“PopMatters has put this question to our vast staff of cultural critics and have come up with a list of 50 DVDs that every motion picture aficionado should have as part of their own aesthetic assemblage. By no means all inclusive, but definitely the result of much handwringing (and film watching), our plan is to … Read morePopMatters Picks: 50 DVDs Every Film Fan Should Own
Chris Dahlen, a contributing writer to publications such as Pitchfork Media, Paste Magazine, The Onion AV Club and The Wire N.H., has started a blog. His blog, Save the Robot, discusses among other things ‘transmedia’. Chris says that ‘Jenkins and others have defined this concept really well’ and wonders what is left for him as … Read moreNew transmedia explorer: Chris Dahlen
Most of you would be aware that the Halo 3 ARG has begun. It has received quite negative reviews from many gammer-community-ARG-crossovers. It seems that the ARG is breaking design techniques such as: progressive disclosure, choreography of the rollout, audience tiering and player-production facilitation. Conversely, alot of the posts seem to be by people who … Read moreHalo ARGs & Parodies
In 1980, on a November evening in Los Angeles, pedestrians who walked past the glass windows of the Broadway Department Store noticed something strange…they did not see their reflection. There were other people walking by, just not them. They ended up talking with the alien reflections and realized that they were in two different locations, … Read moreThe Hole in the Wall: How Humans Connect No Matter What
For the past few months I’ve had the pleasure of mentoring a best-selling UK author through the fabulous De Montfort University Online MA in Creative Writing and New Media program (a course I’ve been a guest lecturer for). Alison Norrington has written many novels that could be described as ‘chick-lit’ (is it still OK to use such a … Read moreCross-Media Story: Staying Single
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 … Read moreFrom Tie-Ins (marketing) to Transmedia (art)
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. … Read moreIf 91 year old Mavis from Mudgee can do it…
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 … Read moreAngela Thomas on Pleasure, Play, Participation and Promise in Virtual Worlds
Content can be repurposed, adapted and stretched across platforms. A story can start in one medium and finish in another. How are audiences moved between platforms, and how can one make this traversal a part of the entertainment experience itself? This paper provides an introduction to multi-platform and multi-format entertainment and then outlines the factors … Read more‘Patterns in Cross-Media Interaction Design: It’s Much More Than a URL’ for Proceedings of 1st International Conference on Crossmedia Interaction Design
SPACE TIME PLAY. COMPUTER GAMES, ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM: THE NEXT LEVEL Edited by Friedrich von Borries, Steffen P. Walz and Matthias Böttger In cooperation with Drew Davidson, Heather Kelley, Julian Kücklich“Space Time Play” is a journey through the past, present and potential spaces of computer and video games. Have you ever wondered what’s behind a … Read more‘A Quick Primer on Alternate Realities’ for Space, Time, Play