Author: Christy

A seminar will be held in Virginia late June this year on ‘Cross-Media Teams: Strategic Thinking for a Multi-Platform World’.

This seminar brings together senior executives from both Web and traditional operations to tackle the challenges and rewards of multi-platform media and interdepartmental cooperation. Participants boost teamwork while getting the core knowledge and strategies required to build lasting multi-platform news operations.

Of the intended results listed the following are of interest to me:

* Alignment of online and offline strategies and workflows to maximize the impact and reach of news and information initiatives on all platforms
* Creation of a cohesive, multimedia vision to integrate strategies and workflow of all available delivery channels

It seems that the areas of advertising and journalism are the earliest to jump into understanding cross-media. This is due to both being highly reliant on market force. Franchise creators are also keen to understand the area, as well as iTV developers. I just wonder why there isn’t more interest in the creative and academic realms? Perhaps because the use of cross-media implies lots of $$ and corporate backing and so is considered either out-of-reach or not Art. If anything, the lack of consideration of the area is an indication of a lack of understanding of how audiences are experiencing works. Obviously not many creators and Narratologists have their ear to the ground.

A prestigious Art prize in Australia, the Archibald Prize, is having its conventional feathers rustled by a cross-media artist: TonyJohansen.com. Johansen, who has his domain name as his signature in the competition, has created a ‘triptych’…in four parts. To add to the hypertextual reworking on his name is the name of the entry: GoFigure.net.au. The first three parts of the work are in the gallery space — ‘a self-portrait in acrylic, a portrait of the portrait hanging on a wall, and a digital image of the painting’ (source). The fourth part is online. The site shows other pics of the self-portraits, the making of the portraits, unused images, description of the project and so on. Just like all the other works I’ve mentioned over the last couple of years on this blog the work is cross-media and exhibits the following traits: public production, alternate and possible paths, elaboration, interaction, self-reflexive and so on.

Great to see. This gives me inspiration to send my stuff out to places that I presume wouldn’t take it. Perhaps cross-media works are such a novelty they could be accepted.

Thanks to Drew for passing this on to me.

A television soap in the US has flirted outrageously with cross-media by producing a novel. The novel is written by a character in the TV series and is referred to and launched in the series! I love this.

The book, The Killing Club, is brought out by Hyperion Books. Marcie Walsh, a character in the series is even credited on the publisher website, alongside real life author Michael Malone. Apparently in the TV series, One Life to Live, Marice refers to her past and how it would make a good novel. She then goes on to launch the book on the series. You can read an excerpt of the novel online.

They even describe ways in which the relationship between the book and the Tv series can be discussed in a book club.

There are 2 other works mentioned in the NYTimes article, one of which is Stephen King’s Rose Red TV series and a diary in the series.

I’ll be adding these to my preferred cross-media works list.