“HOW CAN I TELL YOU WHAT I FELT?”: CONVEYING AND/OR PORTRAYING HUMAN SUBJECTIVE LIVED EXPERIENCE IN INTERACTIVE DIGITAL LIFE STORIES

Abstract

This thesis investigates how subjective lived experience is conveyed in computer-mediated interactive life stories (CMILS), potentially enabling the user to experience something akin to the life protagonist’s experience. The thesis also shows the medium-specific contributions of interactivity, in a narrative genre constrained by expectations of nonfictionality. Theoretically informed close readings were used to discover the conditions necessary to successfully convey subjective experience. An initial literary approach demonstrated that metaphor and the surreal can express subjective experience interactively and structurally. Subsequently, a multimodal approach showed how specific audiovisual and linguistic combinations, together with interactivity, create different storyworlds and subjective experiences. A study of poetic gameplay devices, which alter the interactive feedback loop, showed how these can convey subjective experience by thwarting expectations. Contributions include a model for explaining how subjective experience is conveyed, a multimodal framework for analyzing subjective experience, and an emotion map linking gameplay poetic devices to emotions elicited.