Christy Dena

Yes, that’s right, my podcast at UniverseCreation101.com is now in video. In this vodcast I interview filmmaker Lance Weiler, who has been extending his films to different media platforms for years, and spearheading digital distribution & social networking for the film community. Check it out. Also, for those in Facebook I’ve started a UC101 group. It is there I’ll ping you when a new video or substantial post is up, you can post stuff you think I and the others in the group will find interesting, and you can heckle me.

• Interview with Lance Weiler at UC101.com
• Large screen version of interview with Lance Weiler at Blip.tv
• Join the UC101 Facebook group

My latest articles to be published include an academic book review and two opinion pieces/reports about a film festival panel and a new media art panel I participated in.

My review, in the latest issue of Cyberculture Studies, covers Anne Friedberg’s very interesting book about the history of windows, screens & frames in film, art, architecture & philosophy: The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft. The review is also graced with a response from the author: Anne Friedberg. As an extra note, the man behind CyberCulture Studies — David Silver — included the online augmentation to my essay on Tiering & ARGs (and Sean Stacey’s article on ‘Undefining ARGs’) as reading material in his class on Digital Literacies, which was guest lectured by Bryan Alexander. Ah, the world is getting smaller and smaller.

I participated, chaired & organised a few panels last year, and as I intimated in an earlier post, I was commissioned to write opinion pieces on two of the panels I participated in. The first is a short review/opinion piece about the ‘cyber-born film panel‘ at Megan Spencer’s Destination Film Festival. Here is the blurb about the panel:

The revolution will be downloaded… It’s an exciting time in filmmaking right now. Using Four-Eyed Monsters as a starting point - the superb ’YouTube feature’ - our panel will explore how online and digital culture has r/evolutionised and challenged traditional means of production, distribution and exhibition. Has the internet made these conventional methods all but redundant? How? And where are things moving to? A range of viewpoints will be heard across the spectrum - from filmmakers and producers to artists and web designers.

The article, ‘Cyber-Conceived/Cyber-Birthed Films: Christy Dena on Making and Distribution at DestFest’ has been published in RealTimeArts (an Australian arts magazine) and has been edited somewhat. Of particular significance (regarding the editing) is the listing I included of all those who participated in the panel. So, here it is: This panel was organised by film critic, journalist and director Megan Spencer. The panelists included Arin Crumley of Four Eyed Monsters fame (via video Skype); remix artists Dan & Dominique Angeloro of Soda_Jerk ; highly regarded film producer Rosemary Blight; Rachael Lucas, the director of cult hit Bondi Tsunami; DOP, Producer/Cinematographer Streetsweeper Toby Ralph; director and composer Jason Sweeney and me.

The second article in the same issue of RealTimeArts and is an opinion piece/review of the panel ‘What Happened to New Media Art?’ from the 2007 Australasian Interactive Entertainment Conference. Here is that blurb:

So was it the mobile phone or changes at the OzCo? Why has new media art apparently disappeared from the cultural landscape? Key cultural institutions such as ACMI have made the transition from pixels to Pixar. Games criticism is thriving at a time when discussions of media art histories recede into the background. Or do we need to revise our definitions of what is new media art? Does anyone really care about interactivity any more? In the age of machinima and Second Life, is there still a place for “new” media art?

In this panel discussion key media artists, curators and writers will debate these issues.

Interactivity may, or may not, be present during the discussion.

For those interested in a bit a background to the debate: recent notable essays & discussions include Steve Dietz’s 2004 ISEA essay ‘Art After New Media’ and 2006 Olhares de Outono Symposium essay ‘Just Art: Contemporary Art after the Art formerly known as New Media’. In 2007 Steve Dietz was in Australia and continued the discussions there (here): ‘A Meeting with Steve Dietz’. For an Australia-specific (though internationally relevant) article about Art & funding bodies etc, see Keith Gallasch’s (the editor of RealTime) 2005 essay: ‘From Art in a Cold Climate’.

So, in light of such history new media arts critic, academic and educator Darren Tofts organised the ‘What Happened to New Media Art?’ panel. It included educator, critic and curator Shiralee Saul; director, critic, writer and curator Philip Brophy; new media artist Marcia Jane and myself.

My article on the panel is now online: ‘Playing the Moon: Christy Dena on the Fate of New Media Art’.

