About

DTC 354, Digital Storytelling, is a class dedicated to exploring the new boundaries which constantly evolving digital technologies have afforded to the ancient art of storytelling. Storytelling has its base in the aural cultures of early man, and has constantly evolved and expanded to encompass the constantly broadening horizon of technology. From the written word, to the mass replication of the printing press, from live music, to recorded music, and radio. From the etchings on the walls of Lascaux to drawings, painting, television, and cinema, storytelling has evolved to use new technologies. Like its predecessors, digital storytelling promises to expand our notions of what is possible in a story.

Artifacts

In the spirit of Radio Nouspace, a project by the course instructor John Barber, the students went about either recording, finding sounds, or recording an oral history in order to practice sound editing and create a short narrative. These pieces were then collected and edited together to create an overarching narrative.

Contents (in order of appearance)

Sean Frazier ("Sean's New Day")
Brittany Davis ("Eddie's Game Day")
Lindsey Norberg ("Morning Routine")
Christopher Pien ("Morning Drive")
McKenzie Wells ("Origins of Ruby")
Erin Carlie ("Shutdown")
Mark Campbell ("Chance Encounter">
Jaidah Dickinson ("Interview with My Father')
Rachel Gellinger ("Connie's Corner")
Jewel Harrington ("Moon Landing Interview")
Julli Krishcko ("Forest Sounds")
Valerie Parrish ("Ruined by Rain")
Kaikee Perry ("Rock Story")
David Schneider ("Car Frustrations")
Jeremey Testerman ("3 Timelines 9/11")
Vanessa Rhodes ("Not My Daughter")
Peter Thompson ("Love. International")
Austin Andersons ("The Struggle of Learning to Swim")
Yun Zoo Oh ("Leul's Story")

Student Projects

Mark Campbell - Save the Server

Chaos reigns down upon the IT department as the E-mail server has crashed. The server Tech was unexpectedly detained. It is left up to Glen a Help desk professional to get in and save the day. One problem. It’s not your normal corporate job.

Erin Carlie - Little Did We Know

The lingering cinders of a desert town mystery flare to life when a young, unnamed blogger stumbles across the last remaining evidence. Our tragic hero strives to quench their curiosity surrounding the long forgotten town and its people. However, could it be that they are in over their head? More info...

Brittany Davis - White America

White America is a social justice narrative told through the voice and visualization through children. The work offers a look inside the minds and daily lives of the stereotypes put on today's African American population in today's society

Jaidah Dickson - Change

Change is a short fictional story made to present for a Digital Storytelling course. It is read primarily through the eyes of a character reflecting upon a significant event in their childhood. The purpose of this tale is to introduce and provide some background on the main protagonist of a larger story I hope to one day share.

Sean Fraizer - Black Coffee

I started with the song and the idea of two people having a cup of coffee together, or not. The idea of how to present this in a digital story then came the idea of a website. Then the idea of of the Jim Carrey website came to mind,and it not working well because it was not apparent how to use it. The website has now been taken down, and I thought I could make it better in this project.

Rachel Gellinger - The Bunny

This story tells the tale of how Alina and Ylva, two demon hunters, got started in their profession. These two characters are actually some of my more recent creations, having only been thought of just a few months ago - very young, compared to my oldest characters, which are around 3 years old. After coming up with the original sketches for these two, I quickly became very interested in thinking up their backstory - who they are, what they did, and what their world was like, and this project was the perfect opportunity to do so. It was very fun to see where this project took me and my characters - I got to see my them go through several different stages in their development, and while I’m not sure I can say they’re quite finished yet, I’m still very happy with how this story turned out!

Jewel Harrington - Indifference

This project is about the environment. I feel that it’s important to remember that there is no other Earth to go to, if we destroy this one. I’m unconcerned about myself, as I do not, and will not have children. I am very concerned that people will be thrown into the Dark Ages, soon. The reliance on fossil fuels, should allow an understanding that they will eventually run out. Most likely, during my lifetime. I believe that if people are concerned about their friends, and their family, then they might want to think about re-salvaging the planet. People must understand that the governments of the world are not doing enough. All of the life on Earth, is not independent from the rest of all other life. All of species of life, is dependent on others. What we do to the Earth, we do to ourselves.

Julli Krishcko - Borsht : The soup of the soviets

This website was created to give insight to the visitor about a classic & historic Soviet dish. It also has the potential to spark the interest of the visitor to further investigate the Ukrainian and Russian cultures and cuisines, and furthermore, act out in this interest and cook these dishes. I hope it will encourage the visitor to engage with this website and the topic and seek out opportunities to discover more about it.

Lindsey Norberg - Lost in VanWA

Recently, there was a long-term care facility called Lincoln Place built in Clark County where my mother now lives full-time. This has been one of the best things that had happened since her diagnosis of Schizophrenia. This experience has motivated me to speak publically about mental illness and homelessness in Clark County to make these same kinds of services more accessible to others. That is why I created Lost in VanWA a one-stop-shop for all community resources in Clark County.

