Saturday, 30 June 2012

Collider:



Collider is an interesting Transmedial project. Live action and online comic book, possible off-line, as well. not blown away by production values, not really blown away by story either. But I certainly think this is worth watching to see how things develop.



http://www.sfx.co.uk/2012/06/16/collider-episode-3-breakdown/
http://www.colliderworld.com/
http://www.facebook.com/colliderworld

interesting project


Just started reading Janet Hague, Murray's books and on the holodeck. The future of narrative in cyberspace first two chapters of very interesting. One of the key things to remember about this book is written from the perspective of somebody who is in right at the very start of the new Transmedial age.she discusses in the opening chapters. Some ideas about the fundamental nature of the immersive Transmedial experience. The impact that it has on the viewer/consumer the impact that this type of technology might have on society at large.

Janet Murray uses images of a Transmedial experiences found within fictional setting to explore both a utopian and dystopian the Transmedial future. She uses the holodeck found on the starship enterprise, as an example a utopian Transmedial future. A future in which the consumer uses the Transmedial environment to stimulate their  imagination.The consumer, effectively reaching into the Transmedial world and controlling what he or she sees and does. It is a world where the Transmedial environment can be used to confront social, personal problems/issues. A world where the Transmedial experience augments and adds to the everyday lives of those who consumed it.

She positions, this utopian view against the dystopian view presented by movies such as Huxley's Brave New World and Ray Bradbury's book Fahrenheit 451. In these fictional depictions of the Transmedial experience, the  experience takes over the consumer superseding the consumer's real-life. Effectively, the Transmedial environment controls the consumer, ultimately telling the consumer  what he or she should want and feel.

The transmedial experience within these dystopian views of the future meets the consumer's shallow immediate basic lusts (sexual excitement etc) and in so doing breaks the link between the consumer and the real world. Murray uses these examples to tease out some  the more esoteric moral issues surrounding transmedia and the consumption of transmedial product. For many these are still relevant questions today.

As perhaps it does for anybody working in this space the question raised is how  do I want the consumer to operate in the transmedial world I am about to create?

Janet Murray makes it clear in these chapters that the idea of a new media/medium somehow corrupting it's user and society at large is not in itself a new. And again, she helpfully drawers our attention to  some of the more historical examples of where new media types  have been seen as a danger to society something incredibly negative. Even the book, and the humble printing press were seen as dangerous. When they first appeared.

Although the moral questions raised within this chapter are interesting. I don't  want to spend too much time thinking about them. They are surely questions which have been asked, fears that have been expressed, whenever a new media platform has become available, and information is available in a new form.

 What I do think is relevant for me is a basic understanding where the consumer sits in the transmedial space?

The arguments, Janet Murray is raising about audience control, social impact relate directly to what we call audience participation.

How do you get the audience to participate? How do you capture them?

These are fundamental issues that I think I want to explore in my dissertation .  


Friday, 22 June 2012

http://www.brandongenerator.com/behind-the-scenes

Just stumbled across this - really very interesting transmedia project using the power of crowds to generate content , certainly raises issues about ownership and line where professional creator and amateur  enthusiast meet.

Thursday, 21 June 2012

My journey begins: The Convergent audience , Audience participation through transmedial narrative.


This is my second blog on transmedial narrative , and once again I am creating it as part of my MA into digital media and transmedial narrative! 
This time and I preparing to undertake my dissertation, which right now has a working title of The convergent audience understanding audience participation within a transmedial environment. This may change ( it already has a number of times over the last wk) but I certainly feel I have the right elements in forcing on audience participation.
This is where my journey into Transmedial narrative and audience participation begins! I punched Transmedia narrative / audience participation into google and amongst the first things thrown up was a recent lecture by Henry Jenkins. Henry Jenkins is one of the fathers of transmedia theory.  It was upon his ideas that I based my first transmedial project the SEER and  I thought it would be fun to see what HJ was saying now on audience participation i a transmedial reality. 

