Links to Narrative in Digital Contexts

This page collects a list of sites and individuals who are working in narrative in digital contexts. It has been compiled as part of the Tags Network Narrative project in order to provide a resource that will offer an introduction to this field. The list was generated from two main sources:

  • a database of individuals with an interest in narrative in digital contexts who were contacted by us during the project;
  • a selection of key individuals and organisations in the field of digital narrative.
The intent of this list is to provide pointers to key researchers, practitioners and organisations. For more information about this list and how it was constructed, see the notes.

List of Sites

A Million Penguins
A"wikinovel" organised by Penguin Books and De Montfort University during February 2007. The project was an experiment in collaborative online writing. http://www.amillionpenguins.com/
Armstrong, Kate
Artist and writer with interest in networks, distributed experience, and contemporary practices. She is engaged with text and experimental narrative, especially open forms that bring poetics and computational function together. In the past this has taken a variety of forms including net art, psychogeography, installation, audio, performance, and robotics. http://www.katearmstrong.com/index.html
Aylett, Ruth
A researcher in intelligent virtual environments with an interest in emergent narrative. "The research into the Emergent Narrative concept has been targeted at its potential in terms of entertainment, education and pedagogy. It could potentially greatly impact the design and game-play of video games or interactive entertainment performances. In addition, since a number of educational methods use themes and storytelling to engage people’s emotions, one could see the study and use of narrative as a pedagogical tool for the development of Personal and Social Education (PSE) ." Developed under the ecircus framework. http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~ruth/
Bakioglu, Burcu
Phd student with research interests in, narrative forms across media. http://www.palefirer.com/
Benson, Jim
Social media analyst with a specific interest in collaboration and cooperation. http://ourfounder.typepad.com/
Capture Wales
"Everyone has a story to tell. All over Wales, people are making Digital Stories about real-life experiences and each story is as individual as the person who made it. Digital Stories are two-minute personal films created by the storyteller, using their own photos, words and voice." This is part of BBC Wales Digital Stories project. http://tinyurl.com/3a9s6e
Center for Digital Storytelling
The Center for Digital Storytelling is a California-based non-profit 501(c)3 arts organization rooted in the art of personal storytelling. We assist young people and adults in using the tools of digital media to craft, record, share, and value the stories of individuals and communities, in ways that improve all our lives. http://www.storycenter.org/
Centre for Narrative Research - University of East London
The Centre brings together work on narrative that is being pursued in a variety of contexts across the social sciences. Such work includes analyses of the structure of social stories and the processes of social storytelling, and explorations of the relationship between narratives and the social world. http://www.uel.ac.uk/cnr/index.htm
Centre for Narrative Studies - University of Southampton
The Centre for Narrative Studies was set up in June 2003 as a means of promoting interdisciplinary research and exchanging research ideas and experiences across the university's disciplines. Narrative is broadly defined, and includes considering narrative as a research instrument, narrative as a way of explaining our research results, narrative as a medium of knowledge transfer, and narratives as artefacts. http://www.management.soton.ac.uk/research/centre-for-narrative-studies.php
Cianci, Lisa
Researcher and practitioner in net art and digital narrative. http://www.mmorphe.net/
Cyberspace and Critical Theory Web
Produced by George P. Landow, who also produced the Victorian Web this set of webpages explores critical theory, hypertext and the web. The deconstruction of narrative has an important part in this analysis. Many of the nodes are, effectively, student papers. http://www.cyberartsweb.org/cpace/
Dena, Christy
Industry strategist, mentor, designer and PhD researcher in cross-media entertainment. http://www.cross-mediaentertainment.com/
Digital Narrative Project - Macromedia
This project provides a free set of curriculum materials, that enable students to build an online narrative presentation to demonstrate their understanding of an academic concept. The project includes a teaching guide, template, and step-by-step technology instructions.
Digital Stories - BBC Wales
