Weird and Wonderful: How Experimental Film Narratives Can Inform Interactive Digital Narratives

Abstract

An analysis is made of historical experimental films in order to determine if alternative models and techniques of narration are in use that may inform current and future creators of interactive digital narratives (IDN). An overview of experimental film leads to five case studies chosen as being of most relevance to narrative: these discuss works by Deren, Greenaway, Frampton, Markopoulos and Rybczyński. All these works predate the establishment of digital and interactive technology. Characteristics of verticality and repetition, spiral structures, ‘interlexia’ transitions, voice-over disjunction, trance narratives, multiscreen and multilayering, and the use of equations and set theory to determine the form of the film, are shown to be of potential interest to IDN.