Stories come in many forms, and in a wide range of detail — from casual anecdotes told among friends, to epic Hollywood blockbusters, heavily engineered and rendered in vivid high-definition. But regardless of how they are told, great stories do not simply appear fully formed in the mind; they are inspired by the work of others, crafted with familiar tools, and refined through iteration. The Magic Grant team of Computer Scientists Abe Davis and Mackenzie Leake will provide users with tools that focus on the construction of a narrative (specifically, through the writing of a script or the posing of rough character sketches) and use algorithms to search the Internet for visuals that can be repurposed or remixed to fit that narrative. In doing so, their work will offer an accessible way for untrained users to learn from and build on the work of experts.
