Take Back What Has Always Been Yours – Ted Hope, Producer & Co-Founder, This is that corporation

More videos at Power to the Pixel!

The degree was designed for writers interested in experimenting with new formats and was informed by contemporary thinking on transliteracy, meaning the ability to read, write and interpret across a range of media from orality through print and film to networked environments. Creative Writing, indeed the very nature of text itself, is changing. No longer bound by print, there are many opportunities for writers to experiment with new kinds of media, different voices and experimental platforms, both independently and in collaboration with other writers or other fields and disciplines. Not only is writing evolving, but writers themselves are developing broader expectations and aspirations. Novelists are learning about the potential of hypertext and multimedia to change the ways in which a story can be told. Journalists are finding that blogs and wikis are radically affecting their relationships with their readers. Community artists are discovering powerful collaborative narratives. And the commercial world is finding new and creative ways to interact with its employees and customers in the fast-growing attention economy of the internet.

While digital media have altered the way we disseminate and gather information, readers – both online and offline – still hunger for compelling narratives. As readers, we want to be told stories; we want complex and interesting ideas and characters; we want vivid pictures in our heads. As writers we want to communicate. We need good stories well-told, whatever our choice of delivery platform. The MA in Creative Writing and New Media gave students an opportunity to focus on developing work at the cutting edge of the new technologies and provided new ways of thinking about narrative.

The course enabled postgraduate students to study and practice with a rich range of theorists and practitioners from around the world. What I loved about this course is that it focused on practice — how is new media and cross/transmedia writing different — and how they invited lecturers and mentors from around the globe to assist their students. Because the guests were from all around the globe, the guests did not fly in (that would of been a prohibitive budget for any course). Instead, we participated from wherever we were in the planet, by providing online resources for the students, and using Skype and forums to discuss. Look at the guests who participated:

Randy Adams, Paul Beasley, Ronni Bennett, Alan Bigelow, Will Buckingham, Andy Campbell, J.R. Carpenter, John Cayley, Suw Charman, Christy Dena, Jeanie Finlay, Caitlin Fisher, Carolyn Handler Miller, Chris Joseph, Jess Laccetti, Marjorie Luesebrink, Bruce Mason, Nick Montfort, Meg Pickard, Rita Raley, Alan Sondheim, Maurice Suckling, Jonathan Taylor, Christine Wilks

The course has finished now, but what is wonderful is that an archive of all the Guest Lectures given during the four years of the online MA in Creative Writing and New Media are now online for all! It was put together by CWNM graduate and digital artist Christine Wilks, and the ”resource will be of value to practitioners, students and academics with an interest in transliteracy, digital fiction, digital art, e-poetry, and cross-media”. Yes!

• My 2007 lecture ‘A New Total Work of Art’ is here
• My 2008 lecture ‘Designing for Lotsa Media’ is here
• My 2009 lecture was a discussion about the Writer’s Guide to Making a Digital Living
• Check out the entire archive of all the talks here: http://www.creativewritingandnewmedia.com
• Comment on the archive here: Transliteracy Notes

Wohoo! Enjoy!

Now, the team are also continuing their work on ‘Transliteracy’. The Transliteracy Research Group (TRG), is a research-focussed think-tank and creative laboratory.

Transliteracy is currently defined as the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks. The Transliteracy Research Group coordinates theoretical and practice-based research into transliterate materials and behaviours.

They have a new blog at http://www.transliteracy.com, community site at http://transliteracy.ning.com/ and have a CFP out:

The first Transliteracy Conference will take place at Leicester’s new Phoenix Square Digital Media Centre on Tuesday 9 February 2010.  This one-day event offers an opportunity for academics, artists, business people and practitioners to share discoveries, ideas, and creative works that amplify and augment transliteracy research. Themes to be explored include:

• transliteracy and libraries
• transliteracy and the arts 
• transliteracy in education 
• transliteracy in communications 
• transliteracy in the workplace 
• transliteracy and transdisciplinarity
• transliteracy in action – examples of transliterate works, like digital fiction, networked arts projects, or library resources.

The Call for Presentations invites 250 word abstracts. Presentations should be 10-15 minutes in duration, and can be used to show work or deliver a short paper. Deadline for Abstracts:  1 December 2009

Enjoy all of this!

