Some people haven’t understood me. In the beginning many in my university department didn’t understand what the heck I was talking about. You want to do a thesis of what-media? I applied to the creative writing department, and they sent me to the media department. It’s about media, right, not writing. Hmmm. Others didn’t understand why I would do a PhD when I’m keen on pursuing my creative passions? Why on Earth would anyone do a PhD if they don’t plan to work in academia? It’s like walking the Sahara before you write a book. Well, funny you should say that. I watched an interview with writer Paula Constant a few weeks ago (transcript, video). She wanted to be a writer. But before she wrote her first book she decided to walk across the Sahara. She needed to take that journey before she wrote. It was a perfect expression of who she is. A long road to a destination, but a path that is truly her own. This is where I think people who knock others, who claim that they can’t be X because they also do Y have never taken a risk themselves, have ever been courageous enough to be truly different…indeed, to be themselves.

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
 e.e.cummings

One of the things Paula Constant said was that she had never completed something. I have completed things in the past, but nothing substantial. I wanted to do the PhD because I wanted to explore every aspect of a phenomenon I was passionate about. I wanted to research the past and present, I wanted to understand. I also wanted to train my mind to stay on one thing. Ha! At least I’ve learned to complete multiple things. But the training of the mind was important. I wanted to learn how to form an argument, to have knowledge that can be communicated in a sophisticated manner. I was very surprised by what I discovered.

I entered academia being bewildered by big words. It frustrated me and so I understand when others are frustrated too. Why can’t they just say the same thing in accessible language? I’ll tell you why. Experts delve deep. Discussions in academia last for decades, centuries. It is amazing, you don’t just turn up and say this is what I think! You enter a rushing river in which people throughout time have been pondering the same thing. Over that time the discussions get more and more specific. Generalisations don’t work, and terms have years of significance behind them. This isn’t just in academia. Any area of specialisation leads to jargon. So, big words aren’t about being a wanker (though a small population are like that), they are about communicating a specific point.

I also learned a lot about seeing something you create through to the end. I mean, this thesis has been in my life for years. I had to learn to keep going no matter what, to force myself to work. I’ve learned the easiest and most fun stage is definitely the wide exploration stage at the beginning. I’ve learned writing is research too. You discover things while you write. I learned that the hardest and darkest part of a major project is the final leg. This was for me in part due a significant death.

In the last four years, all of my significant female elders have died: my maternal and paternal grandmothers, and most recently mother. I know most people don’t have good relationships with their parents, and I know many are not brought up in loving environments, but I did and I was. My mother was an extraordinary woman and my only parent growing up. My life is less without her.

In fact, while writing the thesis was the hardest thing I have done, the worst part was finishing it. It broke my heart to finish it because it meant the end of a chapter of my life that included my mum. Just putting it online makes the end of this chapter undeniable. She isn’t here to be a part of it. It is the last leaf on the autumn tree. I remember when I was cleaning her blood out of the carpet (she hit the floor when she collapsed). I relished it because I could smell her, she still had a life-force of some kind, she was present. The heart-wrenching part was not cleaning her blood, but removing the last bit. Until there was no stain, nothing. Gone. Releasing the PhD is that last moment for me all over again. As long as my PhD is not released, I’m still in that world where I was struggling to finish it and she was there with me.

But she was there at my undergraduate ceremony, with my Granny too (see pic). And a couple of months before she died, she sent me a graduation gown for PhD ceremony. She was magically clever like that. Yes, now I have to leave that chapter of my life behind. She’ll be with me in other ways.

I am actually lucky to have a gift to give to the world as part of this crossing-over. It isn’t the thesis I thought I would write, it isn’t the thesis I wanted to write, but it is what I decided to give at this point in time. It lovingly embraces the complex breadth of the area, and so most of you with it. It is in many ways a mirror of you all, the beauty I see in you.

In the name of all who have created their own path, walked their own Sahara, and had the courage to follow their own star, I give you what is hopefully my first substantial gift to the world: my PhD.

