Tools for Use Before the Virtual Hearth
There are many ways to live before the hearth. They will be explored here through time. However, two premier ways of such living involve the audio and the visual. In this regard, storytelling encompasses both. So a priviledged way of being before the virtual hearth will involve devices or tools that help us to generate, tell and share stories.
The Twine application will take centre stage. It allows us to create and disseminate stories with text, images and sound. A related instrumentality will be the Inform authoring system. While the focus of Inform is typically limited to text alone, it is still a powerful tool for telling stories that can be quite immersive. Both of these applications are intregally associated with InterActive Fiction. However, they can also be engaged in terms of non-fiction storytelling as well.
As indicated above, we will be going beyond what can be done with these two tools. We will aslo explore how they function and why it is important to know how tools work and how they can be retooled or repurposed as needs change and opportunities arise. The About page outlines what this will entail.
There are other tools that will support these two. They include, but are not limited to, audio manipulation tools such as Audacity or video tools such as OpenShot. Of course, there are the old tried and true tools such as Inkscape, Gimp, and Scribus, as well as many others.