Digital Storytelling and New Media

The platform of digital storytelling can provide a interesting interactive experience between creators and audiences. As the project Welcome to Pine Point (http://pinepoint.nfb.ca/#/pinepoint), the history of a particular place can be told through the stories of a close knit group of residents. This project wove personal accounts of living in Pine Point with facts and personal affects like home videos and photos. Despite the fact that this project had a great deal of personal and emotional elements to it, audiences could connect with the story of Pine Point through both the nostalgia of the creators and by tapping into their own memories of growing up. By utilizing multiple levels of digitization and media to create a story telling experience, as the Welcome to Pine Point project did, audiences would be able to experience this story as if they themselves were a part of it.

Although projects like Welcome to Pine Point can provide an enjoyable experience for audiences, the use of various forms of media and fancy visualization can distract the audience. For example, in The National Archives program (http://digitalvaults.org/), the digitized archives are displayed with a rotating display that continues to shift and change as one clicks on the images and documents. While this was a very interesting and interactive experience to the National Archives digitized repositories, the constantly shifting display confused me as to which document was next, and if there was a specific theme that I should have been following. Not only can the visualizations be distracting to audiences, lack of instruction or a clear correlation between the digital platform and the story that should be told can leave an audience confused. While it may seem new and inventive to add high tech or flashy formats to a storytelling or new media projects, these could largely impact negatively on how audiences interact and receive the project.

Overall, digital storytelling and new media provides a new level of interaction that creators can provide for their audiences. As we discussed in class projects like Welcome to Pine Point can blur the lines between art and the humanities. By blurring this line, digital and new media creators can provide amazing interdisciplinary and educational experiences for a wide range of audiences.