September 5, 2007
The Sequence of Intimate Exchanges
Or, Choose Your Own Choose-Your-Own-Adventure.
Choice #1, re-blogged here from Save the Robot: a play called Intimate Exchanges recently staged in NYC, as part of the annual Brits Off Broadway festival.
‘A 750-page epic by Alan Ayckbourn that asks 2 actors to play 10 characters in 8 interconnected plays.’ The two actors’ decisions at the beginning lead to different middles and ends. If the actress lights a cigarette in the first scene, it sets them down one path; if not, they go down another. Theatergoers have gone multiple times to catch the different permutations.
Also read about it in the NYTimes. Talk about let’s do it again, groundhog!
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Choice #2, emailed to us from Jason Alderman: Knock Knock, by Jason Shiga, “is a 500-page handmade choose-your-own-adventure-style comic that’s set up like an old graphical adventure game, replete with inventory.” Image below. It’s available from Global Hobo; I’ve already ordered mine.
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Choice #3, again ripped off from Save the Robot: an album by Morningbell called Through the Belly of the Sea, whose liner notes and corresponding audio tracks are structured as a CYOA.
The trick to the album is simple, and seems like a fun idea; you read the liner notes while listening, and after each track you are given two choices as to your next move. Relax on the coral reef? Fight the mysterious sea monster? The world is yours. For a lot of people, shuffling music around is a daily activity, so Belly’s batshitness is of a much lesser conceptual realization than that of, say, Zaireeka. But in a way, this is the most compelling aspect of Morningbell’s gimmick; its regressive approach toward listening technology, limiting iTunes’ infinite-choice power to but two post-song options. Along that line, perhaps a good idea to market the CDs might be a slogan like one from the back of a comic book: ‘Magically Transform iTunes Into a Paperback!’
September 6th, 2007 at 6:41 pm
Choice #4: a GOP CYOA.
From the CNN article: “A House Ways and Means Committee hearing on America’s “carried interest” policy isn’t likely to drum up widespread excitement. But GOP Deputy Whip Eric Cantor, who holds a seat on the panel, is hoping to change that. The Virginia Republican’s staff has launched a choose-your-own-adventure style interactive Web video … Three young Cantor staffers are told it’s ‘vital’ they figure out who is putting retirement security ‘at risk.’ Viewers are soon prompted to send the intrepid staffers to the Longworth House Office Building, the U.S. Capitol, or the Washington Monument to solve this whodunit caper. Hint: The perpetrators in question are Democrats.”
(thanks, Mark!)
September 9th, 2007 at 11:30 am
Ebert would be so pissed; these are not and cannot be high art, right?
Andrew – is that a Persuasive Game?
September 9th, 2007 at 11:49 am
[…] ning a blog post into a set of branching paths (isn’t that what blogs already are?). Here, they’ve linked to three “choose your own adventu […]
September 11th, 2007 at 5:55 pm
This isn’t Shiga’s first branching comic; his comic “Meanwhile” is a non-CYOA tour de force. http://www.shigabooks.com/interactive/meanwhile.html