Northern Lights. Volume 10 (2012). Volume editors: Mette Mortensen & Eva Novrup Redvall. Re-thinking Film and Media Production: Creativity, Convergence and Participation

Deadline for abstracts: December 15, 2010
Full articles to be delivered on March 15, 2011.

The 2012 volume of Northern Lights will focus on the renewed interest in film and media production. In recent years there has been a shift across a broad field of media and cultural studies from primarily devoting attention to the finished product, oeuvre or reception to also considering production practices. On the one hand, technological changes in the modes of production and distribution have caused a blurring of boundaries between media consumers and producers. On the other hand, concurrent with a heightened awareness of the project-based nature of work in creative industries, a scholarly interest in creative collaborations, choices and constraints as well as institutional contexts have emerged. New empirical topics along with new theoretical and analytical tools have gained ground within film and media research in response to this development. Areas of studies such as ‘screenwriting’, ‘creativity’ and ‘convergence culture’ are appearing, just as familiar theoretical keywords like ‘production aesthetics’ and ‘cultural production’ are being rethought. Acknowledging that the conditions of production have a great impact on the framework for reception, production analysis and theory may pave the way for new insights into the aesthetical, technological, ethical, ideological, political and economical aspects of film and media.

In particular, the editors will consider articles relating to the following themes:

•    Analyses of creative work and production practices through theoretically informed case studies.
•    The changes brought about by user-generated content and other participatory practices to different media formats and to the larger contexts, e.g., of popular culture, the public debate and politics.
•    The convergence of different media systems setting new conditions for the modes of production.
•    Collaborative practices in film and media production, e.g., how they challenge the traditional notions of oeuvre and authorship.
•    Studies of institutional frameworks and power structures in the film and media industry globally as well as nationally.
•    Changes in the roles and self-perceptions of film and media professionals prompted by new modes of production.

Deadlines:

Abstracts/papers: December 15, 2010
Full articles: March 15, 2011
Publication: January 1, 2012

Abstracts/papers should be sent to the volume editors: Mette Mortensen, University of Copenhagen (metmort@hum.ku.dk) and Eva Novrup Redvall, University of Copenhagen (eva@hum.ku.dk).

EVOKE trailer (a new online game) from Alchemy on Vimeo.

What is interesting is that already — while there has been much publicity before the game, it officially started on March 3rd — a parody has been created. Invoke is described as an “ARG to save the World Bank”.

It isn’t the first parody of an ARG or online game of course. There was a similar one for I Love Bees called CAPitALLism; and more general fun ones like I Love Beer. Last Call Poker had Fast Mall Joker. Jay Bushman wrote a short parody scene of The Beast, as if the true protagonist was Coroner Sweborg [pdf]. But these parodies have not just been created around large-scale (or at least well promoted) branded entertainment ARGs. Small independent ARGs also have parodies too, like Chasing the Fish for Chasing the Wish; GuysGuise webpage for Lockjaw…and I’m sure there are many others (tell me!). There have also been general ARG parodies (parodies of ARGs in general or all ARGs, not a specific ARG), such as Seen Steve. There was even a #pretendargfest (a festival in Twitter for those who weren’t at the 2009 ARGFest). I was honored to be invited to speak on the future of ARGs. I spoke about ARGs in space. And, in a slightly bigger context, Penny Arcade has been running a parody of fantasy franchises since 2005 (it started with this comic and blog post, and has continued with many comics and an extensive wiki of the fantasy ‘world’ for years).

