George Legrady Studio

Transitional Spaces : Siemens Kulturprogramm

"I use the term narrative primarily to mean the passage from one state to another. And i use it in an active sense: the fire goes out, I drop the wineglass and it breaks, etc. Such actions are transitional and consist of three states. First there is a siutation, which is disturbed in some way and then results in a new situation that refers back to the first." -13

quotes Tzevtan Todorov:
"An ideal narrative begins with a stable situation which is disturbed by some power or force. There results a state of disequilibrium; by the action of a force directed in the opposite direction, the equilibrium is re-established, the second equilibrium is similar to the first, but the two are never identical." -5

"So, for me, narrative implies an analytical approach whereas phenomena implies a kind of mythifying process--it is the creating of an experience without the revealing of how it works" -15

From his own site:

"Emerging from digital media there is a kind of transformation of several traditions: montage, narrative, temporality. A rethinking or extension of the issues surrounding the simple semiotic constitution of the image, and a concern with the "space" of electronics become vital. In electronic media, a new range of problems invoke not merely the formal issues of juxtaposition and association, but those of the interplay (or collision) of text, image, and sound in space and time. Instead of resolving as a singular images, the flow of associations emerges as a diversified temporal narrative."

Impressions:

Legrady is too generous with his use of the term narratve. Within Transitional Spaces I don't see a narrative component per se. A dynamic display of content is not necessarily narrative, and my research actually focuses on adding a narrative element to an already dynamic content. It seems to me that he applies it to any situtaion that alternates between an active and static state. In my opinion, this periodic motion is not inherently narrative.



I'm interested with the development of a story over time. In some of Legrady's projects, audience participation and the archive of data help define a narrative. From what I can gather of the project from his description, I think he is successful at this in "Slippery Traces." A series of postcards, linked together through a database of associations, can be naviagted by the user to form a meta-narrative. The postcards are chosen to represent certain themes and the personal history of the author. In a way, he is curating the narrative, but allowing the user to define the development of the story. This is a powerful idea. Much of the Calvino's text also revolves around the idea of the reader creating their own narrative out of a fragmented collection of texts. Curation allows the author to narrow the content in such a way that a meaningful story can develop, but at the same time, interaction allows the audience to participate in the development of the story.