In the digital space time becomes an object to be manipulated and controlled. The linearity of storytelling is no longer a necessity. As we move through our ‘reality’, whatever that may be, there is a clear past, present, and future that moves linearly. Time has an order and the stories that we tell tend to reflect that order; however, as technology advances and new ways of exploring story telling devices emerge we begin to recognize that time is not always so direct. When we recall events through exploring the landscape of our memories the lines that define that linear understanding of time start to blur, and what are we left with but a blanket of a past sensation and feeling with no precise timeline.

In Shelley Jackson’s piece My Body the evolution of the story seems reminiscent of walking through your own memory. Memories don’t happen linearly. You don’t think about your past recalling all moments in the order in which they happened. Memories pop up at random times, in varied order, and sometimes you skip to another memory before you’ve fully reminisced in the memory you were currently remembering. There is no concept of linearity when recalling your past other than a vague sense of the order in which certain events occurred.

My Body seems to speak to the natural nature in which a mind processes and perceives the world around us. As you move through the links you find yourself randomly jumping between thoughts and memories, just as you might if you were naturally thinking about your life and past events. There is an authenticity that seemingly lacks in the more ‘traditional’ methods of linear stories.

In Adrienne Eisen’s piece Six Sex Scenes there is that same feeling of being inside someone’s mind as they are thinking about and processing moments of their life. Adrienne moves around different scenes that are more specific to memories or present occurrences. In My Body there is deeper discussion of plain thought and reflections on life. Still these two pieces strongly resemble the feeling of floating through your own mind. The story telling methods feel personal and intimate like you are glancing at the inner workings of someone’s thoughts. You feel connected in a way that is unusual in other storytelling methods. You have been transported into the mind and feelings of the author or whatever character they are trying to present and you feel like you are getting to know all the secrets that they hold dear.

As technology has advanced so have the methods for capturing time, predicting future, and dissolving the present. In our current digital-world we find that we can move beyond the linear nature we are so used to in our physical reality. A story no longer has to have a beginning, middle, and end. A story can be experienced as a collection of memories, moments, and pieces of history that can be influenced by your very interaction with that story.

In both Bob Arrelano’s Sunshine 69 and Donna Leischman’s redridinghood the stories become completely different depending on the interaction of the viewer. There are different paths to choose and different stories to be told. Again we are transported out of time to a place where multiple realities can and do exist. The questions of what if are asked and the directions of choosing different paths are revealed.
Again there is an authenticity to this method of storytelling as the story of one’s own life only unfolds due to the interactions and decisions that we make. By offering the viewer an opportunity to influence the path the story takes, the author, creator, or whatever you wish to call the expressers of these digital narratives, allows the viewer to now be a participant. In natural life we are all participants influencing the world depending on our actions. No matter how greatly we wish to just be observers our presence alters every moment. These stories truly demonstrate that natural state and force people to recognize that they are not just observers.

In the breakdown of time, digital storytelling has opened up a realm where we can begin to question our own interpretation of time within our own physical existence. It begs to question why our natural thought processes don’t function linearly and yet the stories we tend to tell ourselves do. Now as we break down the linearity of stories we open up routes to an intimacy that has struggled to be portrayed in past story telling methods. We can step into someone else’s mind.

Currently, with the advent now of VR, the concept of presence is talked about as an important element of the future of storytelling. If we can make someone feel like they are there in that place, interacting with their environment in the same way they would interact with their physical environment, maybe we can stimulate something within them that was unobtainable before? As technology continues to advance how will the future of storytelling change and affect humanities perception of the world?