Digital life storytelling and dementia: linear narratives or lines of flight?

Abstract

Digital storytelling using a standard software package such as Photostory 3 can work to impose a linear format on a slideshow of visual images. By contrast the forms of self-expression adopted by people who have a diagnosis of dementia can often be digressive, circuitous and rhizomatic, corresponding more closely to Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of ‘lines of flight’. Preparatory to completing digital stories with ten people with a diagnosis of dementia who were living in a long-term social care environment, we used both linear (visual narrative) and non-linear (collaging) storyboarding techniques. This presentation draws on examples of both, together with extracts from one completed digital life story, to highlight why we need to avoid linear form dictating digital storytelling practice.