The Map - an experimental tool for interactive narrations and storytelling

The Map - navigation mode (screencast)

The Map is a system of creation and playback of interactive narrations - a prototype application came into existence as a result of the author's many years of experience in creating interactive projects exploring three major paradigms in the current media: timeline, modularity and code.

A special feature of The Map is the possibility to build structures that allow to make choices (interaction) in a manner typical to object-oriented systems (such as Pure-Data, or MaxMSP), but also including the aspect of temporal dependences and relations, structuring the narration by the collection of classic, narrative figures typical for linear media. The Map is therefore a hybrid environment, modular and linear at the same time, and in this sense a unique formula, almost absent in the commercial and noncommercial software. Moreover, the possibility of re-coding parts of the software by the author, practically allows to go beyond the paradigms of graphical editing.

The Map - edit mode (screenast, part I)

As an editing environment for designing the narrative structure, The Map is primarily a modular (object-oriented) system, but its specificity enables to connect dependence of space (location of components and connections between them), and time – the route outlined by the connection between the components can be traced and experienced – in a certain time (depending on the length of the route) – not „skipping” through hyper-links ignoring time and space, but mapping these two coordinates on which the road varies.

The Map - edit mode (screenast, part II)

The Map is a multi-platform environment (PC, Mac, Linux), it also allows to publish projects on the Internet integrating them with web browsers. At the moment the prototype of the application is being used by its author and a few other artists in the number of projects.