Points of View(er)s: the viewer as director/the director as viewer in the binary model of non-sequential storytelling in Steven Soderbergh’s Mosaic
Mosaic, the desktop and mobile phone application, created by Steven Soderbergh features a model of storytelling inviting the viewer to determine a personalized narrative path through its episodic structure. A Story Map with hyperlinks offers the viewer a set of binary options to advance the narrative. Soderbergh has suggested that his intent in structuring Mosaic as an interactive app is about allowing the viewer to experience the story from shifting points of view. Though it might be assumed that enabling the viewer in this way – shifting the power to direct the narrative from the creator to the consumer – might be unequivocally welcome, the reviews of the Mosaic app experience in the press were mixed. Mosaic’s breaching narrative interrupts strict identification of the viewer with a traditional protagonist. Is it possible that this was partly the reason for the mixed reception to the interactive version? In exploring this question, this paper seeks to one, offer strategies for non-linear narrative modalities which preserve the scaffolding of viewer identification in traditional narrative structure; and, two, illuminate methodologies for directors creating non-linear multi-platform content to inhabit shifting point of view(er)s in order to enable them to be effective facilitators of collaborative content experiences.