Ana Serrano: Yeah, well that is the thing right? I mean that is why you need to look at both. In Michael Joyce's case in the hypertext fiction, you know interesting intellectually, but terrible emotionally. I mean you just don't get the same feeling out of those things. Same with some of the virtual reality stuff. You have interesting technically, but none, there doesn't seem to be that emotional oomph. And while as you know a nine year old, a digital story that she creates out of the digital storytelling workshop has this emotional, this compelling emotional tone to it that we still haven't been able to figure out when we create interactive products. And there has to be, there is an answer there, if you were just to lay, and if you could flatten out all of these things and lay them out on the floor, I know that there is an answer there somewhere.

Interviewer: No, I think that arguably and that is where I respect Janet Murray a lot and I think coming also from a literary background, she has done a good job of kind of looking out and finding points in which emotional engagement are possible within the medium. And actually has done a good job of identifying the places where a larger community has said yes, that worked, and there are few examples, but the examples are certainly what should be, as you said, the light that we follow in trying to develop new media narrative if you will, we'll call it digital storytelling, but narrative concerns within all of these new media forms. Then how did it come to be that you developed this idea of the Canadian Storytelling?

Ana Serrano: Well...

Interviewer: What is it called the Story Telling Engine?

Ana Serrano: The Authoritative Story Engine. Well there seems to be two types of products that have emerged from Media Links Habitat, the new media design program. And I think that we're -- to be bold, I think we have created certain frameworks that are at the transition stage between that linear and you know between the old mediums and potentially the new media. And the two types frameworks I guess that have emerged. That on the one hand we have projects, not just the Great Canadian Story Engine, but also I Matter and Home. Which essentially created non-linear frameworks within linear pieces can be accessed. And the non-linear framework is also not the only important thing. But also that there are certain types of subjects that this kind of thing works with, whereas other subjects it wont. And so in terms of the Great Canadian Story Engine, the question is what is it like to be Canadian? And so the team created this non-linear framework through which one can, the user can travel through Canada by time, by place, by scenes. And then access different stories that are tagged in these areas by ordinary [Canadians] about what to them means, by what being Canadian means to them. And so it's an idea that works well. I think that it's important when you're talking about identity to have and to talk about it as a whole, i.e. as you know I can't talk about my identity in piecemeal, but I can certainly talk about my identity well this is what to me being Ana means. And then if you zoom away from it you can see how...and like individual identities must be and I don't believe that [unintelligible] calls that word fragment itself, I'm not a big proponent of that. So I think that individual identities have some kind of holistic....

Interviewer: Coherency....?

Ana Serrano: Coherence to it or we try to make some kind of coherence from it regardless of whether they are in fact, fragmented or not. But when you move out at the macro level and you see a national identity, then it becomes quite clear that of course, it's going to be fragmented, because there are so many different people that makeup that national identity and so many different circumstances of that etc. And so at the conceptual level it made sense, with this idea to go with creating linear stories, digital stories of people's experiences and then framing it within a non-linear framework so that people can and so that the form of the product matches the form of the conceptual piece which is that people are people and the national identity is about different things. Does that make sense?

Interviewer: No, I mean I think well the argument is really about separation or fluidity, in the sense that idea of fragmentation suggests that our identities even within ourselves or even between ourselves that there is not a fluidity that is happening, meaning am I talking with you right now and you talking to me is changing both of us. And our identities have merged as they are, if you will not only juxtaposed side by side, but also in interacting with each other. And in my mind obviously, I come from more of the school sharing your point of view that in fact, cultures even at the macro level seem to be very fluid. And there is no contradiction there. It's not a great psychological weakness to live in a [syncratic] environment where you believe two things simultaneously that are contradictory. It is within the particular construct of western scientific analytic thinking that you can't live within those kind of dialectical contradictions. But frankly, there are just so few people that are left like that, that they are kind of they are a unique subspecies, even though they happen to have control of the mechanisms of science and you know and power in the world that we live in. But the reality being that most of us don't have any problem being at once into Mickey Mouse and into revolutionary cultural nationalism. Most of us really don't have that big of a problem with that. It's okay to be both.

Ana Serrano: No, absolutely. So I think that is what that is one of the frameworks that we discovered is that there are certain ideas, and then this is something that is different about the New Media Design Program in that we don't go around saying, okay, we need to create a non-linear framework for linear story. It doesn't come from that end either. It comes from the idea. So what is your idea? Oh, you want to do a Canadian identity, well that is kind of a stupid idea. Everyone is doing a story about Canadian identities you know since the turn of the century. And that we keep talking about it until the idea becomes interesting enough that you actually want to stay late and keep talking about it you know? And so these products get born out of a real reverence for good ideas. This was just one of those things where we realized yeah, the old way of trying to determine what Canadian identity is, i.e. by asking the experts just its never worked and so why don't we go to the people? And how are we going to go to the people? And well this medium is actually an appropriate way to do it. And so how are we going to broadcast? How are people going to find other people's stories? Well they can find it the way people find places, you know, geographically, or the way people might remember, memory, time, you know? Or the way people categorize their lives you know, celebrations, regrets or passions or whatever. And then it just became born. And then after that you know that project was done and the next session of students, they were looking at our type of projects and again another good idea emerged which actually has a very similar framework to the Great Canadian Story Engine. But in this case it's about how do teenagers find out what kind of jobs that are out there for them? And how did they really find out about what having a job means to people? And again they started out by saying that we want to do a career database resource on line. And we were going, why would you want to do that? There are so many career resource databases on line, it's so boring. And then they started talking to people, you know how did you get your job? And actually I met someone at a bar. And you know how did you get your job? And then they realize oh, my God, it's through story. These are different ways of approaching things. There is no linear path. But to the person it's their own personal story. And so again, it as a non-linear framework within linear stories and how people got to where they are emerging.