Series of community audio-video projects run by BBC Wales. Includes Capture Wales. http://tinyurl.com/2kt4mp
Digital Writing Wiki
"This wiki is designed to support the book, Engaging Students in Digital Writing, by Richard Beach, Chris Anson, Lee-Ann Breuch, and Thom Swiss, published by Christopher-Gordon Publishers, Inc. 2007." http://digitalwriting.pbwiki.com/
DNAFF - Digital Narrative Arts Film Festival
Influential annual festival. The DNA Film Festival was founded to give a voice to storytellers worldwide. The DNA Film Festival showcases quality stories by filmmakers who may not otherwise have the opportunity to tell their stories. The only criteria for submission are that films are narrative and filmed in a digital format. The website itself does not contain much information. http://www.dnaff.com/
Dreaming Methods
New Media writing: Dreaming Methods projects combine creative writing with multimedia and web-based technology. http://www.dreamingmethods.com/
Eastgate Press
Eastgate publishes Storyspace, one of the few commercial standalone hypertext authoring systems. Eastgate has published several influential fiction and non-fiction hypertexts. http://www.eastgate.com/
ecircus
An EU-funded research project. "eCIRCUS will develop a new approach in the use of ICT to support social and emotional learning within Personal and Social Education (PSE). This will be achieved through virtual role-play with synthetic characters that establish credible and empathic relations with the learners." http://www.e-circus.org/
Electronic Book Review
"Generally interested in promoting literary innovation on the Internet and reviewing books that address the electronic future of fiction, poetry, criticism." http://www.electronicbookreview.com/
Electronic Literature Organization
The Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) is a nonprofit organization established in 1999 to promote and facilitate the writing, publishing, and reading of electronic literature. Since its formation, the Electronic Literature Organization has worked to assist writers and publishers in bringing their literary works to a wider, global readership and to provide them with the infrastructure necessary to reach one another. http://eliterature.org/
Electronic Poetry Center
"The EPC was founded in 1995 and serves as a central gateway to resources in electronic poetry and poetics at the University at Buffalo, the University of Pennsylvania's PennSound, UBU web, and on the Web at large. Our aim is simple: to make available a wide range of resources centered on digital and contemporary formally innovative poetries, new media writing, and literary programming." http://epc.buffalo.edu/
Fisher, Caitlin
New-media author of "These Waves of Girls" and lecturer at York University, Canada. http://www.yorku.ca/caitlin/
Frasca, Gonzalo
His "research interests deal with videogames, games and toys, particularly within the fields of communication and rhetoric (read: serious games, newsgaming, educational games, docugaming)." His blog is at http://www.ludology.org/
Furtherfield.org
"Furtherfield was founded in London in 1996 and is the collaborative work of artists, programmers, writers, activists, musicians and thinkers who explore beyond traditional remits; dedicated to the creation, promotion, and criticism of adventurous digital/networked media art work for public viewing, experience and interaction." http://www.furtherfield.org/
Gelmini, Giulia
PhD student with research interests in collaboration, new media, literacy and textiles. http://www.psychology.nottingham.ac.uk/staff/gg/home page/
Goett, Solveigh
Textile artist and conducting PhD research into digital narrative. Blog: http://thetextilefiles.blogspot.com/
Grand Text Auto
Group blog "about digital narrative, games, poetry, and art." http://grandtextauto.gatech.edu/
Hansen, Kathy
Author of the blog "A Storied Career" which explores intersections and synthesis among various forms and uses of storytelling, including journaling/blogging, organizational storytelling, storytelling for organizational entry (job search), and Writing to Learn theory.http://www.astoriedcareer.com/
Hayward, David
Researcher and developer with interests in psychology, video games, art, cultures, sexuality and technology. Blog at: http://func-auton.net/blog/
History of Internet Art - Digital Narrative
A section of the "Histories of Internet Art: Fictions and Factions" web site: an online-only exhibition of the early (and continuous) history of Internet art. This section collects information about some influential online literature. http://art.colorado.edu/hiaff/subSection.php?id=3
Hazan, Susan
Curator of New Media and Head of the Internet Office at The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
New Media Unit, with interests in electronic architectures in the contemporary museum. http://www.musesphere.com/about/Susan.Hazan.html
Hight, Jeremy
New media writer and artist. Blog at http://airstory.blogspot.com/
Hunt, Joanna
