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ZED.TO

April 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment

One could easily be forgiven for just about believing, and even hoping, that ByoLogyc’s array of slick, hi-tech but quasi-homeopathic products truly exists. Why not join a green-hearted company that promises you can do good and well at an evolutionary scale through the synergistic marriage of natural resources and human ingenuity? What could possibly go wrong?

Through the “immersive narrative experience” of ZED.TO—a sort of transmedia thought experiment along the lines of Vonnegut’s Galapagos—the quintet at The Mission Business and their collaborators invite you to find out. Something definitely will go wrong: “end of the world,” “cataclysm,” and “apocalyptic” are all part of the baseline description. The creators emphasize that they want to push the boundaries of audience participation in influencing the story through moral choices that must be made along the way.

ZED.TO rests on a tripod of live interactive events spaced over the coming summer and fall that follow a dramatic arc of ByoLogyc’s unveiling of its latest and greatest product at the Toronto Fringe Festival in July, a pandemic catastrophe at Nuit Blanche in September, and an as-yet mysterious climax at a rural location a month later. For those who live in or visit Toronto, smaller-scale live events are planned, while for everyone, much of the high-quality online content, such as ByoLogyc’s website, is already up and running.

One unusual feature of ZED.TO is that some participants are brought inside the doomsday corporation, implicating them in the double-edged science and morality of biotechnology development as well as the all-too-possible, all-too-human wrenches that might complicate the work at hand. It is also cool that the organizers are publicly documenting aspects of the project’s own development, which will be useful to anyone with an interest in either the theory or practice of transmedia.

Read on at http://zed.to and http://www.byologyc.com/, or at http://www.indiegogo.com/ZEDTO, where you can help fund the project if you like.

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LARP Spotlight: Just a Little Lovin’

March 21, 2012 By Leave a Comment

By Kristin Finnsson

On June 8th participants from all over the globe will be meeting up in Gålögården, Haninge, south of Stockholm  to play in a LARP event that expresses and discusses a very sensitive subject felt around the world. The year is 1982 and it was the summer that AIDS came to New York City, and friends will be pushed in ways they never thought they would be.

In New York 1985, 3 groups of friends traveled to update New York to celebrate the 4th of July just as the HIV virus had begun spreading. Nobody yet had known that by the end of that decade the groups of friends would be hit by death and this horrible disease. Participants will be playing people from this epidemic era, using tools such as documentary photos with an 80s style art to help tell the story of their characters.

Just a Little Lovin’ is a collaborative art project that uses contributions from LARP, game design, visual art , and photography. This is the second year this game will be running with new staffing and players but the story is the same. The emphasis is on the homosexual community in the 80s and their fears and dreams and heartaches.  Intrigued or just want to keep up with news and articles about this Swedish game and media event, follow them on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/justalittlelovin.

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Transmedia Social Activism: The Lost Generation

March 19, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Starting with its title, The Lost Generation aims to provoke in the tradition of Orwell, spiced for the zeitgeist with a gladiatorial reality television plot.  Antihero Sarah Jane, a member of the eponymous wayward cohort, signs up for a Battle Royale (or Hunger Games, or The Most Dangerous Game) style TV show in a Big Brother world—a la 1984, not CBS.  An underground youth resistance group suitably called the Unknown rescues her from her Matrix mentality, “but the only problem is that she will have to become the evil she is trying to escape.” That seems to mean homicidal.

Provocation is Mark Ashmore and his collaborators’ intent; they drew inspiration from the mainstreaming of exploitation themes in mid-century cinema.  (See his blog at http://producerofdistribution.tumblr.com/.)  They also drew topical inspiration from the worldwide social protest movements of the past year or so to craft a transmedia experience.  While their vigilante’s reality TV nightmare unfolds in a film to be released in summer, she is also participating in the Occupy movement.  The Lost Generation website already links to several real-world organizations.  A planned ARG (alternate reality game) will connect to that piece, and people can participate in the online experience by contributing content as well.  Ashmore has identified the meta theme behind all these layers and crossovers as a commentary on the convergence of society and media into a continuous, indistinguishable phenomenon.  It brings to mind a political impetus in the tradition of Kinoautomat but with the contemporary brick-by-brick hopefulness of something like the Nine Inch Nails Year Zero project.

