Stories from your Future
An interactive text-based narrative set in 2050 Delhi addressing the crisis of water scarcity. The participant makes difficult choices as they navigate through the story; a provocation to reflect on the climate emergency and the agency we hold today.
Touring Plaid:
Matte Lim (Singapore), Srishti Lakhera (India), Swati Simha (India), Vinko Vrsalovic (Spain)
Mentor: Harshit Agrawal (India)
Concept Note
The increasing crisis in resources is gradually rendering our lives to be managed and maintained, with technology playing an important part in the way we make decisions.
Do we have agency to shape our future? Do we really have choice? Is it possible to connect our immediate and pragmatic existence to think of our lives in the long term? And what is to become of choice as we go on to encounter more and more resource scarcity.
These are some of the questions that have shaped our project.
Our initial showcase of Stories from the Future features a user interactive story set in Delhi at a time of extreme water scarcity in the year 2050.
In this immersive text-based experience, the users navigate through CloudBee, an Ai digital governance system that is written by storytellers by observing and understanding the presence of Ai in our everyday life and how it is poised to augment the experience of our future and our decision-making process. At the same time, it is not just a commentary on Ai but also features real-time Ai interaction. We propose to bring predictive research and geographically specific data about the climate crisis and seamlessly weave them into stories with the users being its co-authors.
We hope that as our users navigate through Stories From Their Future, structured according to how things stand today, they will indeed be in a better position, not just to navigate but also to transform the structures that shape what lies ahead.
The world and obstacles we create will be structured on scientific prediction and relevant information will be woven into the story. The user will have to pay close attention to the information about the climate emergency, in order to make appropriate decisions. That way, creating urgency and importance to the available information and the ways we come to understand them.
PROJECT LINK: https://befantastic.z29.web.core.windows.net/
INTENDED AUDIENCE: English-speaking, internet-connected audience across the world.
Detailed Description
“Stories from Your Future” (shortened to SF) is a web-based application accessible from a computer, tablet, or phone. It is built using responsive web technologies and can easily adapt to different device constraints. It is a primarily text-based story game, with images, sound and music supplementing the story-telling experience.
SF requires active participation as part of the work. SF references choose-your-own-adventure books, or more recently, Netflix’s Bandersnatch. The experience will be packaged in the form of a chatbot assistant. SF requires participants to make decisions at various points as the story unfolds. The participant will be given two or more choices for each decision. Each decision made by the participant leads them down a separate path in the narrative. At some points, the participant would also provide text input to advance the story. Ultimately, their choices will collapse into several endings that may be tied to different levels of global warming.
The medium that participants will experience SF through is a fictitious AI chatbot companion known as cloudbee. Cloudbee is imagined as an app used by governments to ration and allocate resources to citizens in a world where countries and cities are fast approaching or living past Day Zero (defined as the day where water levels go so low that municipalities are forced to shut public access to tap water).
Currently, SF offers one story set in New Delhi, India in 2050 that is about a protagonist going through life in a water-starved future. We plan to launch more stories set in other locales so that people around the world can more closely identify themselves as an intricate part of the climate emergency.
In the future, SF may involve additional participant input. For instance, participants may enter information about themselves, including their current location or even a recent photo of themselves. In the background, SF uses these data points to personalize the narrative experience for the participant. The personalization includes the use of location-specific IPCC climate projections to shape the participant-generated story.
Bibliography, References and Tech Stack
Twine is an open-source tool for telling interactive, nonlinear stories : https://twinery.org/
IPCC regional data models for climate projection data: https://github.com/IPCC-WG1/Atlas/tree/main/datasets-aggregated-regionally
“What Could Happen in a World That’s 4 Degrees Warmer” by WIRED: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__Kt_oU9iss
Interactive text-based story game: https://chooseyourstory.com/
Intended Technology & Integrated Tools
Within a gallery setting, “Stories from Your Future” can be set up with a computer terminal or a tablet device, put in fullscreen mode. “Stories from Your Future” is a web app and requires an internet connection. Any internet browser can be used to access it but we recommend Google Chrome.
Sound will be played as part of the gameplay, and headphones will be recommended. Multiple stations can be set up so that a few people can enjoy it at the same time. Alternatively, a QR code can be printed and placed onsite so that visitors can experience the game on their own devices.
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