Dusting off StoryMachine

StoryMachine was originally conceived as a way of illustrating gene expression and consequently first named GenomeThing. It soon became clear, however, that it could be used to represent anything with a temporal dimension and could be viewed as an extension in that direction of Eloise Pasteur's spidergram tool. The story is written as a series of commands in a notecard placed in the controller. When the user selects a story, in the case below one illustrating the role of glycolysis and respiration in energy metabolism, the actors are rezzed and connected sequentially by particle streams, much as in the spidergram. The StoryMachine can also chat explanatory text as the story unfolds.

The value of the StoryMachine probably lies more in giving students a tool to construct dynamic models rather than as a replacement for PowerPoint. However, it might play a useful role in summarising a complex topic, especially if space is at a premium. I certainly found it helpful in scoping some aspects of a proposed build. However, I can imagine other strategies that might ultimately be more effective (and varied) than StoryMachine. Its use also highlighted some ongoing issues, e.g. handling of commas in text, use of textured particles, ability to change the shape and colour of the building blocks and, indeed, to hide or shrink them.

The rather crude machinima were recorded freehand using Taksi. For some reason the WindLight release candidate appeared incapable of responding to the normal key combination for hiding the user interface. Editing was performed in the free version of Camtasia 3 which has editing as well as recording functionality, including addition of captions as shown here as well as interesting zooming potential under its pan-and-scan facility.

The .mov video produced by Camtasia was uploaded to Vimeo which I note now also offers a high definition service. The editing had to be fairly heavy-handed in order to get the footage down to about 2 min. There is a separate video of rezzing a cytochrome.