To my Mother, who can claim this as another degree for her own:  is thesis is born from the love for stories and books that you instilled in me. Remember  e Flopsy Bunnies? PAN NARRANS Rudi Benad? Architecture and 21st Century storytelling A B S T R A C T : Humans are storytelling creatures, not Homo Sapiens but Pan Narrans:  e Storytelling Chimpanzee.  e story is told by one human to another and thus  nds another place to take hold. Furthermore, the story is written down or recorded and then exists inside media. Storytelling is a method for ensuring that knowledge and ideas exist outside of the human head.  rough this process humanity becomes ?extelligent?. Architecture is used as an interface to our stories: portals are built to regain access to them.  e theatre has been the oldest of such portals, being found in some form or another since 2500 BC. As media evolve and accumalate, the theare has grown into a conglomerate of portals: today a theatre typically encompasses a library or archive, a cinema, a gallery, as well as the stage for performance. Storytelling has now been altered by a the Net: a total-medium. Suddenly all media exist together as one. Books,  lms, images and conversation all travel through the same network.  e storytellers are altered as well.  e means of production are now availble to everyone. Anyone can be storyteller (again).  e Read-Write capability of the Net makes switching from spectator to actor instant.  e advantages of virtual media come at the cost of tangibility and interpersonal contact. Without comparative discussion we risk allowing these disadvantages to be ?locked-in? inde nitely.  is thesis therefore discusses the requirements of a portal to stories in the 21st Century. As case studies, a number of  exible ?theatre machines? are investigated to suggest how this portal might manifest.  e traditional theatre is condensed and adapted to suit the needs of its new medium and become a Web  eatre Comlex. Finally such a design concept is proposed at an intervention site in Braamfontein, Johannesburg. I, Rudi Benade (student number 0415563J), am a student registered for the course Master of Architecture [Professional] in the year 2010. I hereby declare the following: I am aware that plagiarism (the use of someone else?s work without permission and/or without acknowledging the original sources) is wrong. I con rm that the work submitted for assessment for the above course is my own unaided work except where I have stated explicitly otherwise. I have followed the required conventions in referencing thoughts, ideas and visual materials of others. For this purpose, I have referred to the Graduate School of Engineering and the Built Environment style guide. I understand that the University of the Witwatersrand may take disciplinary action against me if there is a belief that this is not my unaided work or that I have failed to acknowledge the source of the ideas or words in my own work.  is document is submitted in partial ful llmen for the degree: Master of Architecture [Professional} at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Signature October 2010 HOTEL FOXTROT Brad Evan Krom, you have the amazing ability to discuss the anonymous, malicious, beaurocracy of Kafka during the day and to party your face o (face? o ) at night. We?ve spent over a thousand hours in this room (conservative estimate) and it would have felt like sitting in the eye of a torcano without you. Here?s to whiskey and watchables . Ante Up! Broni Ariella Kotzen I really rethpeck you ath a dethigner, seriously I do. Here?s to boom, boom, boom b*tches and the fact that that makes sense.  anks for the philosophy and the attitude. You?re  erce and you make it work. Love you long time. To Steve Sotiriou, the ?Kramer? of Hotel Foxtrot, we didn?t see you much but when we did it was intense. THE NEIGHBOURS Danielsun Okeyo,  ank you for the late-night pop culture philosophy and for frequent heads-ups on Julie Bowen. Jack Frenkel,  anks for constantly reminding me that this is an Architecture thesis and for being the smirking recipient of so many emailed pictures of unicorns. TEAM GINGER Jonathan Noble, you were the perfect tutor for me.  ank you for your insights into life, the universe and Wagner. (Also thanks for considering the Doomsday Bunker  esis).  e rest of Team Ginger: Ryan (Dov) Goldring and Catherine De souza whose opinions and input I truly valued. Ryan, Mazel Tov yet again? ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS THE FAMILY To Mom for keeping me stocked in tea and biscuits and for, you know, giving me life. Estee for the ?hysterical female? messages and giving me a reason to take the weekend o . Natalie, my bestie and toughest critic.  ank you for american berry pancake breakfasts, for listening to my babble and laughing at my expense. CRITICS To my favourite professionals: Sarah Calburn,  iresh Govender, Vaughn Horsman and Brett Wilks. Your willingness to consider my na?ve student whimsies is testament to your undying creativity in the face of ?the real world?. To Randy Bird and Steven Blumberg, thank you for smiling. To the Masters class of 2010, thank you for making every room worth popping into, from the Man-room and its curious smells to Loni and Daniel?s eternally open door. You have made this year my favourite and I shall watch your future careers with considerable interest. To everyone else who made the time to meet with me or visit for co ee, you will see evidence of your input somewhere in this document.  ank you! THEORY ESSAY SITE ANALYSIS PROGRAMME CONCEPT DESIGN DOCUMENTATION APPENDIX Index 01 02 03 04 05 06 THEORY ESSAY AIM: To understand the ways in which stories modify the form and format of the theatre typology. These lessons are then be applied to the web to understand what is required of a theatre for the web. 01 C O N T E N T S GRAPHIC SUMMARY INTRODUCTION ACT 1 THE STORYTELLING CHIMPANZEE TOTAL WAGNER BRECHT AND THE SPECTATOR ACT 2 AGENTS OF CHANGE HERE COMES EVERYBODY THE WISDOM OF CROWDS ACT 3 SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW A THEATRE FOR THE WEB CONCLUSION BIBLIOGRAPHY 12 15 17 18 20 23 31 36 41 44 50 52 Spect-Actor Interchangability ContinuousFragmented TOTAL ARTWORK HYBRIDITY WagnerBrecht ( interface )real virtual Internet GRAPHIC SUMMARY OF ESSAY WORDLE ANALYSIS OF THIS ESSAY Words are larger depending on their frequency INTRODUCTION 17 Media contain the collective knowledge of all humanity and gives us extelligence. Structures like libraries, theatres and cinemas are portals to stories and allow us to access this extelligence.  e following chapters will argue that these portals change how stories are told and interpreted.  e Internet is the multiple medium of the 21st Century. All information travels through the internet in the same way, wether it is a  lm or an image or text.  e internet is a platform for all other previous mediums. We can now all tell stories with footage, sounds and pictures. We don?t need to buy a printing press to write a book, or a printer to show someone a picture. Author and reader are now the same person. So, on the internet, anyone can access this media, change it and turn it into new media. We call this social media ? media created and disseminated through interaction and collaboration.  rough this collaboration we are realising that access to media is what makes us extelligent. We have pooled our resources and are building vast libraries of human knowledge: text libraries like Wikipedia, image libraries like Flickr and video libraries like Youtube - all driven by the human need to tell stories. What does this mean for physical media?  e portals we build to house extelligence are out of sync with the new world of the internet. A library, as we know it, is a place where one goes to read the books that others have written. It is a place where the  lm archive is on a di erent  oor to the books and the sound recordings are on another. A building that is meant to represent the library of human knowledge in the Read-Write age of the internet must allow both reading and writing of stories. It must be more immediate and  exible.  e world of the Internet works more like a theatre - ever adapting, and shifting to suit the needs of the storyteller.  e forthcoming chapters will showcase the theatre?s ability to bend to two opposing playwrights and will argue that the Internet encompasses the ideologies of both end-members.  e a ordances of digital media and physical media will also be compared in terms of their storytelling potential. Finally, some case studies will be discussed and design drivers for a Web  eatre will be derived. e call ourselves Homo sapiens ? wise man - but genetically, we aren?t very di erent from the Chimpanzees, sharing about 95 % of the same DNA. While most animals communicate, some almost have a verbal language and a few could even be said to be intelligent, humans are a storytelling creature ? the storytelling creature. Evolution dishes up various solutions for living in a hostile environment: animals evolve fangs and claws; others grow deadly venom or camou age. Humans evolved stories: we use our fables and fairytales as tools.  rough listening to the stories of others we can learn from their mistakes without having experienced the same events. Not only do we gain knowledge from others in this way but we also store knowledge in others through stories.  e amazing thing about stories is that we store them in the minds of others, in dribbly ink on paper or in streams of electrons. THE STORYTELLING CHIMPANZEE ACT 1 Act 1 will attempt to derive lessons for the design of a web theatre, by learning from the evolution of the theatre. It showed that theatres were altered by social and political forces of their times, and the minds of their storytellers. ACT I 19 nce upon a time, in a land far, far away, a little girl with a red cape set o to her grandmother?s house. When she arrived there, she found granny a bit furrier than usual, and possibly a bit ill-tempered. She asked her a few un attering questions and was promptly gobbled up.  is is a story is about a (possibly near-sighted) little girl, who strays from the safety of the village into the dangers of the forest. It is a classic fairytale, designed to frighten little girls into staying at home. It has become a folk ?standard? and is collective property. From early oral versions in the 14th Century, through versions by  e Brothers Grimm and Perrault, the exact details of the story change at each new telling.  e interpretation also changes: the hood signi es dawn, blood or virginity while the Big Bad Wolf represents the night, sexual predators or a legitimate threat of wolf attacks. Extelligence is a set of shared attitudes, practices or ideas and emerges through the back-and-forth telling of such a story.  is back-and-forth dialogue causes a constant evolution in storytelling. We  ap our tongues about, and a story jumps from particle to particle, through the air, as ripples of sound. It tickles the  ne hairs in the ears of a listener, shoots through neurons as electrical impulses, the listener understands and tells a slightly di erent story to someone else.  ere is a type of continuity here: a gradual drift as a story mutates. Fads and fashions get replicated: a motif, a catchphrase, a hook, a pithy epigram gets copied here, used as a sample there.  e Staple Singers gospel song,  is may be the last time mutated into lyrics for  e Rolling Stones song  e last time.  is melody was then used as the basis for an orchestrated version by  e Andrew Oldham Orchestra, the recording of which was in turn sampled heavily in Bittersweet Symphony by the Verve. ONCE UPON A TIME PAN NARRANS - Architecture and 21st Century Storyelling 20 But then there is suddenly a radical change. Stories are also designed and engineered. Beethoven?s 5th symphony did not emerge accidentally through millions of slightly incorrect performances of Mary had a Little Lamb.  e composer wrenched the notes onto the pages with extreme force of will. It is this ?engineering? that produces the logic of the story. A story is nothing but a series of events arranged sequentially and tied together with some sort of logical cause and e ect. It is not a formal or algebraic logic but a sociological logic: based on erratic human behaviour. In the story of Little Red Riding Hood, the young heroine asks the wolf in gran?s clothing to account for his large eyes and large ears to which he responds: ?All the better to see you with.? ?All the better to hear you with.? When asked to account for his large mouth, the precedent has been set.  e repetion allows the listener to logically infer the response: ?All the better to eat you with?  is cautionary tale is wrapped up in an airtight logic that de es argument from insubordinant children. It reinforces certain shared attitudes, practises and ideas and is teaching mechanism. It is a form of social grooming, used to ensure that all members of a certain culture share the same morals and values.  