Watch Backyard Transformations (1991) Official Trailer

This exploration in combinatorial media and the morphology of narrative integrates motion picture, sound, and text elements in a story construction environment for children. Introduced through a series of card games that elicit spontaneous, improvisational creation, a collection of fanciful characters, unexpected events, and imaginary viewpoints, fabricated in the storyteller’s own backyard, are shuffled and revealed like a deck of Tarot cards. 174 movie intervals furnish scenes and threads from which children construct and narrate original stories. The project was developed in Los Angeles, CA at Alan Kay’s Apple Computer Vivarium Lab.