The Lost Generation is certain to be controversial.  Its characterization of young people as bewitched, and bewitchable, by a malicious media-corporate-governmental complex spares no one’s moral righteousness.  The implied “j’accuse” cannot be entirely allegorical because of the call to real-world action.  Similarly, the project takes a specific stand on numerous real issues.  In addition, while the material available so far is careful not to cross any lines, the blurred boundary with reality carries some risk—to authenticity, if not actually of violence—around holding together broader participation and Sarah Jane’s extreme life.

This envelope-pushing is, of course, also The Lost Generation’s potential strength.  Ashmore & co. envision a “comprehensive” experience that promotes involvement in events that, by definition, cannot be scripted.  While breathless headlines about “Facebook revolutions’ smack of the tail wagging the dog, a transmedia approach to activism may have stronger legs precisely because it a priori enlists technology and multimedia in service of engaged (story)world participation.

For the film trailer, initial briefings, and other ways to participate in making and enjoying The Lost Generation, go to http://www.projectlostgeneration.co.uk/main.php.  The creators welcome collaborative participation of all sorts.

For an introduction to the wider world of transmedia social activism, start with one of Lina Srivastava’s posts, like this recent one: http://namac.org/node/26131.

For a more entirely nonfiction “book and web toolbox” for social activism also inspired by recent events, which is simpatico with transmedia without using that term, check out Beautiful Trouble at http://beautifultrouble.org/.

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Transmedia Spotlight: Prison Dancer

March 7, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Prison Dancer. The title itself conjures an iron cage and the love it cannot thwart, the enmity it cannot squelch, the ambition it cannot repress. Billed as “Glee meets Miss Saigon wrapped in a choose your own adventure” (or maybe Oz meets Smash at a sing-along?), Prison Dancer also promises a sometimes lighthearted take “inspired by, but not based on” the lives of inmates in the maximum-security prison at Cebu, in the Philippines, whose en masse choreography of Thriller went viral on YouTube a few years ago and launched something of a group career for the incarcerated men.

This imagining follows six prisoners of widely varying temperament and aspirations, brought into focus by a “pop culture journalist” who visits the facility to investigate. From teasers and other material available so far, the creators—Romeo Candido, Carmen De Jesus, and Ana Serrano—seem to have treated what could have been facile ethnic, sexual, and socioeconomic stereotypes with a sensitivity to character palatably dosed with humor and a dash of camp. That formula should help preempt a self-defeating media conversation about whether a production that unabashedly draws on a distinctive (and, in its home market of North America, minority) cultural outlook can also be mainstream.

The trio characterize their twist on transmedia storytelling as an “interactive musical web series,” a Frankensteinian term they may have coined, or at least begun to popularize through this project. The centerpiece is twelve webisodes launched on the Prison Dancer YouTube channel on March 6. A second major component has been live shows, which will culminate in a “performative cinema” experience as the Closing Night Gala Screening of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival on March 15. Both of these settings aim for audience interaction in various ways, ranging from what Serrano told the Huffington Post she hopes will be the “karaoke-ified” webisodes and fan covers to a group participatory event at the festival.

Prison Dancer also provides a glimpse into a couple of ways that the holistic transmedia ethic seeps into a project beyond its storytelling platforms. Its meme-muse itself leapt from the Cebu dancers’ live performance, through their YouTube hit, to both Prison Dancer and a plotline of the TV show (Glee) its marketing invokes. Meanwhile, its fundraising has looked to both a private Canadian outfit that embraces multimedia endeavors and the crowdsourcing site, Kickstarter—where one of the rewards is a private Transmedia 101 seminar from the experienced creators.

For more, check out prisondancer.com or its YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Kickstarter pages.

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LARP: Striking Gold!

March 1, 2012 By Leave a Comment

By Kristin Finnsson

Hey there partner! Come on out and try your hand at becoming rich by striking it lucky with gold. Be warned though, there are bandits and other all sorts of other no good people that may be lurking about. But do not fret over that, the United States is a grand place, especially under the newly elected Abraham Lincoln.

Besides strapping on your favorite nerf six shooter, what could be more fun than finding an openly practicing Occultist aka wizard and having a lovely séance. Just be warned, you never know when something might go wrong like a golem suddenly appearing!

This is the land of Frontiers; a game that is set in Fort Colville of the Washington Territories in the 1860s. At first glance, you may think this is a normal western, but appearances can be deceiving. With Frontiers, it parallels real American history, but implements of a unique style of the steampunk genre. To incorporate the fantastical machines and technology that never was, these machines run on a secret magical energy disguised as a combination of science and clockwork.