e power of stories then, is that they can be both consistant and variable. Stories use a type of logic called ?informal reasoning?, which means that the logic is speci c and unique to each story and will only be maintained in the realm of this particular story. Architecture for storytelling is an extension of this realm, and obeys the same logic. As an example, the following two chapters will compare Richard Wagner and Bertholt Brecht, who diverged from the industrial revolution with two contrasting stories and which subsequently gave birth to two di erent types of theatre. ow the house lights dim. It begins with instant tension: vibrating ? like a hornet?s nest. Violins slash the air ? intermittently at  rst ? then weave rhythmically back and forth as the famous leitmotif of the horn strides forward, dramatic, into bat- tle. Strings and brass, together, folding around: a symphony of warmongering.  is is Wagner?s Walk?renritt: ? e Ride of the Valkyries?.  e foreboding motif is the beginning of Act III of the Ring Cycle ? Wagner?s mammoth cycle of four operas that took twenty-six years to write and  fteen hours to perform (over the course of four nights). An opera of gargantuan scale, the result of a complete immersion in Norse mythology and Greek drama, that eventually culminates in the cataclysm of G?tterd?mmerung: ? e Death of the Gods?. TOTAL WAGNER ACT I 21 ?A work like the Ring is, with respect to its beginning, growth and completion, the only one of its kind in the world and perhaps the mightiest work of art of the last millennium.? -Gerhard Hauptman (Hodson, 1984) Wagner wielded the story like a battleaxe, swinging it at everything and nothing in particular. In his essay ?Art and Revolution?, he used  rst used the notion of ?Gesamtkunstwerk? (?total artwork?), a combination of visual, musical and dramatic arts (Gregor-Dellin, 1983). He sought control over the music, dance, literature and even the architecture associated with his story. To this end, he had the Bayreuth Festspielhaus built speci cally for the Ring Cycle. It consumed four years and ?nearly bankrupted Wagner several times over? (Hodson, 1984) but the large two-thousand-seater theatre exhibited several of the innovations that Wagner pioneered to enhance the ?mystic gulf ? between audience and stage.  ese include the double-proscenium arch over the stage (to increase the apparent distance between spectator and actor); the sunken orchestra pit that created the rich textured sounds and disembodied soundtrack; even the dimming of the lights at the beginning of the performance was an attempt to emphasise the otherworldliness of the production. ?Every time I listen to Wagner, I get the urge to invade Poland.? ? Woody Allen 1 Opernplatz is a public square in Berlin 2 ?The Fourth Wall is the invisible wall through which the audience views the play. If an actor breaks character by addressing the audience they are said to have ?broken the Fourth Wall?. PAN NARRANS - Architecture and 21st Century Storyelling 22 Verfremdungse ekt ? (estrangement e ect) ?prevents the audience from losing itself passively and completely in the character created by the actor? (Willet, 1964). During the conventional dramatic form theatre, the audience identi es with the main character and the catharsis of ?happily ever after? purges the character (and vicariously the audience) of fear, pity, anger. But that?s not what Brecht wanted. It wasn?t enough to merely show a revolt on stage, he sought to lead his audience to real revolt outside the theatre. He wanted to rile them up to real social change. Inevitably, Brecht found it near-impossible to get his revolutionary drama onto stage. His new form of theatre demanded a new social order.  is realist infatuation led him to the creation of a theatre consistent with communist ideology, not in content but in method: a shared ownership of the means of production.  rough lehrst?cke , a collaborative ?teaching theatre? (Ewen, 1967, p. 237), Brecht rewrites a play according to questionnaires  lled in by the audience after a performance, and then makes them act it out.  is removes the separation between actor and spectator, creating, what Augusto Boal will eventually call, ?spect-actors?. (Boal, 1974) Boal took the idea of Brecht?s teaching-plays and turned it into a type of ?forum?. Boal?s ? eatre of the Oppressed?, as he calls it, is largely based on the idea of dialogue and interaction between audience and performer.  e audience can call a stop to the play at any time and take the place of the actor or advise them on a course of action. In this way the audience feels empowered and enlivened to generate social change. (Boal, 1974) Wagner?s double proscenium would not allow this. A dreamy, Nordic wonderland is inaccessible to anyone who hasn?t taken the blue pill .  e spect-actor needs to be right next to the play, in the thick of it. Accordingly,  eatre of the Oppressed is performed in an arena : the audience surrounds the play, on the same level.  ere are no ?cheap seats?, no backdrops, no blind-spots and the lighting must accommodate the audience as much as the actor. 3 ?Catharsis? is a Greek word meaning ?cleansing? or ?purging?. 4 Lehrstucke = ?teaching plays? 5 In the fi lm The Matrix a person chooses either the blue pill or the red pill. The blue pill keeps one in the illusory, simulated world while the red pill frees one to reality. 6 Also known as Theatre-in-the-round eutschland erwache!? Germany awake!? the crowd shouts outside on the Opernplatz1.  ey have ?created such an uproar that a hundred of them had to be ejected from the theatre? (Ewen, 1967). Inside, the lighting is harsh, unnatural.  e orchestra stumbles over strange, atonal music. Stage right, a plain clothes man holds up a placard. It reads:  e Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, by Berthold Brecht. Sitting in the audience one is always aware of the fact.  ere is no mystic gulf here. Brechtian characters address the audience directly.  ey smash the fourth wall2 to bits and launch into marathon diatribes.  e workings of the theatre are displayed openly, because Brecht?s intention is not to deceive but to educate, perhaps even to lecture. (Willet, 1964) BRECHT AND THE SPECT-ACTOR ACT II 23 Brecht was the anti-hero of theatre. He pursued an egalitarian society with the fervour of a dictator. He made his audience collaborators in order to awaken their capacity to act, then saltened them with communist dogma. He lured them in with the promise of cheap entertainment and then orated at them through his agitprop theatre.  e stage became his soapbox. ?It is not enough to demand insight and informative images of reality from theatre. Our theatre must stimulate a desire for understanding, a delight in changing reality.? Bertholt Brecht (1954) Wagner was creating a complete world through his total artwork. In order to do this, it was necessary to separate it from elements in this world which were not consistent with the logic of his story.  is created a fourth wall, a looking glass, that removed the audience but allowed him to make his grand narrative come alive. Where Wagner was sweeping and continuous, Brecht was fragmented: his epic theatre does not proceed in a linear fashion but is nebulous.  e former is mystical, the latter is everyday.  e one is dictator, the other: democracy. But while Brecht and Wagner told opposing stories, they both used the story as a weapon, and they made their respective architectures obey the logic of these stories. While one or either may not be to ones taste, the fact is that it takes both Wagner and Brecht to make a world.  e choice of taking the red pill or the blue pill is for the audi- ence to make.  e workings of a theatre, whether concealed or displayed, are designed to accommodate the needs of the story being performed.  e sets, backdrops, lighting and acoustics are in nitely variable.  e con gurations of stage and auditorium are dynamic and kinetic. If the theatre is architecture for storytelling, then architecture for storytelling is not  xed use. It is not every building at the same time, but it is any building the storyteller requires it to be, at any given time. It might be a shapeshifter: all the way from preacher?s platform to mystical wonderland. 7 Agitprop = agitation + propaganda ?It is most important that one of the main features of ordinary theatre should be excluded from epic theatre:  e engendering of illusion.? -Bertholt Brecht (Willet, 1964) Act 2 will argue that the medium of the Web is allowing for new methods of storytelling and therefore, a new type of theatre. Act 2 asks the question: ?What is the nature of the stories told through the Web, now, in the 21st Century?? ACT II ACT II 25 urope, 1452: A former goldsmith is moving bits of metal around. On each bit of metal is a symbol. He fumbles around, looking for an ?L? and places it. It?s a tedious process; he places an ?i?. Not as tedious as it used to be, he thinks to himself, placing a ?g?. Still, one only does it once; he places an ?h?. More accurate too; he places the  nal letter of the sixth line and reads it aloud: ?and there was light.? Before Johannes Gutenberg?s printing press, books and manuscripts were meticulously duplicated by scribes by hand. Even so, errors accumulated and there was the sense in scribal culture that knowledge would degrade with time and that the ancients were closer to an uncorrupted truth (Dewar, 1998).  e press caused the notion that cumulative and progressive knowledge was possible and with it the Scienti c Revolution (Dewar, 1998). Very few had access to the stories in these books.  e Church was home to many of the scribes and therefore the primary distributer of the Word of God. Ideas were spread by wandering scholars, who would carry manuscripts with them and add additional notes in the margins (Dewar, 1998).  e storyteller was an elite class of professional. ? e invention and development of printing with movable type brought about the most radical transformation in the conditions of intellectual life in the history of western civilisation. It opened new horizons in education and communication of ideas. Its e ects were sooner or later felt in every department of human activity.? (Eisenstein, 1979)  e press changed ?the appearance and state of the whole world? (Bacon, 1620). rough the Gutenberg Bible the Church lost its status as the sole scribe of God. ? e proliferation of di erent biblical texts eventually cast into doubt the existence of a single infallible text.  is led to alternative interpretations such as Luther?s, but the ability to publicize those interpretations by the same means of printing kept them from being crushed, as were earlier heresies. (Dewar, 1998)  rough the revolution in medium, the alternate stories became a weapon to subvert the sovereignty of the church ? not even through their content, but simply by virtue of their continued existence.  e press was a revolution in the way it allowed a rapid dissemination of knowledge and dissolving of the professional storytelling class. ?I think that this is a revolution. I think that this is a really profound change in the way human a airs are arranged.? (Shirky, 2009) Act 1 attempted to derive lessons for the design of architecture for storytelling, by learning from the evolution of the theatre. It showed that theatres were altered by social and political forces of their times, and the minds of their storytellers. Act 2 will now argue that the medium of the Web is allowing for new methods of storytelling and therefore, a new type of theatre. Act 2 asks the question: ?What is the nature of the stories told through the Web, now, in the 21st Century?? AGENTS OF CHANGE TYPESETTING [Photo: Cybertoad. http://www. ickr.com/photos/cybertoad/510187391] BIRTH TIMELINE EXTINCTION TIMELINE 1900 1950 2010 20302020 Polaroid Camera CBMMQPJOU!QFO PHOTOCOPIER TELEVISION Sliced Bread Tabloid Newspapers Getting Lost FM RadioLibraries Coins FAX MACHINES DIAL UP LANDLINE TELEPHONES DVD KEYSBLACKBERRIES EJKNFJQQFSpelling Paris Hilton Hope Post Offices ?Thank you? Tape Recorder EQR[TKIJV TGVKTGOGPV Sourced from Richard Watson?s ?Innovation Timeline? [http://www.nowandnext.com/PDF/TimeLineweb_ver2.pdf] Sourced from Richard Watson and Ross Dawson?s ?Extinction Timeline? [http://rossdawsonblog.com/extinction_timeline.pdf] 20102000 2040 20--2050 Dot Matrix Printer Lazer PrinterInternet CD-ROM Camcorder EMAIL HOME COMPUTING Word Processor Post-It Note DISPOSABLE CAMERA DVD HPPHMF Amazon Cell PhoneYCNMOCP Floppy Disc Casette Tape EQNQWT"VX Blindness s DISABILITY AGINGSPAM Lunch WALLETS DIFS! Wrinkles Predictions Cosmetic Surgery Microsoft Petrol Engined Vehicles WW2 Survivors WWW QKN FGCVJ PAN NARRANS - Architecture and 21st Century Storyelling 30  e internet is the  rst medium in history that has native support for groups and conversation at the same time (Shirky, 2009), the  rst with a many-to-many and few-to-few structure. (Gillmor, 2004).  