Tamra Norris - Tale of Three Kingdoms

This project uses Facebook posts to tell a fantasy story. The purpose of this is to bring to life the stories created by my brothers and I, as well as to demonstrate the storytelling capabilities of a minimalist medium, as well as dialog-only, character focused storytelling methodology.

Yun Joo Oh - The Mermaids of Jeju Island

Have you ever heard the story of mermaids living on beautiful Jeju Island, off the coast of Korea? The mermaids living on Jeju Island are actually Haenyeo, or Korean female divers. This website contains their story on the timeline. Further, I hope that my digital storytelling website plays a role in promoting ‘Culture of Haenyeo' to more people. Therefore, it eventually helps to add it to the UNESCO List of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

Valerie Parrish - John and Jessica

This is a story of Jon and Jessica and the evolution of their relationship. You hear the story of their engagement, see pictures of when they were younger all the way through their wedding day, and watch a video of where they are at now these days. This is a documentation of a span of several years in a matter of minutes.

Kaikee Perry - Team 121

Delve into the mysteries of space with the top secret case file of Team 121. As a government official, it is your job to review and analyze the text, HTML, images, and audio of the file... but be sure not to share any of this information publicly! This digital story is told through the perspective of a crew member who is responsible for updating the live journal feed for their team. The goal is to find out what truly occurred during their mission! Good luck!

Christopher Pien - Keepsake Box

Keepsake box is a small interactive project built in Unity 5. In Keepsake Box, the player is presented with a cardboard box full of different objects. Each of these can be clicked on and then inspected. Additionally, a small snippet of text will appear below the object giving some context to either what the object is of how it got there. Instead of relying on explicit storytelling, the project requires interaction from the viewer who must put together all of the pieces within the box to form a cohesive story for their collection.

Vanessa Rhodes - Deep Water

This webpage was created for sharing my seven year-old Deep-Water poem. I went through a life altering experience in the military and I wanted people to understand that depression gets worse when you are isolated from people who care about you. In the help section, I included information about suicidal thoughts and steps to get safe.

David Schneider - Sight Unseen

This is the story of two gamblers. It is a media driven recount of a roadtrip adventure to help a best friend purchase a car, "Sight Unseen". It uses written, and visual media to recount the events that took place and the story of which both won't forget.

Nicolaos Skimas - The One Who Cares

This project is the telling of my personal faith journey through multimedia elements. It describes some of the events, emotions, and places that shaped my life and the person I've become. Please feel free to click any part to start reading and listening to the story.

Jeremy Testerman - Digital Canvas

The story behind Digital Canvas is one that we have all experienced at one time or another, the reliance of plan b, or plan c even. I had the idea of doing something similar to this but on a much grander scale but plans fell through and I had to go on to other options. I wanted to make somewhat of a satirical sense of always having backup plans for when other plans don’t follow through and hence digital canvas was made but unfortunately even a plans plan don’t work out and things change.

Peter Thompson - Lunastro

This work is what would be considered a "visual novel" in the gaming industry. As an aspiring game designer I wanted to try my hand at creating a game. While I've played many games over the years I had yet to take the opportunity to sit down and create one of my own. Lunastro became the resulting product of my efforts.

Works Best in Chrome.

Brandon Van Sluis - Creeper

My end goal was to create a horror story that effectively disturbed and/or unsettled my audience. Invoking fear is an art form, one which I aimed to perfect with this project. My earlier outlines called for a focus on the audio element of storytelling. However, as the creative process continued, I made the decision to use a hybrid of fear-inducing audio and still photography to tell my story. At its core this is a ghost story. With inspiring elements from slenderman and the X-Files, I utilized powerpoint to create a slideshow video documenting my encounters with a ghostly figure that began showing up in the background of my photography. To portray this work of fiction, I staged scenes with my friends as actors. Then, visualizing where I wanted the ghost to appear, I directed the positioning of the actor playing the ghost so as to be the most scary

McKenzie Wells - Stellenet

Stellenet is an exploration of a different world, where the Internet continues through dedicated individuals in space. It connects humans from different parts of the galaxy, with telecommunication and physically. Living in such a delicate time in human history has some of us wondering how long we can keep up our consumer habits and lack of personal research.

Examples of Digital Storytelling

There are many methods of digital storytelling, from websites, to video games, to electronic literature and everything in-between. Digital storytelling faces a challenge unique to the medium in terms of the preservability of the works themselves. Many are dependent on specific hardware or software combinations, and will not work otherwise. As such, libraries of not only pieces of digital storytelling, but also the hardware and software required to run them have to be compiled.

Collections like the Electronic Literature Lab attempt to preserve digital storytelling which would otherwise fall into obscurity and otherwise cease to exist.

Here are a few examples of digital storytelling, created by students outside of the Digital Storytelling Class at WSU Vancouver.

The following are based on H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, made famous by Orson Welles’ 1938 radio broadcast. Works by: Ryan Kellipio, Geoffrey Matheson, Morgan Hutchinson, Angela Morrelli, and Brittany Wouden