storytelling today and the changes there
in and how those changes are absolutely
amazing for education I’ve been I’ve
been doing all sorts of things in the
digital storytelling world these include
technote writing writing and directing
story worlds get to bluebird in a minute
and doing online documentaries helping
other program makers and storytellers
tell their stories in a digital context
and also sort of facilitating how we all
reach stories in the digital realm so
stories are essentially a form of memory
they have this unspoken fundamental part
in our lives because as social creatures
which is a bit rich coming from an
introvert like me but as social
creatures we have this drive to share
our stories by mem which as I say
essentially memories are memories and
experiences with other people if we
share those things it basically fulfills
fundamental drives in all of us you know
and here we are at Ted and Ted is this
incredible facility for sharing stories
and ideas and it’s perfect for me
because you know sitting there trying to
bring the story together bring this some
speech together and I thought how am I
going to do this and how are going to
make it this great and let’s just say I
kept it concise by looking at other TED
Talks and one of the talks i came across
you may well have seen which is by Sir
Ken Robinson passive little title there
40 million views no big deal but I’m
amazing and I took three things away
from that and I thought gosh this is
actually what my talk is about my talk
is going to be about answering the
challenges of another talk this is one
that’s 10 years old and Ken’s challenges
are still very much with us so he had
three things that he said in particular
that really you know got me interested
one was that creativity is as important
as literacy in education he also said we
tend to get educated out of creativity
and he said that ideas of value come
about through an interaction between
different disciplinary ways of seeing as
I love all those things particularly
that last one you know the is really
taking this gloves off for those first
two but that last one is just it’s so
important and um the collision of ideas
is what really gives us creativity so
digital storytelling digital narrative
which is you know it’s fairly recent
phenomenon really we’re absolutely
getting into it but it answers those it
answers those challenges just
marvelously and it does that because it
can create created you can create
environments for learning that are
essentially creative dynamic social like
us essentially um yep so I have to talk
about two types of story today and I’m
not going to get backwards and then go
forward two types of story today but
before we get there um I’ve got this
metaphor let’s call it a metaphor it’s
it’s a bit it’s a bit too wooly to call
a theory and it’s in two parts but I
think it really explains why digital
narrative is so important and and and
not only that but foundational to the
thing that is story and so we’re going
to talk about you know how foundational
story is to us as human beings but I
think what I’m trying to say is that
digital narrative is is bringing
something quite foundational and new to
the form of story okay so it’s in two
parts it’s got a little bit of
philosophy of mind and it’s got a little
bit of Oscar Wilde and it starts with a
question and the question is so you know
I are stories so foundational to the
experience of being a human being and
you know my back-of-the-envelope theory
on that is it’s because our ability for
self-reflection combines with an
instinct to be social and in doing that
it asks us to take the memories and
experiences that we have and formulate
them in entertaining and and instructive
ways to share with others that’s that’s
really all it is but unpacking that is
you know that that in itself is quite an
amazing idea so that’s I also sorry i
also want to read you a couple of
academics on this subject as well just
to sort of give myself a bit of support
in that so yeah let me just read to you
Roger Shang and the late Robert abelson
who brilliant psychologists the reason
that humans constantly related stories
to each other is that stories is all
they have to relate put another way it
comes to into it when it comes to
interaction in language all our
knowledge is contained in stories and
the mechanisms to construct them and
retrieve them so stories are a form of
memory and we share those between
ourselves and we also format them we
format them into books we format them
into film we format them into television
you name it that idea of formatting is
really really interesting basically we
can now say and I’m sure we all kind of
knew this intuitive you already that
stories are therefore a fundamental
aspect of our lives there an absolutely
foundational part of being a human being
and we share them all the time
everything we’re doing we’re sharing
them all the time so let’s now retreat
back to that bright digital corner that
I wanted to talk about in terms of the
storytelling universe and ask another
question this time the question is okay
so what if the format of that story
could be more like us not static but
dynamic social adaptive wouldn’t that be
able to create a ver
a very impressive very creative very
interesting environment for learning yes
yes it would all right so that’s that
bit and then the second bit is Oscar
Wilde who knows the story of the
portrait of Dorian Gray yeah a story for
our times I think so anyway really all
right I’m going to give a little
synopsis because um it’s great to be
reminded of these things so it really is
a time the store too but I think you’ll
see why it’s kind of appropriate to knit