e di erence between the ?former audience? (Gillmor, 2004) and the new storyteller is becoming di cult to discern. Millions of people are reading millions of articles, watching videos, looking at photos, written,  lmed and photographed by themselves.  ey are the new spect-actors: they can  ip back-and- forth between reading and writing at will (Shirky, 2008). Brecht would have looked on Web 2.0 and smiled. But the Web is also Wagnerian: the total-artwork has found its total-medium ? the mode of carriage for all other media (Shirky, 2009) Text, video, sound and voice is native to the web - they coexist, side-by-side. Creating a gesamkunstwerk has never been easier. ?It?s as if when you bought a book, they threw in the printing press for free, it?s like you had a phone that could turn into a radio if you pressed the right buttons? (Shirky, 2009). ?I think that there is e ectively new model of interactivity that is starting to emerge on the internet.? (Johnson, 2003) Nowhere is this more apparent than in the birth of Wikipedia. Launched in 2001 it now contains 15 million articles, written not by employed experts but by passing collaborators, like you and me. ?Wikipedia is able to aggregate individual and often tiny contributions, hundreds of millions of them annually, made by millions of contributors, all performing di erent functions? (Shirky, 2008). Every edit is provisional, because human knowledge is provisional. (Shirky, 2008) Each article is work in progress ? which allows it to update events as they unfold ? making of it a frequently updated news resource as well as an encyclopedic reference (Lih, 2004).  e innovation is one of process and interaction, the result of which is the emergence of a new type of organization. ?He showed me a web page. I don?t remember what the page contained except for one button. It said ?Edit  is Page? ? and, for me, nothing was ever the same again.? (Gillmor, 2004) Clay Shirky de nes four previous revolutions in media: the one-to-many mass distribution of printing;  lm and broadcast; and the one-to-one conversation of the telephone. But they all contain a ?curious asymmetry? (Shirky, 2009): ?the media that is good at conversations isn?t good at organizing groups and the media that is good at organizing groups is no good at having conversations? (Shirky, 2009). 8 ?leading Time Magazine to name ?You? the Person of the Year in 2006. (Grossman, 2006) 31 THE PATH OF THE STORY 32 CRITICAL MASS TWITTER TRAFFIC 38 % - Conversational 9 % - Pass-on Value 4 % - News 4 % - Spam 6 % - Self-Promotion 41 % - ?Pointless Babble? Pointless babble can be better termed ?social grooming? - a process of maintaining communities and relationships. When a system reaches critical mass the momentum becomes self- sustaining and the system grows exponentially. As the story gathers momentum it gains enough storytellers in one medium for it to break into another. ACT II 33 ight now, in Venezuela, Twitter is rapidly becoming the last refuge for press freedom. After closing down a popular private television network, and forcing the remaining TV and radio stations to air his speeches, President Hugo Chavez is being accused of silencing opposition and attacking free speech (Pretel, 2010).  e seven of the top ten Twitter accounts in the country are critics of Chavez, while the trending topic #freevenezuala is being used to rally street protests (Pretel, 2010).  e nature of protests which make use of social media is instant and ephemeral. Appropriately named ? ash mobs?, they coordinate on the  y, appear out of nowhere and evaporate just as quickly, making the participants di cult to pre-empt or arrest. While some of these  ash mobs gather to act out harmless happenings or performances, they also have the ability to upset an oppressive government. What matters is not that they can be large, but that they can be large and organized. Meanwhile, in China, an earthquake erupts.  e news breaks, not in the state-run news or in the U.S. Geological Survey, but on Twitter. People were reporting on the earthquake, as it was happening ? by uploading photos, videos and blogs. ? e last time China had an earthquake of that magnitude it took the government three months, just to admit that it happened? (Shirky, 2009). In less than a day, donation sites started collecting funds from all over the world: ?an incredible coordinated global response? (Shirky, 2009). Tragically, the earthquake occurred on a school day and due to China?s One-Child policy, many families in the Sichuan province lose their only stake in the next generation. In a cruel twist, it is discovered that corrupt ministers cut corners during construction and the schools were not built to code.  e ?reporters?, enlivened to act and now with nothing to lose, again become protesters.  e read-write functionality of the Web is made manifest and the Chinese government clamps down on these amateur journalists. Typically, the question arises whether these reporters are ?journalists? but it?s the wrong question. (Gillmor, 2004) Journalists were an elite class of professional storyteller and ?journalism was an answer to an even more important question which is ?how will society be informed? How will they share ideas and opinions?? (Shirky, 2009)  e Web is just another answer, and while the majority of the story details on Twitter, Blogger and Flickr seem like ?pointless babble? (Kelly, 2009) - statements or photos about sandwiches and kittens - the particular content of these stories is actually irrelevant. What is more important is that they are able to exist ? that they are seen and heard, not censored ? and as a whole, provide the back-and-forth feedback of the story. 9 Twitter is a free, mass-sms distribution platform. Users send or ?tweet? messages to any or all of their subscribers at once, using 140 characters or less. (Williams, 2009) 10 Ranked according to number of subscribers or ?followers? 11 Referring to the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake which measured 12 One child policy is a population control law that restricts families to one child ? excepting certain conditions. HERE COMES EVERYBODY 34 ARRESTED ! YEAR # OF PA RT ICI PANT S PRE- EVENT C O VER AG E DURING SN O WS TORM ! Improv Everywhere No Pants Subway Ride SOCIAL MEDIA C O VER AG E GL OB AL NA TIONA L TIPPING POIN T 22 00 190 0 15 0 35 0 50 00 0908070605040302 10 Spectator Actor Doesn?t break character e invisible barrier between real and ctional worlds is maintained in all directions. e Spectator becomes Actor at a moment?s notice and switches back just as quickly. Real-World environment SPECT-ACTOR FOURTH WALL ? IMPROV EVERYWHERE: NO PANTS SUBWAY RIDE A ? ash mob? performance in which 3000 people took their pants o and ride the subway in New York. Having started in 2002, the  rst ride included 7 participants. In 2010, the now-annual event had grown to 5000 participants riding subways in 44 cities all over the world. [photo by www.ImprovEverwhere.com] STARLINGS A ?murmuration? of starling seems to behave as one uni ed agent. However each starling acts locally only, changing direction based on the movements of 6 or 7 of its neighbours (Potts, W. 1984.  e chorus-line hypothesis of manoeuvre coordination in avian  ocks) [images for photo collage sourced from www.heand .org] PAN NARRANS - Architecture and 21st Century Storyelling 38 ike the printing press before it, the Web is a revolution because it a ords everyone the ability to be a storyteller and like the printing press, ?if it?s really a revolution it doesn?t take us from point A to point B, it takes us from point A to chaos.? (Shirky, 2009) But this is no cause for concern. What we?ve learnt from the Web is that ?a chaotic process, with unpredictable and wildly uneven contributions, made by non-expert contributors acting out of variable motivations, is creating a global resource of tremendous daily value? (Shirky, 2008).How is this possible? How can a crowd a decentralised diverse crowd create an intelligent resource? It is an apparent paradox, especially when one imagines a looting mob or a stock market crash, but crowds can be wise when certain conditions are met (Surowiecki, 2004). Let?s look at the following two examples of the ?Wisdom of Crowds?: 1. Deborah Gordon is a woman who spends a large amount of her time looking at the ground. Usually it is covered in a swirling noise of tiny red bodies ? a swarm of ants  ghting o a nest intruder. Gordon is a myrmecologist and studies red harvester ants and ant colony behaviour, in order to understand ?how the simple parts of organisations interact to create the behaviour of the whole organisation?. (Gordon D. M., 2003) No one ant knows what is going on in a macroscopic level. Look closer and you will see a blind ant ?clumsily? bumping into another.  e touch-touch greeting sequence provides each ant with a pattern of chemical signals that then determine what the ant does: it is the unconscious communication that makes ant colonies work.  e feelers rushing over the other ant are ?tasting? a story told in hydrocarbons. Ants are able to respond to changes in their environment apparently as a single intelligent entity, by accumulating complex behaviour out of simple individual actions. 2. Remember the test-screen? When I was twelve years old I used to sit in front of it, that droning signal ringing in my ears, waiting for an animated show on KTV, the name of which I have since forgotten. I remembered a few obscure plot elements: a villainous pirate and a monkey-bird thing. So I googled the words: ?pirates + monkey- bird?.  e search took only 0.14 seconds to direct me to provide me with the Wikipedia page for  e Pirates of Dark Water where I con rmed that the monkey-bird was called Niddler and the villain?s ship was called ?Maelstrom?. So how did Google know what I was looking for? ?It? didn?t of course. No one person decided that the Wikipedia page was the best answer to my search question. All of the users of the web decided to link their pages to the Wikipedia page or not, and Google just ran the numbers. (Johnson, Steven Johnson as the Web as a City, 2003) What that means is that the search result page was ?e ectively collectively authored by the web? (Johnson, Steven Johnson as the Web as a City, 2003). Google calls this mechanism PageRank. (Surowiecki, 2004) 13 ?googled? ? the simple past tense of the verb ?to google?. A common method for coining names for new activities on the web is to take the name of the website used and ?verb? it. ?Curiouser and curiouser.? (Carroll, 1992) THE WISDOM OF CROWDS ACT II 39 Just as the individual ant ultimately creates a swarm by the simple action of tasting another ant, so does the individual web user create search results by the simple action of hyper-linking other users.  e result can be said to be ?crowd-sourced? and when simple local rules drive di erent large scale phenomena like this, the result is said to be ?emergent? ? greater than the sum of the parts. (Johnson, 2002) ?If you watch ants at all, you end up trying to help them because they never seem to be doing anything exactly the way that you think they ought to be doing it.? (Gordon D. M., 2003) It is incredibly di cult for humans to comprehend such a world without hierarchy or top-down control. We represent ant colonies as beaurocracies, with soldiers and queens and we think of Google as an entity that is deciding between right and wrong content. However, crowd-sourcing and emergence are becoming commonplace on the Web and they are powerful tools in organising vast amounts of data. Architecture for 21st Century storytelling could make use of these principles, in order to become ?a resource of tremendous daily value.? ?Go to the ant, you sluggard! Consider her ways and be wise, which having no captain, overseer or ruler, provides her supplies in the summer, and gathers her food in the harvest.? Proverbs 6:6-8 LOOKING BACK TO LOOK FORWARD THE INTERNET IS NEUTRAL We have dont know how revolutionary the internet is yet.  inkers on the subject re ect on the revolution of the printing press in an attempt to understand the potential end result.  