Digital Diaries

Digital storytelling takes the ancient art of oral storytelling and uses simple technical tools to weave a personal story using images, graphics, music and sound, often mixed together with the author's own story voice. It is an emerging art form of personal expression that enables individuals and communities to reclaim their personal cultures while exploring their artistic creativity.

While the heart and power of the digital story is shaping a personal digital story about one's self, family, ideas, or experiences, the technology tools also invites participants to think and invent new types of communication.

Artscope adopted a Digital Diary format that was even more flexible and adaptable than a traditional one, whereby a tale can be a simple combination of still photographs/drawings and voice-overs, or it could be a short animation or live action film, silent, or with music.

The stories themselves evolve from whatever the 'Digiteller' wants to express about their lives. Artscope purposefully did not promote the linear narrative, but encouraged the group to think freely in collating their ideas to record.

Because it focused on personal stories, and the results were achieved in a short period of time with relatively little equipment or resource, the Digital Diaries could be adapted to suit the differing needs of the group.

The programme lasted 12 workshop sessions, in which the group explored the notion of identity and constructed new characters for themselves, building upon their own thoughts, ideas, ambitions and aspirations. For example one participant recreated himself as a Variety Performer and another as a Business Woman. Through drama, drawing, collage making and photography, the group crafted their own narratives.

In the second phase of the project, the group have taken some of their main ideas and extended them into the world of drama. Here, participants are working with a selection of drama exercises and theatre games.