Well, it has been a long time between posts and so you’re all probably wondering what is going on. As you know, I’ve been working on getting my PhD finished. I’ve had a few things delay its completion and so it isn’t done yet. But since I’ve been a hermit for so long, and have missed out on so many events, birthdays, launches, going-away parties and so on, I thought it best I crawl out of my cave and engage with the world again anyway.

I’m back to working too. I’m consulting with a few clients at the moment and am booking presentations. I’ve promised to keep people posted on where I’ll be when, so here is a run down of what I’ve been doing and trips I’ve confirmed:

• I did a talk a couple of days ago for the Historic Houses Trust for an event run by dLux Media Arts on ‘Mobile Histories’. Richard Fox presented on his serious game ‘Razorhurst’, a locative mobile game that uses photos and footage from the Justice and Police Museum. David Cranswick presented on the work dLux does with mobile gaming and what technologies they use (such as mscape). I presented on ‘ACTUAL WORLD FICTION’ – how the actual world is integrated into a fictional world in pervasive, ubiquitous and alternate reality games etc.
• Next public event I’ll be at is Power to the Pixel, London Film Festival. Wohoo! I gave the keynote last year so I’m thrilled to be asked back again to be a part of the conference and workshops. This year I’ll be doing a follow-up to my intro talk last year. I’ll give a quick run down ‘LESSONS LEARNED’ in Cross-Media. I’ll also be chairing a panel on ‘EXTENDING THE EXPERIENCE’ with three great cross-media folks (in alphabetical order): David Varela of nDreams, Steve Peters of No Mimes Media and Martin Elriccson of The company P. I’ll also be running a workshop of ‘CREATING CROSS-MEDIA NATIVE’ projects. I won’t have much time before and after the event so I hope you can make there and I hope you come up and say hi!
• The next confirmed public presentation after that is the Modern Language Association Convention in Philadelphia on December 29th. The panel is run by Marc Ruppel and will include Burcu Bakioğlu (aka ‘Pale Fire’). The panel is called ‘(Re)Framing Transmedial Narratives’ and I’ll be talking about ‘TRANSMODAL’ theory. It will should be a rip-roaring academic discussion about the area so I really hope to see familiar faces there to join in! I’ll be staying on the East coast of the US from late December until sometime in January. There are plenty of folks I’d love to catch up with while I’m there! So, please do ping me if you’re keen.
• The next confirmed public event will be at Cartoons on the Bay - the International Television Animation Festival held in Italy in April 2010. I’m excited about this too! Not only is animation in my heart (my first professional job in the ‘industry’ was working as a Producer in a fully-digital production studio managing 2D & 3D animation), but it really is on my radar in terms of my own projects in the future, and in terms of cross-media aesthetics in general. Indeed, Cartoons has a cross-media award in their Pulcinella Awards. I really look foward to being at this event, meeting Max Giovagnoli finally, and of course…hanging out in Italy! Let me know if you’ll be around then.

There are other events, but they are unconfirmed or not for the public. I’m just letting you know about these international gigs so we can arrange to meet! It helps me know ahead of time so flight bookings etc can be made accordingly.

As for why I’m still working on the PhD. Well, it is a few things.

1. Since I started my research the area has become well-known. However, despite its pervasiveness, there still hasn’t been lengthy work done to distinguish the area from existing research areas. So, rather than talk about the stuff I find an issue for me now, I had to go back and argue just what I think this phenomenon is and how it differs from existing theories.
2. I’m encompassing a range of practices in mass entertainment and independent arts. That means I need to apply a range of different methodologies as you can’t apply research questions from one to the other easily.
3. Related to the previous point is my multi-disciplinary approach. I’m utilising media, narrative, game studies and semiotics to help illuminate the nature of the phenomenon. Each of these disciplines have their own research questions. I started by writing a thesis that put the phenomenon first, but that doesn’t work. In order to write a PhD that will be examined, I have to design the argument according to certain research questions.
4. Because I’m referring to a range of theories from different disciplines I cannot assume any shared knowledge at all. This means I need to preface every theorist, explain the context of every theory, and I cannot employ allusion at all.
5. My mother passed away unexpectedly just before Xmas. This means feeling a lot of grief and loss (I loved her very much, she was my best friend and my only parent growing up). But it also means I feel my own mortality. How does this relate to the thesis? Well, what if my thesis is the last big thing I contribute to this world? What if I die suddenly? I had to let go of these ideas and not try to communicate all that I want to say now. Instead, I had to write with the assumption that I will have time to develop my ideas…

I’m not sure if these points illuminate my process at all, but it is true for me. I must say I’m very close. I’m currently finishing my conclusion, refining my chapters and going through my references with a fine-tooth comb. But since I’m working again it’ll be another few weeks. Nearly, nearly there.

