1st Edition
The Mobile Story Narrative Practices with Locative Technologies
What happens when stories meet mobile media? In this cutting-edge collection, contributors explore digital storytelling in ways that look beyond the desktop to consider how stories can be told through mobile, locative, and pervasive technologies. This book offers dynamic insights about the new nature of narrative in the age of mobile media, studying digital stories that are site-specific, context-aware, and involve the reader in fascinating ways. Addressing important topics for scholars, students, and designers alike, this collection investigates the crucial questions for this emerging area of storytelling and electronic literature. Topics covered include the histories of site-specific narratives, issues in design and practice, space and mapping, mobile games, narrative interfaces, and the interplay between memory, history, and community.
Part I. Narrative and Site-Specific Authorship 1. Site-Specificity, Pervasive Computing, and the Reading Interface Jason Farman 2. The Interrelationships of Mobile Storytelling: Merging the Physical and the Digital at a National Historic Site Brett Oppegaard and Dene Grigar 3. Re-narrating the City and Constructing the Self Through Location Adriana de Souza e Silva and Jordan Frith Part II. Design and Practice 4. The Affordances and Constraints of Mobile Locative Narratives Jeff Ritchie 5. Location is Not Compelling (Until it is Haunted) Mark Sample 6. Dancing with Twitter: Mobile Narratives Become Physical Scores Susan Kozel 7. Walking-Talking: Soundscapes, Flâneurs, and the Creation of Mobile Media Narratives John Barber Part III. Space and Mapping 8. Locative Media in the City: Drawing Maps and Telling Stories Didem Ozkul and David Gauntlett 9. Paths of Movement: Negotiating Spatial Narratives Through GSP Tracking Lone Koefoed Hansen 10. On Common Ground: Here as There Paula Levine Part IV. Mobile Games 11. The Geocacher As Placemaker: Remapping Reality Through Location-Based Mobile Gameplay Ben S. Bunting, Jr. 12. Proximity and Alterity: Narratives of City, Self, and Other in the Locative Games of Blast Theory Rowan Wilken 13. Playing Stories on the Worldboard: How Game-Based Storytelling Changes in the World of Mobile Connectivity Bryan Alexander 14. ‘I Heard It Faintly Whispering’: Non-Locative Transmedia Design and Mobile Technology Marc Ruppel Part V. Narrative Interfaces 15. Narrative Fiction and Mobile Media After the Text-Message Novel Gerard Goggin and Caroline Hamilton 16. Stories of the Mobile: Women, Micronarratives, and Mobile Novels In Japan Larissa Hjorth 17. Telling Their Stories Through iPad Art: Narratives of Adults with Intellectual Disabilities Jennifer Chatsick, Rhonda McEwen, and Anne Zbitnew Part VI. Memory, History, and Community 18. Mobile Media after 9/11: The September 11 Memorial & Museum App Alberto S. Galindo 19. Enhancing Museum Narratives: Tales of Things and UCL’s Grant Museum Claire Ross, Mark Carnall, Andrew Hudson-Smith, Claire Warwick, Melissa Terras, and Steven Gray 20. Mobilizing Cities: Alternative Community Storytelling Mark C. Marino
Biography
Jason Farman is an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park in the Department of American Studies and a Distinguished Faculty Fellow in the Digital Cultures and Creativity Program. He is the author of Mobile Interface Theory: Embodied Space and Locative Media (Routledge, 2012).
"The Mobile Story is a cutting-edge collection of essays for the designer or scholar of locative media in the present moment. It moves the field forward from what has felt, for several years, like a period of stagnation. But it also broadens the horizons of what mobile games can be." —Lauren Burr, First Person Scholar
"The Mobile Story: Narrative Practices with Locative Technologies, could be viewed primarily as a
study of current web-based technology. However, within each of the chapters, those interested in
enhancing the study of narrative production can greatly benefit from reading how they are being
used and evaluated. This book addresses the increased use and need for the critical study of mobile
technologies in the classroom, particularly as it is producing new and innovative storytelling projects
that question our traditional ways of studying, understanding and experiencing notions of space,
time, narrative and history." - Elena Foulis, Ohio State University
