China Social Science Review

No.2, 2023

Challenges and Implications of Digital Interactive Art for Traditional Narratological Criticism

(Abstract)

Zhong Liqian

Contemporary digital art is becoming increasingly “interactive” and its narratives are taking on many new characteristics, posing a clear impact and challenge to traditional narratological criticism. The text of digital interactive art is instantly generated and pluralistically polyphonic; digital interactive art uses computers and software as equipment for development, display and interaction, requiring artistic narratives to adapt to programming rules and algorithmic languages, and giving rise to the emergence of new narratives such as multi-path links and database narratives; in terms of space and time, the narratives of digital interactive art have mostly shifted from linear chronology to disorder and chaos, while in terms of space, multidimensional connections and sprawl are increasingly influencing narrative activities in a powerful way; in interactive narratives, the reader is usually required to hold a certain ideological position or value in advance and bring it into the aesthetic interaction. All of these changes require narratological criticism to reform and innovate constantly based on the classical model and to the ever-changing practice of artistic creation.