to the now basically a very fortunate
young man um you might say beautiful
young men he’s his influence to pursue a
life of hedonism and high aesthetics so
basically go out party have a good time
just think of yourself and he’s he’s
inspired to do this just as a portrait
of him is being finished by you know a
famous artist and the portraits going
really really well and I’m just you know
that actually it’s interesting the
artist is like no no no III don’t want
anyone to influence this man i’m
capturing this purity of this of youth
basically and then this you know this
head earnest comes in and blows it you
know this last conversation before the
portraits finished so encapsulated into
the portrait is this tainting i suppose
of this character and i’m sure enough
sure enough the portrait gets finished
dorian takes the portrait from the
painter he sort of obviously feels a bit
weird about it he puts it in the attic
and goes about his business of living
large now what happens essentially is
that as he lives large he makes all
sorts of moral decisions some of those
decisions or basically a lot of those
decisions are not so good and the the
portrait in the attic or in the room
upstairs begins to reflect those
decisions whereas beautiful Dorian just
stays beautiful unscathed completely so
I’m spoiler alert it ends badly but
anyway we’ll move away from Dorian now
the point is that
let’s just let’s just fixate on that
that narrative device the the magic
portrait digital narrative can take a
narrative a narrative device like that
and just realize it in these
extraordinary new ways and that in
itself is is very exciting so a little
bit further on now okay this is the last
part of the metaphor and this is
audience participation bit which is
again really rich coming from someone
who loves audience participants well I
love the singing how that was fantastic
actually that’s why I’m still here
basically I gave me a lot of courage
definitely um okay so it might help to
close your eyes for sentence it’s really
it’s really not much but this next
sentence I want you to bring to mind a
photograph that is you’re really
familiar with might be that you’ve been
in your life for a long time and now
think about maybe you’ve looked at that
picture and you thought something’s
different about it this time something’s
changed well obviously the picture
hasn’t changed you’ve changed your
experiences your memories in the world
had changed and so the picture begins to
look a bit different you might
rationalize that but now think about a
book or a film that you know you love
that you’ve seen before and then years
later you come back and you see it again
and you’re like oh yeah that that was
different well obviously it was a static
piece of storytelling and it’s you
that’s changed well what is a bitch
could change you know what if some
through interaction with not just life
and your experiences but the picture
itself what if it could change oh he’s
supposed to like not disappear in a
blink he’s like fade out mysteriously
so yet a digital store a digital tool
set makes possible a story that is
basically adaptive not static
potentially much more like memory and
therefore much more like us which is a
really interesting proposition for
education ok now I’m going to talk about
some work so um digital has touched many
many areas of let’s call it more
traditional storytelling so books are no
longer in print audio like radio and
television have decoupled from
appointment viewing and we can sort of
pretty much see them when we want to now
and listen to them I mean it’s been a
complete revolution for what we used to
call radio it’s extraordinary and yeah
cinema is available for a much longer
period of time now on so many devices so
digital in sort of in certain functional
ways and to some extent aesthetic ways
has already touched storytelling in many
many ways but the one you know the types
that I want to talk about our emerging
and especially this first one so about
five and a half years ago which is like
50 years in internet years by the way so
here’s lot that all but I’m maybe not
that young but some about five and a
half years ago worked on this brilliant
project called Bluebird a are with a
group of people at the ABC and we were
exploring new ways of telling drama and
new ways of and new ways of telling
stories for sure but I think some of the
aspirations we had don’t match the
aspirations we came out with what we
came out with was spectacular in terms
of a series of lessons that can be
applied to education and which I’m very
excited about so Bluebird is absolutely
an example of a story or a picture that
when it’s looked at it’s changed from
being looked at it absolutely took the
audience and brought them to the center
it made them highly participatory and
basically the story of blue bed itself
was a collision between the storytellers
us and the audience
that was very very interesting and very
very complicated but the outcome of that
was magnificent as a learning experience
so Bluebird played out online when we
say alternate reality what we’re talking
about is kind of like this juxtaposition
between reality and so what might happen
in reality and what is happening in
reality so it’s almost like a war of the
worlds for our times if you like of
course you can’t do War of the Worlds
anymore because we’ve got multimedia the
idea of pulling the wool over off our
heads alienates completely so we didn’t
try for that but what we what we do is
we sacrifice the fourth wall arm by
saying okay I know this is an alternate
reality but i’m going to go headlong
into it anyway so people spent a long
time working through the plot of