Conducts research into storytelling, technology and online gaming. her blog, "Eventyr" can be found at http://www.eventyr.co.uk/
Interactive Narratives
A site that combines a blog and further links to interactive narratives. They define interactive narratives as "informational and storytelling experiences designed and produced for the web". http://www.interactivenarratives.org. See also http://del.icio.us/tag/soundslides
Chris Joseph (aka babel) - digital writer
A digital writer and artist who has created work since 2002 as babel. Projects include Inanimate Alice, an award-winning series of multimedia stories produced with novelist Kate Pullinger; The Breathing Wall, a digital novel that responds to the reader's breathing rate; and Animalamina, a collection of interactive multimedia children's poetry. Eeditor of the post-dada magazine and network 391.org; a founding member of the 404, a network of digital and traditional artists supported by Virginia Tech Center for Digital Discourse and Culture; and a member of PART (Production And Research in Transliteracy), a group based in De Montfort University researching the concepts and practice of transliteracy. http://www.chrisjoseph.org/
David Kolb
Philosopher with an interest in scholarly hypertext and narrative, especially in the field of philosophy. He authored the influential hypertext "Socrates in the Labyrinth" which was published by Eastgate. http://www.dkolb.org/
Korsakow System
The Korsakow-System was invented by Florian Thalhofer in 2000 for the making of the nonlinear documentary the korsakow syndrom. It has been developed into a platform for the creation of database narrative films.http://www.korsakow.com/ksy/
Laccetti, Jess
Blogger and hypertext researcher at the Institute of Creative Technologies, De Montfort University. Her Ph.D. thesis, Click Lit: Interactivity, Feminism, and Narrative Structures in New Media, examines web fictions within a narrative and feminist theoretical context. http://www.jesslaccetti.co.uk/musings.htm
Larsen, Deena
Home page for Deena Larsen, pioneering hypertext/electronic literature author. http://www.deenalarsen.net/
George P. Landow
Important hypertext theorist primarily associated with a post-structuralist analysis of hypertext. He has published in print - most notably, Hypertext 3.0 : Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization (Parallax: Re-visions of Culture and Society), 2005 - and produced extensive online hypertexts in conjunction with his students. See Victorian Web, Cyberspace and Critical Theory Web, Postcolonial web. http://www.landow.com/
Literatronica - adaptive digital narrative
The site focuses on what it calls "adaptive digital narrative", which it describes as "...a writing and reading form in which the links have different destinations depending upon what the reader has read before. An adaptive literary piece reconfigures itself for the reader, leading every time to a potentially unique book. " http://www.literatronic.com
Louchart, Sandy
Researcher in interactive narrative, synthetic actors, virtual agents (characters), digital writing (drama) and emotion modelling. http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~sandy/
Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences
Association created to promote machinima. Wikipedia describes machinima as "a portmanteau of machine cinema or machine animation,..."http://www.machinima.org/
Jem Mackay
Researcher into collaborative new media that he describes as "aAn enquiry into the political structures of creative collaboration." http://www.jemmackay.co.uk
Mediamatic.net - New Media, Art, Culture, Theory
Mediamatic is a cultural institution in Amsterdam that conductsexhibitions, presentations, workshops and other activities in Amsterdam and internationally. http://www.mediamatic.net
Memory Archive
Example use of a wiki to host a repository of anecdotes. http://www.memoryarchive.org/en/MemoryArchive
MENO - improving the design and use of interactive multimedia for education
A project, funded by the ESRC Cognitive Engineering Programme from 1995-1998, investigates the relationship between the design of educational interactive multimedia products and how people learn with them. A study of interrelationships between the learning tasks, the narrative (or macro-structure), the classroom context, and the users (interpreting users as teachers and students). http://iet.open.ac.uk/pp/s.a.rae/Meno/default.html
Miller, Carolyn Handler
A pioneering writer in the field of narrative in interactive media. http://www.carolynmiller.com/
Mortensen, Torill
Researcher in media studies, reader-response theory, Multiple User Dungeons (MUDs), role-play games, academic weirdness and online communication. Her blog is at http://torillsin.blogspot.com/
Newman, Michael
Film and media researcher mainly concerned with narrative in film,  television, and new media. http://michaelznewman.googlepages.com/
 