e press undermined the power of the Catholic Church through the Gutenberg Bible, powered the Reformation and enabled the rise of modern Science.  e many-to-many nature of the net means the number of participants and the connections between them makes for bewilderingly complex phenomena: Bottom- up complexity emerges out of the interactions. When Napster was born, for example, its users unwittingly assembled the largest music archive in human history, and they did it in only 18 months, for free. As the speed of broadband connections increases the geographic location and the processing power of individual computers become less important than the speed and power of the network as a whole. Even simple devices like cellphones can now act as interfaces to the network and use the collaborative power of servers and other users.  is is called ?cloud computing? and, while undoubtedly very useful, has potentially ominous implications on user privacy.  e net is a disruptive technology and it is even the platform for other disrtuptive technologies. In fact, it is as disruptive as it is because its very architecture is not designed to allow discrimination in the data being transfered back and forth. Anyone can write any code on the internet without having to ask anyone else for permission. Illegal, unsavoury or harmful data is treated objectively by the network and the indivudual user decides The Internet is threatening the hegemony of the professions and institutions of tradtitional media. On the Net, it is possible to for useful order to emerge spontaneously out of chaotic and uneven interactions. The Net allows delocalised distribution of power and resources - this is both a useful and dangerous feature. The disruptiveness of the net is due to its neutrality and is ?a feature, not a bug?. COMPLEXITY IS THE NEW REALITY THE NETWORK IS THE NEW COMPUTER THE WEB IS NOT THE NET When the web  rst emerged it was essentially used as a publication medium: people uploaded static webpages to a server. It then evolved into Web 2.0 which refers to social networking and collaborative media. Currently, it is becoming a ?Semantic Web?: able to interpret the meaning of the content on its pages, and make judgements about its relevance and function. Copying comes easily on the web. Data does not get corrupted over time and everyone has access to the software and media to do the copying. Users can now become their own distributers and publishers, leaving traditional copyright laws that try to prevent this copying, out of sync with the 21st century.  e Internet is the infrastructure and the ?Web? is only one of the many types of tra c on it. Email, Voice conversations through Skype, chats, webpages and peer- to-peer  le transfers all ?live? on the internet. Collaborative phenomena on the Net like the rise of Wikipedia, peer-to-peer  le-sharing and ?crowdsourcing? leaves most economists scratching their heads.  ese phenomena do not obey traditional capitalist business models which are driven by competition between a few.  e Internet works more like a balanced ecosystem in which more di erences contribute to healthy biodiversity and keep the system dynamic and adaptable as a whole. A constantly changing web requires updated mental models to enable an understanding of its nature. The read/write culture of the net is bending and breaking the law. it requires either legal reform or shutting down of the internet. The net is much bigger and far more important than anything on it, including ?the web?. there is no way of knowing what is yet to come. The Internet defies traditional assumptions about human motivations and desires showing that tremendous daily value can emerge without seeking profit or gain. THINK ECOLOGY, NOT ECONOMY THE WEB IS CONSTANTLY CHANGING COPYRIGHT IS BECOMING OUTDATED Summarised from: Naughton, J. (2010, June 20). The internet: Everything you ever need to know. Mail & Guardian . Act 3 will argue that the increasing emphasis on the virtual is opening up a gap between our physical realm and the content of our stories and asks the question: can architecture be used as an interface between the two? ACT III ACT III 43 nderton, Chief O cer of the Washington D.C. Pre-Crime division, grabs the air and throws a video clip onto the plate of glass like it?s a baseball. Data streams  icker over it. He gestures like a conductor: a twirl of his  ngers scrubs the timeline and the footage steps forward, one frame at a time.  e interaction is  uid, intuitive: natural. Ever since the  rst screening of the  lm Minority Report, this image has become the epitome of future interfaces: the virtual made ?tangible?.  ere is a problem with this oft-cited vision of the future. In a word: ?haptics? ? the information humans gather from their environment through touch. It is the sense of touch that allows us to read Braille or di erentiate between a door and its keyhole in the dark. Virtual touch screens, however  ashy, rob us of valuable information gleaned through the sense of proprioception ? the brain?s sense of its body in space and in motion. Interacting with the virtual requires a textured, tactile and ultimiately physical interface. (Segan, 2009) As stories enter the virtual realm, predictions are frequently made regarding the demise of traditional media. In a tongue in cheek ?Extinction Timeline?, Ross Dawson plots the disappearance of Libraries, physical newspapers and ?childhood?, all in the next 40 years (Dawson, 2007). However, many of these prophecies turn out to be over-enthusiastic.  e ?paperless o ce? of Hollywood ( rst predicted in 1975 ) has not yet become a reality. (Sellen & Harper, 2001) Sellen and Harper, members of a Xerox think tank, explain that the use of paper has not disappeared; rather, it is being used for di erent types of work. ?When it comes to performing certain kinds of cognitive tasks, paper has many advantages over computers? (Gladwell, 2002). Paper has persisted, because the physical document itself represents more than the sum of the information printed on it. It is more like a prompt which aids the remembering of information in our heads. ?What we see when we look at the piles on our desks, is, in a sense, the contents of our brains? (Gladwell, 2002). Paper is a spatial medium ? ?a physical embodiment of information? (Sellen & Harper, 2001). It carries information through its arrangement and proximity. On any given desk, there is a square foot of open work space, surrounded by piles of paper or books.  e piles might seem messy, but they contain a logic which usually only makes sense to the piler (Sellen & Harper, 2001).  e piles nearest to my empty work space, for instance, represents greater urgency (the resources being used to write this chapter) while the books angled sideways are library books that need to be returned. Sellen and Harper argue that the use of one medium depends on its ?a ordances?: the speci c uses that the medium allows. (Sellen & Harper, 2001) e physical properties of paper (being thin, light, porous, opaque and  exible) a ord the human hand actions of grasping, carrying, folding, writing, and so on. 14  e term was used in a Business Week article ? e O ce of the Future, June 30, 1975 (Business Week Executive Brie ng, 2008) SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW ? e road from manuscript to print was continuous and broken and I venture to say that all great discoveries, all so-called new movements, harbour the same contrasting elements: continuity and radical change.? (Eisenstein, 1979) PAN NARRANS - Architecture and 21st Century Storyelling 44 SCISSORS GRIP FIVE-JAW CHUCKTHREE-JAW CHUCK TWO-JAW PAD-SDE CHUCK TWO-JAW PAD-PAD CHUCK SQUEEZE GRIPDISC GRIP SPHERICAL GRIPHOOK GRIP Paper is currently better at a ording collaboration by several people, at marking up of documents while reading, and allowing  exible navigation. On the other hand, digital documents are easier to index, archive and then access again.  ey allow multimedia and hyper-linking to other documents.  ey allow rapid searching and updating of full-text, remotely. Erin Mckean makes the case that online dictionaries actually duplicate all the problems of print, except for allowing this rapid searchability (McKean, 2007). However, increasing searchability in turn removes serendipity: ?when you  nd things you weren?t looking for because  nding what you were looking for is so damn di cult? (McKean, 2007). ?Online dictionaries are Victorian design merged with a little bit of modern propulsion, what we have is an electric velocipede, Victorian design with an engine on it? (McKean, 2007).  e allowances of the Web come at the cost of some allowances of physical media, so needs to be applied judiciously. Like the printing press, the Web is both a revolution and continuous evolution. In attempting to make use of the dramatic new a ordances of computers and the Web, we must be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Methods and mediums of storytelling in the 21st Century are clearly, as Eisenstein refers to book printing after the press: ?a remarkable admixture of the old and the new? (Eisenstein, 1979). AFFORDANCES | Di erent hand grips allow the manipulation of physical objects Technologic by Daft Punk ?Write it, cut it, paste it, save it, Load it, check it, quick - rewrite it, Plug it, play it, burn it, rip it, Drag and drop it, zip - unzip it? High Fidelity written by Nick Hornby Dick: I guess it looks as if you?re reorganising your records. What is it though? Chronological? Rob: No... Dick: Not alphabetical... Rob: Nope... Dick: What? Rob: Autobiographical. Dick: No Fucking way... PAN NARRANS - Architecture and 21st Century Storyelling 46 ever before has architecture been faced with such a curious phenomenon as the Web. It is the total medium that Wagner dreamt of, with the interactivity and democracy that Brecht predicted technology would bring to the world. It is a complex system that grows from the bottom up like an ant colony, and the inventors of its applications rarely know what their applications will be used for (Williams, 2009). It exists behind a virtual ?mystic gulf ?, inaccessible except through detached or unintuitive interfaces and yet its content is often called ?pointless babble? of the everyday real-life. Charles and Dee Wyly  eatre in Dallas Texas, by O ce for Metropolitan Architects, embodies this ?interchange ability?.  e traditional back-of-house functions are accommodated above the stage, while the front-of-house is placed underneath.  is allows the shell of the auditorium to become nothing more than a glass surround and curtain; making the city visible as a backdrop or even physically accessible, should the artistic director choose to make it so. ? e entire building becomes one large  ytower , a ?theatre machine? that eliminates the traditional distinction between stage and auditorium.? (Cecilia & Levene, 2007)  e theatre allows each component to be edited: lighting, acoustics and seating.  e seating and balconies are especially  exible: rotating, moving and tilting.  ey can be con gured into various stage formats depending on the type of story being performed: from Boal?s arena, to Wagner?s proscenium. ?In today?s world where railway stations become museums and churches become nightclubs, we must come to terms with the extraordinary interchange ability of form and function... architecture must be see as a combination of spaces, events and movement, without any hierarchy or precedence among these concepts? (Tschumi, 1997) 15 Back-of-House refers to the changing rooms, sets and stage prop storage. It is the area which the audience does not see in traditional theatres. 16 Front-of-House refers to the foyer, reception and frequently the administration offi ces of a traditional theatre. 17 The Flytower refers to the space above the stage which contains the mechanisms and ropes needed to move set-pieces, lights or curtains. ?So many out-of-the-way things had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible.? (Carroll, 1992) ? e moment we?re living through, is the largest increase in expressive capability in human history.? (Shirky, 2009) THE THEATRE MACHINE ACT III 47 SECTION THROUGH WYLY THEATRE CHARLES AND DEE WYLY THEATRE OMA + REX Architects [Cecilia, F. M., & Levene, R. (2007). OMA Rem Koolhaas. Madrid: El Croquiz.] PAN NARRANS - Architecture and 21st Century Storyelling 50  e Za-Koenji Public  eatre by Toyo Ito is a similar ?theatre machine? which contains an experimental hall with variable seating.  