Surftrail: forking chronologies. Friday, 3 December 2004

surftrail

forking chronologies

I made some progress with my Scream Archive project last night.

I seems now that the stories divide easily into a few categories. We have the local chronology, that is, the increasing details of what actually happened in the robbery. Then we have the background, following two major tracks, converging at the robbery. One is the history of Munch's painting and its reception over the last century and a decade, the other the history of great art thefts and security measures.

After the thieves disappeared, we again follow two threads. One is the story of the investigation: theories, actions, rumours. The other is the many comments from more or less interesting persons.

So far, input is very simple. I just cut and paste in the story and give it a timestamp relative to the chronology of the murder. Of course, some stories cannot be assigned a single timestamp, and then I either cut it into several notes, or just give it a rough timestamp so it will be sorted about right.

Screenshot from Tinderbox. Articles by publication date to the left, article note with timestamp middle, agent sorting articles by timestamp to the right.

I think I am close to having enough stories inserted in my pilot archive to start working with it. I'll start storyboarding and tweaking the Tinderbox file before I input much more. That way I can get a feel of whether the system is working.