Interested in: Formal representation of semantics, user feedback, generative multimedia, reconfigurable discourse. Generative poetry provides a research basis, privileges metaphor, no virtual world inhabited by a character. Cognitive linguistics and algebraic semiotics are the main fields drawn upon. Cognitive patterns, formally represented.

[Narrative poetry provides a good initial "case study," which is something less grand and fundamental than a "research basis" (the phrase used above). I think (hope) it is a good way to express my attitude toward the potential of interactive narrative and my theoretical ideas and foundations without placing a huge amount of effort at this stage toward other related issues (nice graphics, NLG, etc.). The danger is being seen as "the poetry guy" or having the ideas being seen as limited according to the dimensions portrayed by the prose poetry created so far. What I want to convey is a deep structure for semantics as necessary and desirable for interaction and deep and meaningful levels with narrative content, and that many new and experimental forms are ripe to be discovered. The idea of having "no virtual world inhabited by a character" is just meant to emphasize that interaction and narrative can intersect along an endless variety of dimensions. At various times I focus more or less on user agency within the story as a central feature, I do not believe that it has to be *the* defining feature of interacting within a narrative.]

Conceptual blending is used to elaborate metaphor theory.

[It is Fauconnier's claim that blending elaborates metaphor theory, but also that it describes a fundamental feature of human creative thought. Controversies with the theory tend to center around its lack of predictive results and its tendency to subsume many diverse cognitive phenomena under the heading of blending. Nonetheless, Fauconnier has a forthcoming very compelling and careful account of how spatial metaphors for time are not completely accounted for by the two space model in metaphor theory.]

Double-scope stories provide clashing, sometimes cascading conceptual blends. Provides a theoretical model used in Walking Blues Changes Undersea.
[The "double scope" aspect here refers to blends of spaces with clashing (very different in terms of structure and content) frames. It is an amazing aspect of human cognition that, in fact, we do not perceive these blends as clashing and fluidly and extemporaneously perform such blending operations and elaborate imaginatively based on such blends.]

Algebraic semiotics provides typed elements (sorts) for signs in spaces, partially ordered. Constructors build level n signs from signs of level n or less. Morphisms map between spaces. The alloy blending algorithm computes all possible ways to integrate two conceptual spaces, ordered by optimality.

[Algebraic semiotics provides representations for sign systems, including the idea the signs are built from other signs. From computer science and algebraic specification it brings data types (here known as sorts) and a precise formalization of sign systems as semiotic theories. One important difference in using algebraic semiotics as a basis for conceptual integration from other approaches to analogy is this fact that we use theories, as opposed to models, to describe conceptual structures. This captures the idea that we are not describing completely understood set-theoretic type objects, but rather partially understood representations which can always be refined or elaborated. Morphisms map between spaces, and in the case of blending map multiples spaces to spaces.]

Different levels: Polypoems (e.g., “The Girl with Skin of Haints and Seraphs”) are built on the GRIOT system, then a person provides input, then a person performs the poem. A discourse structure is specified for polypoems. Demo of the latest polypoem, “Walking Blues Changes Undersea,” in which the world fills with water as a person goes through a daily routine. Keywords specific to locations change the disposition.
[In the new polypoem "Walking Blues Changes Undersea," the idea that "the world fills with water" refers to undersea concepts being integrated with a mundane, rather pessimistic view of unfulfilling mundane life. This is meant to conjure a more fantastic world with varying emotional tint, depending on user interaction. In this fantastic world the undersea elements can appear as strange, threatening, oppressive, or otherwise...as can the every day elements of the world. In particular the weight and pressure of the sea are pervasive in the content, along with the myth of Atlantis and undersea creatures.]