• Journal of Korea Game Society
• /
• v.8 no.4
• /
• pp.45-53
• /
• 2008

This paper analyzed the narrative construction of ‘World of Warcraft’ which is very popular worldwide. Narratology and ludology should be interrelated in the larger area of art, rather than existing as separate fields. Dramatic narrative constructions of game would be made when the rules of game emerge with the circumstances of play. This paper reviews how 'World of Warcraft' generates its tremendous popularity through analyzing the overall narratives of 'World of Warcraft' and sub-narratives such as quest, PvP and hunting systems. The distinctive feature of this game is its well-designed story flow which is emerged by both underlying linear original story and non-linear multi-scenario that offers rich interactivities to the game users.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
• /
• s.29
• /
• pp.61-75
• /
• 2012

The essay explores the narrative structure of the classical Chinese feature animation, (a.k.a. Da Nao Tian Gong, 1964). The film is presented with a modular structure which is quite unique compared with the storytelling in feature animated films from other cultures, but could be connected with the tradition narrative structure in Chinese Zhanghui style novels in Ming and Qing Dynasty. By relating the original text of the story, the 16th century novel Journey to the West (a.k.a. Xi You Ji), with the film , the essay addresses the question of how the narrative tradition in Chinese classical literature influenced the Uproar in Heave for its segment narrative structure, character driven storytelling strategy and mirrored repetitive 2 plot lines. The subject of this essay is even more significant after the restored 3D version of was re-released in the spring of 2012 and became one of the best-selling animated feature film in the history of the country.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
• /
• s.40
• /
• pp.397-421
• /
• 2015

Aristotle's Poetics is the earliest work of dramaturgy. It explains some of the most important narrative notions, for example, Mimesis, Katharsis, Mythos(Plot), Ethos(Character), Anagnorisis and Peripeteia. etc. Aristotle considered the plot which is the arrangement of events, as the most important element of drama. This paper presents an example of a plot configuration as an alternative to the traditional narration used since Aristotle. Dead Island, developed by Techland and published by Deep Silver, is one of the most successful action role-playing survival zombie video games. Its trailer, the Winner of Gold Prize for Internet Film at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in 2011. Since the purpose of the trailer is to attract the audiences/gamers to the film/game, it has generally a similer narrative method from its own works. But Dead Island trailer is different. We treat this trailer as an short animation. It could be a new example of the non-linear narrative by the control of the time for example, temporal arrangement, direction and speed. We analyse all shots of Dead Island's trailer with Poetics' rules and with $G{\acute{e}}rard$ Genette's some narrative notions for example temporal order and duration. Furthermore we look for how to maximize the audiences' curiosity by the adjustment of the time, combined with its shocking images.

• Smart Media Journal
• /
• v.12 no.1
• /
• pp.77-91
• /
• 2023

Interaction methods and technologies for mutual exploration based on user behavior are evolving variously. Especially, in recent years, with the development of a wide range of sensors, they have developed from contact to non-contact methods. However, developers' senseless definitions of the interaction methods have made the exploration process quite complicated, which rather creates the hassle of users needing to learn the interaction guide defined by the developers before experiencing the exhibition contents. In this context, in order to make visitors smoothly communicate with exhibition contents, a preliminary study on easy interaction for users of various ages is needed, and in particular, research on improving the usability of user interaction is also essential when developing non-contact exhibition contents. So, in this study, a method to reduce the confusion between developers and users was sought by researching non-contact interaction that could be universally interacted with in the field of exhibition contents and proposing behavior designs. First, based on the narrative structure of cultural resources, existing studies were reviewed and the points of interactions as cultural contents were derived. Then the most efficient search process was selected among non-contact behaviors based on hand gestures that allow users to naturally guess and learn interaction methods. Furthermore, on the basis of the meaning of non-linear narrative-based interaction and the analysis results of spatial behavior elements, affordance behavior with high learning effect and efficiency was derived. Through this research process, an action that helps users to understand non-contact interaction naturally in the process of exploring exhibition-type cultural contents and to utilize non-contact interaction in the process of immersion in exhibition contents is proposed as a final model.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
• /
• v.28
• /
• pp.17-36
• /
• 2012

