When we bring to mind the ancient experience of embodied storytelling, we picture myths and memories shared around a campfire at night, a grandmother weaving distant tales, or a parent reading us into an imaginary world when we were young. We think of theatre.
The force of these early experiences has flowed into modern inventions: into books and the printed word, into radio and the ethereal voice carried by wires and air, and into cinema and the moving image. Each medium captures something of the original magic, and changes it. Today we stand on the cusp of new forms of storytelling, which we call augmented storytelling or Living Stories.
it is augemented because it is able to take the human, the original performnce, whether live or recorded and add or restore features to it. We may resptre elements of its liveness, or add to the drama or spectacle, but perhaps the most interesting augmentation is the bringing together of the remote in the present. Let's explore some of these performative possibilites one at a tiem.
Generative AI can is able to converse. This remarkable feature is both familiar and alien. It is still able to suprise us how something dead, can b brought to life. through careful design and staging, it is possible to explore this new form of livenenss in the story telling which by its early and experimental nature will surely be clumsy, until we hone the art.