Summary
Narrative Forms is Culture Hack Labs’ model of how narratives work. It treats narratives as more than stories or messages: they are “complex, adaptive, evolutionary systems” that can evolve, mutate, die out or merge. Each form has a visible material layer – speech, images, text, clothing, art – and a hidden virtual layer that shapes it.
The model traces a loop between the two. Someone sees a meme and feels something; frames and metaphors give the feeling a meaning; ideologies turn the meaning into an intention; the person shares it. It draws on embodied cognition, the view that thinking arises from brain, body and environment together.
Rationale
A practice precedent for us, from Culture Hack Labs. Their loop follows a told story through one person; we’d add that the hidden layer is also built, breathed and lived, in places and relationships.