As an added bonus, a participant on the panel and long-time (well for me) colleague of mine Shiralee Saul also has an article about game art in the just-released: SwanQuake: The User’s Manual. Also, one person who was in the audience of the panel (but who participated in the panel I organised for Interactive Entertainment 2007) — Christian McCrea — is participating in this months’ empyre discussion ‘Game Off’:

Whether we play or not, whether we live in the moneyed west or not, games occur.
Using the rubric of ‘game off’, our stellar guests will tease out and map intertwined threads of play culture, game art, game theory interrogating the frictions and fissions of experiential pleasure, avatar uprisings, the game engine medium, collection and archiving, futility and joy. Join Marguerite Charmante, Daphne Dragona, Margarete Jahrmann, Max Moswitzer, Julian Oliver, Melanie Swalwell, David Surman (and maybe Helen Stuckey) in multi-streamed dialogues moderated by Christian McCrea and Melinda Rackham.

Empyre is an interesting new media arts listserv that I had the pleasure of participating in as an invited guest about Second Life art a few months ago. Ah yes…cyberspace can seem really small at times. Then I wake up. There really is no end of the Internet, though the idea is funny.

Anyway. Enjoy the finger-linking-goodness!

Last year and this year I was a guest lecturer at the De Montfort University’s Online MA in Creative Writing and New Media — run by Sue Thomas and Kate Pullinger among other notables. Well, after my lecture last year I had the luck to be a mentor for a talented writer: Alison Norrington. Alison created what she calls a ‘cross media work of fictional blogging’. Basically, she created a fictional character, Sophie, and had her come alive across the web — conversing with people through her blog, Twitter, Bebo, Second Life and other sites. I wrote a bit about Staying Single at my CME blog. It was the first time Alison had explored this type of media design and she was quite taken by it…and I loved exploring it all with her.

Well, on the 12th (sorry about the short notice!! :() Alison is giving a talk on her work at O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference in New York: Fictional Blogging: Can Web 2.0 Translate to Publishing 2.0?. Go Alison! I’m sure you’ll do a grand job. Yay! [And if you see her, say Happy Birthday]

Recently pervasive game designer & researcher Jane McGonigal’s idea about ‘Alternate Reality Business’ mades the Harvard Business Review annual “Top 20 Breakthrough Ideas”. Here is a snippet from Jane’s blog:

In the coming decade, many businesses will achieve their greatest breakthroughs by playing games—specifically, alternate reality games, or ARGs. Custom-designed ARGs will enable companies to build powerful collaboration networks, discover solutions to specific business problems, forecast opportunities, and innovate more reliably and quickly.

Why? ARGs train people in hard-to-master skills that make collaboration more productive and satisfying. Playing an ARG teaches 10 collective-intelligence competencies. These include cooperation radar, a knack for identifying the very best collaborators for a given task, and protovation, the ability to rapidly prototype and test experimental solutions. Using these skills, players amplify and augment one another’s knowledge, talents, and capabilities. Because ARGs draw on the same collective-intelligence infrastructure that employees use for “official” business, games will map directly to a familiar reality—no translation required.

As these competencies mature within a business, ARGs will provide a truly stimulating framework for doing everyday work. Few meetings are as engaging as an ARG, whose emerging narrative evokes players’ shared sense of urgency and whose puzzles and clues deepen their curiosity. The structure for collaboration is clear, with players rallying around explicit goals and continually sharing theories, tactics, and results. Playing also generates compelling momentum: The puppet master monitors and rewards participants’ efforts, and times the release of new challenges so that players experience multiple cycles of success.

Of course, Jane was also involved in the design and community management of the biggest serious ARG World Without Oil. There have been many examples of small-scale ARGs being created for education and training though. Well, recently, ARG designer Dave Szulborski was involved in the design of an ARG for the military. Here is some info from their release:

This is the scenario behind a new ARG created by BBN Technologies and Dave Szulborski, author of This Is Not a Game and creator of five well-know ARGs. ARGs have been used with great success to promote books, movies and television shows and BBN scientists proposed that the method could be applied to serious training with equal success. Now, the US military is testing that hypothesis with the first evaluation of an ARG as a tool for training military personnel. In a month-long demonstration, a group of 124 participants made up of active duty military, reservists, government staffers, and university students is working together to cope with the tsunami scenario. This is the kind of situation that is most difficult to train for; not an acute, episodic crisis than can be simulated in a short course or in a classroom, but a longer term situation that changes as the circumstances unfold. ARGS offer the benefit of allowing trainees to practice the skills needed for such exceptional situations while they continue to do their regular jobs and to develop real relationships in a virtual scenario that will help them respond effectively when they are required to cope with an unexpected situation such as the tsunami scenario.

