RELATED TERMS: Avant-garde movements; Ergodic; Historicism; Interaction Design; Literary theory; Music The term aleatory derives from the Latin word alea, meaning dice or game of chance. In composition, whether literary, poetic or musical, it implies the use of the element of chance and dependence on contingencies. Marc Saporta’s novel, Composition No. 1, which is entirely loose-leafed, andContinue reading “Aleatory”
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Agonistic Politics – Mouffe
RELATED TERMS: Arendt; Focalisation; Politics and the Political A Greimasian approach to narrative environments emphasises actantiality, as a complex field of inter-related, systemic or networked inter-actions involving actants of many different kinds, from conventional characters to various kinds of artefactual entities such as climate change and religious symbolism. Nevertheless, there still remains the problem ofContinue reading “Agonistic Politics – Mouffe”
Agonism and Avant-Gardism
RELATED TERMS: Agon; Avant-Garde Movements As is noted under the term Agon, the terms, agonism, agonist, antagonist and protagonist can be of great value in developing and understanding the dynamics of narrative environments, particularly when considered from the point of view of dramatic conflict. Renato Poggioli (1968: 65), furthermore, argues that agonism is a moment of enormousContinue reading “Agonism and Avant-Gardism”
Agon
RELATED TERMS: Actant; Agonism and Avant-Gardism; Antagonist; Dissensus – Ranciere; Dramatic conflict; Focalisation; Human Actantiality; Narratology; Protagonist The word agon and its cognate terms, agonism, agonist, antagonist and protagonist are of great value in developing and understanding the dynamics of designed entities, particularly when considered in conjunction with a notion of dramatic conflict. Agon is aContinue reading “Agon”
Diégèse and Diegesis
RELATED TERMS: Diegesis; Storyworld; Narrative environment design Rather than the process of story-telling, that is, diegesis contrasted with mimesis in Greek philosophy and poetics, the term ‘The diegesis’, i.e. as the English translation of Gerard Genette’s term diégèse, is understood, here, as the world of the story in its entirety. This includes unseen or not presented parts of it, theContinue reading “Diégèse and Diegesis”
Medium and Media
RELATED TERMS: Transmedia, Cross-Platform and Multimedia; Visual Arts and Visual Media; World-Building “To me, the facade of a building is like the first sentence of a novel – it sets the tone, the mood, and hints at what’s to come.” (Alexis Dornier quoted in Sharma, 2025) The choice of what media and materials to useContinue reading “Medium and Media”
Actor-Network Theory
RELATED TERMS: Actant; Actantiality; Actantial model – Greimas; Human Actantiality; Agency; Theoretical practice; Ethnomethodology; Latour; Storyworld; Apparatus – Dispositif; Object-Oriented Ontology According to Jary and Jary (2000), actor-network theory combines post-structuralist insights with detailed empirical studies of scientific practices and technologies, organisations and social processes. It builds on the work of Bruno Latour, John Law and Michel Callon. TheContinue reading “Actor-Network Theory”
Actantiality
RELATED TERMS: Actant; Actantial model – Greimas; Actor; Actor-Network Theory; Affordances; Heterarchy; Human actantiality; Lack, Loss and User-Centred Design Practices “Why should you always have live things in stories? said the Professor. “Why don’t you have events, or circumstances?” “Oh, please invent a story like that!” cried Bruno. The Professor began fluently enough. “Once a coincidence was taking a walkContinue reading “Actantiality”
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