In a recent lecture Henry Jenkins outlined his current thinking on transmedia and the audience.
WIthin this lecture HJ identifies 5 logics of engagement which he suggests  go some way to understanding the explosion in fan participation.
In Jenkins’ view, five logics are contributing to the emergence of transmedia and the phenomenon of increased fan participation (‘fandom’):
-    The logic of entertainment, as evidenced by the presence in the US TV schedules of TV series and reality shows;
-    The logic of social connection, highlighted by votes and discussions on social networking sites;
-    The logic of experts, symbolised by the collective intelligence (Levy, 1994true) brought to bear by fans for the purposes of creation, production and discussion. Henry Jenkins cites the examples of the creation of Twin Peaks fan sites and the Lost Wiki (Lostpedia), which both collate articles written by fans to offer greater insight into both series;
-    The logic of immersion, which encourages participation. For example, on Oscars night fans could use a number of interactive tools to immerse themselves in the ceremony and form a community;
-    The logic of identification, which enables fans to establish an identity depending on what they watch.


http://www.transmedialab.org/en/events/henry-jenkins-explains-his-vision-of-transmedia-and-audience-engagement/

Extract taken from reports on lecture by Henry Jenkins on Friday 25 May 2012 on Transmedia Storytelling entitled “Engagement, participation, play: the value and meaning of Transmedia audiences”.
Henry Jenkins explains his vision of transmedia and audience engagement
Logics of engagement:
In Jenkins’ view, five logics are contributing to the emergence of transmedia and the phenomenon of increased fan participation (‘fandom’):
-    The logic of entertainment, as evidenced by the presence in the US TV schedules of TV series and reality shows;
-    The logic of social connection, highlighted by votes and discussions on social networking sites;
-    The logic of experts, symbolised by the collective intelligence (Levy, 1994true) brought to bear by fans for the purposes of creation, production and discussion. Henry Jenkins cites the examples of the creation of Twin Peaks fan sites and the Lost Wiki (Lostpedia), which both collate articles written by fans to offer greater insight into both series;
-    The logic of immersion, which encourages participation. For example, on Oscars night fans could use a number of interactive tools to immerse themselves in the ceremony and form a community;
-    The logic of identification, which enables fans to establish an identity depending on what they watch.

THE DEFINITION OF TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING
Henry Jenkins then returned to his definition of Transmedia Storytelling, which he proposed for the first time in a 2003 analysis of the augmented universe of the Matrix film franchise, published in Technological Review.
Taking this definition as a starting point, he suggested examples to illustrate the concept, both in terms of production strategies and fan extensions. For instance, Jenkins highlighted the narrative universe of The Wizard of Oz (musicals, cartoon series, books, comic strips) to illustrate the idea that, in his opinion, Transmedia strategies were in place well before the term was coined and defined, and certainly well before the rapid rise of digital media. He emphasised this idea by explaining that Transmedia Storytelling is perfectly viable without using new technologies, and that the latter have mainly been used as facilitators by the modern creators of transmedia universes.
The researcher at USC’s Annenberg Lab then moved on to more contemporary examples, such as the creation of the Tru Blood drink as a direct spin-off of the TV products, the posting of “no aliens” stickers on benches specially designed for humans to symbolise the racial segregation depicted in the film District 9, and the Buffy the Vampire Slayer comic books created by Joss Whedon, which added an eighth non-televised season to the series.
Fans, immersed in a wide-ranging narrative universe, strive to produce their own transmedia extensions, in an example of what Jenkins calls the logic of performance. For example, fans of Lost have managed to create a map of the island which is not shown in the series, enabling them to map locations and characters’ movements. Glee fans, meanwhile, perform songs and dance routines from episodes of the show and then post and share them on platforms like YouTube. Finally, fans of Star Wars have made Star Wars Uncut, a series of sequences filmed by them and stitched together to recreate the whole film.
Jenkins also noted that some fan extensions precede the cultural industries’ transmedia creations. He cited the example of Pottermore, the official transmedia extension created by the author of the Harry Potter books. This website offers functions such as the Sorting Hat Ceremony, which determines which of the four school Houses each new Hogwarts student is assigned to. Yet this ceremony had already been developed by fans themselves ten years before, leading Jenkins to note that the cultural industries are lagging ten years behind!