Anyway, just thought I’d touch base with you all. I look forward to seeing some of you at events and will continue chatting with you online.

Australian new media arts organisation dLux Media Arts was one of my sponsors for the trip, and so I’ve published my report on their site: http://bit.ly/fId0H 

Enjoy!

Second Nature: The International Journal of Creative Media is a new open access, peer-reviewed online journal that explores the distinctive particulars of and interconnections between textual, visual, aural and interactive creative research and practices.

It welcomes contributions from across the field of creative media including creative writers, media and art historians, media practitioners and fine artists, performers, architects and architectural theorists and historians, curators, museum professionals, scientists, cultural and media theorists, archivists, technologists, software developers, educationalists, philosophers and any others who have a stake in the understanding and future developments of creative media. Second Nature publishes research papers, articles, and creative projects.

The first issue is themed ‘Role Models’, which editor (the wonderful) Shiralee Saul explains:

The theme of this issue, “Role Models”, is intended to be as multifaceted as the journal itself. What, it asks, is academic research’s, and creative media generally, relationship with the past? What is our ‘proper’ role as academics? And what models should we be providing, and critiquing, for our students? How can we facilitate their entry into an increasingly rapidly changing industrial and cultural landscape?

Check it out!

Dena, C. (2008) ‘Emerging Participatory Culture Practices: Player-Created Tiers in Alternate Reality Games’, Henry Jenkins and Mark Deuze (Eds) special issue on ‘Convergence Culture’ in Convergence Journal: International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, Vol 14, No 1, pp: 41-57.

This article introduces an emerging form of participatory culture, one that is not a modification or elaboration of a primary producer’s content. Instead, this article details how the artifacts created to ‘play’ a primary producer’s content have become the primary work for massive global audiences. This phenomenon is observed in the genre of alternate reality games (ARGs) and is illustrated through a theory of ‘tiering’. Tiers provide separate content to different audiences. ARG designers tier their projects, targeting different players with different content. ARG  player production then creates another tier for non-playing audiences. To explicate this point, the features that provoke player-production – producer-tiering, ARG aesthetics and transmedia fragmentation – are interrogated, alongside the character of the subsequent player-production. Finally, I explore the aspects of the player-created tiers that attract massive audiences, and then posit what these observations may indicate about contemporary art forms and society in general.

Since this paper was restricted by copyright for a year (which provoked a controversy), I created a website to augment the paper. Many people thought the website provided all the content that was in the essay, but that is not the case. The website provided another point of entry for those who couldn’t access the essay, and provided more depth for those that could. Now this can be made clear because the paper is out of copyright. Yay!

• PDF of the paper
• Online Augmentation Website

Dena, C. (2007) ‘The Future of Digital Media Culture is All in Your Head: An Argument for the Age of Integrating Media’, Proceedings of perthDAC 2007: the 7th Digital Arts and Culture Conference, Perth, Curtin University of Technology, 116-125.

Although research into digital media culture assists greatly in understanding new technologies, its influences and affects, to continue to do so in isolation of other media shows little regard for the reality of its role and use. ‘Old’ or ‘traditional’ media such as dusty books and smudged newspapers, consensus television, linear films and radio are also part of the daily medial diet of humans. Indeed, this paper argues that an emerging cultural approach is the integration of all media and that this will continue in the near- to long-term future. We are no longer in a Digital Age, we are instead in an Age of Integration. This argument is explored through providing examples of extant integration practices and outlining economic and cognitive influences. Finally, these influences and existing practices are utilized as insights into potential future cultural practices.

This paper has now been published in a special issue of Leonardo/ISAST: ’Social Media: Narrative and Literacy in Digital Culture’.