This essay places the South Korean film Thirst (2009) within Park Chan-wook's oeuvre as a filmmaker notorious for graphic depictions of violence and revenge. Park's use of dark humour in his films, which is emphasized in Thirst perhaps more than ever, allows for a more self-aware depiction of violence, where both the viewer and the protagonist are awakened to the futility of revenge. This ultimately paints his characters as fascinatingly crazy - simultaneously heroes, villains, and victims. Film theorist Wes D. Gehring's three themes of dark humour ('man as beast,' 'the absurdity of the world,' and 'the omnipresence of death') become most obvious in Park's most recent film, which pays closer attention to character development through narrative detail. Rather than portraying the characters as sentimental, dark humour depicts their misfortunes in an alternative way, allowing for consideration of such taboo subjects as religion, adultery, and death/suicide. These issues are further tackled through Thirst's portrayal of its vampire protagonist, which ultimately de-mystifies the traditional vampire figure. While this character has more often been associated with romance, exoticism and the mystical powers of the supernatural, Thirst takes relatively little from the demons of Nosferatu (Murnau, 1922) and various other Dracula adaptations, nor the romantic figures of Interview with the Vampire (Jordan, 1994), and Twilight (Hardwicke, 2008). Instead, it is part of a much smaller group of contemporary vampire films, which are rather informed by a postmodern reconfiguration of the monster. Thus, this paper examines Thirst as an important contribution to the global and hybrid nature of those films in which postmodern vampires are sympathetic and de-mystified, exhibiting symptoms stemming from a natural illness or misfortune. Park's undertaking of a vampire film allows for a complex balance between narrative and visuals through his focus on the Western implications of this myth within Korean cinema. This combination of international references and traditional Korean culture marks it as highly conscious of New Korean Cinema's focus on globalization. With Thirst, Park successfully unites familiar images of the vampire hunting and feeding, with more stylistically distinct, grotesque images of violence and revenge. In this sense, dark humour highlights the less charming aspects of the vampire struggling to survive, most effective in scenes depicting the protagonist feeding from his friend's IV in the hospital, and sitting in the sunlight, slowly turning to ash, in the final minutes of the film. The international appeal of Park's style, combining conventions of the horror/thriller genre with his own mixture of dark humour and non-linear narrative, is epitomized in Thirst, which underscores South Korea's growing global interest with its overt international framework. Furthermore, he portrayal of the vampire as a sympathetic figure allows for a shift away from the conventional focus on myth and the exotic, toward a renewed construction of the vampire in terms of its contribution to generic hybridization and cultural adaptation.

• Journal of Korean Theatre Studies Association
• /
• no.53
• /
• pp.167-202
• /
• 2014

When video composes mise-en-scene during the performance, it reflects the aspect of contemporary image culture, where the individual as creator joins in the image culture through the device of cell phone and computer remediating the former video technology. It also closely related with the contemporary theatre culture in which 1960's and 1970's video art was weaved into the contemporary performance theatre. With these cultural background, theatre practitioners regarded media-friendly mise-en-scene as an alternative facing the cultural landscape the linear representational narrative did not correspond to the present culture. Nonetheless, it can not be ignored that video in the performance theatre is remediating its historical function: to criticize the social reality. to enrich the aesthetic or emotional reality. I focused video in the performance theatre could feature the object with the image by realizing the realtime relay, emphasizing the situation within the frame, and strengthening the reality by alluding the object as a gesutre. So I explored its two historical manuel. First, video recorded the spot, communicated the information, and arose the audience's recognition of the object to its critical function. Second, video in performance theatre could redistribute perceptual way according to the editing method like as close up, slow motion, multiple perspective, montage and collage, and transformation of the image to the aesthetic function. Reminding the historical function of video in contemporary performance theatre, I analyzed two shows, Schaubuhne's Hamlet and Lenea de Sombra's Amarillo which were introduced to Korean audiences during the 2010 Seoul Theatre Olympics. It is known to us that Ostermeir found real social reality as a text and made the play the context. In this, he used video as a vehicle to penetrate the social reality through the hero's perspective. It is also noteworthy that Ostermeir understood Hamlet's dilemma as these days' young generation's propensity. They delayed action while being involved in image culture. Besides his use of video in the piece revitalized the aesthetic function of video by hypermedial perceptual method. Amarillo combined documentary theatre method with installation, physical theatre, and video relay on the spot, and activated aesthetic function with the intermediality, its interacting co-relationship between the media. In this performance theatre, video has recorded and pursued the absent presence of the real people who died or lost in the desert. At the same time it fantasized the emotional aspect of the people at the moment of their death, which would be opaque or non prominent otherwise. As a conclusion, I found the video in contemporary performance theatre visualized the rupture between the media and perform their intermediality. It attempted to disturb the transparent immediacy to invoke the spectator's perception to the theatrical situation, to open its emotional and spiritual aspect, and to remind the realities as with Schaubuhne's Hamlet and Lenea de Sombra's Amarillo.