FUTURE CINEMA

The Cinematic Imaginary After Film

Edited by Jeffrey Shaw and Peter Weibel

Narrative Experiments

At the same time, multiple screens broke up the linearity of traditional narration. Multiform plots, a non-linear narrative matrix, became possible. Narrative elements could be repeated, recombined, or replaced by other elements. ~~~

A new form of narration was achieved on a single screen. The narrative matrix was based on a theorem of set theory(Zorn’s Lemma). The narration became a multiform matrix, a multi-story machine. (p117)

Narration is not only broken apart spatially through projection onto multiple screens but in chronological terms as well. Shifts and distortions of conventional parameters of space and time play a significant role in the new narration. (p123)

Navigable Rhizomatic Narration

The narrative universe becomes reversible in the field of digitally expanded cinema and no longer reflects the psychology of cause and effect. Repetitions, the suspension of linear time, temporal and spatial asynchrony blast apart classical chronology. Multiple screens function as fields in which scenes are depicted from a multiple perspective, their narrative thread broken.

Linearity and chronology, as classical parameters of narration, fall victim to a multiple perspective projected onto multiple screens. Asynchronous, non-linear, non-chronological, seemingly illogical, parallel, multiple narrative approaches from multiple perspectives projected onto multiple screens are the goal. These narrative procedures comprising a “multiform plot” have been developed with reference to and oriented toward such rhizomatic communication structures as hypertext........

These narrative systems and scripts have a certain algorithmic character. Narration becomes a machine, a plot-machine, an engine. (p124)