Center for Digital Storytelling Comes to the GSE

Above the breezeway on the second floor of Tolman Hall, a former classroom is now crowded with iMacs and audio and video equipment. This room has been transformed into the site of an innovative project, the Center for Digital Storytelling (CDS), that aims to merge the latest in cyber technology with the ancient art of telling tales. "Digital storytelling seeks to engage its audience in narrative as a thoughtful, intimate, emotional, and meaningful experience," said Joe Lambert, co-director of the center with Nina Mullen. The Center plays an active role in UC Berkeley's College Writing Program, and offers a special section of College Writing that focuses on the use of multimedia in narrating personal stories.

Watching and listening to a digital story is a bit like seeing a personal documentary film on a computer screen. The stories run for a few minutes, and the makers of these stories are often brand new to the high-tech equipment they use. They quickly master the techniques in a one-semester class or in an intensive weekend workshop. Their subjects vary enormously.

One digital story features Neil Marcus, a performer and writer who suffers from a spastic disorder that makes him essentially a paraplegic. His narrative, titled "I just had to laf," uses his own distinctive and hard-won voice and handwriting, superimposed over a series of photos of Marcus on his own and with friends. Marcus uses the digital story to comment in a moving and frank manner on his body and the way people react to it.

An entirely different digital story, "Murder on Smuttynose Island," was created by Professor Paula Petrik of the University of Maine. Petrik uses digital storytelling to demonstrate new ways of teaching and researching history. Starting with the actual account of a grisly nineteenth-century axe murder on a remote New England island, she weaves together images from old letters, newspapers, and photos, with the computer simulating the movements of a camera zooming in and out and panning across graphics. Her narrative over these images shows how current historians are able to use new outlooks and modern methods such as computer imaging to reopen issues that were thought to be closed cases.

Many of the stories, though, are extremely personal accounts of family history or mementos of lost loved ones. Part of the idea of this multimedia art form is the importance of claiming one's own story. "There is an inclusionary aspect to this," comments Lambert, "in the sense that 'everyone has stories to tell.'" Even though these short movies are narrated and produced by non-professionals, there is surprising self-possession in the voice-over narrations, and many layers of texture in the graphics and musical backgrounds.

CDS intern Thenmozhi Soundarajan attributes some of the storytellers' calm and the complexity of their work to the preparation that Lambert and Mullen do prior to the intensive workshops. "Nina and Joe often review the scripts by e-mail before the participants come in," she explained. "They work on refining them so that the participants develop a good idea of what they want to do even before they start."

GSE Professor Glynda Hull summed up the potential benefits of having the Center for Digital Storytelling in Tolman Hall: "Digital storytelling represents a new technology for composing, one that can complement traditional essayist techniques, but that also departs from the old and long-valued ways of communicating in print. I think it's wonderful that Berkeley is offering students a chance to learn these latest composition techniques and to juxtapose them to the essayist tradition. Knowing how to create a digital story, one that intermixes text, image, video, and sound, is important for today's teachers, too."

For more information on the Center for Digital Storytelling, including information on their workshops, visit their website at: www.storycenter.org.

Nina Mullen and Joe Lambert, co-directors of the Center for Digital Storytelling