| Star Trick: The Next Iteration is an experimental television "program" based on a probabilistic algorithm that organizes a database of modular footage into an endless "episode" of sci-fi spaceship drama. The computer-based video resembles the visuals and tropes of nineties-era Star Trek shows. However, rather than parody or pay homage, Star Trick: the Next Iteration (ST:TNI) is an interactive installation in which the viewer may alter the character of the piece by choosing which actor plays which character, and which music will be played. ST:TNI is a "story" of generic characters in an outer space exploration, but it is also an exploration of the modular character of generic television stories (what I call Absurd Procedural Fractals) and generative digital media. The system itself is foregrounded in the work and shares equal visibility with the ideas and "stories" emerging from it.;In this written thesis, I address my focus on formal structure in ST:TNI. The mechanical nature of the media I used helped me conceptualize the narrative while also considering the computer's syntax and grammar. ST:TNI is therefore a television program in the truest sense. I discuss how the digital computing concepts of database, algorithm, recursion, and iteration can be applied to classic television forms and genres. Finally, I examine the concepts of paradigmatic sets and character with regard to narrative and database by connecting the idea of the "television program" to Theatre of the Absurd and the ideas of media theorists such as Marshall McLuhan, Lev Manovich, and Alex Galloway. |
