Scholar has moved into Jupiter Green

I’ve spoken twice about the online interactive drama Jupiter Green on this blog: originally when the work was being user-tested online and then about director Kylie Robertson’s latest offering: Girl Friday. Well, now a refereed paper on it is online for the inaugural issue of Performance Paradigm. It is a fascinating and timely journal that investigates the media technologies and live performance. The journal interrogates pertinent questions:

The articles and interviews we have assembled here ask questions as to how we can best use the heightened audio-visual experience offered by media technologies to best effect and what might such performance experiences communicate? Does the performance come to be about the media interface alone or are other possibilities suggested?

And the editor, Edward Sheer, said nice things about me, the writer of the paper titled ‘Elements of “Interactive Drama”: Behind the Virtual Curtain of Jupiter Green’:

Christy DenaÂ’s essay extends AuslanderÂ’s trajectory from acting to performance to interactive online drama. Her discussion of the specific kinds of interactivity afforded by the example of Jupiter Green, a recent web based drama, represents an important piece of scholarship on an emergent form which suggests that the notion of spectatorship in digital performance is more active and assertive than in conventional performance forms. Her elements of interactive drama will serve as a useful guide to other scholars and practitioners working in the field of new media performance, digital narrative and drama.

You have to subscribe to get a username and password to read the articles (no fee) but I assure you it is worth it. There are some fascinating papers by Andrew Murphie, Jon McKenzie, Yuji Sone and Ray Langenbach with some essential reading in the artist interviews.

Read Performance Paradigm now!

Can U C iTV, itvt and IPTV?

The 3rd ceremony (I didn’t know there was 1) for the International iTV Awards is happening in Cannes on April 13, 2005. ‘The Awards competition has grown to incorporate all new formats of global television interactivity, through remote control, fixed and mobile phone.’ I hope they have snippets of the works on the site after the ceremony. But definately check out their links page for some excellent interactive television resources.

While on April 5 the 2nd annual [itvt] Awards for Leadership in Interactive Television will take place in San Francisco. The site has an excellent gallery of details and pics and the chance to nominate leaders. The site is also home to whitepapers, a helpful glossary and a pretty good list of books.

Even sooner is the IPTV Forum held in London on March 8th and 9th. IPTV is pitched as:

Telecom companies are increasingly exploring ways to earn revenue and IPTV can be seen as a new way of doing this. Internet Protocol is more and more used to deliver not only voice (telephone), and data (internet) but video as well, this forms the ‘Triple Play’ which has the increasing benefits of customer retention, loyalty, and ultimately reduced churn.

On the exhibiton page are links to some interesting content creators.

Wish I Had a Dream Researcher Budget

A half-day executive workshop has my researcher and practitioner mouth dribbling. In Dallas, Texas on March 22 is Media Opportunities and Strategies for the Multiple Media Enterprise:

The event, sponsored by the American Press Institute, focuses on how to create and sell innovative content and information services for connected, multiple-media audiences.

Among the topics are ‘state-of-the-art print-broadcast-online media convergence’; mobile audiences, participant audiences, new story forms… I’m craving attending an event like this, since I missed the IST one and the last one held in my home town held only moments of insight.

But we can all at least keep updated on The Media Center blog: Morph. Their lovely description is:

Morph, The Media Center blog, is a forum for new ideas and events related to digital media, convergence, and how society informs itself, tells its story and creates the narrative from which we extract context and meaning about our world, our neighbours and ourselves…