e addition of a publically accessible archive for plays and scripts relating to contemporary Japanese theatre enables it to create a theatre academy in collaboration with selected universities and other theatres (Za-Koenji, 2010).  e workings of both these ?theatre machines? however, remain as invisible as the workings of a traditional theatre.  is does not allow intuitive interaction. It is like a Wikipedia article, without the ?Edit this page? button. OMA employed a similar approach on the winning proposal for Taipei Performing Arts Centre. At  rst glance the project is clearly an evolution of the Wyly  eatre, now accommodating three theatres resembling Sputnik space probes. One large and two smaller, these theatres orbit a central cube which houses the back-of- house.  is allows them to be used independently or in synergy, while audiences may even be allowed visual access from one auditorium into another.  e probe-like theatres hover above the Shin Lin Market on stilts and like the Wyly  eatre, this context functions as a backdrop and visitors have direct physical access to it. However, while the architectural indulgences of the foyer and bar were tucked underneath the Wyly  eatre so as to avoid distraction from the performances, in the TPAC visitors and everyday passers-by walking through or next to the public areas of the core become accidental spect-actors, participating in the performance seen from the street level.  e theatres, by contrast ?read like mysterious, dark elements? (Parthesius, 2009): containers of other worlds perhaps. ACT III 51  e Alice Tully Hall by Diller Sco dio + Renfro assumes a similar approach. ?We very strongly believe that the theatrics of a concert hall is as much in the space of intermission and the space of arrival as it is when the concert starts? (Diller, 2007).  e acoustic surface of the hall, which contains various pragmatic systems, glows during intermission, and leads the eyes of the audience toward the stage as it shares in the performance, ?like the parting of the curtains or the raising of a chandelier? (Diller, 2007).  e Prada Transformer, in Seoul, South Korea, also by OMA, achieves variability not through such variable internal components, but by rotating its entire envelope.  ree cranes pick up the entire structure, rotate it and place it on a di erent side.  e temporary pavilion is a tetrahedron which consists of four sides: a cross, a rectangle, a hexagon and a circle which are used for an art exhibition, a  lm screening, a fashion exhibition and a fashion show, respectively. Walls become  oors and ceilings, and each function occurs exclusively, one at a time. Act I showed that the theatre is a typology that adapts and accommodates the story being told inside it. Act II showed that the stories being told on the Web are dynamic, variable and a back-and-forth between reading and writing.  erefore, a  eatre for the Web can, like the Wyly  eatre changes its format, change to accommodate the various storytelling media native to the Web. It can be a shapeshifter: from a Twitter soapbox to a Blogger press; from a Wiki Library to a YouTube Cinema or a Flickr Gallery. It is not every function at once, but any function at any given time. PAN NARRANS - Architecture and 21st Century Storyelling 52 NA was only the beginning. Humans have evolved through storytelling.  ey pass on bits of themselves to others, not only through their genes but through stories: ?memes? that mutate with each retelling. Storytelling is an evolution: a bottom-up process much like the touch-touch interaction between two ants or the click-click linking between web pages. It is an always-un nished, work in progress. Humans construct spaces which can host these stories.  ese spaces are as speci c to the story as an aquarium is to  sh. Stories by Wagner thrive in Bayreuth and prefer to replicate in all media. Stories by Brecht live in the arena and like to replicate in all people.  e Web is the habitat of both ? both dream-like and day-to-day; both all media and all people.  e apparent ?pointlessness? of storytelling on the Web soon becomes evidently powerful as the storytellers mass in real-life  ash mobs and demand that they be heard.  e Web is a tool that allows order and ?tremendous daily value? to emerge out of a chaotic susurrus of millions of tiny voices.  e results are both terrifying and exciting.  e e ects are radical and continuous - fragmented and sweeping. Some allowances of the web are powerful, while some of its physical limitations are debilitating.  e virtual is an a-spatial and intangible world and physical architecture can become the interface between story and storyteller. A  eatre for the Web could be the platform for storytelling in this total-medium: an environment as dynamic and  exible as the stories that live in it. It o ers multiple functions and multiple roles to visitor and yet it is not all the visitor needs but rather anything he needs: a shapeshifter. CONCLUSION 53 Conversation (One to One) Variability of Function The following diagrams represent the theoretical underpinnings derived from the theory essay. physical affordances virtual affordances Loose Conversation (Many to Many) Broadcast (One to Many) Public Private One-to-Many Central Server Many-to-Many Network of the Internet THEORETICAL DESIGN DRIVERS PAN NARRANS - Architecture and 21st Century Storyelling 54 BIBLIOGRAPHY Ailion, G. (2009). Everywhere is here: Architecture and a Developing Information Society ( esis). Johannes- burg: Wits University. Bacon, S. F. (1620). Novum Organum. London. Boal, A. (1974).  eatre of the Opressed. London: Pluto Press. Business Week Executive Brie ng. (2008, July 19).  e O ce of the Future (reprint of the 1975 article). Retrieved May 23, 2010, from Business Week: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/may2008/ tc20080526_547942.htm BIBLIOGRAPHY 55 Carroll, L. (1992). Alice?s Adventures in Wonderland. London: Macmillan. Cecilia, F. M., & Levene, R. (2007). OMA Rem Koolhaas. Madrid: El Croquiz. Coppola, F. F. (Director). (1979). Apocalypse Now [Motion Picture]. Dawson, R. (2007, October 14). Extinction Timeline: What will disappear from our lives before 2050. Retrieved May 23, 2010, from Ross Dawson Blog: http://www.rossdawsonblog.com/weblog/archives/2007/10/extinction_ time.html Dewar, J. A. (1998).  e Information Age and the Printing Press: Looking Forward to See Ahead. Rand Corporation. Diller, L. (2007). Liz Diller plays with architecture. Ted. Monterey: Ted.com. Eisenstein, E. (1979).  e printing press as an agent of change: communications and cultural transformations in early modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ewen, F. (1967). Berthold Brecht: His Life, His Art and His Times. New York:  e Citadel Press. Gillmor, D. (2004). We the Media - Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People. Online eBook: Creative Commons. Gillmor, D. (2004). We the Media. O?Reilly. Gladwell, M. (2002, March 25).  e Social Life of Paper.  e New Yorker . Gordon, D. M. (2003). Deborah Gordon digs ants. TED.com. Gordon, D. M. (2007, 08 20). Gordon on Ants, Humans, the Division of Labor and Emergent Order. (R. Roberts, Interviewer) Gregor-Dellin, M. (1983). Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Grossman, L. (2006, December 13). Time?s Person of the Year: You. Time . Hodson, P. (1984). Who?s Who in Wagner?s Life and Work. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson Ltd. Johnson, S. (2002). Emergence:  e Connected Lives ofAnts, Brains, Cities and Software. New York: Simon & Schuster. PAN NARRANS - Architecture and 21st Century Storyelling 56 Johnson, S. (2003). Steven Johnson as the Web as a City. TED. Monterey: TED.com. Kelly, R. (2009). Twitter Study - August 2009. San Antonio: Pear Analytics. Lih, A. (2004). Wikipedia as Participatory Journalism: Reliable sources? Metrics for Evaluating Collaborative Media as a News Resource. Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong. McKean, E. (2007). Erin Mckean redefi nes the dictionary. TED. Monterey: Ted.com. Mitchell, W. J. (1997). City of Bits: Space Place and the Infobahn. London: MIT Press. Naughton, J. (2010, June 20). The internet: Everything you ever need to know. Mail & Guardian . Parthesius, F. (2009). Taipei Performing Arts Centre, Taipei, Taiwan, 2009. Retrieved May 23, 2010, from OMA: http://www.oma.eu/index.php?option=com_projects&view=project&id=1122&Itemid=10 Pinker, S. (1999). How the Mind Works. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Pratchett, T., Stewart, I., & Cohen, J. (2002). The Science of Discworld II: The Globe. London: Ebury Press. Pretel, E. A. (2010, March 30). Twitter?s heady rise has Chavez in spin. Mail & Guardian . Segan, S. (2009, January 2). Why I Hate Touch Screens. Retrieved May 23, 2010, from PCMag.Com: http:// www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2337575,00.asp Sellen, A. J., & Harper, R. H. (2001). The Myth of the Paperless Offi ce. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Shirky, C. (2008). Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations. New York: The Penguin Press. Shirky, C. (2009). How social media can make history. Monterey: TED. Surowiecki, J. (2004). The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few. London: Little, Brown Book Group. Tschumi, B. (1997). cited in. In P. Noever, Architecture in transition: Between Deconstruction and New Modernism. Munich: Prestel. Willet, J. e. (1964). Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic. London: Methuen. Williams, E. (2009). Evan Williams on listening to Twitter users. Ted. Monterey: Ted.com. Za-Koenji. (2010). A Theatre as a Forum. Retrieved May 23, 2010, from Za-Koenji Public Theatre: http:// za-koenji.jp/english/about/index.html#link1 SITE ANALYSIS AIM: TO UNDERSTAND THE CONTEXTUAL CONSIDERATIONS OF THE CHOSEN SITE: THE CIVIC CENTRE, SITUATED IN BRAAMFONTEIN AND PART OF THE CULTURAL ARC. 02 C O N T E N T S THE ?SITE? TYPIFIED REGIONAL CONTEXT THE CULTURAL ARC NETWORKS MAP BRAAMFONTEIN IMPROVEMENT DISTRICT SITE DYNAMICS CASE STUDIES WHY ANOTHER THEATRE? 58 60 62 66 68 72 74 78 60  e site must be near the cultural institutions of other media.  e theoretical underpinnings derived from the essay are used to infer the requirements of a site.  e Civic Center in Braamfontein has therefore been chosen as the site for the  eatre for the Web for its symbolic status as dividing agent between North/South, East/West; for its potential in connecting various transport and infrastructure neworks and for the tragedy of a missed civic oppurtunity. THE SITE ?TYPIFIED? Total Artwork 1 2 3 4 5 6 Spect-Actors Agents of Change Here Comes Everybody Fragmented / Continuous Looking Glass  e site must be near major transport nodes.  e site must be where Arts and Culture meets Law and Legislation.  e site requires a mixed community.  e site may be a hub that connects to smaller satellite nodes.  e site must be able to interface the everyday and the mystical or virtual. 61 1 2 3 6 4 Civic Centre, Braamfontein, Johannesburg 62 REGIONAL CONTEXT Library Gardens Concourt Rissik St Post Office Legislature Wits Civic Centre 65  e City Council is embedded in the ?Cultural Arc?, an imagined route connecting Newtown, through Braamfontein, with Constitution Hill.  e route links various arts/culture facilities through tree-lined streets and signage.  e Arc was the subject of the JDA-run Braamfontein Regeneration Project.  e Project ran o cially from 2002 to 2007, but various components are ongoing, such as the Gautrain Rapid Rail Link and the forthcoming upgrades of Rissik and Harrison Streets. National School of Arts Civic Centre Concourt Joburg Theatre Wits Gallery Old Station JDA @ the Busfactory Bassline Mary Fitzgerald Square THE CULTURAL ARC NETWORKS MAP Rea Vaya BRT Rail Gautrain Petrol Station Internet Cafe?s BRT Tickets Pedestrian JDA Cultural Arc Proects Parktown / Hillbrow threshold Watershed to Legislature to Pieter Roos Park to national Children?s Theatre To Wits 70 The BID specified the following improvement principles: BRAAMFONTEIN IMPROVEMENT DISTRICT In 2001, when the area of Braamfontein started to deteriorate as a result of weakened security and a lack of cleaning, the four largest property owners formed the voluntary Braamfontein Improvement District, and in collaboration with the JDA, started the Braamfontein Regeneration Project.  