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

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.

Now this is something I find interesting. The Entertainment Technology Center at the University of Southern California (with big entertainment industry sponsors such as Disney, LucasFilms, NBCUniversal, Fox, Sony, Paramount) are building an ‘Anytime/Anywhere Content Lab’ (AACL). The overview:

The AACL will showcase a wide spectrum of leading edge products, services and technologies in action. It will use these tools to examine the technological and sociological implications of providing content to consumers who desire it at anytime, on any device, anywhere they happen to be. The Lab’s activities will advance the interests of all industry stakeholders, especially content producers and distributors, network providers, electronics manufacturers, hardware and software companies, service providers and consumers.

The lab research questions:

1. Understanding the Consumer – What are consumer expectations for the integrated digital home and for content on the go? What new attributes and features will consumers find valuable? How can we begin to illustrate tomorrow’s consumer demands and usage patterns, today

2. Digital Delivery – How will consumer demand shape the delivery of digital content, whether by pipe (terrestrial TV, cable, satellite, broadband) or by physical media (DVD, solidstate memory, portable devices)?

3. Managing Content – How will content be moved from device to device and from server to device? How can access to content be made seamless, yet still support commercial transactions and a range of consumer usage options?

4. Identifying Synergies – What are the potential areas for cross-industry collaboration to create new product offerings and to provide greater choice and enjoyment to consumers?

Boy, I would love to get in there are trial specially-designed stories and games for such a media-integrated environment. Indeed, my intention at the beginning of my PhD research was to do user-testing of cross-media stories I had created…but I just ran out of time. It is great to see this sort of thing happening though: a lab for the next generation of technologists and creators.

• Check it out

I participated in three panels this past week, three panels that I really enjoyed.

Designing, Experiencing and Analysing Games in the Age of Integration, Australasian Interactive Entertainment Conference
The first panel was actually my own panel at the 2007 Interactive Entertainment Conference. Here is the blurb:

The contextual framing of this panel is that this age is not about digital media, but the relationships between all media, digital and not. This panel addresses, therefore, the design, experience and analysis of games in an integrating media context. The specially selected panel addresses these media proliferation concerns.

I did something different with this panel. Instead of the usual presentation with Q&A at the end, I did a mix of the unconference style (I learnt from organising BarCampSydney) and chairing in general. I repositioned all the chairs into a circle and told everyone that not only can they ask a question at any time, they can answer one at anytime too! The idea is that everyone has something to add, and that the panelists were provocateurs rather than the only experts in the room. I facilitated discussion by asking the panelists about the ideas they presented in their papers and encouraging conversational exploration of issues. I’m thrilled to say the experiment worked well, I received alot of great positive feedback from the panelists and participants. Well done to the panelists for jumping wholeheartedly into the experiment and doing so well on the day. They were fabulous! Here is the info about their papers:

In his paper, ‘Citizenship and Consumption: Convergence Culture, Transmedia Narratives and the Digital Divide’, media studies Research Fellow and PhD candidate Tom Apperley problematises the experience of ‘transmedia storytelling’ in the context of gaming in Venezuela. In his paper, ‘Place as Media in Pervasive Games’, game designer and lecturer Hugh Davies explores the role of space in pervasive games. Games and interactivity lecturer Christian McCrea charts a synchronic and diachronic course through the co-presence of media within digital games in his paper: ‘Then, Suddenly, I Was Moved: Nostalgia and the Media History of Games’. In ‘Capturing Polymorphic Creations: Towards Ontological Heterogeneity and Transmodiology’, Christy Dena discusses methodologies to analyse polymorphism (from transmedia storytelling to pervasive games to telematic arts).

All the papers are online

Also, I would like to note it was great to spend time getting to know some interesting minds: Robin Hunicke, Troy Innocent, Adam Nash and Kevin McGee.

What Happened to New Media Art?, Australasian Interactive Entertainment Conference

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.

This panel was organised by new media arts critic and educator Darren Tofts. It included educator, critic and curator Shiralee Saul; director, critic, writer and curator Philip Brophy; new media artist Marcia Jane and myself. I found the discussion very interesting because, to me, it made it very clear that there are generational issues with the question that are related to how much someone identifies themselves through ‘new media arts’. I’ve been commissioned to write an opinion peice on it for RealTime, so more in a couple of months.

Cyber-Born Film, Destination Film Festival

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.

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.

It was a great panel, discussing contemporary strategies for film distribution, marketing, filmmaking and emerging transmedia film forms. I’ve been commissioned to write an opinion piece on this too, so more coming soon.

I thoroughly enjoyed participating in these panels, catching up with people I haven’t seen for a while and meeting new people. Lots of great minds bursting to get out there…and I’m happy to be riding the wave - no - creating it with them.

Mark Coleran creates fictional interfaces for film and TV. He has a great showreel online. Adverlab also linked to Michael Schmitz’s academic paper on Human Computer Interaction in Science Fiction Movies, and Jakob Nielson’s Usability in Movies Bloopers.

[image from Mark Coleran's website]

Mark Marino, my lovely colleague at WriterResponseTheory.org, has started a website championing ‘Critical Code Studies’. It is a ‘forum for resources, discussion, and demonstrations of the interpretation of computer code’. This may be a surprise to some, but for many years artists, programmers and researchers of both stripes, have been researching (among other things) the poetics of code, the ideology of code and the impact of code on digital artworks. Mark has now brought many ideas together on this new site.

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Check out www.CriticalCodeStudies.com

As I’ve said before, I’ll be participating on the ‘Cyber-Born Film’ panel at Megan Spencer’s Destination Film Festival (DestFest). It will be launched this weekend and Megan has provided a humorous but true point-of-difference post about the festival:

Big Brand Film Festival: “I’m going to focus on features and government funded films as if no other films are made in Australia (or that other films made in Australia don’t really count).

DestFest: “I won’t”.

BBFF: “I’m going to hold a panel about how to compete with your fellow filmmakers for government funding this round”.

DF: “I won’t”.

BBFF: “I’m going to hold a pitching competition so you can win an opportunity to make a film”.

DF: “I won’t”.

BBFF: “I’m going to spend thousands of dollars flying an American into Australia to tell you how to write the perfect script”.

DF: “I won’t”.

DF: “I’m going to encourage culture instead of industry, community instead of competition, artistic inventiveness instead of commercial compromise, and passion instead of toeing the party line. I’m going to ask filmmakers and film artists to take centre stage regardless of whether or not you’ve heard of them, whether they’ve been to Film School, been tagged as “the next big thing”, won an AFI award or received any government funding”.

BBFF: “Um…”

Though I don’t think ‘culture’ and ‘industry’ are two opposites, the sentiment of preferencing what is needed rather than perpetrating the standard line is much needed.

I’m on the ‘Cyber-Born film’ panel at Destination Festival (Dest Fest) on Dec 8th, which is organised by Megan Spencer. The panel includes Arin Crumley, Dan & Dominique Angeloro, Tim Buesing, Rachael Lucas, Toby Ralph, Jason Sweeney and Rosemary Blight. I’m looking forward to this event. Here is the just released flyer: