Tracey Swedlow, the lady behind the ultra informative [itvt] is holding an industry conference, TV of Tomorrow Show. I have mentioned this before, but thought a reminder post was due since it is being held on March 13-14th in San Francisco, California. The event will include the announcement of the winners of the inaugural Awards for Corporate Achievement in Interactive and Multiplatform Television. I am interested to see who receives an award, hopefully it will be a work that is truly innovative and is quality. Interesting sessions include: Continue reading “TV of Tomorrow, next month“
I didn’t travel there — the whole course is online. Instead, I recorded an audio lecture and created a matching powerpoint and then spent the next week talking with the students in the forum. In the talk ‘A New Total Work of Art?’ I spoke about…you guessed it cross-media entertainment (insert any term you use). I went through highlights of the theoretical and creative history of cross-media since oral culture. The creative component covered cross-media works from the commercial, independent, artistic, narrative, game and marketing sectors. The theory was a mix of theories based on certain artforms and from different fields: narratology, media studies etc. I then gave a brief introduction to some of the design issues/gave guidance on designing cross-media worlds.
It was sooo good to talk about these ideas with writers and to chat for a few days afterwards. The hot topic in particular was the nature of art in the commercial realm. This is of course an issue for many and as a researcher and creator in the area, I have alot to say about it. I do not support the idea that art and commerce exist in a dichotomy, nor that any intermingling immediately improves or depletes a project. I look at what works and what doesn’t and why.Â
I’m not going to say anymore as I don’t like discussing my research theories in the blog format. But I just wanted to share how much I enjoyed getting down to the nitty gritty of cross-media. Often I give talks for industry or academia and walk away. Granted, academics follow up with related theories, and industry folk want that information on tap in the form of consulting. But getting the chance to have a continued conversation over a week with people who are really thinking about it was delightful.
I completely missed this one when it was happening (my defence is that I was travelling at the time), but you really should know about this if you don’t already. In July last year an audio drama began, Shadow Falls. It is a scary tale with high production standards, nice careful attention to the writing, and anagram clues that are issued in the audio fan forum…and so gathered alot of fans very quickly. The season one finale was in early November and fans were hanging out for more tales. And so, the writer Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff, got together with some experts of another artform and added something new on the 22nd of November. On that day they launched “The Shadow Falls Experience“.
What they did was create the fictional world of Shadow Falls in the online virtual world Second Life. And then, over the next few weeks, released audio clues in the podcast. The listeners then logged into SL and sought out the information, based on the clues. Just like the ARG I Love Bees, the players had to solve a puzzle and go to a (virtual) place to retrieve an audio component of the story. The players do this, but for those who do not participate in the experience, the total story is podcast at the end. This story is the season two prologue, a podnovel/audio novel. Here is what Mark said about the experience in the “interactive fan forum”, companion #5 podcast (17/11/06) prior to it commencing:Â
