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PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
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Princeton, New Jersey 08544-5264
Telephone 609-258-3601; Fax 609-258-1301Contact: Wayne Wolf, 609/258-1424
Date: April 2, 1998
e-mail: wolf@ee.princeton.edu
Speaker discusses the future of storytelling and interactive cinema
Princeton, N.J. -- Glorianna Davenport, director of the Interactive Cinema Group at the Media Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will be the second speaker for Series in New Media, which is aimed at encouraging interdisciplinary interest in new media.
Her presentation, titled The Future of Storytelling and Interactive Cinema, is scheduled for 4:30 p.m., Thursday, April 23, 1998, in the large auditorium (Room 104) of the Computer Science Building on Olden Street in Princeton. The Series in New Media is open to the public.
Sponsored by Wayne Wolf, professor of electrical engineering in Princeton University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, Series in New Media hosts speakers who discuss different multimedia venues being explored and used. Davenport will discuss how storytelling throughout the ages has been shaped by changing technologies.
"Digital media and networked two-way channels are transforming our access to knowledge, our inventions and our artistic messages," Davenport said. "As we create narratives for our future, artists are redefining the relationship between maker and recipient. Over the past two decades, storytellers have struggled with the paucity of the engineered environment. As makers and audience alike, we were, per force, ‘users’ doomed to type, point, and click our way through the digital universe regardless of the task at hand. So far, video games are the only form of electronic entertainment that has successfully shaken the general public’s notion of television viewing."
Davenport added that recent breakthroughs in sensor technology, computer vision, immerse display devices, and the construction of semi-autonomous software agents are rapidly changing the face of information and entertainment delivery. "The next generation of computer media will feature information-rich, dynamically adaptive distributed environments which seamlessly merge the real and virtual worlds," she said. "As bits themselves become graspable and manipulable, the separation between maker and consumer shrinks dramatically, while the connection between consumer and story becomes more tangible, personalized and intimate."
Davenport is trained as a documentary filmmaker and has achieved international recognition for her work in new media forms. Her research explores fundamental issues related to the collaborative co-construction of digital media experiences, where the task of narration is split among authors, consumers, and computer mediators.