‘Chronovist’ conceptualisation method: exploring new approaches to structuring narrative in interactive immersive audio/visual media.

This research investigates whether the application of the initially literary concepts of Bakhtin’s ‘chronotope’ and ‘utterance’ to the field of interactive narrative audio-visual media can lead to the development of new approaches to structuring narratives. By extending Bakhtin’s concepts to the analysis of interactive immersive audio-visual media I analyse interactive immersive cinema as a first-person experience of a chronotope. Further, I propose to approach chronotope as a real physical space or environment and I supplement the concept of chronotope with an architectural concept of Benedikt’s isovist, expanding its definition from ‘location-specific patterns of visibility’ to a general term for calculating the distribution of a certain spatial or temporal attribute from a vantage point throughout the space. The result is a new conceptualisation tool, which I call ‘the dynamic isovist of a chronotope’, or a ‘chronovist’. The research discusses the implications of this tool for interactive immersive cinema authorship and shows how it can lead to new narrative paradigms (models). It maps the practical uses of such approaches for interactive authors, as well as for authors migrating to interactive i mmersive cinema from conventional (non-interactive) filmmaking, and suggests how existing interactive works by other artists can be ‘remixed’ using the chronovist approach. Using one of my feature films, ‘Dog’s Paradise’, which was completed while undertaking this research, I analyse narrative devices used in the film that were developed using the chronovist approach and suggest how the film could be further developed as an interactive cinema piece. The research also suggests how this conceptualisation tool can be extended to other ‘genres’ of interactive art and what its implications might be for future researchers and interactive authors