Month: June 2006

 

 

The ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge is being held in August 9-12 this year. Artists will be given the opportunity to pitch their ideas live on stage to thousands of audience members, once they get through the game that has been planned for them.

C5 Quest for Success is curatorial selection as urban game, testing competitors’ analysis, management, and cooperative decision making skills – traits needed for success in Silicon Valley. The grand prize is a six to twelve week residency at the Montalvo Arts Center co-sponsored with C5 and a Silicon Valley corporate partner – a great opportunity for the right player with the right project pitch. Contestants navigate the streets of San Jose exploring GPS controlled narratives in an attempt to locate the C5 Corporate Limo. Once there, you just might have the opportunity to pitch your proposal to a panel of distinguished experts.

The contestants, cast as arty versions of The Apprentice it seems, have to drive around in specially made go-carts with a GPS to activate a narrative segment they then interpret for a possible path through the city. The main site mentions stuff about how they then use this narrative as backstory in their pitches (seems these artists have an awful lot to do). But what I found interesting – besides the convergence of art festival, industry pitch, locative art and marketing (C5 “specializes in cultural production informed by the blurred boundaries of research, art and business practice”) – are the “storytelling cars”.

GoCar is the first-ever GPS-guided storytelling car.

That is such a great idea! It is basically a pre-recorded narrative tour like galleries have had for years, but with GPS. But having the hardware, having a car that you can drive around the city, that has GPS and obviously a screen for narrative segments. It is something that writers can use (hopefully) for their own projects. We need more of these sorts of grown-up ‘toys’ that can be used for narrative games. I for one am starting a business in that area, because I’m not alone in that desire for intellectual play.

That’s right. I’m lucky to have been asked, nominated and voted in to one of Australia’s key media arts organisations: dLux Media Arts. They’ve been branching into mobile arts and multi-platform arts and that’s why I’m there. I’m working with the excellent team they’ve assembled, including Jamie Leonarder (of SBS Movie Show fame) and the mobile technology genius Leslie Nassar (behind the ABC podcasts and MTV, MIA and so on) and Adriaan Stellingwerff (who was recently awarded a Rhizome commission for his work Eternal Sunset). I’m really excited, we’re going to do some really interesting stuff over the next year: locative arts, experimental film, the archive and so on. I’m especially looking forward to developing the organisation into a well integrated multi-platform one. I’ll keep you posted.

I haven’t been blogging about the projects I work on or projects I follow intimately. For some I cannot until they are in the public domain and others I just, dunno, haven’t. Well, that is silly. There is a project I’m involved in, a thriller film, that will be inviting a lot of participation in the production of it. It really is a pulling of the curtain of a studio. We’ve started the process over at MySpace. The first video of the director arriving in Melbourne is now online. I can’t tell you the name of the film because we’re leaving that up to the fans!

The second is one I’m not officially working on and has started publicity a while ago. The producer and director contacted me because they love my work on polymorphic narrative. 🙂 That is SMSSugarman (a trailer is at the site). What I love about Aryan and Jeremy’s approach is that they are creating a different narrative for each platform: cinema, mobile, web, DVD. It is beautiful. There is an interview with Jeremy Nathan online at Aryan’s blog which is interesting:

10. Did you watch the distribution successes of Steven SoderbergÂ’s Bubble to see how the mixed-media simultaneous distribution approach many work?

Yes, I think itÂ’s an amazing start. The closing of windows is good for filmmakers, and for audiences. People now can chose what medium they want to view a film. Cinemas will always be with us, but the media will proliferate,
so allowing people more options.

A polymorphous approach to distribution will start to invite new story-telling techniques, as we progress through this virtual world.

11. What do you think about the future for cross-media film distribution?

I think it is the future. Traditionally the rights are exploited across theatres, television and DVD, but the advent of Mobile and the Internet will change the way films are distributed. ItÂ’s starting slowly, but it is gathering pace.

Different and new audiences will come to films on different media platforms. And film form will change to meet this demand.

Filmmakers will be able to cut out the middle-men, and to start to retain control over the distribution of their films.

The Internet is yet to be explored in its full entirety – in time to come I think it will become the glue that binds the various platforms. [CD: I’m writing a paper on this at the moment!]

Jeremy also talks about content on the mobiles and where it is going. Very good stuff. I can’t wait to get these guys over here! And, lastly but not least. We’ve just upgraded our interface at my other blog I co-edit on new media arts specifically, WriterResponseTheory. Lovely.