Whilst many little bits of DGR engineering are coming together behind the scenes, Marcus and I wanted to see if it was possible to produce a 'sitcom' or 'tele-novella' style production using the basic DGR technology and the technique of StreamTelling.
Streamtelling is the process of interpreting the actions of the DGR bots in a narrative manner. With a simple blog, we can record 'our' narrative interpretations of the characters (the cast of the show). With an appropriate context of a shop within a town, we can begin to add some gravity to the relationships between the characters.
Another thing I wanted to see if the level of autonomous activity the characters can achieve. As with Nick's work on enabling the DGR siblings to 'walk' around, it will be curious to see where our cast go in the show -- which streets, stores and homes they visit.
So Marcus will be using each characters (re)Tweets to inform 'their' blog posts, rather like how he produced the 'Felix Freeman' creation.
StreamTelling does not devise narrative arcs, only the generative seeds of the narrative - no one has any idea where this is going. That's the point of doing this -- like any form of generative art making, we're doing this to see what is revealed rather than trying to compose a story to be retold at a later date.
Wormwoods is located upon the town Totnes, Devon in the UK. It's not based upon the town. We're augmented the town with narratives using the "town's" metadata to produce an augmented reality. Anyone who has ever posted a picture, wikipedia note, blog post are all informing the Wormwood Store narration.
Just like a fiction, it's got lots of details - a high street, a river, a church.
Totnes seems like a lovely place - though I've never been there.
What's fascinating about all this is that we are folding realities back into themselves by using narratives. The images of Totnes oscillate between reality and fiction now that we can recontextualise their meaning through narrative filters.
Like most places, it's already augmented with loads of metadata from Wikipedia, Flickr, Youtube etc - so there is loads of data we can use to influence the characters.
The cast and production was conceived by Marcus Brown and based around the idea of an eco-friendly store in a town that already thrives on local produce. None of the characters are based upon real people, just archetypes based upon their jobs and fictional background.
Here's the Cast.
Gavin Toulson-Davey (about 4o years old): Gavin is a City drop out that may, or may not have more than one skeleton in his closet. Sick of the city, he has moved to Totnes to get in touch with nature. He bought the shop from Mr. Cecil Wormwood who died shortly there after. Gavin likes to think of his little supermarket as an “Eco2.O startup” and worships Innocent Smoothies and Howies and dreams of building a wormwoods in every town! twitter.com/gavintdavey
Crystal Johnston (about 19 years old): Crystal Johnston is the daughter of the local butcher, and a party girl. She has never left Totnes and dreams only of the weekend, booze and drugs. The most important thing in her life are her “best friends” – a group of people who dictate pretty much everything in the town. She has a mouth like a sewer. twitter.com/cpartyjohnston
Stephen Hornby (about 19 years old): Stephen Hornby is the only Gothic in Totnes. He secretly likes pink. He was found 19 years ago on the steps of the vicarage and is considered to be the illigitmate son of Mr. Johnston (the butcher) and …. Mrs Wormwood! He is bullied by Crystal’s friends. Everyday at 6.45 p.m. twitter.com/gothhornby
Mrs Wormwood (about 62 years old): Mrs Wormwood works at check out number 1. She would never work on check out number 2! She is, after all, the widow of the late owner – Mr. Wormwood. She basically thinks that she still owns the place. There are many rumors and secrets about her past. Many of them include Mr. Johnston the Butcher. She hates Gavin, the owner but insists that he’s a charming man. twitter.com/mrswormwood
You can subscribe to the cast on Twitter -- and here's a full cast Twitter List to subscribe to.
Here they are from earlier today.
Anyone is free to interact with the characters - in fact - we'd be grateful if you would. Testing this kind of innovation is all part of the process.
If you fancy creating a character for the show - let us know the persona in the comments below.
But in the meanwhile, visit...
www.wormwoodsstore.com
... and subscribe to the 'show' and the characters.
And if you could Tweet this with this link, we'd all be hugely grateful.
Just like a fiction, it's got lots of details - a high street, a river, a church.
Totnes seems like a lovely place - though I've never been there.
What's fascinating about all this is that we are folding realities back into themselves by using narratives. The images of Totnes oscillate between reality and fiction now that we can recontextualise their meaning through narrative filters.
Like most places, it's already augmented with loads of metadata from Wikipedia, Flickr, Youtube etc - so there is loads of data we can use to influence the characters.
The cast and production was conceived by Marcus Brown and based around the idea of an eco-friendly store in a town that already thrives on local produce. None of the characters are based upon real people, just archetypes based upon their jobs and fictional background.
Here's the Cast.
You can subscribe to the cast on Twitter -- and here's a full cast Twitter List to subscribe to.
Here they are from earlier today.
Anyone is free to interact with the characters - in fact - we'd be grateful if you would. Testing this kind of innovation is all part of the process.
If you fancy creating a character for the show - let us know the persona in the comments below.
But in the meanwhile, visit...
www.wormwoodsstore.com
... and subscribe to the 'show' and the characters.
And if you could Tweet this with this link, we'd all be hugely grateful.