But what I find interesting about these parodies is two things. 1) what it says about nature of the forms; 2) the design issues associated with them. On the first, let’s look back at some discussions about why parodies emerge in the first place. A key insight was introduced by philosopher and semiotician Mikhail Bakhtin in his theory of dialogism. Within dialogism is the notion of the contre-partie. To Bakhtin, there is no discourse (whether it be artistic, rhetorical, religious etc) that doesn’t have its own double, its own parody. A contre-partie provides:

the corrective of laughter and criticism to all existing straightforward genres, languages, styles, voices; to force men to experience beneath these categories a different and contradictory reality that is otherwise not captured in them (Bakhtin, 1981 [1930s], 59)

In order for someone to parody an ARG, or any similar formats, it needs to be recognised as a form in itself. That is, for a long time ARGs have been this weird unknown form that many people have struggled to grasp. Parodies have emerged, but they have been from players already in the community. But the Invoke parody is not by the ARG community, it is by game educators, critics and consultants Christian McCrea and Katharine Neil (I’m not sure of what Katharine does, but I know Christian does those things).

The parody is a critique of the World Bank, capitalism, branded entertainment, ARGs, and Jane McGonigal’s online games. I can understand criticism of the World Bank and capitalism. The fact that the mechanics of the game, the whole multi-sited system and missions can be parodied means that it is a form that is immediately recognisable. It wouldn’t be a parody of form if there was no recognisable form to parody. This means the mechanics and missions have become somewhat standardised. They are not part of experimental fringe culture, but have moved into mainstream creative forms if you like.

Then there is also a critique of the rhetoric of ‘games saving or changing the world’. This is something that Jane has been championing for years. Games are a prevalent expressive mode that is definitely becoming part of all aspects of culture. But, as ARG (cross/transmedia) designer Adrian Hon reflects, there is a tendency “to make some very big statements about using these games to tackle some even bigger problems”. Adrian notes that many of the ‘save the world’ games do inspire people, “but that means they can change the world no more – and no less – than stories or books or movies or TV shows.” Another issue is how to measure whether people are ‘saving the world’ and whether they are games at all. Here we have a corrective of media spin, if you like, or the simple sound-bites and sometimes simple mechanics that are rife at the moment in the wild wash of gameifying everything (go with me on that word).

The Invoke attack on branded entertainment is somewhat specific to the World Bank being behind this project. But Markus Montola highlights this issue with a few other branded entertainment games:

I don’t know what’s the lesson for ARG designer, for company with a bad public image, or for pervasive games researcher. I remember hearing complaints on The Lost Ring based on the fact that it was financed by McDonalds and collaborated somehow with Beijing Olympic Games. Similarly I remember Vanishing Point being criticized for being a Microsoft Vista promotion. When you mobilize the grassroots, you should prepare to face criticisms such as this one. Personally? My view on World Bank is so much influenced by various criticisms, such as Naomi Klein’s in Shock Doctrine, that I wouldn’t be thrilled to work for them.

Most branded entertainment gets criticised, this isn’t anything new. But there are some brands that are criticised more, and some that may raise issues with the practitioners who work on them. I personally do have a line I don’t cross. Thankfully the brands that I have worked with have all been ones that fit into my OK category. There has been one that I didn’t work with directly, but through a production company. On this project I worked on the initial design of the project pre-pitch. I would not have worked on it if it did go ahead because I didn’t feel the product added any value to people’s lives (even though the multi-billion dollar sales of it says otherwise). Thankfully the project didn’t go ahead so I didn’t have to give the *sorry but too busy* response. But I also personally like it when good can be done with…bad money.

This talk of brands and parodies and criticism and practice brings up what is to me a second interesting issue. That of design. ARG (and trans/crossmedia) designer Jan Libby has commented in Twitter that:

i’m sure the evoke gang knew something like this might come up & have a plan of dealing w/that dynamic of community

Likewise, Michael Andersen (new owner of ARGNet), is

sure there’s a brilliant idea to deal with it / incorporate the efforts

It will be interesting to see what comes next. McGonigal has the problem of dealing with protests within the game (if there do turn out to be any), but perhaps also ones outside like Invoke. Andersen doesn’t see a problem with Invoke, it is the ones that may potentially ruin it for the players within the game that are an issue.