Bill Ferguson, division scientist at BBN Technologies, one of the partner organizations for the demonstration, said, “The military needs a training solution for longer term, intermediate intensity situations that involve multiple agencies. Because ARGs are inherently distributed and built on complex, engaging scenarios, they are an effective and cost efficient way to train for the long duration, large-scale problems that require individuals to respond both collectively and individually.”

Jointly funded by the Joint Forces Command and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the demonstration is being executed by BBN Technologies, Dave Szulborski, and Aptima. BBN, which was contracted to develop the tools and pedagogy and administer the demonstration, provides tools to support ARGs under its trademark, Helical Training. BBN engaged Szulborski to develop the ARG’s initial scenario and to build on the rich content as the responses and changing circumstances affect the fictional situation. Aptima will evaluate the demonstration and measure participants’ responses against specific learning goals.

Congrats Dave and Jane!

Jeffrey Y. Kim, Jonathan P. Allen and Elan Lee have written a short peice on ARGs and specifically I Love Bees for the latest issue of Communications. It provides some great insights into the ILB design. Check it out.

Jak Boumans is very well-known in industry for his work on digital media. He is the General Secretary of the European Academy of Digital Media, writes, reviews, audits and consults. I was a cyberspace lurker on his activities until I had the pleasure of meeting Jak when I gave a keynote at the First International Conference on Cross-Media Interaction Design (which Jak talks about here). After that I travelled to The Netherlands where Eric Voight invited me to give a talk at Noordelijke Hogeschool, Leeuwarden for their Crossmedia Minor. Eric also invited myself, Jak and Monique De Haas (blog) to hold a panel together. Chatting with Jak and Monique about all things cross-media (that is: talking with people who have been working with this area for years) was an absolute delight. Well, Jak has been blogging every day for years. He is up to his 1000th post and asked me to contribute some info about my upcoming thesis. I was honoured to do so. So, without further delay, here is my little contribution to Jak’s amazing online resource (of which he has more to come). Congratulations on 1000 posts Jak and all that you have contributed!

Last year DIY filmmaking pioneers Lance Weiler (The Last Broadcast, Head Trauma, WorkBookProject), Arin Crumley (Four Eyed Monsters) and M dot Strange (We Are The Strange) got together and came up with the idea for a film festival in which audiences can watch films they choose in theatres, in their living room, online and via mobile phones. Not only does this give audiences choice and the filmmakers a global audience, all filmmakers are welcome to submit, they retain their rights, pay no fees AND get revenue directly from the distribution outlets. They’ll also be running virtual panels. Here is some more info about their goals:

The festival’s goal is to create a direct connection between filmmaker and audience. There are no submission fees for filmmakers. FHTA attempts to create multiple revenue opportunities for the festival filmmakers by providing a platform that enables distribution across multiple outlets - mobile, online, living rooms and theaters. Filmmakers retain all their rights and choose how to price their work.

In an interesting twist we’ve decided to put the programming of the festival directly in the hands of the audience. By harnessing the power of social tools, audience members will be able to discover, share and assist in programming the festival.

FROM HERE TO AWESOME consists of four main parts.

1. Discovery – filmmakers and audience members use core features and functions of youTube and myspace to submit and select projects that will be showcased in FHTA.

2. Education – audience members learn filmmaking in an engaging and fun way that has them interacting with their peers and directly with showcased filmmakers.

3. Sharing – audience members enjoy interesting feature length and
short form entertainment which they have helped to program.

4. New Models - the goal of FHTA is to experiment with new distribution models for filmmakers that give them realistic options for reaching global audiences and seeing a return for their creative efforts.

In their generous style, they’re already sharing tips and tricks:

So check it out! It is going to be AWESOME!

