Exploring the ways in which artists, artisans and technicians are intelligently expressing their creativity with a passion for culture, technology, marketing and advertising.
Most people who’ve heard of Pogo, a young music producer who lives in Perth, Australia, know him for a series of songs built around snippets of dialogue and music lifted from movies. This isn’t the only technique that Pogo (born Nick Bertke) employs—many of his songs are agile, diverting hip-hop instrumentals that take no obvious inspiration from films—but it might be his most interesting.
The melodic information in a work like “Upular,” one of the movie-based songs, comes from mostly unmusical moments in the 2009 Pixar film Up: the old man shouts something crotchety, the little kid says something cheerful, and Bertke plucks out syllables and vowel sounds and stitches them together into a tune you can hum. He sets this against a bed of chords sampled from Michael Giacchino’s score, adds a couple of understated cymbal tracks, and a pop song is made.
By the same or a similar process, we get “Bangarang,” from Steven Spielberg’s Hook; “Alohamora,” from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone; and “Alice,” a dreamy swirl of sonic fingerpaint taken from sounds in the 1951 Disney version of Alice in Wonderland. The results are hard not to like (as The Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan can confirm).
The movie-based songs are different, in a hard-to-place way, from Pogo’s other music, and from most pop songs in general. The reason, I think, has something to do with the way Bertke is taking one form (the feature film) and stuffing it into another (the three-minute pop track). Listening to “Upular” isn’t exactly the same thing as watching Up, but it’s as close as you’re likely to get without setting aside an hour and a half, finding a DVD player, and allowing yourself to slip out of this reality and into the one that directors Pete Docter and Bob Peterson have made. Movies demand a lot of us; they ask for our eyes and ears and a fair bit of our time, and in return they build a world for us to live in for a little while.
Pop songs, on the other hand, don’t require nearly as much. They come and go in the space of a few minutes, and because they only occupy one of our senses, we can exercise or write an e-mail or clean the kitchen while we’re listening to them and still get more or less the bulk of their effect. If movies transport us out of this world and into another one, what songs do is make the ordinary world pop with colors we wouldn’t otherwise notice. You can walk down the street listening to, say, Sonic Youth, and the next day walk down the same street listening to Lily Allen, and though nothing will have changed except your soundtrack, it’ll seem like a very different street. And if you walk down that street listening to “Upular,” you’ll feel giddiness, and wonder, and a hot-blooded determination to see what lies over the next hill. This is what I feel, anyway, and it can’t be a coincidence that these are all sensations experienced by the characters in Up.
At his best, Bertke is wonderfully adept at boiling down the strongest feelings of a movie into the quick-consumption form of a pop song. Let’s be clear: in the case of Up and “Upular,” the song doesn’t displace the movie. It doesn’t, and can’t, do justice to the growth of the characters and the full emotional palette of the story (particularly the lovely, heart-quickening first act, generally regarded as the film’s best sequence, where two characters meet and fall in love and grow old together). You have to watch the movie for this. But you can’t watch the movie while you’re walking to work in the morning, and so the movie also doesn’t displace the song. If you want to feel some of the things that Up can make you feel—or Alice in Wonderland, or Hook, or Terminator 2, or any of the other films Bertke has dipped into and made collages of—and you want to do it at a time and place of your choosing, well, you’ve got the Pogo songs. They allow you to put some of those feelings in your pocket and carry them around for when you need them.
In 2008, a few of the astonishing objects from Jay Walker’s Library of Human Imagination provided the backdrop to the TED main stage — and Jay Walker conducted a fun, three-part show-and-tell. Now, for the first time, he has allowed video cameras inside. We’re pleased to give you this sneak peek:
Last week, TED Blog had the opportunity to talk to Jay Walker about the library. Read the Q&A now >>
Tell me how the Library of Human Imagination began.
The origins of the Library of Human Imagination were a disparate set of subjects. Like many collectors, I started out collecting in one area and inevitably migrated to others as a picture began to emerge about what it is that interests me.
I was interested in the history of science and technology. I was also interested in beautiful art books — large or oversized books that enabled you to get a real sense of the artistry. (The reality of a large canvas is so much more powerful than a small one.) I was also interested in the history of writing, the history of medicine — and especially the history of the book, which led me to an interest in the history of the Bible, which is the longest continually published book in Western civilization.
So, when I started, I did not have an overarching thematic center; I had a series of interests. But after a period of years, it became clear that there was a common theme to what interested me about all those things: They were all about dimensions of human imagination. Only after perhaps 10 years did I see that there was a real thematic center to what I was doing, and then I began to work at it.
Just walking through the Library gives you the feeling that it all comes together around this one idea. Tell me about the design of the space.
The architecture of the space is an Escher-like wonder — a series of staircases that run up and down, creating this illusory sense that space has been turned inside-out and upside-down.
There’s another equally important thought behind the design, which dates back to the Dutch at the beginning of the Enlightenment. The Dutch, who were the great sailors, brought back artifacts from all around the world, and they collected them in what they called “cabinets of curiosities.” The Library was specifically designed to create that sense of wonder. The glass bridge, when you begin, is a metaphor for a leap of imagination: the classic story of imagination as an “Aha! moment — a leap across space to get from here to there with nothing between.
