Monday, August 27, 2007

Let's see if I'm doing this correctly

Let's see now...

Narrative - simply put, a story told by someone as opposed to a story you may witness unfold in front of you.

Technology- devices used to accomplish a task. People that use chopsticks and people that use forks have different technologies, for instance.

The relationship between them is that as one evolves, so does the other. Writing allows us to expand our audiences efficiently. With the advent of motion pictures, it is no longer necessary to verbally describe sounds or environments as this is now obvious to the audience. Through audio technologies, a story can be played back in perfect mimicry of the first telling. With each new medium comes a new element to story-telling.

1 comment:

Nik said...

That's totally true, especially about the part with stories being able to be played back the same way it was told. A big deal about the advancement of story telling in general, I think, is that when the tradition was an oral one, you never heard the same story twice. I think that was important because it made the story evolve. It could also be retold in a way that the narrator knew would effect their particular listener. Then when that person, who had heard it, told it, they could make their own little changes.

Does the ability to have the exact same story told to you in the exact same way make it better or worse? Does it have the same effect (affect? I can never tell the difference)? And in a way has that hurt the... I dunno, the evolution of narrative? And has other technology made up for that hurt?