Jane has commented in Twitter that she has:

caught some of the discussion, it’s not unexpected, we will keep trying to communicate the goal;
to create an environment to support new ideas and open innovation, not to push existing solutions;
& that EVOKE is a direct result of demand from African schools for a way to engage students in development.

While these are just tweets Jane sent to fellow ARG designers quickly in response to their conversation (I don’t want to paint Jane into a corner), they do point to the need to educate people about the goals of the project as she has been briefed. I mean, the project could work well for the World Bank, but it seems Jane hasn’t been asked to create a project to improve the image of the World Bank. The initial brief is critical in understanding the nature of a project. I know literary theories and game critics etc all trumpet the “author is dead” and so intention is unknowable and irrelevant, but it can help understand the nature of these projects. Sponsorship (branded entertainment if you like) is on the rise. Critics should not assess it in the same way they have branded entertainment in the past. I could talk more about this but enough for now as there is one other item I wanted to discuss.

How can the designers of projects that are expected to raise criticism (such as having the World Bank behind it) use this knowledge in the design? What are the things they can do? I have some thoughts brewing but I’m keen to hear your ideas…

Grow a Game

Grow a Game is developed by Values at Play, which is a research project concerned with assisting and encouraging “designers to be mindful of what values their computer games promote. We would like to see a diversification of video game values to include positive principles like equity, creativity, diversity, and negotiation, along with the traditional tropes of violence and machismo”

The game involves coming up with a game from cards with Verbs, Challenges, Games and Values. The video on the site shows Mary Flanagan running a workshop and it seems to do the job of making values part of the design process extremely well. I really like the idea of including values in a game (or even, going further, including all elements that influence the design of a transmedia fiction — say, copyright and exclusive commercial agreements could be elements that constrain the design. But this depends on what the goal of the transmedia design game is: to teach how the various influences on design affect the outcome of a transmedia fiction, or whether it is about educating about the different design elements one needs to know when designing a transmedia fiction, and so on).

IDEO Method Cards

The IDEO Method Cards have a slightly different goal to Grow a Game:

IDEO Method Cards is a collection of 51 cards representing diverse ways that design teams can understand the people they are designing for. They are used to make a number of different methods accessible to all members of a design team, to explain how and when the methods are best used, and to demonstrate how they have been applied to real design projects.

The deck really is beautiful, and is split into four categories: Learn, Look, Ask and Try. Under each of these categories are cards that provide methods to design with people in mind. For instance, under ‘Learn’ you analyse information you’ve collected to identify patterns and insights using (for instance) ‘Affinity Diagrams’. Under ‘Look’, you observe people to discover what they do rather than what they say they do, using (for instance) ‘Rapid Ethnography’. Under ‘Ask’ you enlist people’s participation to elicit information using (for instance) an ‘Unfocus Group’. Under ‘Try’ you create simulations to help empathize and evaluate proposed designs, using (for instance) ‘Paper Prototyping’. Here, the game is more about method, which can be the focus of a transmedia fiction design game too.

Once Upon a Time: The Storytelling Card Game

The Once Upon a Time game is actually a storytelling game, but can be used for instruction. They explain that the game can be used “to exercise essential skills in reading, decision making, cooperative play, and creativity”. But beyond these functions, the game offers a set of story elements that make up the design of a story (which can be used then in designing transmedia fictions). There are three cards in this set: ‘Once Upon a Time’ cards (which are sub-divided into Characters, Items, Places, Aspects, and Events), ‘Happy Ever After’ cards (which are endings), and ‘Interrupt’ cards (which you use to interrupt another person’s story). This game has some elements (specifically the story elements) and mechanics that could translate well to a transmedia fiction design game.

GameGame

Ari Jarvinen created this game to “teach analytical thinking through theory”.

In GameGame, players compete in designing games. Players collect and trade cards in order to create a complete game design. In between, one player gets to play a game publisher, while the other players try to sell their game concepts to her. In the end, the best game design is decided in a vote. Let the best game win!

