Mediating digital narratives: An analysis of the animated short The Memory of Fountain.

   Image: Earth Design Works. https://vimeo.com/66372995.

Carmen Rosas Franco is a graphic designer and has a Master’s degree in Art Studies at the Universidad Iberoamericana (Mexico), with focus on Arts and Education. She writes for blogs and magazines on art and literature, teaches courses in Communications, Graphic Design and Animation and has collaborated with public and private institutions in the management of cultural, educational and scientific projects. Currently, Carmen conducts research on digital narratives in children’s and young adult fiction from the perspective of visual studies, reception theories and transtextuality. She has given lectures on digital narratives in congresses in Mexico, Cuba and Argentina.  The following article is part of Carmen’s thesis for the Masters in Art Studies entitled “The digital image in relation to the development of imagination and creativity. Analysis of the animated short The Man of Water[1],”  Mexico: UIA, 2016.

     In the digital universe there circulates content in which the concept of narrative can be recognised as both literary and artistic, changing its traditional form and structure. These works have surpassed the book as receptacles of narrative , adjusting to the mediums that young readers are accustomed to.

     Stories that are based not only on the written word present new ways of “reading” and of “seeing;” they are forms of fiction that integrate into the cultural and communicative paradigm of society today. The analysis of the animated short The Memory of Fountain aims to answer the question: what do digital narratives offer readers in terms of development of perceptive abilities and the creation of a significant aesthetic experience?

    Technology and the emergence of digital mediums at the end of the twentieth century changed the modes of creation and reception of works, shifting them to digital formats that are accessed by means of a screen.

     In cities, children and young adults are immersed in electronic devices through which they have access to an infinity of content and information. These narratives tell stories by combining text, images, movement and sound, elements that come from the visual arts and its technological evolution. A relationship exists between the visual, auditory and textual elements and the narration, which creates an aesthetic and reflective experience in children and young readers.

In contrast to the popular views on the presence of technology - that it distracts children and young adults from reading - this investigation proposes that digital narratives can be used to develop skills for aesthetic appreciation. Furthermore, aesthetic experiences are often tied to museums, galleries, or theatres, venues that have been canonically designated for the enjoyment of the arts. In the 21st century, and despite advances in all areas, there still exists a lack of acknowledgment of the benefits that technology offers in the transmission and enjoyment of cultural manifestations.

     From the comfort of our home, these immersive experiences bring us closer to the arts, including literature.

     Technologies are a new meeting space for the arts (contextually, not physically), where aesthetic experiences are generated that can deepen the reflections of the problems of our surroundings and daily life.

     Access to these new modes of seeing, listening and feeling reinforces the idea that art is not a thing of the last century, is not something that occurs in different epochs, in other places or to other people; we can access art with a single click or the swipe of a finger.

     The short animation The Memory of Fountain was selected out of a corpus of children’s and young adult digital narratives. Its analysis comprised dimensions of both the formal (what is seen) and the conceptual (what is understood) – a methodology used in visual studies to analyse works of art, especially pictorial ones. After a breakdown of all the elements (text, sound, image, movement), a relationship was drawn between these and the narrative.

     Once the analysis was complete, I detected that few methodological frameworks exist that indicate what reader-spectators appreciate in the digital narrative or how they establish links between the elements and their meanings. It is worth noting that frameworks about the meaning of pictures do exist, but these pertain to picturebooks rather than digital contexts.

     Thus, a proposal was created for mediation, a tool that takes key points from arts programs aimed at working with the public, in museums and schools, and that are intended to develop abilities for aesthetic perception.

     From amongst these we took Abigail Housen’s Visual Thinking Strategies (1970), applied in schools and museums across the United States. Other theories used to develop abilities were also consulted, such as those of Parsons (1987), Aguirre (2000) and Bloom (1956). These theories became the backbone of the mediation process with digital narratives, which is roughly comprised of the following steps:
1.    Presentation
2.     Exhibition of the digital narrative
3.     Directed questions[2]: what is seen? What is heard? What is understood? What is felt?
4.     Group discussion
5.     Closure

 

    After carrying out the mediation with a group of children (5, 7 and 14 years old), it is confirmed that these narratives promote learning and reflection. The following are some of the answers that emerged from the discussion.

