Ed machine

When questioned recently whether Machine Corporation was merely one gigantic exercise in online narrative, the reclusive founder of Machine Corporation, Mr Balthasar Cassimir, replied with a knowing wink that Machine Corporation was not in the business of creating stories for the purposes of illusion.

'Machine Corporation creates spaces', he proclaimed. 'Whether those spaces happen to be inhabited by narratives is up for the end user to decide.'

The idea of narratives which derive their form and logic from the parameters of the space that surrounds them is a revolutionary development in the art of interactive story-telling. Mr Cassimir says that interest has been shown from many major multinational corporations in applying the concept in sophisticated marketing campaigns.

However, behind these surface level narratives lie layers of code, in which the genius of the technique resides. These performative texts interact with each other to enable to narrative spaces to exist.

'Narrative spaces are not for the faint-hearted', warns Mr Cassimir. 'Years of labour by both humans and machines are involved in establishing them'.