Now in this game there are both design elements and those ‘meta’ elements that influence design. There are BLAH card categories. The ‘Component’ cards describe what players manipulate in the game (for instance, a chess piece). The ‘End and Victory Condition’ card describes how the game can be won (for instance, ‘Bingo!’). The ‘Theme’ card describes the thematic level of the game (for instance, real estate trade in Monopoly). The ‘Goal’ card describes what effort is being put towards, the directive (for instance, save the Princess). The ‘Environment’ card describes the actual environment of the game (for instance, a chess board or football pitch). The ‘Interface’ card describes the interface tool a player uses (for instance, a joystick or tennis racket). The ‘Game Mechanic’ card describes what players do (for instance, trading). The ‘Assets’ cards are pretty clever and fun. They describe things that you are able to achieve as a designer (for instance, work game journalists into a frenzy about your game or headhunt a top designer to work on your team). I find this design set has a lot of parallels with what I initially looking to do with the transmedia design game (especially when you consider the inclusion of an ‘interface’ — which in my transmedia design game involves combinations of interfaces such as a keyboard and flicking pages in a book).

Do you know of other card games or any other type of design game that you like?

• Dissertations are highly contingent, written for specific committees & institutions – for people who are obligated to read it! #1stbk
• In a diss, your committee can say “so what you are really trying to say is…” in a book, you have to know from the get-go #1stbk
• In a book, emplotment & pacing are important – knowing what the reader needs & why #1stbk
• A diss needs other theorists to justify its argument; In a bk, yr reader doesn’t need to see how u parse theorists that they’ve read #1stbk
• Thinking about audience: do you want it to be taught to u-grads? (that might dictate length) To circulate beyond your discipline? #1stbk
• A book published 5 years from now: how will it be read? On hand-held? The need to write with some uncertainty in mind #1stbk
• Duke Press published ~100 title/year – 30 MSs are turned down each week – but often this is a matter of FIT bet. book & press #1stbk
• At your professional meetings, pay attention to the strongest, most prolific presses – write to editors ahead of time #1stbk
• Book proposals: don’t start off discussing other people’s work! Make your work front & center #1stbk
• Book proposals should include chapter summaries & a sample chapter – send BY MAIL, don’t make the editor print the copies! #1stbk
• Be honest about where you are in the writing: whole MS, 2 chapters – an interested editor will WANT you to send something #1stbk
• Editors sometimes send out dissertations in lieu of completed book MS to reviewers – but rarely just excerpts… #1stbk
• Book reviewers // test screening audiences – reviewers will advise on whether arguments are convincing, what works/doesn’t #1stbk
• Diss to #1stbk usually a 4-5 year process
• Writing groups can be great help – w/ people who can model the audience you’re interested in reaching #1stbk

I’m now in the USA to celebrate Xmas with family in Philly, then have two conferences I’m participating in, as well as lots of catch-ups with awesome people.

On Tuesday 29th December I’m on a panel at the Modern Language Association Convention being held at the Philadelphia Marriot. For those unfamiliar with the event, it is BIG in the traditional academic world. The panel is put together by Marc Ruppel, a theorist who has been researching what is now known as ‘transmedia storytelling’ but which Marc (like me) studied long before it was well-known. I’m really looking forward to meeting Marc and Burcu in person for the first time.