Question	Answer	Observations (of the mediator)
How did you feel when you watched the story?	-        It saddens you because of the music, the main character’s attitude, apathetic, dejected all the time. He has no expressions.	There is a relationship between the formal elements of the narrative and the feelings of the spectator.
	-        The cat is deformed because of its head.	Recognises formal elements and relates them to art models. Compares size and shape. There is a deduction arising from prior knowledge: what should the shape of real things be?
	-        I think that the man is asexual because you cannot see his parts. He is very long.	Makes a gender difference; compares size and proportion.
What is the story about?	-        It is about a man who is made of water and he is trying to help, but nobody listens to him.	Identifies the plot of the story.
	-        People are afraid of him because he is made of water and because he is very big, then the bourgeois gentlemen beat him up	Finds the climax or conflict in the narrative.
Other than the images, what else is in the short?	-        There are sounds of music, wind, and water. -        People talking. -        No, they murmur, they don’t speak.	Relates the images to the sounds.
What do you feel when you are watching this short?	-        It makes me uncomfortable.	Expresses feelings.
Why does it make you uncomfortable?	-        Because it makes me sad to see what happens, and I do not like to be sad.	Draws relationship between what is seen and what is felt.
	-        I know that it has a deeper meaning, a reflection on death. It is also a symbol of discrimination; because he is different from the others, they treat him badly – the character.	Recognizes implicit meanings. Develops critical thinking.
	-        Well not everyone. The children do not discriminate him, because they are less narrow-minded than the adults, because they [the adults] do not feel comfortable with people who are different from them.	Makes own judgements. Compares and contrasts ideas.
Has something like this happened to you, or to a friend or someone you know?	-        In my school, to some children. -        It is a common thing, it happens everywhere.	Relate the story to their own experiences. Compares the story with facts and problems of everyday life.

     The responses show that, in addition to the recognition of formal elements (color, form, size, sound), young viewers decipher the content and meaning of the story; at the same time, an experience is generated that leads to reflection.

     Abilities of perception and construction of knowledge are developed when the three families of signs are combined: the verbal, visual and auditory (Turrión, 2014).

     Mediation of digital stories nurtures creativity in the sense proposed by Morin (2000), Dewey (2008), Aguirre (2006), and Eisner (2002): as an education for the arts that helps in resolving the problems of everyday life, of critical thinking, and the formation of individuals who are more conscious of their social reality.

     Greene (2005: 42) highlights that “when a person has the imagination to conceive new things, there is an unexpected rise in what is apparently possible”, which is how imagination allows the structuring of possibilities that can become actions and which, in turn, transform the lives of children and young adults.

     Digital narratives, in their varied themes, mirror the differences that exist in the actual world, leading their readers to reflection.

The conclusions of the study are the following:

• Digital narratives in children’s and young adult literature develop a new interaction between the work and the spectator.
• They appeal to the senses and previous experiences, which are added to the elements present on screen.
• They imply a greater effort than simply looking at moving images and hearing sounds.
• The adaptation to screen transforms a work of literature and activates new aesthetic experiences which are different from those presented in traditional formats such as those of the book.
• Experience with digital narratives can help develop reflexive and critical thinking in viewers.
• When approaching digital narratives in children’s and young adult literature from an understanding of art, both are seen as constructing meaning and artistic references, and a bridge is drawn between Arts Studies and Literature.
• Changes across and between mediums lead to new experiences that help us to learn new things.
• Each text – be it written, visual, or auditory – increases to a large extent our understanding of stories and our enjoyment of the arts.  

References

Aguirre, Arriaga Imanol. Contenidos y enfoques metodológicos de la educación artística. Conferencia No 4. Universidad Pública de Navarra, España. Consultado en 2016 https://enobserva.wordpress.com/contenidos-y-enfoques-metodologicos-de-la-educacion-artistica/

Dewey, John. El arte como experiencia. Barcelona: Paidós, 2008.

Eisner, W. Elliot. La escuela que necesitamos. Ensayos personales. Madrid: Amorrourtu, 2002.

Greene, Maxine, Liberar la imaginación: ensayos sobre educación, arte y cambio social. Barcelona: Graõ, 2005.

Housen, Abigail. Visual Thinking Strategies, http://www.vtshome.org/research/aesthetic-development. Consultado en enero de 2016.

Morin, E. Introducción al pensamiento complejo, Barcelona, Gedisa, 1997.

Parsons, Michael J. Cómo entendemos el arte. Una perspectiva cognitiva-evolutiva de la experiencia estética. Barcelona: Paidós, 2002 [1987].

Rosati, Ivo, ilust. Pacheco, Gabriel. El hombre de agua, España: Kalandraka, 2009.

Taxonomía de Bloom (2014). Consultado en http://www.eduteka.org/pdfdir/TaxonomiaBloomCuadro.pdf

The Memory of Fountain (L’uomo d’acqua e la sua Fontana). Dir. Kim, Young-jun. Earth Design Works (2013). Consultado en https://vimeo.com/66372995

Turrión, Celia. “Narrativa infantil y juvenil. ¿Qué ofrecen las nuevas formas al lector literario?”. Tesis de Doctorado. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 2014.

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[1] The Memory of Fountain was born from the picturebook The Man of Water; in 2013 animator Kim Young-jun translated the work to a digital format using the original illustrations.

[2] To see the mediation questions and their classification in detail, you can consult the “Masters in Art Studies Thesis: The digital image in relation to the development of imagination and creativity. Analysis of the animated short The Man of Water,” Mexico: UIA, 2016.