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Thesis Info
- LABS ID
- 00026
- Thesis Title
- Erotecha: Electronic Intimacy in the Computer-based Interactive Narrative
- Author
- Brigid Costello
- E-mail
- bm.costello AT unsw.edu.au
- 2nd Author
- NULL
- 3rd Author
- NULL
- Degree
- Master of Visual Arts
- Year
- 1999
- Number of Pages
- 63
- University
- University of Sydney
- Thesis Supervisor
- Geoffrey Weary
- Supervisor e-mail
- NULL
- Other Supervisor(s)
- NULL
- Language(s) of Thesis
- English
- Department / Discipline
- Electronic Temporal Arts
- Copyright Ownership
- Brigid Costello
- Languages Familiar to Author
- English, French, Indonesian
- URL where full thesis can be found
- NULL
- Keywords
- interactivity, narrative, computer art
- Abstract: 200-500 words
- The marriage of narrative and computer interactivity creates a form that is dialogical, performative and ephemeral. This has an effect both on the structures and techniques of narrative and on the sources of emotional pleasure and engagement that a narrative produces. The way that narrative is mapped onto the spatial rather than the temporal form of an interactive work, foregrounds the ‘story’ of narrative comprehension and also the relationship between author and interactor. The intimacy between the interactor and the ‘interactive other’ of the computer becoming, therefore, a primary source of emotional engagement within an interactive narrative. The vitality that the ‘interactive other’ gains from the nature of the computer, from the ‘voice’ of the author and from the projected/reflected ‘voice’ of the interactor creates much of the intensity of the narrative experience. This intensity stems from the way that the fusion between the inanimate and the animate within the ‘interactive other’ creates both conscious and unconscious voyeuristic, epistemic and narcissistic pleasures/anxieties. It also stems from the way that the ‘interactive other’ is embodied within the computer and from the tensions between presence/absence, fantasy/reality and public/private that this produces.