Re)Framing Transmedial Narratives (7:15–8:30 p.m., Congress A, Loews, Presiding: Marc Ruppel, Univ. of Maryland, College Park)

1. “From Narrative, Game, and Media Studies to Transmodiology,” Christy Dena, Univ. of Sydney
2. “To See a Universe in the Spaces In Between: Migratory Cues and New Narrative Ontologies,” Marc Ruppel
3. “Works as Sites of Struggle: Negotiating Narrative in Cross-Media Artifacts,” Burcu S. Bakioglu, Indiana Univ., Bloomington

Our submission abstracts are:

Marc Ruppel, University of Maryland College Park
To See a Universe in the Spaces In-Between: Migratory Cues and New Narrative Ontologies

As narrative continues to move beyond mono-medial storyworlds and into massive, multiply-mediated, multiply-authored fictional universes, literary structures have begun to form which attempt to link together these disparate clusters of media when their material properties do not allow for such networked operations.  Drawing upon narratology, network theory, cognitive science and user-interface design, this paper will examine what I call migratory cues, signs present in universes that work to connect the content of one media channel with that of another. Functioning much like a hyperlink metaphorized through different media, migratory cues can take the form of virtually anything, from objects to events to shared locations, or as external markers such as logos and website URLs. By locating and investigating the properties of migratory cues, we can not only witness the means through which new networks of narrative information are rapidly coalescing, but also the remarkable flexibility of narrative itself as a technology of media convergence.

Burcu S. Bakioglu, University of Indiana
Works as Sites of Struggle: Negotiating Narrative in Cross Media Works

This paper interrogates the divergent ways the materiality of the medium of cross media works affect the process of meaning-making and investigates how it influences the production of works. Works become sites of struggle because the stories that they narrate are in a state of constant negotiation between its producers/creators, the medium of the work, and the communities that these works mobilize. In a work born in media convergence, I argue, story-telling becomes a collaborative, and more important, a participatory process. Using Art of the H3ist, an Alternate Reality Game, this paper investigates the nature of performativity and collaboration in works that extend across various media and develops the model of performative narratives to refer to works that encourage and rely on such activities for the formation of its texts. 

Christy Dena, University of Sydney
From Narrative, Game & Media Studies to Transmodiology

A recognition of the multimodal nature of communication has reinvigorated narrative studies of late. This paper interrogates the methodological ramifications of a multimodal awareness: when observing the role and effects of different modes in a creative work, how can the understandings and insights of game, media and art theory be invoked? How can the understanding of non-narrative and narrative phenomena be recognised and reconfigured in a mode-agnostic approach? This paper presents some methodological frameworks for exploring this approach.

There are lots of great sessions at this event, so I look foward to hearing some interesting talks on gaming, new media narratives and meta discussions on academia in general, and also catching up and meeting colleagues.

I’ll also be at the Microsoft Research Social Computing Symposium.

For the past four years, Microsoft Research (MSR) has sponsored a symposium on social computing that has brought together academic and industry researchers, developers, writers, and influential commentators in order to open new lines of communication among previously disconnected groups. The 2010 symposium will focus on “city as platform”. We will have brief (5-10 minutes) talks by a handful of speakers on each of the topics, followed by related breakout sessions, and lots of time to interact with other attendees.

I was lucky to be flown to the event last year and this year I was invited back because I was on the team that won one of the games last year! Yep, that’s right. I’m not really invited back, just offered a place as a winner. Hehe. Luckily I’m in New York at the time so I’m attending again! It really is a great event that has such a great selection of people attend. I hold this event up as one of my favourites I’ve ever been to and so I’m really looking forward to it.

Other than that I’ll be catching up with many awesome people in Philly and New York. Can’t wait.

Hope you’re all having a great holidays. More soon.

The degree was designed for writers interested in experimenting with new formats and was informed by contemporary thinking on transliteracy, meaning the ability to read, write and interpret across a range of media from orality through print and film to networked environments. Creative Writing, indeed the very nature of text itself, is changing. No longer bound by print, there are many opportunities for writers to experiment with new kinds of media, different voices and experimental platforms, both independently and in collaboration with other writers or other fields and disciplines. Not only is writing evolving, but writers themselves are developing broader expectations and aspirations. Novelists are learning about the potential of hypertext and multimedia to change the ways in which a story can be told. Journalists are finding that blogs and wikis are radically affecting their relationships with their readers. Community artists are discovering powerful collaborative narratives. And the commercial world is finding new and creative ways to interact with its employees and customers in the fast-growing attention economy of the internet.

