Fig 1 (Above): Thumos Prismatic Syntax flow chart
In the future everyone will have the ability to configure media in ways that can be curated and directed to their specifications. AI-driven media will allow self-generated narrative streams that could endlessly generate new vital stories that allow us to see and experience the abstract realities around us through different lenses. This potentiality functions as an antidote to the self-segmenting media trajectory we live with today that mines the population on ideological registers and propagates, amplifies, and instrumentalizes these stories to reinforce them.
Narratives are maps with an underlying premise. We can think of this underlying premise as the skeleton; which in grammatical terms is the story's syntax, or the underlying drive for the story to occur in the first place. The skin that is laid over that skeleton can be many things: people, objects, places, perspectives, and entire representational worlds. The skin of the narrative is shared across time and places; it binds humans together in a shared need to narrativize and bridge it into becoming a part of personal or collective history. Within the syntax of a story is where we find our human centered desires, biases, ideologies, identities, and world views. It is through this lens that stories are both mirrors that reflect back circumstances we feel are familiar, but are also out there in the world; stories that are foreign that we may never experience. We experience these stories as proxies, placeholders, or a working knowledge for what is yet to be.
Prismatic Syntax is an ability to both choose the narrative (syntax) in which a story happens but also overlay a narrative skin through the user's choices. Those choices then give the story its representational structure, aesthetic language, and new overlain plot lines that function as allegory. Throughout recorded history certain syntaxes become recurring motifs and give birth to narratives that share striking similarities with other stories. This is what we refer to as genre in storytelling. Prismatic syntax is a choosing of narrative syntax and its corresponding genre specific container for that story to take place in.
The test bed phase of Thumos would generate five working syntaxes that would be given form through video synthesis. These five syntaxes would be added to over time. They are geared mainly towards a user interface that is of a personal or self-reflexive nature that is outlined in the chart below.
Fig 2 (Below): Primatic Syntax Test Bed Syntax Templates
![]()
All media in each figure below is for case study purposes only. The following examples are meant to indicate the possibility in an adaptation of syntactic video synthesis. The different video syntaxes would be developed with training data from the public domain with fair use rights and follow the narrative syntax templates as outlined above.
Fig 3 (Above): Video synthesis Tests, Allies, Enemies syntax; two dualing characters (an ally and an enemy) morph into one
Fig 4 (Above): Video synthesis Wretched Excess syntax; a transformation takes place rendering Dr. Grant as a human-dinosaur hybrid; pride is his downfall Fig 5 (Above): Video synthesis Maturation syntax; a recognition that a force greater than yourself is controlling your actions; but knowing it is essential to overcome them.
Fig 6 (Above): Video synthesis Maturation syntax; a political compass meme revealing the evolution of media outlets and the ideologies that propagate their gravitational pulls
In the future everyone will have the ability to configure media in ways that can be curated and directed to their specifications. AI-driven media will allow self-generated narrative streams that could endlessly generate new vital stories that allow us to see and experience the abstract realities around us through different lenses. This potentiality functions as an antidote to the self-segmenting media trajectory we live with today that mines the population on ideological registers and propagates, amplifies, and instrumentalizes these stories to reinforce them.
Narratives are maps with an underlying premise. We can think of this underlying premise as the skeleton; which in grammatical terms is the story's syntax, or the underlying drive for the story to occur in the first place. The skin that is laid over that skeleton can be many things: people, objects, places, perspectives, and entire representational worlds. The skin of the narrative is shared across time and places; it binds humans together in a shared need to narrativize and bridge it into becoming a part of personal or collective history. Within the syntax of a story is where we find our human centered desires, biases, ideologies, identities, and world views. It is through this lens that stories are both mirrors that reflect back circumstances we feel are familiar, but are also out there in the world; stories that are foreign that we may never experience. We experience these stories as proxies, placeholders, or a working knowledge for what is yet to be.
Prismatic Syntax is an ability to both choose the narrative (syntax) in which a story happens but also overlay a narrative skin through the user's choices. Those choices then give the story its representational structure, aesthetic language, and new overlain plot lines that function as allegory. Throughout recorded history certain syntaxes become recurring motifs and give birth to narratives that share striking similarities with other stories. This is what we refer to as genre in storytelling. Prismatic syntax is a choosing of narrative syntax and its corresponding genre specific container for that story to take place in.
The test bed phase of Thumos would generate five working syntaxes that would be given form through video synthesis. These five syntaxes would be added to over time. They are geared mainly towards a user interface that is of a personal or self-reflexive nature that is outlined in the chart below.
Fig 2 (Below): Primatic Syntax Test Bed Syntax Templates
All media in each figure below is for case study purposes only. The following examples are meant to indicate the possibility in an adaptation of syntactic video synthesis. The different video syntaxes would be developed with training data from the public domain with fair use rights and follow the narrative syntax templates as outlined above.
Fig 3 (Above): Video synthesis Tests, Allies, Enemies syntax; two dualing characters (an ally and an enemy) morph into one
Fig 4 (Above): Video synthesis Wretched Excess syntax; a transformation takes place rendering Dr. Grant as a human-dinosaur hybrid; pride is his downfall Fig 5 (Above): Video synthesis Maturation syntax; a recognition that a force greater than yourself is controlling your actions; but knowing it is essential to overcome them.
Fig 6 (Above): Video synthesis Maturation syntax; a political compass meme revealing the evolution of media outlets and the ideologies that propagate their gravitational pulls