On top of the twist of history, guns, and machinery, what separates Frontiers from most game systems is that they do not actually have GMs. Every person who attends makes the game and the story line. These dedicated patrons meet up every 2 months at BSA Camp Brinkley in Snohomish, Washington and live out a pure 44 hours of fantasy and history. Truly an outside of the box and intriguing group.

For more information please visit: http://www.biomechine.net/frontiers/index.php

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ARG Review: Guidestones

February 28, 2012 By Leave a Comment

By Blair Crossman

The Georgia Guidestones: A huge granite megalith bearing inscriptions in Babylonian, Classical Greek, Sanskrit, Egyptian hieroglyphics, and eight other languages was discovered outside of Elbert County, Georgia in 1980. This strange structure provides the basis and inspiration for iThentic and 3 o’clock TV’s new mixture of webseries and alternate reality game, titled Guidestones.

In this series, viewers will follow along with 50 documentary-style online episodes released in real time, taking into account travel time and other obstacles (for instance, if it takes two days to drive from Georgia to Colorado, there will be two days for participants to view the previous episode before the next is released). In this down time, players can follow clues hidden in the episodes to online rewards, hidden storylines, and other in-world extras.

By filming and involving real-life individuals (as themselves) in the event, Guidestones blurs the line between the world of secrets, conspiraces, and millenarianism and our own world. By drawing in players and viewers in this manner, they create a truly unique blend of the two medias that promises to be more interactive and compelling the more it grows. If this sounds like your cup of tea, visit www.guidestones.org for the online series and other tools to begin your discoveries.

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Trending: Transmedia

February 24, 2012 By 1 Comment

By HN Deeb

The February 23, 2012 capstone “Big Event” of Transmedia Days at Les Rendez-Vous du Cinéma Québécois will be a screening of KINOAUTOMAT, bringing the revolutionary choose-your-own-adventure style film full circle from its premiere at Expo 67 in Montreal forty-five years ago. It’s a nice reminder that transmedia is not only a surging trend but has a history, global reach, and diverse range of perspectives, purposes, and forms.

As Nick DeMartino observed a few months ago [1], you know “transmedia” has achieved critical mass because the term itself is now a topic of heated debate. I’ll stick to the safest ground possible and quote the well-known definition by Professor Henry Jenkins of the University of Southern California (formerly at MIT) [2]:
Transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience. Ideally, each medium makes it own unique contribution to the unfolding of the story. [Thankfully, his recent update stuck with this core description. [3]]

Whereas the traditional model tells a story through one combination of medium and platform—printed book, filmed movie, etc.—that might then be adapted to others, transmedia starts with a holistic view of the storyworld. Any single piece captured in a particular form is just one slice of the whole. A common, though not necessary, corollary of this ex ante infiniteness is that many more people may be involved in creating (or perhaps merely uncovering) aspects of the storyworld, including those f/k/a mere consumers.

Our sun, at least, shines down on nothing totally new. The “traditional” model really describes the mass media or commercial modes of storytelling distribution that have dominated Western societies for a couple hundred years. People everywhere have always collaborated and taken advantage of different media to build worlds: some archaeologists suggest the ancient Lascaux cave paintings played a role in conveying experiences from excursions to a spiritual realm. Visionaries on a more mundane plane (if only slightly so: I’ve heard more than one transmedia expert invoke Walt Disney) arguably pioneered modern transmedia in the twentieth century with ever-expanding worlds encountered through criss-crossing layers of radio, television, cinema, books, records, theme parks, and so on.

What has changed in recent years, of course, is the spread and diversification of accessible technological tools for (co)creating, distributing, consuming, and reimagining content. These developments have not only spurred transmedia production, but also the growth of a worldwide community of transmedia storytellers. In that spirit, we hope to highlight a few transmedia projects here in coming weeks. In the meantime, check out the Quebec festival underway now if you can. The days before the KINOAUTOMAT screening were packed with a special series of transmedia panels and workshops, kicking off
with one featuring Lance Weiler on February 21. For more info, see http://www.rvcq.com/festival-30e/programmation/evenements?ajax=0&transmedia=1.

