Chocolate and Robots

I’ve been playing some bi-channel games:


Kinder Surprise MAGICODE
I bought the special Kinder Surprise eggs with a toy inside and a ticket with a magicode and website address. I really liked the way the site was designed and the way I was guided through it (it is meant for kids). I played a few games — because I had a few codes!
Here is the magic ticket (which was the most exciting part of the eadventure for me — the real world key to a fantastical world:


The 1st Wireless Internet-Responsive Robot

This one I bought a few years ago but I like to bring it out every now and then and try to make it work better for me. I’ve found 6 year olds know how to work it better than me. The robot won my heart the first time a saw it and I’ve had it on my desk since. It tells great jokes and dances around the floor giggling away. You can link to the online website (a good bi-channel game) and play games there. Soon, the site tells me, they will have Internet Action Message Technology: the Robot will exchange short messages and pictures to and from your friends.

Cross-media Awards

From ARGN:
Interesting to find a cross-media Award:

The 2005 Canadian New Media Awards: Excellence in Cross Platform Category
Best practice, innovation and excellence in cross sector, cross platform, multi-device content development and integration. Projects based on the use of many media for flexibility, media adequacy and high usability. This includes content integration with television and the web; enhanced television services; television and SMS; SMS and the Web and other combinations including print media.

Nominated in 2005 are: Broken Saints, ReGenesis Extended Reality Game, ZeD TV. I checked out the websites and gee I can’t wait to experience Broken and ReGenesis.

On Fictionality

I’ve been looking at cross-overs between TV shows (when 2 fictional worlds meet — like the mixing of NY CSI with Miami CSI) and just recently a comic of the animated TV shows Simpsons and Futurama. The comic, The Simpsons Futurama Crossover Crisis II: Chapter 1: “Slaves fo New New York!”, is a spendid indulgence into the techniques explored in clever cross-over shows. It truly is a metafiction about crossover fiction. One of my favourite scenes is when the scientist explains how the Simpsons ended up in Futurama. How this clash of fictional worlds occurs is actually quite simple:

If only I could submit the special shears for my PhD!

I’ve also just recently met an academic in my school who joined the department last year. He, Peter Hill, has been researching what he terms ‘superfictions’ for many years. Like ALG (alternate reality gaming) and immersive aesthetics and so on, ‘superfictons’ plays with the flimsy curtain separating fiction and reality. Hill, however, a celebrated author and artist, explores this continuum through art. In particular, Hill looks at cross-media works of installations, websites and mail art. Hill has, among other works, manufactored a fake museum: The Museum of Contemporary Ideas.

I’ll be writing alot more about Peter and the works he investigates (adding them to the project pages), and his upcoming book on Superfictions.