Literature review - Narrative Meaning Creation in Interactive Storytelling

Literature Review

A literature review post on an online journal"Narrative Meaning Creation in Interactive Storytelling" by Joshua Tanenbaum and Angela Tomizu.

"the similarities between the process of closure and the process of emergent meaning creation — both deal with the cognitive process by which a reader creates narrative meaning out of a narrative artifact."(Tanenbaum & Tomizu, 2008:4)

Authors have discussed the narrative meaning can be considered an emergent phenomenon that arises from a reader's interpretation of and interaction with a text. Four theorists have raised in the journal which three of them having the similar points of meaning creation is shared between reader and author to varying degrees. 

First theorist, Mikhail Bakhtin(1935) has introduced the concept of heteroglossia  for evaluating the different perspective and conventions of language use that are evident in the experience of reading a novel, both from author's and the reader's perspectives. Second theorist, Umberto Eco(1989) , argue the responsibility of the author, who defines the field of possible interpretations for the reader while not minimizing the role of the reader as a unique interpreter and co-creator of meaning.The third theorist, Janet Murray(1995) discussed this emergent phenomenon is a belief creation. She noted immersion as one of the core aesthetic principles of digital media. Immersion has since become one of the most difficult aesthetics to quantify in a mediated experience, and one of the most highly sought after.Immersion is not simply a suspension of one faculty but the exercising of the active faculty of belief creation. While the other theorist is Roland Barthes writing that meaning creation is the sole responsibility of the reader. 

Authors have also mentioned Scott McCloud(1993), who has describes a phenomenon called closure which he defines as "the phenomenon of observing the parts but perceiving the whole.  While instead the reader read comic as discrete entities but this process allow reader's mind to fill in the spaces between panels, and developed its own symbolic language on how reader interpretation.

"The audience's freedom is ultimately measured not in terms of activity or interactivity, but in the ability of the work to convey the complexity of meaning found in all successful artforms." (Martin, 1997)

However, the idea is that the meaning creation between reader and author that lies in the hands of the reader while the author who defines the possible interpretation but not minimizing the role of the reader. Thus, the storytelling mediums such as comic books where this interpretative process is most explicitly responsible for creating narrative meaning. 

Reference:

Martin, R. (1997). Interactive Narratives: A Form of Fiction?. 1st ed. [ebook] Convergence Magazine, p.11. Available at: http://martinrieser.com/Interactive%20Narrative.pdf [Accessed 3 Sep. 2014].

Tanenbaum, J. and Tomizu, A. (2008). Narrative Meaning Creation in Interactive Storytelling.International Journal of Computational Science, [Online] 2(1), pp.3-5. Available at: http://www.researchgate.net/publication/228341532_Narrative_Meaning_Creation_in_Interactive_Storytelling/links/02bfe50e53ba0ad673000000.