Research Catalogue

This article explores how The Memory Dealer reveals the multiple literacies at stake in pervasive, transmedia, multimodal drama that open up new relationships between player, text, technology and space. In contrast to much scholarship on digital and media literacy, which focuses on children, the focus here is on adults who are already well versed in a range of media-related literacies, including “new” forms such as videogames and digital media, but are simultaneously not “digital natives”. Three specific forms of literacy emerge: narrative, technological and geographical-logistical. When participants came across moments of difficulty with these literacies, they articulated this failure as a form of personal inadequacy. At the same time, key diegetic components such as music, setting and performance aided their re-learning of how to locate and understand TMD’s narrative.

In this Preludium we clarify the history and scope of The Memory Dealer (TMD), and the methods, ideas, and incentives behind the research presented in the current volume. As a new experimental, “pervasive” drama that exploits digital and personal technologies to create fictional narratives that are then layered onto real world spaces, TMD introduces new possibilities both for storytelling and for the positioning of the audience. As the articles in this volume bear witness to, TMD can be thought of as a new kind of “sound narrative”; what remains the most direct experience of the drama is undoubtedly the soundtrack. As a novel soundworld prompting new responses – responses that can be explored and analyzed – TMD is a rare form of documentation that offers fertile ground for exploration.