While digital media have altered the way we disseminate and gather information, readers – both online and offline – still hunger for compelling narratives. As readers, we want to be told stories; we want complex and interesting ideas and characters; we want vivid pictures in our heads. As writers we want to communicate. We need good stories well-told, whatever our choice of delivery platform. The MA in Creative Writing and New Media gave students an opportunity to focus on developing work at the cutting edge of the new technologies and provided new ways of thinking about narrative.

The course enabled postgraduate students to study and practice with a rich range of theorists and practitioners from around the world. What I loved about this course is that it focused on practice — how is new media and cross/transmedia writing different — and how they invited lecturers and mentors from around the globe to assist their students. Because the guests were from all around the globe, the guests did not fly in (that would of been a prohibitive budget for any course). Instead, we participated from wherever we were in the planet, by providing online resources for the students, and using Skype and forums to discuss. Look at the guests who participated:

Randy Adams, Paul Beasley, Ronni Bennett, Alan Bigelow, Will Buckingham, Andy Campbell, J.R. Carpenter, John Cayley, Suw Charman, Christy Dena, Jeanie Finlay, Caitlin Fisher, Carolyn Handler Miller, Chris Joseph, Jess Laccetti, Marjorie Luesebrink, Bruce Mason, Nick Montfort, Meg Pickard, Rita Raley, Alan Sondheim, Maurice Suckling, Jonathan Taylor, Christine Wilks

The course has finished now, but what is wonderful is that an archive of all the Guest Lectures given during the four years of the online MA in Creative Writing and New Media are now online for all! It was put together by CWNM graduate and digital artist Christine Wilks, and the ”resource will be of value to practitioners, students and academics with an interest in transliteracy, digital fiction, digital art, e-poetry, and cross-media”. Yes!

• My 2007 lecture ‘A New Total Work of Art’ is here
• My 2008 lecture ‘Designing for Lotsa Media’ is here
• My 2009 lecture was a discussion about the Writer’s Guide to Making a Digital Living
• Check out the entire archive of all the talks here: http://www.creativewritingandnewmedia.com
• Comment on the archive here: Transliteracy Notes

Wohoo! Enjoy!

Now, the team are also continuing their work on ‘Transliteracy’. The Transliteracy Research Group (TRG), is a research-focussed think-tank and creative laboratory.

Transliteracy is currently defined as the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks. The Transliteracy Research Group coordinates theoretical and practice-based research into transliterate materials and behaviours.

They have a new blog at http://www.transliteracy.com, community site at http://transliteracy.ning.com/ and have a CFP out:

The first Transliteracy Conference will take place at Leicester’s new Phoenix Square Digital Media Centre on Tuesday 9 February 2010.  This one-day event offers an opportunity for academics, artists, business people and practitioners to share discoveries, ideas, and creative works that amplify and augment transliteracy research. Themes to be explored include:

• transliteracy and libraries
• transliteracy and the arts 
• transliteracy in education 
• transliteracy in communications 
• transliteracy in the workplace 
• transliteracy and transdisciplinarity
• transliteracy in action – examples of transliterate works, like digital fiction, networked arts projects, or library resources.

The Call for Presentations invites 250 word abstracts. Presentations should be 10-15 minutes in duration, and can be used to show work or deliver a short paper. Deadline for Abstracts:  1 December 2009

Enjoy all of this!

Second Nature: The International Journal of Creative Media is a new open access, peer-reviewed online journal that explores the distinctive particulars of and interconnections between textual, visual, aural and interactive creative research and practices.

It welcomes contributions from across the field of creative media including creative writers, media and art historians, media practitioners and fine artists, performers, architects and architectural theorists and historians, curators, museum professionals, scientists, cultural and media theorists, archivists, technologists, software developers, educationalists, philosophers and any others who have a stake in the understanding and future developments of creative media. Second Nature publishes research papers, articles, and creative projects.