Bluebird breaking things open moving
that plot forward and in the process
because it was about a quite a complex
subject it was about some geoengineering
they learned a lot of different
multidisciplinary facts and brought
those together into theories and as they
brought their theories and they raised
their theories and socially people
commented on those theories and they all
sort of surface these ideas for up and
the plot as a result move forward I’m
just showing you sort of some slides of
images here so for instance you can see
here someone i’m just about to talk to
it’s a melbourne actually a melbourne
year 11 high school student and his
highly developed theory about the
mesosphere yeah so when when Bluebird
was in full swing one day I received we
received an email from Ken Caldeira who
is a leading climate scientist from
Carnegie Institute for science he was
forwarding an email from from Daniel
Sullivan a year 11 student at the time
at Melbourne high school Daniel had
written to him all by himself having
unlocked these amazing pictures from
Bluebird we can see here sort of flying
saucer like helium balloons that are
going to float up into the stratosphere
and release sulfates to try and you know
test a cloud he had taken this he’d
slightly modified the imagery and it
said it to care
only the leading climate scientists an
expert on geoengineering and said what
do you think do you think this will fly
and it’s like and Ken’s riding back
saying now you’ve got me wondering
whether I’m Daniel strip the dangles
real it was like this fantastic moment
nice little 360 so anyway I would I
would just summarize some the Bluebird
time by saying that this this dynamism
this sort of social curiosity this this
push to the things that seconds talk
we’re asking for you know creative
creative thinking collision of in
interdisciplinary ideas if you provide
that state in a learning environment
it’s very very powerful very powerful
it’s like a pure drop it’s lovely it’s
lovely to watch as well as very exciting
so there’s a flipside of course this
theory which is factual storytelling
factual digital storytelling where of
course you’re not really making
alternate reality as such you’re telling
the story but what we do there is we’ve
called this for a long time now digital
multimedia now digital multimedia is
just a you know a fancy way of saying
bringing all sorts of different types of
media together to tell a story but that
in itself is a fantastic thing to do
because you are giving basically a more
360-degree perspective on something so
I’ve been really fortunate to tell the
story of Sydney Opera House on two
occasions and the thing about the Sydney
Opera House is that the more you
understand about the backstory of this
incredible building the more obviously
it enhances your experience of the place
if you go or just the fact that it’s
masterpiece also an incredibly special
piece of land with a long story
stretching back thousands of years all
of those aspects of the story give you
this fantastic point of view so that’s
what that’s what digital storytelling is
doing a factual weights giving you
context in the broadest way possible so
I’ll just play your little animation so
I’m going to just take one little story
arm which is the
idea behind the shells actually so why
is Sydney Opera House so distinctive or
Sydney Opera House is so distinctive
because of the shells the shells are
what people see all around the world
next to Darth Vader setting up house is
one of those recognizable images in the
world fastening the submission drawings
the competition entry for the Sydney
Opera House but nothing like the shells
that went up I mean of course there was
a similarity you can see the
engineers and architects still hadn’t
found the right solution so it’s it’s
this amazing story about how they got to
it and then of course it’s the edge of
the possible that they could even put it
up and in this one story through
interviews through archival photographs
obviously through standard storytelling
of text new animations that sort of
explain these sort of very complex
principles very very quickly to you in
this sort of encompassed way you get to
learn the story and so I’m talking about
literally within 20 minutes you can be
an absolute expert about the spherical
solution which is great because that’s
something that took more than three
years to get to right so we get to the
VR bit the virtuality this is so what
I’d like to say about that is having
said that digital narratives are you
know this fantastic new way of telling
stories but particularly learning and
yet in the in the realm of education
I’ll sort of talk about this big jump
that digital narrative is making this
year into virtual reality and it’s it is
early days for virtual reality the even
a detect to some extent and certainly
the ideas have been around for decades
and in fact stereoscopy is nothing new
we think the ancient Greeks knew what
they were talking about when it came to
stereoscopy so there’s that but you know
even if even if you look 22 years ago
here’s like a cover I worked on when
Photoshop was four years old virtual
reality 22 years ago but this year with
the fact that it’s a consumer device is
it’s just an enormous moment in the
digital revolution and it’s exactly why
I decided to call my talk this even I’ve
been talking about story
so we may see it as a novelty now but I
think we’ll look back and we’ll see the
sort of a moment in terms of what what
the principles of virtual reality are I
think we’ll see this moment as
significant as when we first saw the
Earth from space which I believe us back
in 1968 thank you that’s my talk [Applause]