At Nightfall, the Goldfish

Melody Mou,

2021

Medium : Literature, Code

At Nightfall, the Goldfish is an interactive digital story, exploring the new possibility of computational technologies to present the nonlinear narrative. This writing applies the first person for each character telling their life experience. Each chapter is closely related to another. There are many symbols of life and death, indicating the topic of metempsychosis in this piece. Readers are provided with full freedom to decide the reading order and to interpret.


The story applies several narrative strategies, including maze narrative, circular method, and leaping strategy. The author designs the surreal plot with entangled interlinks on purpose. One more layer is set in the digital form with interaction, creating the atmosphere and revealing the underlying implication. The interface utilizes codes for interaction and a shader based on a jQuery Ripples plugin to create the water wave effect. The author tries to break the limitation of the online reading experience by creating the bridge between vision and tactile sense. The water wave also has multiple meanings as a vital sign of the intervening substance for the circle of life.





Artist Bio

Melody MOU / 牟培静 is a new media artist born in Shanghai and living in Hong Kong. She is currently studying for a BA in Arts at School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. She is interested in combining digital tech and visual art into her artistic vocabulary. Her work focuses on narrative strategies, moral philosophy, and multispecies rights, with the development of her observation towards this world.





Special Thanks

Dr. Daniel Howe