e BID is a non-pro t Section 21 company and may levy additional taxes on property owners within the district in order to fund infrastructural improvements. BIG FOUR = BID BID + JDA = BRP Pedestrian Safety Image + Identity Commisioning Gra ti and Sculpture Artists Street Lighting Greening Cleanliness Additional Parking Public Facilities Security 74 Greenspace Views Shadows Parking North light Pedestrian  oroughfare Strong winds SITE DYNAMICS 75 Original perspective showing intended future library, future theatre and visitor?s centre. In the 1950?s, A competition was held for a new civic centre, the site for which had been chosen to be an area of the Braamfontein ridge. The win- ning project was built in 1962 but required a large number of houses to be cleared. The final result, an incomplete realisation of the initial scheme, was a series of dry and overbearing spaces, totally devoid of civic life and community. Offices Law Library Archives Events Mayor?s office Debate Chamber 76  e Cultural Arc - stretching from Constitutional Hill to Mary Fitzgerald Square - contains a total of 4 theatres:  e Joburg  eatre (2 auditoriums + black box)  e Alexander  eatre (1 auditorium)  e Wits  eatre (1 auditoriums + black box)  e Market  eatre (1 auditorium) Additionally the National Children?s  eatre is located just north of the Cultural Arc and the greater City of Johannesburg contains the Victory  eatre in Orange Grove, the Lyric  eatre at Gold Reef City and  e Teatro at Montecasino. WHY ANOTHER THEATRE? CONTENT All theatres are not created equal. Small theatres seat 100 or below while large theatres like  e Teatro can seat close to 2000.  e content they stage varies accordingly: from the intimacy of small production plays to large scale pop performances or comedy acts. Perception of identity can furthermore in uence the genre of content.  e Market theatre is able to show politically driven plays that other theatres like the Joburg  eatre, despite its recent makeover, are unable to sell to their audience.  e Joburg  eatre Complex contains a 1000 seater Mandela  eatre, the 250 seater Fringe and the 176 seater People?s  eatre. It functions as a production house as well as a receiving house for external produced performances. Even with so many Theatres in the City, the following arguments can still be made for The Web Theatre: News Cafe Mandela Theatre Flytower Fringe Theatre Foyer 77 CONTEXT A DIFFERENT ANIMAL STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS A number of theatres in the same area eventually form a theatre district - allowing them to collaboratively compete with other districts or even other cities rather than with eachother.  e content staged and audiences targeted can be extremely varied across such a district making the whole greater than the sum of the parts.  e  eatre Machine is variable enough to become more than a stage for plays. It can be a venue for performances that are very loosely de ned as such, like fashion shows,  lm screenings, conferences, expo?s, exhibitions or even markets and fairs.  e  exible format allows it to  ll the market niches in between those of other theatres.  e Web  eatre Complex contains additional facilities and resources which could be shared with  e Joburg  eatre. In return  e  eatre Machine can become a transparent and accessible representative.  is type of relationship is common to the area in the form of the shared parking and gardens between the Joburg  eatre and Sappi and the trade of rehearsal space for two seasons of Ballet from the SA Ballet  eatre. 78 THE BARBICAN CENTRE ?Barbecana? refers to a forti ed outpost - typically a gatetower or the outer wall of a city or castle.  e Barbican is therefore a  tting name for such an imposing complex. It is notorious for being London?s ugliest building but was listed as a historic interest building in 2001. In the centre of the Barbican Estate is the Barbican performing arts centre - the largest in Europe. It consists of galleries, performance spaces, conference halls, restaurants, a library and cinemas.  e Barbican, which opened in 1982, was refurbished in 2006 improving circulation and adding sculptural signage. It remains a ziggurat-like fortress however, largely due to its program of introspective meeting, performance and display spaces. PROGRAM 1949 capacity Hall 1166 seater  eatre 200-seater  exible theatre Gallery 3 cinemas (288, 255 and 155 seat) Informal performance spaces 3 Restaurants 7 Conference Halls 2 Trade exhibition Halls Library - arts, music, children?s sections 79 A possible solution to the problem of introspective program is to merge public and private functions: Library + Cafe Gallery + Public Square Theatre + amphitheatre Conference Halls Cinemas Gallery Library Gallery Hall Hall  eatre (1166 seats) Cinema  eatre (200 Seat) PROGRAMME AIM: TO COMPOSE THE VARIOUS FUNCTIONS AND CONNECTIONS DERIVED FROM THE THEORETICAL ESSAY AND SITE ANALYSIS INTO A PROGRAMMATIC SCHEDULE OF AREAS WHICH WILL BE RESOLVED IN THE CONCEPT DESIGN. 03 C O N T E N T S MANAGEMENT STRATEGY APPROACH TRADITIONAL THEATRE TYPOLOGY WEB MEDIA MAP THEATRE FUNCTIONS SCHEDULE OF AREAS MASSING UPLOAD CENTRE NEW / EXISTING FAR ADJACENCIES 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 88 89 90 82 MANAGEMENT STRATEGY The area therefore survives on ?strategic relationships? and any civic intervention will be more successful if it makes use of this symbiotic system. The Civic Centre Master Plan will suggest oppurtunites for private enterprise, improvements to the government run Metropolitan municipality and will itself function under the Section 21 company that is the Braamfontein Management District. Private enterprise must buy in for the Braamfontein to thrive.  e property prices in the area have risen, large- ly thanks to private developers.  e JDA built the Mary Fitzgerald Square in Newtown and oversaw the Braamfontein Regeneration Project.  e four largest property owners formed the Braamfontein Management District. Government Section 21 BRAAMFONTEIN Private Enterprise APPROACH SITE ANALYSIS PROGRAMME CONCEPT DESIGN Government Section 21 B.M.D. Private Enterprise WATCHING SHOWING MAKINGFINDING 84 TRADITIONAL THEATRE TYPOLOGY 85 WEB MEDIA MAP The Web Media Map shows the corresponding virtual platforms currently provided for internet users Cross-referencing these platforms with traditional theatre functions highlights the affordances that are to be accommodated by web theatre programme. 86 THEATRE FUNCTIONS Gallery Exhibtion Space Studio Storage Showing Making Storing Movie Auditorium Private Screening Editing Stations Projector Room Watching Showing Making Storing Books Multimedia Private Study Orders Desk Reading Watching Writing Finding Stage Auditorium Foyer Box Oce Performing Watching Waiting Finding Coee Bar Drinks Bar Restaurant Bakery Talking Meeting Eating Eating Cinema Cafe Retail Box Office Feedscreen Upload Centre Public Space Library Wiki Library Performing Arts Multi-Format Stage THEATRE PROGRAMME FUNCTION PROVIDED WEB THEATRE PROGRAMME The programme of a theatre is reduced to the functions provided and condensed into a Web Theatre programme. 87 SCHEDULE OF AREAS Program Element People Rooms Area (m2) MULTI-STAGE 19 9 0 Admin Offices 5 40 Foyer 300 Stage 300 Auditorium 800 400 Mech Room 200 Storage 100 Backstage 400 Dressing rooms 24 4 200 Lavatories 50 MEDIATHEQUE 159 Net Caf? 200 120 Upload Centre 4 Projector Screen 10 Lavatories 25 WIKI LIBRARY 1075 Admin Offices 5 40 Multimedia / Bookshop 500 Private Reading Rooms 100 Conference Room 60 Lecture Room 76 320 Kids Room 30 Lavatories 25 RETAIL + FACILITIES 435 Coffee bar 30 Bakery 80 Drinks Bar 20 Restaurant 200 Kitchen 80 Lavatories 25 BOX Office 30 LOCATION FINDER FEEDSCREEN TOTAL 3659 88 MASSING WATCHING SHOWING MAKINGFINDING PUBLIC PERFORMANCE PRODUCTION ADMINISTRATION Traditional Theatre Web Theatre  eatre Machine Media Library Retail and Concessions Box Oce Lavatories Bakery Coee Bar Upload Centre Projection Screen Net Cafe Foyer Admin Rehearsal Auditorium Mech Level Storage Dressing Rooms MediaShop Reception Reading Level Studio Workshop Lecture rooms 90 UPLOAD CENTRE The Council drawing archives are running out of space and must inevitably expand or become digitized. The upload centre is a proposal that aims to immediately digitise the process of submitting council drawings and gradually digitise the process of collecting existing building drawings. An Architect completes a set of provisional construction/ development drawings to council.  ey prepare a digital copy as well as a printed copy for marking.  e submission is approved.  e digital drawings are kept on record with their current status: Queueing, Checking, Approved or Not Approved.  e Architect can follow the progress of their submission from the o ce.  e digital copy is stored in the council servers as a usable cad format. Another Architect collects this a copy of this digital drawing and may or may not choose to print it at the centre.  e net result is a massive saving in space and personel as well as a more e cient and useful drawing approval process.  e physical drawings are recycled or, if drawings aren?t approved, they may be returned to the architect.  ere is no need for physcial archives.  e printed drawings are submitted to the Council and checked for approval. APP RO VED QUEUEING..... 91 NEW / EXISTING FAR Existing Council FAR Existing Council FAR Removed Council FAR added Additional parking provided New Civic Programme Ratio?s Council Floor area Ratio?s  eatre FAR Library FAR Retail FAR Upload Centre FAR Council archive space freed up by Upload Centre 92 ADJACENCIES Retail strip  e spaces of the BRT Station and Metrolink are combined to make a BRT stop with retail strip and terraced landscape. Parkade is proposed at the site of the current open air parking lot. Theatre makes use of the iconic potential of this corner and the vista of the CBD to the south. Library coincides with the Council?s Law Library allowng both to share resources. Public Square corresponds with the mayor?s o ce and debating chamber allowing interaction in the form of announcements, petitions or demonstrations. Box office buttresses the narrative landscape and provides seating to view the feedscreen. The programme is placed according to the site dynamics and adjacencies, as well as its own idiosyncratic needs. Public / Private Fixed / Flexible Intent / Accident read / write 24Hr / Day Private / Non-Profit CONCEPT DESIGN AIM: To place the programme onto the various site constraints; to translate key concepts into physcial structures and to integrate all these elements into a cohesive urban design framework. 04 C O N T E N T S SITE CHANGES SITEPLAN DESIGN LANGUAGE CHARACTER STORYBOARDS NARRATIVE LANDSCAPE STORYVAULT THEATRE MACHINE POWER OF TEN BEFORE / AFTER 94 96 98 100 102 104 106 107 108 96 SITE CHANGES  e site was host to a number of incompleted interventions. First the Civic Centre was built without the public functions intended in the original proposal.  e Metrolink was necessarily designed to exist as a separate entity to the Civic Centre and is not currently being used to function as it was intended.  e BRT stations were placed on the site perpendicular to the east-west axis and cut o pedestrian tra c. The site requires a single, clear design to tie the disparate elements into a cohesive system. To remedy this 5 main changes have been implemented:  e Loveday St BRT Station is converted to BRT stop. Together with the retail strip and the green terraced seating this whole section becomes a pleasant waiting area, well served by amenities and public facilities.  e troublesome open-air parking lot space is used for a more comprehensive parking garage that provides access right onto the piazza.  e new parking lot allows the site to function as transport hub - connecting vehicle, BRT, gautrain and pedestrian.  e Metrolink building is (respectfully) demolished to connect Loveday Street to the piazza. It is replaced by a modest retail strip that serves both east and west and presents less of a visual obstacle.  e Mayor?s O ce is moved to the Council Debating Chamber to free up the piazza and to place the mayor in front of a square more suited to public interactions like announcements and demonstrations. 2 4 1 3  e complicated road network to the south of the site requires a pedestrian to negotiate multiple lanes of tra c. It leaves behind fragments of unusable land and dminishes the size and e cacy of the Civic Centre landscape unecessarily. By simplifying these slips and forks into three clear intersections the project gains enough land to become a useful, pedestrian friendly square. 