Recently, my mother was moving. As she cleaned out the house, she found many remnants of my childhood. One such item was a book my grandmother gave me. Not just any book mind you, a fully illustrated book that was accompanied with text and music! It was Peter and the Wolf, a fairy tale by Sergei Prokofiev. Sergei was a composer, but wrote this story as a way to introduce children to music. It was actually commissioned by a Moscow theater in 1936, and Sergei was so excited by the idea that he wrote the story in just four days. The original composition was meant to be narrated by a single actor, and accompanied by an orchestra. All the parts were arranged so that certain instruments would represent characters in the story. Peter has a grand theme played by the whole string section, the Wolf has sinister french horns playing behind him.
Reading is a wonderful experience, but there is also something to be said for other forms of media. Liturature, music, graphic arts, and even cinema can be equally entertaining. Its also good to cultivate appreciation of all these forms. In 1936, when Sergei penned this story, it was a revolutionary idea to combine storytelling and the modern orchestra. These days it may not seem as much, because we are so inundated with the different types of media that we expect a certain amount of overlap. I am intrigued by the idea of combining medias to create a singular work, and it makes me wonder what the future could hold for storytelling.
In Star Trek: The Next Generation, the crew of the enterprise often partake in stories told on the holodeck. There were even episodes where they mentioned famous holo-authors. The idea that there were guys who created interactive stories on a mind-blowing computer platforms, which allowed people to actually take part of the story is awesome. If the technology existed, I would probably be a holo-addict. I'm not so sure that the holodeck is as fantastical as it seems though; in a hundred years or so, who knows what technologies might assist us in telling stories to one another?
This is something that I will probably give quite a bit of thought to. I would love to find new ways of telling stories, mixing medias and creating new experiences. What do you think about mixing media? What are some multimedia stories that you love?
