ORSON: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXad6Pa_gWw&feature=youtu.be
Valkyrie Speaker, project director, producer, writer, and Chancellor Undergraduate Teaching Assistant
Jessica FitzPatrick, project faculty advisor, with their Narrative and Technology class of Spring 2019: Jackson Bender, Joshua Briggs, claire Carpenter, Aaron Dai, Christine Dantzler, Sydney Deangelis, Anastasia Dyak, Andrew Farber, Natalie Foster, Celestina Hayden, Caitlin Murray, Remy Samuels, Andrew Schartner, Scott Sheffer, Max Sirianni, Zach Stata, Rakesh Sudhakar, Kelly Sung, Shahwar Tariq, Jack Toth, Connor Tshudy, Lucas Vanscovich, and Maura White
WHAT IS ORSON?
A multiplatform digital ergodic narrative of the speculative genre, ORSON invites viewers to reconsider normal practices of social media composition and what makes our online lives real, especially the idea of "live time" posted content. Exploding form (from 360-video episodes, crossing narrative clues between Instagram and Facebook) and challenging the idea of easily digested content, ORSON has garnered interested, frustrated, and perplexed responses (as ergodic literature tends to do) from its viewers, some of whom message the fictional character to inquire about his health, if he's real, and what is happening to him....
WHAT'S IT DOING AS A CLASS PROJECT?
Narrative and Technology is a course that requires students to practice creative inquiry by working in a few of the forms studied throughout the semester. (E.g. Students applying the principles of Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics to their own short comic strips.) When thinking about different types of narrative construction having students step into the role of “makers” is vital to them being able to critically engage the often taken-for-granted elements of narrative form. Valkyrie and Jessica have collaboratively designed a special section of Narrative and Technology that combines Valkyrie’s expertise in film production, her ongoing work on ORSON, and the type of Narrative & Technology sequencing of assignments and readings from Jessica’s section of the course that inspired the ergodic new media ORSON project in the first place. With the financial support of a Chancellor Undergraduate Teaching Fellowship, Valkyrie has brought her Fall 2018 independent study ORSON project into the classroom as a learning opportunity.
After the Spring 2019 Narrative & Tech class mastered concepts of narratology, ergodic texts, modes of reader/viewer/player agency, story world construction, and considered technological lineages of new and alternative medias, new and alternative medias, Valkyrie introduced the class to basic ideas of film analysis and production and presented the behind-the-scenes processes of ORSON. The class was then invited to help finish producing the last two episodes of ORSON by working in groups on beat sheets, having class workshops to combine group ideas and proposing options for ORSON's Instagram narrative visual composition. The class was also presented with the opportunity to go on-set and assist with filming. Since ORSON is a public piece, students will be able to share their product and observe the “real time” responses to their work as their episodes debut, allowing them to reflect upon the effectiveness of their implemented filmic and social media narrative choices.
COOL! WHERE CAN I FIND ORSON?
Episode 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXad6Pa_gWw&feature=youtu.be
You can engage the full current ‘season’ of ORSON through Facebook (search for Orson Weeks) https://www.facebook.com/orsonalpha
and Instagram https://www.instagram.com/orsonalpha/