Marc Ruppel is a researcher into what he terms “cross-sited narratives”. He has put one of his talks online,a presentation that was part of his PhD Comprehensive Exam in Digital Studies,University of Maryland College Park. Marc terms:
cross-sited narratives “as multi-sensory stories told across two or more diverse media (film,print literature,web,video games,live performance,recorded music,etc.)”.
He also notes that these narratives “challenge the idea that convergence results in less media”. Yay! I am amazed at how many people think media has only one direction! Marc talks about CSNs as being complex systems with a “centrix”,“simplex”and “complex”. I’m still thinking about these,need some more information Marc. He says that there are two types of CSNs:Horizontal and Vertical.
Horizontally Cross-Sited Narratives:“similar to the horizontal integration of a market,HCSNs function in the expansion of a narrative across media”.
Marc gives examples from The Matrix and the ARG I Love Bees. The other,Verticals,are explained through Mark Danielewskis House of Leaves (a book I still haven’t finished reading —is it possible to ever finish reading it?!).
Vertically Cross-Sited Narratives:“similar to a vertical market share,VCSNs traffic in emptied signifiers and sustained signifieds that are encoded with an awareness of the other media invoked by the narrative (not a metatext,but a metanetwork)”.
[Question Marc:how does VCSNs differ to collage?] Finally,Marc also discusses what he terms:
Migratory Cues:“any sign within one simplex that can be found in another simplex;a signal towards another mediumthe means through which various narrative paths are marked by an author and located by a user through activation patterns”.
CTAs! Call-to-Actions! The referral system! Cool. I’ve got a post about such calls/referrals/cues coming up soon. Well done Marc. This would have to be one of the most thoughtful works on cross-media narratives I’ve read yet. Good stuff.
Ruppel,M. (2005) ‘Learning to Speak Braille:Convergence,Divergence and Cross-Sited Narratives’,Things as They Are?…[Online] Available at:http://things.wordherders.net/archives/005458.html
