URBAN NARRATIVE ABACUS (pag. 11-12)
EXCERPT from Cumulus Conference Proceedings Roma 2020-2021 | Track: Design Culture (of) LANGUAGES – Beyondstories
A composed narration needs a dynamic grammar, whose elements can be combined according to flexible rules of narrative composition. The Urban Narrative Abacus is a set of possible compilations of the space available to the digital artists who will have to design the augmented reality visual experience.
In designing this new grammar, we took into account the pre-existing urban and architectural scheme and we looked for analogies between physical space and narrative cases recurring in a narrative. Heterotopias have been the medium for imagining the kind of interaction between content, spectator and background. As an additional level of translation, we assigned rhetorical figures on the level of meaning to each element of the abacus.
The digital artists associate the contents of each micro-story with an element of the abacus and creates 360° visual compositions for every checkpoint of the entire beyond-story. The digital artist will be supported by a developer for the final implementation phase of the process. Depending on the main parameter of the narrative, digital artists can treat stories with different styles corresponding to different tones of voice. As in Queneau's Exercices de style (Queneau, 1983), each path can be narrated with a different narrative genre.
