Publications

When Place Becomes Character: a critical framing of place for mobile and situated narratives

Davenport G

mf

2005

in Martin Reiser (ed), The Mobile Audience: Art and New Technologies of the screen, BFI, 2005.

Abstract

Travel through place is an immersive experience. The confluence of geography, history, and culture encountered within a place reflects and discloses the journey of civilization. Cities -- positioned as the matrix of accumulated and transformative civilization -- have fascinated and inspired storytellers from Homer to Stendhal to Dickens and beyond. More than any other novel, James Joyce's Ulysses invites us to participate with its characters in an almost real-time navigation through a genuine urban space. Joyce's Ulysses is a picaresque tale: as an audience, we follow the protagonist's journeys through a sensory surround of particular urban impressions; and, as the narrator in a moment turns our attention to the thoughts of a woman waiting, we understand that we have been seduced by the narrative potential of a place where the sensory surround, culture, rituals, and daydreams that it supports are more important than overt action...

http://mf.media.mit.edu/pubs/other/CharacterPlace.pdf