(Sorry LDRS 1016ers, this post may not be your cup of tea…)
Viola and McCloud should be/must be cronies. It is interesting to see how they use different media as “ins” into the same essential idea of multiple ways through the same material. For McCloud, we studied the circular comic and wondered at the different stories that were contained all depending on where you start. In Viola’s work, we stumble upon the branched structure and the schizo structure – the idea that there might be infinite ways through the same material. For example, a student watching videos that have choices (click here and dive into this story, click here and dive into that story, don’t click and the current story keeps playing) in a way that gives the reader/viewer agency in how they navigate the pre-recorded content. <hint hint, Meta-team, kinda sounds like our looping, linking, Wordles!)>
Viola takes this “control” further as he talks about being able to manipulate and modulate video just as in electronic music. When reading this, I immediately thought of time lapse videos, and how they tell a beautifully unique story on their own that both is and isn’t quite the same as “real time” (whatever that means… gee thanks McCloud for ruining that concept… :P). Ants and little humans?
Viola seems to be beautifully prophetic (like many of our other authors). Just as he discussed the modulation of time within videos, he also mentions that “the computer is merging with video. The potential offspring of this marriage is only beginning to be realized.” iPad? Facetime? Youtube? Second Life? With this kind of “new media” doppler radar, I think we should take a hard close look at the closing tomorrow. What does Viola mean by “development of self must precede development of the technology or we will go nowhere” – ?? Is he sending the same message as the movie Wall-e? Or maybe it is like our takeaway from McLuhan that we should be aware of how we can be both augmented and blinded at the same time? Or…? Are we the porcupine or the cars? Both and neither?
Interesting enough, interactive videos were quite popular during the 90s. Several pretty high profile computer games rely heavily on video clips, where it is played depending on the choices chosen by the player. One of the most famous one is “Gabriel Knight 2”, where the player is put into the snows of the titular character, a private eye, solving a mystery involving werewolves and Ludwig II of Bavaria. Sadly the industry has generally drifted away from this media. The interactive videos back in the 90s have not achieved the amount of non-linearity Viola has envisioned yet. Had the industry not drifted away from this in the mid-90s, who knows where we will be today?