2 5 5 4 1 3 98 SITEPLAN  e axis of Rissik street is an important symbolic route as it connects the Metropolitan Municipality with the Provincial Legislature to the south.  is main north-south axis is projected into the site in a deliberate and legible manner while the multiple east-west axes to  e Wits Gallery,  e Joburg  eatre and  e Alex  eatre are brought into the site with more subtlety.  e siteplan therefore clearly declares its role as meeting point between arts & culture and law & legislation. Siteplan parti sketch Map of symbolic axes Siteplan resolution process Siteplan axonometric sketch 99 100 DESIGN LANGUAGE A Design language is derived from the theoretical underpinnings and applied to the various skins, surfaces and components of the project. In this way the nebulous project is treated in an aesthetic that is consistent with the theory, the programme and itself. Oral Storytelling walls are painted/perforated in pictures from famous stories  e timber landscape tilts and raises to accomodate structures and changes in levels. In requiring future maintenace, the landscape allows adaptation.  e immense wall of the Civic Centre has been an opaque and static monolith since it was built.  e Feedscreen provides a platform for messages and images to be displayed by visitors to the site and in turn creates a living transparent facade.  e paved surface is  xed and conveys its permanence in its form and texture. It is used in the narrative landscape and story vault.  e existing cladding of the Civic Centre would be costly to replace or paint. By commisioning gra tti artists (one of the principles of the Braamfontein Regeneration project) the building can be treated as canvas and the cladding can become dynamic and democratic. Written Storytelling walls are painted/perforated in text from famous stories 101  e existing Civic Centre is covered in coarse brown cladding.  e new glass mesh uses gloss white mullions. Stairways are made legible by bright gloss chevron. Entrance gateways communicate access to the site and the boundaries of the wireless hotspot.  e grid set out by the existing council building is tilted and intersected to create a more adaptable and dynamic grid. CHARACTER STORYBOARDS The site is the backdrop to various characters who play out their stories at different times and on different days. Commuter (Mon-Fri 08:00) Nthabiseng catches a taxi to the Civic Centre and grabs a newspaper and a co ee while she waits to transfer over to the BRT on the grass steps. Theatre goer (Sat 20:00)  eresa sees a rehearsal on the deck of the  eatre and is intrigued. She books a ticket for her and her husband later that night. Tourist (Sat 10:00) Craig is part of a tour party on its way from the Gautrain station to Concourt. He discovers the Storyvault and stores a memorybox. Student (Mon-Fri 15:00) After his classes, Trevor hangs out with his friend at the Net Cafe - they check out some new magazines and update their blogs. Office Worker (Mon-Fri 14:00) Susan and Megan like to have lunch at the Bakery and people-watch while the fountains are spouting. Schoolkid (wed 11:00) Penny plays with her friends in the Rabbit- hole during a school outing. Resident (Sat 12:00) Will meets up with a friend on the steps at the Box O ce and on the spur of the moment they decide to play a game of chess on the square. 104 NARRATIVE LANDSCAPE The Narrative landscape is populated with abstracted sculptural toys, derived from common storytelling devices. These provide shade and seating and allow familiar stories to be traced through the site, or for users to track their own. Molehills Rabbit-hole House Cave Bridge Hilltop Forrest Ocean Fountain Chessboard Your Story? Robinson Crusoe Alice?s Adventures in Wonderland Little Red Riding Hood Hansel and Gretel 106 STORY VAULT In 1986 the mayor of Johannesburg stored johannesburg centenary memorabilia in a casket on the site - to be opened in 2086. The Story Vault extends this same oppurtunity to the public, allowing the storage of memory boxes for up to 100 years. Roof Plan (Piazza Level) Siteplan highlight Site section highlight Ground oor plan 300 mm 500 m m 200 m m Memory Box  e Memory Boxes are slightly larger than shoeboxes and are stacked on either side of the structural walls.  ousands of Memory Boxes can be accomodated in the Story Vault. Visitors pay a small fee for these at the BOX O ce and are then accompanied to the secure Vault. 107 Section detail of Storyvault Interior Perspective Storyvault  e Storyvault is located underneath the piazza and is accessed via a narrow slit in the ramp. Over ten thousand memory boxes can be stored in the vault.  e dark re ective materials and di used lighting are designed to convey a sense of reverence and re ection.  e Storyvault is a relatively somber space compared to the bustle of the piazza above. 108 THEATRE MACHINE The Theatre machine is a theatre typology which is able to shift from one stage format to another, allowing it to house different genres of plays. By applying this principle to the auditorium as well as the stage, different functions can also be accommodated. Vertical transformations are perfrormed by pistons and tracks.  is is the standard method for accomodating a stage with orchestra pit, but now this system is applied all the way to the back f the auditorium.  e traditional stage revolve can be connected to the auditorium seating allowing further  exibility. Additional seating can be accomodated in the storeroom.  e south and west walls of the stage are transparent glass skins which can be opened to the outside or covered by movable acoustic panelling, allowing the performances to use Johanessburg as a backdrop. 109 POWER OF TEN Power of ten is the principle that a public space must provide at least ten different types of activity to be effective. This principle is applied to the theatre: what oppurtunities, besides that of a traditional play, does the theatre machine provide?  e space can be used for a convention like the Johannesburg ArtFair or computer game expo like rAge. As a venue to screen a documentary  lm about the making of a recent play - complete with after party on the rehearsal deck. As an arena stage for a spoken word / rap battle - opening up to the street on the south and the west. During the o season as rooftop Yoga classes in the morning and indoor Salsa classes in the evening. Rented out as a conference venue for a legally questionable pyramid scheme - with dramatic AV presentations and catered for by the retail strip. As an evangelical christian church on Sunday evenings. As a  lm / photography studio with workshop space. Used as a catwalk that extends into the street during fashion week. To house a supplementary exhibtion to compliment the production of La Traviata accross the road at the Joburg  eatre. 110 BEFORE 111 AFTER DOCUMENTATION AIM: Resolved design documentation including plans, sections, axonometrics and perspective representations. 05 C O N T E N T S THEATRE LIBRARY BOX OFFICE RETAIL STRIP 116 124 136 138 114 SITE PLAN 116 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 SITE SECTION 117 118 THEATRE AXONOMETRIC Mechanical Level Dressing Rooms Entrance Level Foyer Rehearsal Deck Shading leaves Auditorium Perforated Shell 121 BASEMENT - FOYER + AUDITORIUM SCALE 1: 250 122 GROUND FLOOR - ENTRANCE LEVEL SCALE 1: 250 123 FIRST FLOOR - DRESSING ROOMS SCALE 1: 250 124 SECOND FLOOR - MECHANICAL LEVEL SCALE 1: 250 125 THIRD FLOOR - REHEARSAL + ADMINISTRATION LEVEL SCALE 1: 250 128 SECTION A-A SCALE 1: 150 129 134 LIBRARY AXONOMETRIC Council Core Lecture Boxes Entrance Level Council Security Planted Level Mediatheque Workshop Sunscreen Council Archives + Library Council O ces Existing Council Frame  reshold Piazza Ground Level 136 SECTION CC SCALE 1: 250 137 138 139 140 LIBRARY PLANS First  oor - Mediatheque + Upload centre Ground  oor - Entrance ramp + Security SCALE 1: 500 141 Second  oor - Workshop + Study level Second  oor - Reading level + Bookshop 144 RETAIL STRIP - PIAZZA LEVEL SCALE 1: 250 Retail strip  e leaves of the retail stip function as shading when raised and when lowered, merge the structure into the landscape - reducing the visual threshold between the street and the piazza. 145 BOX OFFICE - PIAZZA LEVEL SCALE 1: 250 APPENDIX Various projects have recently attempted to deal with the Internet as storytelling medium. Here are some of the examples. 06 John Buchan?s 39 Steps was turned into an interactive story called 21 Steps by Charles Cumming.  e author used Google Maps to place the events in context and allow a reader to follow the characters from a new perspective. Slice was the name of M R James? Haunted Dolls? House as told through the Twitter account of ?Slicequeen?.  e story unfolded bit by bit every couple of minutes as twitter updates. Charles Dickens? Hard Times was redesigned as a series of inforgraphics by Matt Mason and Nicholas Felton. An appropriate representation for a novel that starts: ?Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else.? Other authors told stories through choose-your-own-adventure games, as blog and even live performances. [all screen capures from wetellstories.co.uk] Penguin?s ?We Tell Stories? project consisted of 6 authors converting 6 classic stories for the Internet. PAN NARRANS - A WIKI-NOVEL In May, I started an experiment to discover the collaborative fiction writing potential of wiki sourcecode. I used social media websites to invite friends to contribute writing on a free wiki-based website. Can multiple authors write a coherent story together - just as multiple contributers ?write? a wikipedia article? If not, Why not? storytelling can be collaborative but the process itself is chaotic and, as in this case, jabberwocky gibberish. If there is to be a final product, such as a novel, it must be edited - or indeed be written - by a single author. Wikipedia articles are works in progress and represent knowledge that is constantly being updated - stories on the other hand, are fixed and have a beginning, middle and end. The babble-chatter conversations recorded in this experiment serves as the inspiration for a story, and by sampling it the storyteller makes his story more believable, more accessable to his audience. In Conclusion, A healthy environment for storytelling contains both these aimless, everyday conversations and spaces for formal, fixed storytelling. Over the course of two months 2488 words were written by 29 IP addresses. Some edits  xed typo?s or spelling and grammatical errors. One user even remixed text by Charles Dickens by running it through a text scrambler and adding it in.  e contributors were incredibly resilient.  ey managed to weave bizarre non-sequiters into the story by manufacturing alternate universes and stories within stories.  e project was expected to fail from the beginning. Unlike Wikipedia, the contributors had no reason to visit the page besides writing, and no motivation except the novelty and the goodwill of doing a favour. When told the experiment was completed, the activity ceased imediately. 150 Once upon a crime in Johannesburg, a litTle too late and slightly too early, a midget ran across the kitchen  oor and just missed the life tHat was being swept up by Gladys. She  ung herself back screaming and landed on the cold kitchen tiles.  e midget loOked at her with watery eyes. With a curious tilt of its head, it squeaked and ran o , carrying what could only be described as a small weight on his shoulder - the ?bUrdens of life? some may have called it, while others would have said he was just a hunch back. Gladys swung her broom wildly, like a double-bitted felling axe, catcHing the tip of the midget?s burden as he squeezed beneAth the fridge and disappeared. She sat in silence, staring at the dark cavern beneath the whirring white machine, as the Sound of heavy machinery in operation came from underneath her fridge.?Chuck the fridge out of the window,? said a voice from heaven.  