So yes, 3 has been left intentionally blank, and for good reason. For here, in the merging of reader and character, we find knowledge which the author may never gain access to. Here lies interpretation, misrepresentation and imagination. Here fiction comes under the control of the perceiver, worlds form distinct from their manufacturer: here be the no-man's land of creativity.
   
   Could it be that the future of fiction resides inside this region? Interactive fiction, such as that made real in video games and augmented realities, belongs in the hands of the perceiver. The reader, the interacted upon, becomes at once the maker, the magician and the resolution to the narrative. Here the character controls their author; here evolves the protagonist as omniscient God of their own world; here lies the future real.
   
   How are we to best explore this Realm of The New Fictions?
   
   (Mirrored on The Huge Entity blog)
2. • CommentAuthorwhat?
   • CommentTimeOct 12th 2006 edited

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   Song lyrics come instantly to mind, look how often a listener will pull completely unintended meanings out of a lyric, mostly by mishearing.
   I do it all the time and I don't give a fig for the writers intentions.
   I saw Ridley Scott talking about Blade Runner once, how is it he didn't understand the movie he made? Universal themes possess us through our creativity...do any of us have any idea of what the hell we're doing?
3. •  
     CommentAuthoridoru345
   • CommentTimeOct 12th 2006

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   In an article of some vintage written for Wired Magazine, author William Gibson remarked on the ideal endpoint for Hollywood products: not as audio/visual consumables we passively absorb (not that this was ever really the case, people have always re-interpreted within their minds) but as raw material for what he termed "remix culture".

   
   

   
   
   "Our culture no longer bothers to use words like appropriation or borrowing to describe those very activities. Today's audience isn't listening at all - it's participating. Indeed, audience is as antique a term as record, the one archaically passive, the other archaically physical. The record, not the remix, is the anomaly today. The remix is the very nature of the digital.Today, an endless, recombinant, and fundamentally social process generates countless hours of creative product (another antique term?). To say that this poses a threat to the record industry is simply comic. The record industry, though it may not know it yet, has gone the way of the record. Instead, the recombinant (the bootleg, the remix, the mash-up) has become the characteristic pivot at the turn of our two centuries."