Category: Creative Practice & Strategy

A month or so ago I gave a talk at Sydney University called ‘Multi-Platform Art Versus Commodity Intertexts’. The aim of the talk was two-fold: to explore just what has changed in the object (entertainment) from so-called marketing tie-ins of the past and ‘transmedia’ forms of the present as espoused by Henry Jenkins and myself among others; and also to explore how the study of these objects has changed (the idea being that sometimes it is the researcher that has changed, not the object).

I notice that many people presume that any extension of a storyworld across media platforms is a mere marketing exercise that has no artistic intention. In trying to understand this I’ve looked at just what qualities in an object lends itself to this view. I hypothesized that one of the values people use to make a decision about art is the producer. And so, in my talk I removed the title and producer of a work, described the construction of it — how the elements in each media relate to each other in as neutral way I could — and then asked the students to tell me whether they thought it was marketing or art. They named it art. The work I described was the alternate reality game The Beast — a campaign commissioned by Microsoft and Dreamworks to market Steven Speilberg’s A.I. It is a ‘marketing campaign’ that has, incidently, been described as ‘the Citizen Kane of online entertainment’.

I also looked at what possible qualities there are inside the work that signify a difference from so-called ‘tie-ins’ of the past and the ‘transmedia’ forms of the present. Here are some differences I posited:

• creative control over the extensions either by having the same creator or commissioned creators;
• part of the primary narrative (needed for coherence);
• deals with primary characters and settings;
• conceived at the time of creation rather than after it;
• consideration of the combined experience of the units in each medium for a particular (polymorphic) aesthetic effect;
• cross-media traversal techniques are embedded in the work;
• consideration of relationship between the narrative information, medium, arts type and audiences;
• a sincere representation of the artistic preferences (transliteracies) of the creator;
• targets and is experienced by more than fans;
• ubiquity: employed by many major entertainment corporations, but also by independent artists and writers…

Now, these are just some, and they are not the only factors and are not strictly speaking the only way to identify a work with artistic intentions (which can also have economic ones). But I think these are some of the markers that distinguish works. What do you think?

My grandmother, who passed away just a couple of months ago, was a late-comer to ‘new media’. But at the age of 95 she was teaching computers to the ‘oldies’ in her village. She used to dazzle us by insisting she had the latest software, reeling off features like a car fanaticist would engine parts. I took her along with me inside the online virtual world Second Life  for a Christmas party once. She wasn’t fazed by the presence of avatars controlled by people all around the world, or how we could fly around, she just thought the girls were inappropriately dressed for the snow. But companies had a hard time understanding that she was a real person. She was kicked out of her online banking because the administrators didn’t believe her age. They thought they had outsmarted an automated program trying to access the account. She wasn’t a robot, she was my granny.

I like to relate these stories to people who claim that it is not possible to learn technology when you’re older, or that young people are the only ones who understand it. Both of these assumptions are simply not true. I know plenty of young people who don’t have a clue about the diversity of things on the Net (yes, really!). People, markets and communities cannot be segmented according to their age or geography anymore. But that is rant for another time. My point is that just because someone is ‘young’ doesn’t mean they understand technology any better and conversly that the ‘oldies’ don’t have anything to teach us. Here are two examples of ‘oldies’ doing online marketing better than many:

THE ZIMMERS

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The Zimmers are well-known across cyberspace because of the content sells itself. But their sites are also well managed: they’re even getting ‘consumers’ to ‘participate’ by asking everyone for ideas on what songs to record for their album. How can you contribute? On their forum of course! This isn’t just some company (BBC) pulling all the strings though. Alf is ‘geriatric1927’ on Youtube and he did a preliminary vlog about the upcoming music video a while ago. In the video he refers you to their myspace, the motivations behind creating the song, the need to have a short vlog and so on. He’s aware of technology and the culture surrounding it:

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SEWING 101

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Now this is Mavis from Mudgee Australia. I came across Mavis from a post at videomarketingcoach about a talk presented by Carol Solomon. It is just great the way Mavis tells us about her work, the ebooks we can download etc. I am so impressed by the simplicity and effectiveness of having a video introduction that I’ll be putting one on my bio site. Thanks Mavis.

Check out Mavis’ site: http://www.i-sewing.com/

Looks like the elders of the village are back, and they’re in cyberspace. 🙂

SL and RL colleague Angela Thomas — who was on TV with me last year (see the 7.30 Report link in my press page), edits the Slate Night magazine I write for and is at the same university as me! — was flown to the US recently to deliver a talk on ‘Pleasure, Play, Participation and Promise: socio-emotional dimensions of digital culture which are transforming the shape of new media literacies’ for the New Media Consortium. It is a great talk, jam-packed with info about what youth are doing in worlds, how they are playing with their identity and so on. I’ll be posting about the Zimmers until in my next post, but first enjoy Angela’s presentation as the audio and ppt are online at the New Media Consortium, and check out her site if you don’t already know about it. 🙂