at damn thing was up to something, buT gods be damned if Gladys could  gure out what. Her train of thought - an intricate plan involving removing every piece of furniture and wielding a  ame thrower - was interrupted as her sister Aynlee Choice bounded into the room. ?Gladys? What on earth are you doing?? Aynlee Skidded to a halt and gaped perplexedly at her oldest sister. ?I am wondering something,? GLadys answered slowly. ?I think that, whatever sign from above it was that was just bestowed on me, was full of way too many metaphors!?. ?What do you meAn?? queried Aynlee. ?OK...so far,? Gladys began to explaIn ?I was sweeping the  oor clean of my current life, when I saw a sad midget run pass, carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. Maybe that?s why he was sad? And he raN into a black hole under the cleaning machine. Could this mean that I should not start a new life? Or that all the worlds problems are in need of cleaning up? And it just dawned on me That your name is Aynlee, which is Hebrew for ?I don?t Have?. So, your full name translatEs to: ?I don?t have a choice?. Seriously God, WTF?!? Aynlee gave her a concerned look. ?Are you feeling alright? I know things have been really hard on you since Marie died, and you?ve been a real rock. Are you sure that you aren?t more a ected than you let on? In the distant hills a vague cry echoed ?Suddenly...life with supersound!?, but remained unheard and unnoticed. Suddenly aware of her somewhat inelegant position lying sprawled across the kitchen  oor, Gladys started the laborious task of heaving her body upright again, hearing the reluctant creaks of her long-su ering Joints in the process and feeling A new dull ache in her right hip. Tonight she will have to try the lavender bath soak again, or perhaps some arnica. ?Damn midgets. Spotted another one just now. Went in under there. Already late with getting everything ready for today and now we have a midget to contend with. I?m sure Aunt Gertha will have much to say aBout that,? she sighed, envisioning her great aunt?s puckered leathery face and ever-disapproving stares that Gladys had Been so familiar with since AynleE and she were little girls with pigtails and toothless smiles. ?To hell with Aunt Gertha. It?s a funeRal, for goodness sake! She should at least try to behave for the sake of the family. It?s di cult enough without her meddling and remarks. Do you knoW she already phoned three times this morning with the most particular instructiOns? Or, ?suggestions?, as she would put it. I suppose she will insist on living forever, just to make sure we are all as miserable as she is.? Gladys sighed and turned baCk to the cucumber sandwiches she had been making prior to the invasion of the midget. She knew her aunt would never change, but sometimes she wished she wouldn?t make their lives as di cult as possible. Marie?s death had been a shocK, and the last thing they needed was a cantankerous and meddling old fool making things even worse. The full text from pannarrans.wikispaces.com follows: 151 A rustling, followed by giggling, emerged from the beneath the fridge. Damn midgets. She would love to know how so many had gotten into the countrY in the  rst place.  ey had had enough problems with the indigenous Tokoloshes running around; the last thing they needed was this European invader. Arranging the sandwiches neatly oNto the serving plates, she passed them to Ellie, who turned to take them out to the dining room. Following her sister out with the last of the sandwiches, she paused at the dOor, waiting for Ellie to disappear into the room at the end of the hall. Waiting a moment in the empty corridor, she rolled her eyes and very quickly, crouched down and slid a sandWich under the fridge. ?You, keep it down under there, you hear? People will be arriving any minute.? She sighed. Bribing a midget? It was Going to be a very long day. A rude snigger was her Only response. Scowling and muttering darkly to herself, Gladys strained back up into standing with a groan - and stared aghast at the man leaning against the doorframe, eyeing her coolly.  e man was noT what you would call handsome. Rather, his dark trench coat made one wonder if he was wearing anything underneath, and if he was to remove the item of clOthing, would that hopefully distract you from that hideous face. ?Can I help with anything?? the man asked, and as he spoke Gladys was able to tear her gaze away for the horrendous scars and weird markings thaT covered the man?s face. His voice was strange too, she mused: deep, mellow, strangely musical. She shook her Head, as if to clear it. She had enough stresses to deal with today without adding wEird to the mix. Yet, the more she triEd to ignore the man, the more thought of him kept bouncing around in her head, but not in the way she wanted it. Past all the scars, the mutilated shallow hole that was his face, that voice drifted iNto her.... through her. She had known this voice. It remindeD her of something she could not place, and she had to have more. Every bit of her told her to stay away, but when she caught his gaze next, she gestured for him to follow her upstAirs? 20 years later, in the same house, and old man is hovering over an IroN Man print duvet set, eyes glazed with lost nostalgia. ? en she totally shagged his brains out, probably,? said the olD man. ?Shagged who?  e man or the midget?? said a little voice. ?Shagged whom Teddy, shagged whom.? ? is story doesn?t make any sense, Granddad.? ?What story?? Teddy rolled his eyes. ? e sTory you were just telling me. Who was the man with the scars? Why does this woman feed cheese to midgets?  at can?t be politically corRect. Is this an allegory for Mao?s Great Leap Forward?? ?Where did you learn the word ?allegory??? Granddad Willis asked with an accusatorY pointing of his  nger. ?I read Animal Farm. I was actually thinking of becoming a communist,? said Teddy, looking down at his tatty, stu ed bear he?d Named Marx. ?A RED! IN MY HOUSE! My grandson will nOt join any Communist party!? ?I?m a communist with a lower case ?c?! I?m not a joiner, I just think class strucTures should be abolished and property should be commonly controlled by the proletariat,? said Teddy. He gripped Marx? head and made iT nod in agreement. ?What dO you have against the class system?  is is suburban Saxonwold!? ?I don?t like class. I?d rather be outside playing with my friends. What?s a tokoloshe, Granddad?? 152 Angelica walked into the kitchen, reeking of perfume. ?I have asked you before not to let him tell those stories to the kids, how many times?!? Marcy looked back into the pot. She found comfort in the hazy, distorted world it made for her. Nonsensical shapes in shades of copper, morphing and melding into something new as you moved about. A lovely, silent world. ?MARCY!? AnGelica shrieked, right in her ear. ?Maybe you should try talking to him,? Marcy suggEsted quietly, struggling to concentrate through the ringing in her ears. She could feel the air boiling behind her as her sister?s sinister sTare bore a hole in her back. But she ignored it until, with a huge hu , her sister stomped out the room and slammed the door behind her. Relieved to have been left to her solitude, MarcY looked up and out of the window to see a strange meeting of two strangers at neighbour?s garden gate. Next door, the hOuse with the poppies by the gate ?Open the door?, commanded a man outside; ?it?s the o cers from Bow Street, as was sent for today.? Much comforted by this assurance, Brittles opened the door to its fUll width, and confronted a portly man stepping back to the gaRden-gate, and helped his companion to put up the gig: while Brittles lighted them, in this case,? said Mrs. Maylie. Mr. Blathers made a bow. Being desired to sit down, he put his hat on the mat, as coolly as iF he lived there. ?Just send somebody out to rElieve my mate, will you, young man?? said the stouter man. Brittles hurried into the housE. 5 seconds later, in a parallel universe? or someThing? In a time and place far from Earth and yet having more impact on their daily lives than ever fully appreciated by any Earthling, the Great Writer Of All People?s Stories (or Gwoaps, as he was commonly called by his very feW friends, and his mother), stared aghast at the journal in front of him. ?Who did this?? he roarEd when  nally his shock had been replaced by outrage and he was able to speak. ?Who? WHO!? ?Who did what, Gwoaps?? asked his moTher, coming in to his study. Today was apparently Scarf Day, for she wore a multitude of them, each more absurdly patterned and coloured than the other, and all of them clashing horribly.  e sound of this conversation was muted as it travelled through the house. By the time it reached the kitchen it was a whisper, but Marcy made out every word. She never took to the stories the old man told the children. She found by the time the old man has ended his tales nothing made sense, not even a thin line joined the story together. She pondered on this while stirring the pot she was busy with, its copper base warped ever so slightly so that as it shifted, the world it re ected altered in shape and proportion. One could spend hours creating interesting Picasso-like contortions of one?s face. ?MARCY! Where the hell are you?  e old man made the children cry again!?  e shrill voice boomed around the house, making her wince. Her sister was, apparently, angry. Again. 153 ?Someone,? Gwoaps hissed, ?has been writing in my journal! See here!? He gestured imperiously at the open book in front of him. ? is bit with Brittles and Blathers...it?s from a completely di erent tale, and here it sits in this one! Now the entire thing is completely nonsensical!? His mother, having skimmed the previous paragraphs, murmured, ?To be honest, dear, I don?t think it was making much sense for quite a long time before Brittles and Blathers came on the scene.? ?It?s like a parallel universe just suddenly merged with another one!? Gwoaps continued to raGe, ignoring his mOther. ?How can I spin the stories of these people?s lives when things like this happen?? ?Who do you suppose did it?? asked his mother, retrieving another iridescent scarf from the surprisingly plain brOwn handbag she always carried. ?If I knew, I?d hardly sit here yelling ?Who did this?, would I?? Gwoaps sNiped sarcastically. ?None of that attitude with me, young man,? his mother rebuked him, although her attention wasn?t fully on him. She considered the scarf in her hands, wondering if she could somehow incorporate it into her current ensemble without looking over the top. Gwoaps didn?t like being called young man. At The age of 176 years, he felt he deserved more respect. He slumped into his well worn leather chair.  is simply would not do. As his mother disappeared out of the room mUttering something about polka dots and pink, Gwoaps peeRed at the words before him. ?Mr. Blathers? Mr. Blathers?!?! Oh, No you don?t?. He reached for the phone to call the only person who could  x this mess. Next door, again, The house with the poppies by the gate As Mr. Blathers sat calmly waiting for his relief, a strange light gathered around him. Gasping Mr. BlatHers suddenly?changed. It was hard to explain the phEnomenon, for he looked exactly the same. Or at least that?s what everyone would have thought. But instead of the portly man, there sat a di erent Mr. Blathers. A New Mr. Blathers. And New Mr. Blathers was not what you would call handsome, strangely tall and unnaturally lean in his long dark trench coat. New Mr. Blathers stared out from the Porch to see the green eyes of a pretty young girl frowning at him. Quickly, he put his hat back on, tipped it in her direction with a smile, and returned on the mat with a sigh.  e green eyes widened before the whole head disappeared beneath the window sill. He stAred at the house of the green eyed girl and frowned. Why did it seem so familiar? A cool wind picked up, distracting him from his pondering. Reaching into his pocket he pulled out the well-folded, well-worn letter. In it were the brief details of his mission. Gwoaps was not pleased, and his instructions to New Mr. Blathers were clear: ?Get in,  nd them, and stop them.? Unfortunately, the letter neglected to mention precisely whom was to found, and what it was that they were to be stopped from doing. Or indeed, how they were to be stopped. For example, would a stern talking-to su ce, or was something on a Grander scale preferable? New Mr Blathers knew what he personally would have liked to have done, but people became strangely pernickety when it came to things like bloodshed and wanton destruction.  ey could become rather boring about it. Blathers touched the door, expecting it to open with a drEary creak. It didn?t. Rather, it did what front doors all over the world have done since the dawn of doors: it got stuck and needed to be wiggled just so to open all the way. He stepped inside the darkness of the foyer.  e air was thick with dust which did not move. It smelt like old. Old books; old leather; new... person. Someone else was in the house.