||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Garden of Forking Paths |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| The Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges is an interesting place to start a discourse on 'forking paths' and non linear story telling, however the story itself is not truly an example of that form. To simply map the sequence of events in the story itself frankly wouldn't have been terribly exciting, and would not have gotten to the heart of what the narrative was trying to convey. In our efforts to 'envision information' we must do more than display content. As creative information architects we need to provide valuable imagery that helps broadcast our messages. Earlier I mentioned that I do not believe the story itself is a forking path, or a non linear narrative. Essentially, I am saying that it is not as obvious of an example as hyper text, or 'Timecode' or some of the other examples we've talked about in class. The reader cannot change the composition of the story, the words on the page, the ending provided. But, in the minds eye, particularly of those who've taken the time to really explore this text, there are many interpretations to be had. Every reader sees the story, any story, in their mind. Alison and I had some different impressions of the work, but overall we were trying to grasp the idea of not only forking paths, but forking time. The possibility that there is this labyrinth of time and space. Maybe physics isn't our thing, or maybe it is, either way, we had a hard time grasping metaphysics. In the above interactive map, the decisions and the path of the main character are being placed in a spacial diagram. We are trying to illustrate the organic, interconnected nature between different points in the story; blood, past, future, Yu Tsun, Albert, Madden, China, labyrinth, documents, and the secret. In our rapid prototyping phase we also explored the idea of an actual three dimensional map. We created a wireframe, that was to represent the labyrinth of space and time. We proposed that the sculpture be placed in a garden, to create the garden of forking paths. However, we could not decide if it was a map. Creating an 'experiential' map may not be the easiest project to work on as a team, since experiences and interpretations are so varied. Alison and I had to combine our very different aesthetics to create a unified map. Alison did the flash programming, and set up the wire frame map to navigate, and I created imagery and text for all the stops on the map.
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