Eighteen months ago I submitted an essay idea to Henry Jenkins and Mark Deuze for their special issue of the Convergence journal. The essay, titled ‘Emerging Participatory Culture Practices: Player-Created Tiers in Alternate Reality Games’ is in the publication and is now available online. I’ve created a website to go with the essay for a few reasons….some of which is to provide general-reader designer-oriented content, to provide the basic info it wasn’t appropriate to put in an analytical essay and because the copyright agreement is that I cannot publish the essay on my site for a year. Here is the full list of contents:

• Henry Jenkins and Mark Deuze > Editorial: Convergence Culture
• danah boyd > Facebook’s Privacy Trainwreck: Exposure, Invasion, and Social Convergence
• Neil Perryman > Doctor Who and the Convergence of Media: A Case Study in `Transmedia Storytelling’
• Christy Dena > Emerging Participatory Culture Practices: Player-Created Tiers in Alternate Reality Games
• Hector Postigo > Video Game Appropriation through Modifications: Attitudes Concerning Intellectual Property among Modders and Fans
• Daren C. Brabham > Crowdsourcing as a Model for Problem Solving: An Introduction and Cases
• Larissa Hjorth > Being Real in the Mobile Reel: A Case Study on Convergent Mobile Media as Domesticated New Media in Seoul, South Korea
• Gunn Sara Enli > Redefining Public Service Broadcasting: Multi-Platform Participation
• Samantha Lay > Book Review: Barbara Klinger. Beyond the Multiplex: Cinema, New Technologies, and the Home
• Melissa Gregg > Book Review: Mark Nunes. Cyberspaces of Everyday Life

I look forward to reading the other essays. I hope this issue provokes some conversations, please send through your thoughts on the comments here or via email. I’d love to hear them.

I’ve gone a bit New Year crazy and posted four items on UC101:

Ep 002: Transcript of Evan Jones Interview

The first is the text transcript of Evan Jones’s interview – he’s got some great quotes in there (and my conversational style doesn’t translate too well) :/

Admin Update: What’s Happening?

The admin update is a quick overview of what I think this exciting area needs, changes to the UC101 site and a call for contributors. So let me know if you’re interested!

Launching Strategy: Birth Your Alternate Reality in an ARG Community

The launching strategy post is the first in single-topic articles that share some of the lessons learnt so far. In this article I tackle how one can get around the ‘hoax’ issue in ARGs.

Possibility Post: Will Integrated Media Homes Kick the Holodeck’s Butt?

This article is the first exploring possibilities for the future. In particular I look at storytelling and gaming possibilities in a media integrated home.

I look forward to hearing any feedback and ideas you may have.

Welcome to 2008! Wohoo!

As many of you are aware, I’m busy in my PhD writing cave…tapping away at my keyboard to share with you some of my findings from my research over the past few years. Although I’m still active in social sites like Facebook, doing some consulting and writing some articles, I’m working hard to keep focused on writing a PhD I will be proud of. At times, it is a particularly looney state of mind in my cave. Indeed, I bought a t-shirt for myself for Christmas with the writing: “Caution: Thesis Writing in Progress”.

I also counter-balance my deep-furrowed-brow-leather-patched-elbowed-jacket-contemplation with extreme cyberslacking. So, here are some of my favourite distractions for the year so far, along with some notable announcements:

Following on from the 2006 conference, the Beyond Belief series continues the exploration of religion, consciousness, belief and quantum physics with top generous and deep thinking scientists with Enlightenment 2.0. All the vidoes of the presentations are online. I’m enjoying the friendly academic jousting and discussion and also some really clear explanations of complex theories. For instance, David Albert’s presentation on the questions quantum physics has raised.

As for pure non-fiction. I’m so pleased to see a webisode that isn’t targeted to some teen or tween. I’ve been enjoying quarterlife because it does deal with people a bit older. The acting and script is alot better than most webisodes. As for looney surprises. I’m a bit addicted to iChannel now. Here is the webisode premise:

“iChannel” is a collaborative web series about a young man who has his life magically taken over by an audience… YOU. Our goal is a compelling original series where the audience can interact with the creators and the show’s characters in unique, unprecedented ways.

