PowerPoint Presentation
Andreas Fickers / Universit du LuxembourgTransmedia Storytelling
& Media HistoryChallenges and Opportunities
Structure of presentation
What is historical storytelling?State of art of storytelling in
media historyChallenges and opportrunities of transmedia
storytelling and mono platform storytelling in media history
Historical StorytellingMyth of objective storytelling in history
has been destroyed long ago...
Rankes concept of historicism to show how it really was = aim to
understand the essence of past timesAuguste Flaubert on the
profession of a writer: Il faut boire des ocans et les repisser (
Louise Colet, 8 mai 1852, Correspondance, d. Jean Bruneau,
Bibliothque de la Pliade, Gallimard, 1972-1998, t. II, p. 86)John
Pemble: Writing history is like drinking an ocean and pissing a
cupful (Quoted in Venice Rediscovered (1995) pp. 82-3.)
Historical StorytellingDoing history = act of creative
storytelling about the past, of subjective interpretation, yet
based on the methdology of source criticism, problem based
questioning, evidence-based argumentation, and double
reflexivityHistorian is actively involved in the sense-making
process: historical thinking as mental re-enactment of the past
Historical knowledge is the knowledge of what mind has done in
the past, and at the same time it is the re-doing of this, the
perpetuation of past acts in the present. Its object is therefore
not a mere object, something outside the mind which knows it; it is
an activity of thought, which can be known only in so far as the
knowing mind re-enacts it and knows itself as doing so. To the
historian, the activities whose history he is studying are not
spectacles to be watched, but experiences to be lived through in
his own mind; they are objective, or known to him, only because
they are also subjective, or activities of his own.
Roger Collingwood: The Idea of History. Oxford: Oxford
University Press 1946, p. 218 Historical Storytelling
Historical StorytellingHistorycal narratives are based on
information / evidence re-presented in sources or documents:
sonic (oral testimonies, sound recordings), written (texts),
visual (paintings, photographs, moving images),physical (material
remains, landscape, nature)
Historical Storytellingsources or documents incorporate /
express epistemological or ideological indexes:
Paul Otlet: documents as in-forme (indexed information)
Documents as evidence are ontological entities whose evidentiary
origins lie in their belonging to taxonomic or indexical regimes or
to looser discursive or conversational regimes (...) Facts occur
through the infrastructuralization of documentary techniques and
technologies not only into scientific and professional activities,
but also as mediating devices in everyday life. Ronald E. Day,
Indexing it all. The subject in the age of documentation,
information, and data. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT 2014, p. 4f.
Historical StorytellingAcademic historical storytelling is
factual storytelling based on scientific / professional
conventions:Specific formats (book, article)Academic standards
(references, footnotes, bibliography, citations etc.)Yet, remaining
tensions between facts & fiction in historical storytelling
history as retrospective prediction (Carlo Ginzburg)
Challenge of media historical storytellingNarrative conventions
of both sources (letters, diplomatic notes, photographs, home
movies) and of historical narratives (books, documentaries,
exhibitions)Content and form are intrinsically intertwined! What
kind of history is told depends on the medium of storytelling:
book, film, radio documentary, novel, internet homepage...
So farAcademic media historiography = re-telling of the past in
form of written narratives (books, arcticles)Based on linear
narratives: Based on chrono-logical conventionsBeginning and end
(periodization)Mostly from past to presentEither synchronic or
diachronic perspectives
So farMainly mono-medial storiesHistories of film, newspaper,
radio, photography, television, telephony, ...
Few integral approachesHistoricising the mass media ensemble and
the intertextual / intermedial interconnectedness of media
Challenges of new media historyHow to do research on media in an
intermedial perspective?Questions of conceptual framework,
methodological approaches, multimodal media literacies
How to tell this integral media history?Through multi-platform
or transmedia storytelling?Through database histories?Through
multi-media narratives?
Transmedia StorytellingA transmedia story unfolds across
multiple media platforms with each new text making a distinctive
and valuable contribution to the whole. In the ideal form of
transmedia storytelling, each medium does what it does bestso that
a story might be introduced in a film, expanded through television,
novels, and comics; its world might be explored through game play
or experienced as an amusement park attraction.
Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media
Collide. New York Univ. Press (2006), pp. 9596.
Which media does what best?
Novel (1929)Radio Play (1930)Film (1931)TV Series (1980)
Intermedial media historiography
Urban Soundscapes-project: city of Berlin sounds very differnt
in novel, radio play, (sound) film and tv series! Narrative
conventions frame the possibilities of staging sound:Novel as
silent and blind medium offers most rich, dynamic, varied acoustic
re-presentation of the sound of Berlin! Through kino style
(montage), thick sonic descriptions, O-Ton-like soundmarks (Berlin
dialect), onomapoetic interludes Radio play, sound film and
television series reframed story due to narrative conventions and
technological limitations (main subject of the novel changes: from
city to Franz Biberkopf)
Intermedial media historiographyIs written text therefore the
best narrative format for integral media history?No, but using the
narrative possibilities and conceptual liberties & creativity
of transmedia storytelling requires multi-modal literacies:media
literacy: understanding narrative conventions of different genres /
formats / mediadigital literacy: creating non-linear, parallel
story lines, sophisticated platform design, possibly interactive /
participatory elements...
Intermedial media historiographyWhile classical writing enables
/ favours single authored narratives, transmedia storytelling can
only be realized as a team effort (multi-vocal narrative)Advantage:
democratization of storytellingDatabase histories
Steve Anderson: database historieshistories comprised of not
narratives that describe an experience of the past but rather
collections of infinitely retrievable fragments, situated within
categories and organized according to predetermined associations.
(p. 122)
Example of database history: National Film & Sound Archive /
Australia
http://nfsa.gov.au/collection/documents-artefacts/
Mono platform storytellingExample: Radio Luxemburg project
One platform multi-media storytellingCombination of different
sources (text, audio, audio-visual, objects...Three different
visualization strategiesLinked storylines / three semantic
levels
JuxtapposeTimelineStorymapBiographies
ObjectsPlacesPeopleProgramsInstitutions...
Mono platform storytellingChallenge of VIEW:
How to integrate different media (textual, audio, audiovisual
sources) in a classic academic format of storytelling (article)
online?How to go beyond using such sources as illustrations how to
make them part of storytelling and historical argumentation?
Mono platform storytellingSome tentative ideas:Adapt online
screen reading to classical reading situation; e.g. a page to page
presentation, no scrolling...When sources are presented /
discussed: need for a layout that enables a full immersion /
concentration on the medium specificity:Audio (reduce visible
elements; possibly offering transcription in case of foreign
languages...)
Mono platform storytellingSome tentative ideas:Adapt online
screen reading to classical reading situation; e.g. a page to page
presentation, no scrolling...When sources are presented /
discussed: need for a layout that enables a full immersion /
concentration on the medium specificity:Audio (reduce visible
elements; possibly offering transcription in case of foreign
languages...)Video: automatic switch to full screen presentation of
video; enable annotation;
ConclusionAcademic historical storytelling will (hopefully)
include more audio/visual sourcesInternet will become the main
platform for factual / historical storytellingRe-contextualising
archival material (database histories)Re-publishing secondary
literatureHosting digital born content
ConclusionHistorians (as factual storytellers) will need to
invest in media and digital literacyUnderstand narrative
conventions of audio/visual sourcesCritically reflect on
authenticity and evidence of digitized sourcesInvent / develop new
narrative strategies and formats for factual online
storytellingDeal with the paradox of actualization and
contextualization in media based historical storytelling
