The Entanglement of Interactive Digital Narratives and the Body: The role of aesthetics and sensory perception

Computational systems have molded the interactions between code and language, increasing the complexity of the feedback loops that connect humans and machines, old and new technologies, and analog and digital processes. When computation is enacted, Interactive Digital Narratives (IDNs) emerge from these interactions, increasing the intermediation network where aspects like source code, executable, and runtime can reveal new dimensions of aesthetic reception. IDNs operate across several technologies and activate modes of performativity through the mediated body, giving rise to new aesthetics of behavior. This paper examines how IDNs change the role of aesthetics and sensory perception and how this impacts the construction of meaning while reading them. Through analyzing the sensory-motor experiences shaped by readers in two case studies, Elsinore (2019) and Wide Ocean Big Jacket (2020), we will examine the interrelation between the idea of movement and the sense-making elements that allow the construction of meaning by readers. Based on four main ontological categories – being-in-the-world, temporality, embodiment, and language – we will look at IDNs as active cognitive agents that, together with readers, give rise to sophisticated acts of interpretation and representation. We will examine how the system affordances are structurally coupled with readers, either through how the narrative system adjusts its content, rhythm, or narrative elements to create a more personalized experience or in the form of text-based responses, character reactions, or changes to the structure and direction of the narrative.