Geometric Representations for Subjective Time in Digital Narratives

Subjective time refers to our living experience of time. We develop subjective timescapes i.e., spatial representations for time as experienced by story characters. Each such timescape describes how a character perceives and shapes story time. We show how these spatial constructions are compatible with relevant psychological and phenomenological studies on subjective time. Timescapes allow us to model characters as operating from particular temporal perspectives mediated by memory and anticipation at various points in a story and to provide geometric mappings of these concepts. We apply these ideas in a visualization environment for digital narrative plot structures.