NLAB - Narrative Laboratory for the Creative Industries
The NLab Network connects small creative businesses working with new media to generate pioneering partnerships. Network members come together to find out what makes them different from each other, what connects them, and how they can forge new collaborations. NLab was created in 2005 with funding to De Montfort University from HEIF. HEIF is a partnership between the Department of Trade and Industry/Office of Science and Technology (DTI/OST), HEFCE, and the department for Education and Skills (DfES). http://narrativelab.org
Orgad, Shani
A researcher with interests that include media and everyday life, narrative and media, media and globalisation, new media and Internet studies, health and new media, gender and the media, and methodological aspects of doing Internet research. http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/media@lse/whosWho/shaniorgad.htm
Page, Ruth - Digital Narratives Senior Lecturer in English at Birmingham City University.
Blog which discusses the author's research work in digital narratives and linguistics can be found at http://www.digitalnarratives.blogspot.com/
Production and Research into Transliteracy Group
Research group based at the Institute of Creative Technologies, De Montfort University investigating transliteracy. Has a strong interest in narrative across media. http://www.transliteracy.com
Programmatology
An introduction to some of the work in 'machine modulated poetry' which John Cayley has been developing since the late 1970s. See also John Cayley's .mac page for examples. http://homepage.mac.com/shadoof/net/in/inhome.html
Pullinger , Kate - digital author
Kate writes in new media, film and print forms. Her most recent digital work is www.inanimatealice.com, a multimedia graphic novel in episodes. She frequently collaborates with Chris Joseph ( Babel), the digital writer in residence at De Montfort University. http://katepullinger.com/
Pullman, Andy
Researcher exploring the possibilities of educational solutions that fuse together social networking tools, gaming experiences, personal narratives, virtual health communities and simulation. http://tinyurl.com/ysexek
Reading Online
Reading Online is a freely available, online-only publication of the International Reading Association (IRA), a professional organization of literacy educators. Its focus is literacy practice and research in classrooms serving students aged 5 to 18. “Literacy” is broadly defined to include traditional print literacy, as well as visual literacy, critical literacy, media literacy, digital literacy. http://www.readingonline.org
Ryan, Marie-Laure
Influential scholar in the field of digital narrative research. Most notable for her book Narrative as Virtual Reality: Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media. http://lamar.colostate.edu/~pwryan/
Rybas, Natalia
PhD student focused on Internet, cyber culture, blogs, online education, mobile identity, and social network systems from a critical-cultural perspective. http://personal.bgsu.edu/%7Enatalir/biography.html
Sagasnet - writing interactive fiction
"...a joint initiative of the European MEDIA Plus Programme Training & Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film München aimed at furthering fiction writing skills for the interactive media market." http://www.sagasnet.de
The Storymaking Project
this site documents doctoral research conducted by Joanna Kwiat at the Knowledge Media Institute, under the supervision of Simon Buckingham Shum and John Domingue. The research is concerned with stories in and around medicine, the immediate focus being stories among medical people. People telling stories about themselves and other people, and the day-to-day things that they care about. Research includes a digital metadata component. http://kmi.open.ac.uk/projects/storymaking/
Tads.org
The official web site for TADS, the Text Adventure Development System. TADS is a freeware programming system that can help create high-quality interactive fiction. This site is devoted to news and information about TADS. http://www.tads.org
Tech Head Stories
A list of "key digital storytelling web sites." http://www.tech-head.com/dstory.htm
Thinking Machinima
Blog by Paul Marino covering machinima. http://blog.machinima.org/
Thomas, Angela
Author and academic specialising in Auto-ethnographic work (i.e. writing about her own culture) in the virtual world "Second Life." Her blog is at http://angelaathomas.com/
Thomas, Sue
Writer and Professor of New Media at the Institute of Creative Technologies, De Montfort University, specialising in transliteracy and narratives of the online environment. http://www.hum.dmu.ac.uk/~sthomas/
trAce Archive
Ten years of writing on, about, and via the internet, collected together in a single searchable resource. This unique archive contains a large and diverse collection of work published by the trAce Online Writing Centre between 1995 and 2005. It captures an evolutionary period in the history of literary communication comparable to the beginning of writing or the development of fixed type. The trAce Archive houses a broad range of original new media writing, articles, and transcripts of practice-based discussions. http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk/
Transliteracies Project - Research in the Technological, Social, and Cultural Practices of Online Reading
Research project run by Professor Alan Liu, "It will establish working groups to study online reading from different perspectives; bring those groups into conjunction behind a shared technology development initiative; publish research and demonstration software; and train graduate students working at the intersections of the humanistic, social, and technological disciplines." The project's blog is at http://transliteracies.english.ucsb.edu/category/research-project/
Utterback, Camille - artist and programmer
"My work is an attempt to bridge the conceptual and the corporeal. How we use our bodies to create abstract symbolic systems, and how these systems (language for example) have reverberations on our physical self is a matter of great concern to me. The dialog between these two realms is the subject of both my traditional and interactive work, and it is particularly relevant to our contemporary culture as we aim to grapple with the ramifications of virtuality and our increasing relationship with the interfaces and representational systems of our machines. " http://www.camilleutterback.com
Vogelsang, Axel
Researcher and practitioner in mixed media and digital narrative forms who is looking at metaphor in tangible interface design and the relationship between these design elements and connections to narrative and poetry.. http://www.incompatibility.net/
Walker, Jill
Author of an influential blog focusing on hypertext, electronic literature and education. http://jilltxt.net/
Writer Response Theory
A blogging collective dedicated to the discussion and exploration of digital character art. http://writerresponsetheory.org/wordpress/
Wright, Tim
Creator of the fictional town "Oldton" through mixed media and other innovative online narratives. Blog at: http://timwright.typepad.com
Project Xanadu
Ted Nelson's pioneering attempt at envisioning a "docuverse" of interconnected electronic literature. Based on his concept of "transliterature."
Zeroland art directory - web art
Useful collection of links to various web art sites, many of which feature experimental narrative forms. http://www.zeroland.co.nz/internet_art.html