[1] http://www.tribecafilm.com/tribecaonline/future-of-film/Why-Transmedia-is-Catching-On-Part-1.html
[2] http://www.henryjenkins.org/2007/03/transmedia_storytelling_101.html
[3] http://henryjenkins.org/2011/08/defining_transmedia_further_re.html

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ARG 101

February 17, 2012 By 1 Comment

By Blaire Crossman

You may have heard the term before, but what exactly is an “ARG”? (Aside from an expression of displeasure, of course.) An ARG, otherwise known as an “Alternate Reality Game”, can include anything from scavenger hunts and video games to phone calls in the middle of the night from characters in the game. In essence, ARGs blur the line between the game and real life. They attempt to draw their players into the world of the ARG with online games and puzzles that often lead to encounters or riddles to solve in the outside world.

For example, the ARG entitled “Conspiracy for Good” would release fake “security leak” information about an imagined evil corporation called Blackwell Briggs, employing game rewards and hidden video stills to simulate a global confederacy of individuals fighting against the oppressive company. Games for smart phones gave players the opportunity to hack into Blackwell’s mainframe to extract valuable intelligence, and others literally smuggled a woman into a London safehouse by van.

This kind of tangible adventure is a staple of ARGs in an effort to have players feel, if even for a short time, that they are actually a revolutionary force for good in a world where evil is concrete and visible. But other types of ARGs exist—some of the most widespread include marketing attempts by TV shows and movies such as Heroes, Dark Knight, and the upcoming re-imagining of the Amazing Spiderman. In games such as these, players may find codes in trailers or on merchandise, discovering locations in the real world to meet or to find clues to the next event, all tied in to the overarching theme of the aforementioned story.

All these games and many more are active currently all across the globe. If you think you might like to join an ARG or are just a little curious, please don’t hesitate to visit www.argn.com.

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Hackers, corporations, and mutants… oh my!

February 16, 2012 By Leave a Comment

By Kristin Finnsson

As you enter the room, music from the nearby DJ helps set the mood for your environment. Around you there are people of questionable nature, some that are not even people. But what else is new!

The year is 2045 in the city of New Rome. This isn’t what we thought the future would be. Instead of aliens and spaceships, the world is ruled by large corporations, and I mean literally ruled. As the world turned on itself from nuclear war, disease ran rampant, food was in short supply and the mortality rate increased. Groups were organized to try and combat these problems but due to lack of funding they were purchased by conglomerates. These conglomerates then would sign agreements with countries that were in need of help and getting those countries to give up most of their industrial infrastructure and natural resources. This is the world you now live in and must survive in.

SINergy is a cyberpunk themed boffer LARP system located in Leicester, England. The world of SINergy is best described as the Matrix meets The Minority Report meets Johnny Mnemonic and so much more! Their dedicated group meets on the first Sunday of every month (with a few exceptions) from 5pm-9pm at a fully licensed bar (Leicester Square Club). During the entire game session there is even an in character DJ, helping set the mood for the evening. Unlike most LARPs, time is the same even when there is gae down time. The characters go to their jobs, get money, and every minute counts. This is a unique feature that is not commonly found in LARPing systems and one that works well for the group as they have been running for many years now.

So zip up those leather pants, put on your trench coat, grab your ray gun, and have a look into what the future holds for you! Click here for more information.

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Ever wanted to be someone’s Hero?

February 7, 2012 By Leave a Comment

by Kristin Finnsson

Herofest is a fantasy based LARP/LRP that takes place three weekends out of the year. These events take their adventurers from Friday to Sunday through a magical world of Orin Rakatha. The Tower group system allows new players to come in as mercenaries and be recruited to join the folds of that Tower that provides protection much like a guild. These towers contain races such as Thissessin Tower, the race of the Lizardmen, to more specific schools of magic and knowledge like Dymwan. The land of Orin Rakatha is hard to travel to due to being on separate plane. The only means of transportation between Planes and Orin Rakatha is by using a device called the Rift Gate.

As your character immerses itself into the world, you will find that your actions affect everything around you. Decisions made in one game will affect you and possibly your Tower later down the road. With each game there are no predetermined outcomes, so your actions can have some very interesting consequences.

Within the campaign’s rich world, lie unique economic, political, and environment systems. Don’t like politics? There is plenty for a strong warrior to do whether it be drinking in the tavern or shopping around the vendors.

Herofest is a great place for any level of LARPer/LRPer to start a character. The team who runs Herofest has successfully been running a main campaign called Heroquest (the founding story line for Herofest) since 1987. For 2011, Herofest received 4 LARP Award nominations. More information about Herofest can be found at http://www.live-roleplaying.co.uk/LARP/herofest-larp_awards.html. If you are near Gloucester, UK this is a LARP I highly recommend checking out.

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