The Made and the Making

Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace by Janet H. Murray examines ways of world making and at its heart is a tension between two modes:

There will always be a trade-off between a world that is more given (more authored from the outside and therefore imbued with the magic of externalized fantasy) and a world that is more improvised (and therefore closer to individual fantasies). The area of immersive enchantment lies in the overlap between these two domains. If the borders are constantly under negotiation, they will be too porous to sustain the immersive trance.

There appears to be shock if one is expected to move too often between an authored world and improvised world and vice versa. Implied here is a sticking point when changing gears. Implied in the co-existing overlap is the premise that negotiation reacts against immersion. I wonder how this would play out if instead of overlap one thought about a relation of consecutiveness.

And so for day 609
13.08.2008