logo iconThe Living Glossary of Digital Narrative

Terms starting witha

Affordances
Possible interactions that a tool, medium, or environment offers to its users, shaping the way content can be created, experienced, and understood
# AI Hallucination
Phenomenon where an AI model—usually an AI chatbot powered by Large Language Models (LLMs) or computer vision programs—produce a confident but factually inaccurate or nonsensical responses or perceives objects and patterns that do not exist
# Aleatory
Elements of a work that are left to chance, often relying on randomization algorithms to affect the narrative or poetic outcome
# Algorithmic Folklore
Folklore that emerges from vernacular creative practices inflected by the growing global relevance of algorithmic media
# Algorithmic Narrativity
The combination of the human ability to understand experience through narrative with the power of the computer to process and generate data that results in the development, modification, and distribution of narratives
Alternate Reality Game (ARG)
Interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements, to deliver a story that can be influenced by players' actions
# Anamorphosis
Distorted projection or perspective requiring the viewer to use special devices or occupy a specific vantage point to reconstitute the intended image or message
Appropriation
Use of pre-existing media or texts within a new work, often to critique, comment upon, or pay homage to the original source material
# Archetype
A recurring or recognizable narrative pattern – figure, image, motif, or plot, such as the hero, the great mother, the descent into the underworld, or the rags-to-riches tale – whose repetition across cultures and periods has been taken as evidence of a universal psychic structure, a shared literary grammar, or an act of abstraction that produces the similarity it claims to find
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Simulation of human intelligence processes by computer systems, to create or interpret content in innovative and sometimes literary ways
# Augmented Reality (AR)
Technology that superimposes computer-generated enhancements atop an existing reality, enriching the user's perception of the real world with digital information and media
# Authoring Software
Tools for creators to design, develop, and publish interactive or multimedia stories without the need for advanced programming knowledge
# Autopoiesis
Aesthetic content and conceptual structures generated from internal, self-replicating and reflective processes, often constructed partially by Artificial Intelligence
# Avatar
Digital representation of a user or character within a virtual environment, allowing for interaction and identification within digital narratives or online spaces