Inclusion criteria

This list contains entries for webpages which meet at least one of the following criteria.

  • it is the work of an individual working in the field of narrative in a digital context;
  • it is the work of an organisation in the field;
  • it contains a collections of narratives with a digital element;
  • It is a link page that features one of the above elements.

Although there are many researchers and practitioners with an interest in narrative in digital context, not all of them have useful and stable webpages. Consequently we have only included entries for people and institutions with a track record in this area. We have not included links directly to digital narratives; they can be found within the authors' links.

Subjects we considered to be relevant to narrative in digital contexts include: electronic literature, interactive fiction, computer games, online reading and writing, new media presentations, multimedia presentations, online ethnography, digital storytelling and net art (when it has a strong narrative element).

Please note that this list is current as of September 2007 and will no longer be updated. All of the links here should be available on del.icio.us under the tag "digitalnarrative". To explore this list and beyond, try http://del.icio.us/tag/digitalnarrative.

About this project

Tags Networks Narrative is the "Interdisciplinary application of experimental social software to the study of narrative in digital contexts," project. It is a unique speculative project assessing the potential for collaborative social-software techniques such as folksonomy in narrative research. The project is based in the Institute of Creative Technologies (IOCT) at De Montfort University, Leicester UK and is and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board from October 2006-September 2007. The project team consists of Professor Sue Thomas, Simon Mills and Bruce Mason.

Last Updated: November 30, 2007.

Contact: Prof. Sue Thomas, School of Media and Cultural Production, Clephan Building, De Montfort University, Leicester LE1 9BH, UK. Tel. +44 (0)116 207 8266, fax +44 (0) 116 257 7199, email Sue.Thomas at dmu dot ac dot uk. http://www.ioct.dmu.ac.uk/tnn/