Sunday, September 13, 2009

Random Comics / Abstraction in Narrative

Some of you heard me mention this project at the MoCCA panel. One direction that I think you can also abstract comics is by abstracting the narrative. This can be done by removing the deterministic nature of intended sequencing. In other words, let go of your story and see how it behaves using the formal elements and sheer luck.

In the project below, there are approximately 100 images and 500 lines of text that get filtered into 4 panels and 3 lines of text. On refresh, a new page is generated. I would posit that a new story, or at least a new visual poem, is generated. Try it out!

http://www.sokolindesign.com/experiment/comic/index.php


5 comments:

  1. That's great, I could spend hours hitting that refresh button.

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  2. This is what I was trying to get at in during the panel. The text is abstract/non-narrative in combination with the text.

    (p.s. Blogger: I hate your commenting system. This is attempt 6....)

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  3. It does have a really hypnotic effect. The panels and story become more of an environment than a linear narrative: you get a feel for the directions it can go, and the suspense is in trying to see where it DOES go.

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  4. Love it. I like the extension of "abstract" beyond fully n on-representational --- back, actually, into one root of abstraction --- simply a "drawing away from" (< L abstractus drawn off (ptp. of abstrahere; to drag or pull away from). I have been doing that recently in a "looped" static way, with images, but I still see it as rather abstract. (Like my new installation: http://www.sharkforum.org/Brandl_und_wall_stitched_sm.jpg )

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