a looking-glass book

push/pull

the project i used as my creative work on my usc app is one titled 'push/pull'. it lives over at madeofglass.com, a blog-style site that is a weird little entity (more on it some other time).

'push/pull' goes back to what i was beginning to explain the other day: using the medium itself to leverage the interaction.

when you play a game, the user has 'modes' (for lack of a better term) which allow things that a user of a movie (commonly known as the viewer, i suppose) does not have. the user of a computer piece again has a different set of modes.

(when i say modes, i dont just mean 'functions' or 'abilities', i also mean expectations and goals.)

being able to think outside of what is traditionally known as a narrative is important to me. we (a people) understand what makes a traditional narrative satisfying. but what happens when we begin to introduce 4th and 5th dimensions into it? and how can we push into new ideas in these realms (the 4th dimension being time; the 5th being 'multiple realities/outcomes' [the 5th dimension might be something else, thats just my way of thinking about it for ease of use]).

so back to 'push/pull'. i wanted something that used a little server side programming to tell a story from three points of view all at once. i have never seen something like this done before or even talked about. the project itself is less than stellar...i have thought about converting it to flash and i know exactly how it would behave and appear. but i haven't gotten around to it. the hurdles with the piece (fitting text into micro-portions of images) i think have left the user experience somewhat unfulfilling.

but i wanted to share a project that i don't think many of you have seen and i think is extremely relevant to my work and the program...