Digital dreaming.

• Author: Freund, Charles Paul
• Position: Artifact - Brief Article

Here are moments from Donna Leishman's redridinghood (www.6amhoover.com), part of the most recent generation of interactive online narratives. Digital artists such as Leishman have been experimenting with the technology for over a decade, looking for ways to bring "readers" into their stories. Leishman, for example, portrays different states of mind of her main character in different frames. Other artists have achieved their own striking narrative advances. But where, after all this innovation, is the audience? Interactivity remains a narrative novelty; digital storytelling, it seems, still has a number of aesthetic problems to resolve. Digital technology can eliminate cultural middlemen, but just how dispensable are storytellers and their control? Can these narratives ever escape a sense of game playing? Does active involvement prevent the kind of...