The first issue is themed ‘Role Models’, which editor (the wonderful) Shiralee Saul explains:

The theme of this issue, “Role Models”, is intended to be as multifaceted as the journal itself. What, it asks, is academic research’s, and creative media generally, relationship with the past? What is our ‘proper’ role as academics? And what models should we be providing, and critiquing, for our students? How can we facilitate their entry into an increasingly rapidly changing industrial and cultural landscape?

Check it out!

Dena, C. (2008) ‘Emerging Participatory Culture Practices: Player-Created Tiers in Alternate Reality Games’, Henry Jenkins and Mark Deuze (Eds) special issue on ‘Convergence Culture’ in Convergence Journal: International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, Vol 14, No 1, pp: 41-57.

This article introduces an emerging form of participatory culture, one that is not a modification or elaboration of a primary producer’s content. Instead, this article details how the artifacts created to ‘play’ a primary producer’s content have become the primary work for massive global audiences. This phenomenon is observed in the genre of alternate reality games (ARGs) and is illustrated through a theory of ‘tiering’. Tiers provide separate content to different audiences. ARG designers tier their projects, targeting different players with different content. ARG  player production then creates another tier for non-playing audiences. To explicate this point, the features that provoke player-production – producer-tiering, ARG aesthetics and transmedia fragmentation – are interrogated, alongside the character of the subsequent player-production. Finally, I explore the aspects of the player-created tiers that attract massive audiences, and then posit what these observations may indicate about contemporary art forms and society in general.

Since this paper was restricted by copyright for a year (which provoked a controversy), I created a website to augment the paper. Many people thought the website provided all the content that was in the essay, but that is not the case. The website provided another point of entry for those who couldn’t access the essay, and provided more depth for those that could. Now this can be made clear because the paper is out of copyright. Yay!

• PDF of the paper
• Online Augmentation Website

Dena, C. (2007) ‘The Future of Digital Media Culture is All in Your Head: An Argument for the Age of Integrating Media’, Proceedings of perthDAC 2007: the 7th Digital Arts and Culture Conference, Perth, Curtin University of Technology, 116-125.

Although research into digital media culture assists greatly in understanding new technologies, its influences and affects, to continue to do so in isolation of other media shows little regard for the reality of its role and use. ‘Old’ or ‘traditional’ media such as dusty books and smudged newspapers, consensus television, linear films and radio are also part of the daily medial diet of humans. Indeed, this paper argues that an emerging cultural approach is the integration of all media and that this will continue in the near- to long-term future. We are no longer in a Digital Age, we are instead in an Age of Integration. This argument is explored through providing examples of extant integration practices and outlining economic and cognitive influences. Finally, these influences and existing practices are utilized as insights into potential future cultural practices.

This paper has now been published in a special issue of Leonardo/ISAST: ’Social Media: Narrative and Literacy in Digital Culture’.

• LEA Special Issue from perthDAC

The citation for this issue is: Dena, C. (2009) ‘The Future of Digital Media Culture is All in Your Head: An Argument for the Age of Integrating Media’, Leonardo Electronic Almanac, Leonardo On-Line (LEA Special Issue from perthDAC: Social Media: Narrative and Literacy in Digital Culture) [Online] Available at: http://www.leonardo.info/LEA/PerthDAC/PerthDAC.html

I hope you find these papers interesting! Indeed, check out the other great papers in the LEA issue. As always, please feel free to send me your thoughts via comments or email.

The data is not comprehensive, but I hope that you will all ping me with corrections and additions. What I find really exciting about this data is it makes it clear that ARGs have a global reach and there is the opportunity for truly cross-cultural, indeed truly global, ARGs.

• ARGs Around the World Part One: player countries, multi-country design, localized ARGs
• ARGs Around the World Part Two: non-English-language ARGs, ARG communities

Enjoy!

Photo credit: ‘Globe Hands SM’ by Noticelj