• LEA Special Issue from perthDAC

The citation for this issue is: Dena, C. (2009) ‘The Future of Digital Media Culture is All in Your Head: An Argument for the Age of Integrating Media’, Leonardo Electronic Almanac, Leonardo On-Line (LEA Special Issue from perthDAC: Social Media: Narrative and Literacy in Digital Culture) [Online] Available at: http://www.leonardo.info/LEA/PerthDAC/PerthDAC.html

I hope you find these papers interesting! Indeed, check out the other great papers in the LEA issue. As always, please feel free to send me your thoughts via comments or email.

The data is not comprehensive, but I hope that you will all ping me with corrections and additions. What I find really exciting about this data is it makes it clear that ARGs have a global reach and there is the opportunity for truly cross-cultural, indeed truly global, ARGs.

• ARGs Around the World Part One: player countries, multi-country design, localized ARGs
• ARGs Around the World Part Two: non-English-language ARGs, ARG communities

Enjoy!

Photo credit: ‘Globe Hands SM’ by Noticelj

I’ve been seeing a lot of negative ‘FAIL’ rhetoric lately in social media about social media campaigns, or anything really. Many of the negatives are from social media commentators, but also come from a wider range of sources. Indeed, it is all too easy (and sometimes fun) to join the chorus. But what concerns me about this rampant (well it is for me at the moment) behaviour is what these people are missing. When one thinks in terms of success or fail as a simplistic binary opposition, then the opportunity to find gems, to discover the mechanics of a complex system, is lost. What do I mean?

Well, for a long time I’ve studied as many aspects of cross-media as I can. I’ve spent years reading, watching, playing and analysing theories, projects, processes and people. I’ve spent time with the inspired and banal in academia, mainstream media, marketing, independent arts and gaming. I’ve got flack from artists who consider me naive or selling my soul because I study and work with marketers; been encouraged by mainstream media folk to not spend so much time with independent arts and anything that doesn’t guarantee large incomes; have had it insinuated that by spending time in the corporate world I’m not a true academic, and have had it insinuated by practitioners that by spending time in academia I’m not a true artist. Aren’t I the rebel eh? To be fair, these are distant, small, rare voices that underlie people’s thinking, than anything said directly to me. And there are many that appreciate my diverse mix. But I have had to defend/or explain what I do in almost every environment I’ve been in.

What’s my point? My point is that I don’t segregate my life and my interests and my mind the same way others do.  I see value is lots of (seemingly unlikely) places. This spills over into the way I observe and analyse things. I do look at crappy projects (let’s face it, there are more of them than there are of the sublime). But if I look at a project that isn’t working I don’t fob it off as a failure. Really. I don’t. Even if it isn’t working, my mind is still interested in it. Why? Because more often than not I see one or two things that do work. Not because I’m trying to find something good in the bad, but because I see things that can work independent of the entire execution. For me then, what is interesting is trying to figure out what other parts stuffed it up.

You see, a project can have some top notch strategy and execution in there, alongside the terrible. You may think this a strange thing. But I’ve seen it. There can be some great thinking informing an approach, that is then thwarted by execution (duh). Or there can be a good technology or aspect to a project executed, that is dulled or even reversed with a weak pairing. By observing how people make good strategies crumble — what element they forgot, what element they had too much of, and what combination of elements didn’t work  – I gain an understanding of what exactly the core design principle is, and how it needs to be executed within a delicate creative ecology. All of this is missed when you just stamp a big FAIL on a project that doesn’t seem to work.

I should end here. But I won’t. I’ll now ask why? Why is it that people analyse things so differently? Perhaps this approach requires different cognitive wiring. I’ll wack out some neuropsychology here to explain the pondering. In the 1990s, psychiatrist Eugene G. d’Aquili and radiologist and religion researcher Andrew Newberg investigated the behaviour of the brain during a religious experience (nuns praying, monks chanting and so on). In overly simplistic terms, they sought to discover more about how the brain shapes *reality*. During this research they developed a theory of ‘cognitive operators’ that ‘comprise the most basic functions of the mind’ (1999, 51).  These primary cognitive operators  (there may be more) ‘allow the mind to think, feel, experience, order, and interpret the universe’ (51), and they are:

1. The holistic operator: “allows us to view reality as a whole or as a gestalt” (52)
2. The reductionist operator: “allows us to look at the whole picture and break it down into an analysis of individual parts” (52)
3. The causal operator: “permits reality to be viewed in terms of causal sequences” (53)
4. The abstractive operator: “permits the formation of general concepts from the perception of individual facts” (54)
5. The binary operator: “allows us to extract meaning from the external world by ordering abstract elements into dyads. A dyad is a group of two elements that are opposed to each other in their meaning. Therefore, dyads include good and evil, right and wrong, justice and injustice, happy and sad, and heaven and hell…each opposite, in some ways, derives its meaning from its contrast with the other opposite” (55)
6. The quantitative operator: “permits the abstraction of quantity from the perception of various elements” (55)
7. The emotional value operator: “permits us to assign a particular emotional value to various elements of perception and cognition” (56)

Now, I’m no neuropsychologist, but it seems that for many in the social media world and beyond, the binary operator is…operating overtime! FAIL or FTW?! Is this because the recognition of, and involvement in, any *new* media involves seeing the opposite of what already exists? It should come as no surprise that a person (me) concerned with cross-media (how individual media plaforms work together) would be balancing the holistic and reductionist operators more than anything else.

I’m always keen on balance though, and so I’ll take two lessons from this personal pondering: there are benefits to seeing the parts separate from the whole (and how the parts work together in a whole), but there are also benefits to acknowledging something has failed…because it makes the wins easier to recognise.

There’s gold in them thar FAILS.

Source: D’Aquili, E. G. and A. B. Newberg (1999) The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience. Minneapolis, MN, Fortress Press.

Photo ‘A Quiet Search in Paradise’ by moonjazz on flickr

For a few years I’ve been working with the Australian Literature Board on their Story of the Future project. The project (a big hat tip to Josie Emery for creating the program) involved touring Australia running sessions on how digital technologies can be utilised for storytelling, for marketing your stories and running your writing business. The project has now ended, but the project manager, the always-a-delight Therese Fingleton, didn’t want it to end without sharing some of the things we’ve been doing. So, The Writer’s Guide to Making a Digital Living was born. Myself and the fantastic Jennifer Wilson were commissioned to co-write the guide, which has a lot of (hopefully) interesting stuff in there for writers. It is aimed at writers at various stages of their career, who work in a variety of artforms (screenwriting, game writing, poets, novelists, ewriters), and addresses writers worldwide, whilst also featuring some great Australian talent.

I wrote the sections on the craft of new writing forms, professional development, concept development, marketing and distribution. But on top of the Guide, which is available online and in PDF form, I’ve also created (with the wonderful design of the Lycette Bros.) a chart of the New Writing Universe to give a glimpse at the vast range of emerging writing forms out there (there is much more than writing a shooter game!). Enough of me, as a start, check out the very tongue-in-cheek promotional video we’ve created (mainly the work of the wonderful Lycette Bros. and Therese Fingleton):

Check it out at: www.australiacouncil.gov.au/writersguide

Enjoy! Let me know what you think!

The London Film Festival conference I participated in, Power to the Pixel, (see my last post) is still cranking out material and attracting press. Recently, I was quoted in The Guardian and an interview with me has been published at the PttP site. Both of these are really cool, but there are a couple of little things I’d like to clear up…

The Guardian piece quotes me referring to a ‘Project Universe’. While I’d love to take credit for that, it is actually Lance Weiler who came up with that term. I really like it…not just because of the ‘universe‘ theme, but because it is mode-neutral. I don’t like using terms such as ’storyworld’ or ‘gameworld’ because cross/trans-media projects involve both narrative AND game elements. ‘Project Universe’ is also practice/industry-neutral, in that it can refer to franchises OR small-scale independent projects. I’m a sucker for inclusive terminology.

The interview is posted on the Power to the Pixel site and is written by Nikki Nimme. Nikki did a great job mashing up my email and in-person interviews and main speech at the conference. There are some little things, though, which didn’t quite make it or got a mixed up: I’m currently doing doctoral research, not post doc research; I prefer working with clients at the concept stage rather than coming in later in the project; the changes to distribution I mention are only SOME, not all!; as technology improves, it is entertainment that utilises pervasive/networked/augmented technologies more that will come to the fore, as well as simultaneous media usage (prequels etc are already happening!).

Anyway, these links have been added to my press page. I hope you get something out of them.