Draft 2

What do you want to make?

My final outcome would be an online digital fiction exploring the evolution of my thoughts, my experiences, and my experiments, during this academic year. The story will be developed as a science-fiction narrative focused on the exploration of the outer space (space opera), metaphor of the inner space (nexialism / connectivism), with the task to find the nature of reality, metaphor of consciousness, to enhance human progress over the unknown universe.

Following the ideas of my previous project 'A text within a map, a map within a text', where the 3D navigable space represents the mind with its clusters of thoughts (related to texts, videos, music ...), and producing, on a top-level, the narrative itself (or vice-versa); I will develop a series of small experiments related to the main topic of my thesis: consciousness and software. In particular:

how our consciousness can be explored, and pushed to its limits, from a subjective and objective point of view developing a consciousness of the self (self-consciousness) and its relation to the world.
how software, instead of being idealized as human-like beings, helps to develop this self-consciousness by giving the possibility to explore and build worlds projecting our ideas and observing them critically.

These experiments will become phenomena of this universe. Mysterious/alien places, events and things populating the outer space and challenging the characters to find an explanation to their mystery, while questioning and trying to understanding their own existence.

How do you plan to make it?

I will build a website where the user can choose the path to follow and each page will develop a part of a non-linear narrative. In this way the connecting a like a sort of game, with an underlying narrative of the exploration of outer space, representing my self-research for consciousness (consciousness of myself and the meaning of consciousness). The user will be able to choose the path to follow and each page where he will finish will be an experiment I did or relevant things I collected. The narrative will not be totally linear so the temporality of the events can be created by the user by choosing its own path. There will be different levels of depth to let always something to find and a sense of unexpected. The narrative will not have an end, the research doesn't stop, and possibly it will continue. In the future, I could expand it.

Structure

To develop the structure of the project, I'm relating concepts of media theory (cyberspace, hypermedia, mew media, metamedia, rich media) with fiction theory (game book, digital fiction, hypermedia fiction, electronic fiction).

The homepage will contain the introduction and will be the interface to access the 'narrative' from a starting point.

To move from one page to another there will be essentially links:

internal links, in other parts of the same page
links, to other pages of the narrative or parallel windows
external links, to force you to escape from the narrative

The content of the pages will be:

selected previous researches and experimentations related to this project
hackpact experiments (30 to 50)
documentation (multimedia)
collection of books and articles (alternative library and reference system organized through the narrative)
collateral/personal data

Narrative

To develop the narrative of the project, I'm using expedients of science fiction, in particular of the subgenre of space opera, cyberpunk, connectivismo/nexialism. In particular, the nexialist approach underlines my interest in connecting my knowledge of different disciplines in a coherent and unified whole in process. In this case the narrative itself.

The narrative will have different levels of reading:

inside the window (explicit text)
inside parallel windows (pop-ups...)
inside the code (HTML, CSS, JS)
external media
hidden or encrypted messages

The narrative will be non-linear, with different isolated or chained events, forming a network of pages where the user will choose his own path. This will help to identify oneself in the task of exploring a world while giving a sense of control and free will.

Characters and point of views:

narrator (captain's log) > overview of the situation (objective pov)

Captain's Log, stardate 2263.2.
I shouldn't have gone so far from the X system. The controls are malfunctioning, my research for meaning is pushing me at the edges of the known universe. This part of the space is cold and inhospitable, the stars are less shiny than ever. I have to decide if to continue in this direction or explore another galaxy, but now I can't go back anymore to my home planet. Not without an answer.

alien phenomenon > question/mystery to solve
assistant (engineer, doctor, ship's AI) > hypothesis and explanations (technical pov)
captain's thoughts > additional and final thoughts (subjective pov)
others > free thought and details (personal pov)

This form of fiction can be traced back to the Odyssey. In this adventure, the characters will encounter different alien forms of 'consciousness' with the task of enlarge human perspective Be clearer about the narrative frame, how can we access the different elements Eliza, Clippy, your hackpacts &c. Want to make an open system. Narrates consciousness in its alien form, how does the Captain talk to the alien consciousness?

“An adventure in which we encounter different forms of consciousness”. (radical alterity, clouds of steam, pulsating light =communication with / observation of - an interaction)

Want to make something which engages interest, sometimes hard to play, needs commitment and generates interest to take another path… (Talk to Aymetic and Marloes about narrative and games.)]

It will contain different contents, from music to video to texts and so on...
It is important to me to highlight that is my world and to explore it you need to be really interested in it.
Who enters with a superficial approach will be rejected outside of the site, so who is really interested can come back and chose a new path.

Experiments

There will be from 30 to 50 small projects plus collateral content. The experiments could be, unfinished or just ideas, reflecting my struggle to understand what/why I'm doing it and the necessity to change the path if not enough strong. The experiments will touch different parts of this discourse following my personal evolution and my personal understanding of them.

Right now I have:

hackpact 1 > experiment to visualize all the parts of a software together
hackpact 2 > explorations of software as agents (early AI)+ how to visualize software
- 2.1 > clippy
- 2.2 > ELIZA
- 2.3 > Git Stalker
hackpact 3 > liminal space between the code and its visualization + others
- 3.1 Unspatial spaces
- 3.2 DOM Annihilator
- 3.3 Infinite spaces
- 3.4 Auto Scrolling
- 3.5 Tag's Highlighter

I'm working on:

induced/simulated altered state of consciousness (ASC) (rubber hand / ganzfeld / dream machine / mirror synesthesia...) & neuropsychological syndromes (anosognosia, anodisphoria / schizophrenia / alien hand syndrome / DID / identity disorder / ego death...)
biofeedback
brain-machine interaction (BMI)
flow state?

User:Tancre/2/project proposal 3

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