Week 11: Polymorphic Narrative & Crossmedia Storytelling

Week 11: Polymorphic Narrative & Crossmedia Storytelling

Transmedia Entertainment: Narrative and Play Get Snuggly

Special Guest Lecture by Christy Dena (http://www.cross-mediaentertainment.com/) via Skype videoconferencing - on the CLS Big Screen!

This week will be a special session on an emerging form of entertainment that utilises many media platforms and arts types. With the large range of platforms available and the accompanying artforms on them, there is great choice for artists and audiences. The decision to create works that traverse these media forms rather than replicate on them has economic and artist motivations. This seminar will explore the aesthetics of this form.

The following readings provide an overview of different approaches and lists works that fit in this genre. Henry Jenkins identified transmedia practices by the Wachowski Bros. (Jenkins, 2003b; Jenkins, 2003a). Jane McGonigal has discussed ‘alternate reality games’ (McGonigal, 2003) while Jill Walker has concentrated on the distributed nature of works in general (Walker, 2004). Lizbeth Klastrup and Susana Tosca identify design elements for the creation of transmedial worlds and Christy Dena looks at the use of the Internet by players to combat design issues on cross-media works (Klastrup and Tosca, 2004; Dena, 2006).

Dena, C. (2006) 'How the Internet is Holding the Center of Conjured Universes' presented at Internet Research 7.0: Internet Convergences, Association of Internet Researchers, Hilton Hotel, Brisbane, 27-30 Sept, prepublication version at Cross-MediaEntertainment.com http://www.cross-mediaentertainment.com/DropBox/DENA_InternetUniverse.pd....

Jenkins, H. (2003a) 'Transmedia Storytelling', Technology Review Inc., 15 January [Online] Available at: http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/03/01/wo_jenkins011503.asp?p=1

Jenkins, H. (2003b) 'Why The Matrix Matters', Technology Review Inc., 11 June [Online] Available at: http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/posts.aspx?id=15779

Klastrup, L. and S. Tosca (2004) 'Transmedial worlds - rethinking cyberworld design' presented at Proceedings International Conference on Cyberworlds 2004, IEEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos, California, published in Klastrup Cataclysms http://www.itu.dk/people/klastrup/klastruptosca_transworlds.pdf.

McGonigal, J. (2003) ''This Is Not a Game': Immersive Aesthetics and Collective Play' presented at MelbourneDAC, the 5th International Digital Arts and Culture Conference, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia, May 19 - 23, published in School of Applied Communication, RMIT http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/dac/papers/McGonigal.pdf Also Available at: http://www.fineartforum.org/Backissues/Vol_17/faf_v17_n08/reviews/mcgoni....

Walker, J. (2004) 'Distributed Narrative: Telling Stories Across Networks' presented at Association of Internet Researchers 5th Annual Conference, Brighton, 21 Sept, published in jill/txt http://huminf.uib.no/~jill/txt/AoIR-distributednarrative.pdf.

Questions to Consider:

• What are the economic motivations for creating transmedia works?
• What are the artistic motivations for creating transmedia works?
• What are the creative precursors to these forms?
• What theories can be used to analyse them?
• What impact do these works have on Narratology (the study of narrative) and Ludology (the study of game)?
• How does a distributed work change the design and experience process?

Christy Dena’s sites:
Cross-Media Research blog: http://www.Cross-MediaEntertainment.com
Bio Site: http://www.ChristyDena.com
New Media Arts Collaborative blog: http://www.WriterResponseTheory.org
Virtual World Art Magazine: http://www.SlateNight.com