Now, that blurb does on the face of it smell like every other claim about interactivity and participation etc. But this one is really well done. What they do is take comments from the previous episode and integrate them throughout the next episode. Sure, this has been done before, but not to the degree undertaken in this webisode. For instance, while the protagonist is dealing with some issue, he receives an SMS from one of us, or he sees a video, a bit of grafitti on the wall and responds. For the audience, this means we start making comments that we feel will work well in defining or answering certain situations we anticipate. Check it out.

Another bright-side of looneyness is artist Ethan Hayes-Chute’s weekly Good News Newsletter. It is a great way to balance the influx of serious email.

Speaking of participation (not looneyness), theorist Axel Bruns has launched the companion website for his forthcoming book: Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage:

Produsage, and Produsage.org, is an idea whose time has come.

It builds on a simple, yet fundamental proposition: the proposition that to describe the creative, collaborative, and ad hoc engagement with content for which user-led spaces such as the Wikipedia act as examples, the term production is no longer accurate. This is true even where we re-imagine the concept of production as user-led production, commons-based peer production, or more prosaicly as the production of customer-made products: not the adjectives and qualifiers which we may attach to the term production are the problem, but the very noun itself.

Another colleague, fellow Rotten Tomato Mark Marino has published his elit peice A Show of Hands in the latest issue of Hyperrhiz. While the other rotten tomato Jeremy Douglass has not only finished his PhD on interactive fiction (yay!), he already has a postdoc researcher position for the Software Studies program at the Uni of California San Diego. I love my fellow robed techies.

Best quote of the year (so far):

[W]hile the industry talks about “participation” and “user-generated content,” I don’t think developers always realize how important this is – how they take me back to a time when the best thing in the world was making a new one. Chris Dahlen

As for Cross/Trans/Multi-platform/media/storytelling, the National Association of Television Program Executives (NAPTE) is happening on 28-31 Jan and has a special session on alternate reality games with lots of familiar faces:

Adventures in Storytelling: Alternate Reality Games
Audiences are now living across platforms where their viewing experience is enriched with additional characters that advance storylines and unravel plots beyond weekly broadcasted episodes. Alternate reality games allow the audience to interact with characters and each other in worlds were fiction fuses with reality. Now, both story and audience evolve together. Fast becoming a genre unto itself, cross media production demands new shot callers. What are the roles of executive producers of cross-media? How does technology, distribution, content and social behavior dictate development? With audiences living across multiple platforms in story specific communities, what is the future for traditional television show formats? Brian Seth Hurst, newly appointed second vice chair for the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and one of The Hollywood Reporter’s Digital 50 for 2007, will be our expert resident for this panel discussion.

Moderator(s): Brian Seth Hurst, CEO, The Opportunity Management Company, Inc.
Panelist(s): Stephen Andrade, Senior Vice President of Digital Development and General Manager, NBC.com; Patrick Crowe, President, Xenophile Media, Inc.; Matt Wolf, Founder, Double Twenty Productions

Before then, on the 21st of Jan, submissions for the 2007 MIPTV 360 Content Pitching Competition will need to be in. Interesting change of terms and themes in this years event: ‘multi-platform co-production on human rights’, ‘mass participation fiction and entertainment’ and ’cause related marketing’.

By the end of Jan you’ll need to get in your application to be an Alternate Reality Game Producer for Six to Start, with (among others) the team from Perplex City.

Also, as many of you would be aware, a lot of projects will be coming out this year and many have already launched. Find815 is the latest outside-TV extension of the Lost universe. The five week interactive online experience is created by Australian company Hoodlum Digital Entertainment. That was obvious (to me), as they’re using a similiar game mechanic and interface they used for Yahoo!7’s PSTrixi. Hoodlum is also behind projects such as ITV Emmerdale’s ‘Who Killed Tom King?’ and Fat Cow Motel.. Although I love the billboards popping up all over the US it seems the ABC have decided to scale down the amount of platforms, reduce the advertising (ya!), and make it more accessible to casual audiences. I hope it works for them.

Well, the final goodie is another ARG design chart. This one is the excel document for the Sharp Legend of the Sacred Urn campaign. It is generously supplied by Michael Monello of CampfireNYC. The pdf is on the ARG Design Charts page.

Okay, I think that is it for now. Except for…Hi, my name is Christy Dena and I’m addicted to area/code’s Facebook Parking Wars game.