We are given tantalising insights into how and why these stories were developed as they were, in videos of some of the creators talking about their pieces. Physical items that were the inspirations for, or themselves inspired by the pieces help highlight the interplay between digital and analogue. However, because the fairly small space of the exhibition isn’t filled by these larger themes, it allows room for the pieces on display to breathe and manifest in the spaces they’re given. Nor is much said about ongoing debates and tensions in this space, such as the role of procedural generation and how these technologies affect the labour of creatives. Not a lot of context is given to the history of digital storytelling, for example how personal computers or the development of the internet changed and shaped the medium. Hopefully these playthrough videos will be archived as part of the British Library’s vast collection alongside the games themselves (many of which are already held here) – because when it comes to interactive art and playful culture, archiving examples of play as well the games themselves is vital.
British library newsletter how to#
Created by Florence Smith Nicholls, they not only help clarify how to play or navigate the stories, but also make the exhibition more accessible. As Twitch has proved, watching someone play is a perfectly legitimate way of experiencing something interactive. One thing that helps is videos showing demonstrations of play alongside some of the more complex exhibits, and which I’d love to see at future museum displays of interactive art and media. Instead, this is a sampler, a useful introduction.ĭemonstrating play … Digital Storytelling. It’s not like we’d go into an exhibition of an author’s work and expect to be able to sit down in a comfy chair and read the entirety of a novel. QR codes on some of the pieces allow visitors to experience the stories on their phones, but the very nature of a couple of these stories means they cannot be properly experienced here – though that would be too much to ask of any exhibition of playable stories. They’re intimate and reflective, perhaps not naturally suited to this environment. A lot of these experiences are meant to be sat with for a while. Negotiating the tension of bringing interactive, digital pieces into the physical space of an exhibition is one of the greatest challenges when it comes to displaying stories of this nature. As Giulia Carla Rossi, co-curator of the exhibition and curator for digital publications in contemporary British and Irish published collections, highlighted: “It feels special to be able to have this work on display this year, which marks the 75th anniversary of the arrival of passengers from the Empire Windrush to the UK.” The preview of Windrush Tales is one of the highlights of the exhibition, both as an experience and as an invitation to think about digital storytelling’s present and future, rather than its recent past.
It is an interactive narrative game based on the lived experiences of Caribbean immigrants in postwar Britain.
Windrush Tales (3-Fold Games) is the only piece still in development this exhibition contains its first playable preview. Nearly all of the pieces are snapshots of recent history, waypoints for some of the ways that digital media have been used in storytelling. Re-reading British history … Windrush Tales on display in Digital Storytelling.
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