Month: April 2005

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.

I’ve decided to shift my focus onto a project website instead of this blog. I chose the blog format initially because I wanted to encourage discussion and feedback about cross-media storytelling. This did happen — I’ve met some great people and had some very interesting feedback. It has been a long time between comments though, and so I’ve decided to add the project page and update that with sometime additions to this blog. Perhaps this blog or others will get more activity when there are more researchers into the area (or even a listserv to discuss the area).

The new site will be be a showcase of researchers in the area with helpful guides to cross-media works and theories. So, over the next few weeks expect some change… 🙂

I have something to confess. I’ve been deceiving you. Even though I’ve got this low-tech blog going with no RSS or anything I’ve actually been hob-nobbing with the hi-tech blogware on another server. The object of my dalliance is a:

blogging collective dedicated to the discussion and exploration of digital character art — any art involving electrons and making use of letters, alphanumerics, or other characters in an interesting way. Our primary focus is on active and interactive works, in which users input text and receive textual responses as output

I’m co-editor, with Mark Marino and Jeremy Douglass of the University of California, at WRT: Writer Response Theory. It is a place I can explore and discuss the aspects of my creative experimentation and theoretical inquiry not covered in cross-media: ‘text’ and bots.

And on the subject of creative works, a cross-media work of mine — The Villager Girl and the Teenbot — has been accepted into the ‘Original Hypermedia, Net.Art, Mods, Flash’ panel at the |dis|junctions conference: theory relaoded, University of California. The panel discusses ‘original new media works that use electronic media in challenging, subversive, or literary ways’. The work is bi-channel: a story that is told over a print booklet and a website. I’ll let you know more details about it soon.

You’re all welcome to contribute your views on the WRT so please do.