From the tumbling block pattern on the floor to the lighting to the design of the ceiling vault, everything about the room was designed to reflect the sort of room that would hold the history of human imagination.
Talk about your criteria for selecting an item to include. Is it instinct? Do you see an object and just know you’ve got to have it?
No, there’s nothing like that. That sounds good, though. (Laughs)
Here’s how it really works: I have an insatiable curiosity. Just about everything interests me. When I find things, I look at how they might fit into the picture of the history of human imagination … and whether or not that particular imaginative leap is represented in the library. If it’s already represented, I ask, “Does this object, artifact or document improve the understanding of that leap?”
Think of the Library as a giant puzzle. The purpose of the puzzle is to assemble a picture of the history of human imagination. Somebody might show me something and say, “Here is one of the very first manuscripts that dealt with the pollination of plants.” I might look at that and say, “I have something similar.” Somebody else might show me something that expresses Mendel’s genetics in a visual way, and I’d say “Wow, there’s nothing in the library which expresses that.”
There are often subject areas where I have overlap. But there are just as many times when I’m looking for things that represent a particular leap of imagination in a new and approachable direction. For example, Isaac Newton’s Principia is no doubt a giant leap of imagination. It’d be hard to argue that his independent invention of calculus wasn’t one of the great leaps of imagination. But if you look at a copy of the Principia, it’s just deadly boring. You’re just not going to look in the Principia and say, “Wow, I see this leap.”
Whereas if somebody were to have done a comic book of the Principia in a phenomenal way — a way that made it accessible, a way that would help you appreciate what Newton had accomplished — that would be the kind of book I’d put in the library. It’d make that whole leap more imaginatively understandable. The Library is a lot about accessibility. Think of a childlike wonder: You shouldn’t have to be an expert in a subject to appreciate the leap of imagination.
So, you consider this a type of history museum?
It’s very much a history museum. You don’t need to think of that when you’re in it, but as the curator, that’s how I think of it. It’s the history of human imagination as told through the documents, objects and artifacts that allow you to see it.
That includes the history of evil and the history of beauty and the history of love. It’s not uncommon for the library to juxtapose those things. You might juxtapose a copy of an incredibly evil document which has been designed to look like a religious document. Or a religious document which in reality was an economic document.
The Library allows you to see how human imagination takes things from one sphere and moves them into another.
On my visit to the Library, one thing I was struck by is that all of these objects are right out in the open — anyone can touch them.
That’s critically important.
There’s a big distinction between private and public collections in our world. Both have a critical role to play in the preservation of our history and the forward progress of humanity. The great public collections, like the Library of Congress or the Smithsonian, by definition are curatorial exercises in archiving and preservation, and as such have to preserve with a multi-hundred-year view of things.
Private collections, on the other hand, have an archival role, but typically allow for much more intimate contact for non-scholars. As a non-scholar, your chance of being able to pick up and hold an illuminated manuscript are extremely low … but so much is lost when you can’t hold these things in your hand. Private collectors have an extraordinary capacity to allow for much more intimate contact between historical objects and people who want to appreciate them.
We’ve been fed, to some extent, this cult of fragility — that you can’t touch these books or objects because you’ll hurt them — but that’s just not true. I’ve had almost zero damage of any kind. Most books and manuscripts have been abused and neglected for most of their history, ironically. It’s only in recent times that we’ve thought of these objects as valuable.
When you bring school kids into the Library of Human Imagination and you allow them to turn a page that’s 800 years old, you awaken a sense of wonder and awe that no amount of looking at a screen, or at an object frozen behind glass, could ever accomplish.
We’ve covered what happens when people first enter the Library. But what’s the takeaway? What happens when they walk out?
A couple of things happen when people leave the Library. The first is they don’t know how they’re going to describe it to anyone else. (Laughs) So there’s a sense of what I’ll call “fun frustration” when people leave.
The other thing I think people get, which is a tremendous benefit, is that a mind once stretched into a new direction never goes back to its original shape. The Library just does that — whether you’re seeing a book woven in silk from 1886 or seeing up-close the spectacular work of a man who traveled through all of Napoleon’s battles and painted them in miniature. You just don’t forget it when you see something that you’ve never seen before. And that’s true for the individual objects, but also the relationships between objects. People appreciate that these objects are part of a continuum of human imagination.
When people leave the Library, they say, “I see things differently.” That, and they say they want to bring their kids.
And not just end-of-year but also end-of-decade. Here are some of the most interesting lists I’ve seen, interspersed with some of the best work I’ve discovered this year and some suggestions for creative gifts.
• Pixar’s Up: It delivered what is perhaps the most poignant animated sequence ever created. This heartwarming video shows the evolution of Carl and Ellie’s relationship from the first concept sketches to the final shots of the movie.
• Google Wave continues to confound most everyone. And then you see this:
• GE Plug Into The Smart Grid: This is the first example I encountered of Augmented Reality actually implemented. A whole creative department stood huddled around a computer, mouths open, uttering small cries of disbelief.
• Tarsem’s The Fall: For the visual artist in you. Produced by David Fincher and Spike Jones. Incredibly rich visuals used to tell a simple, universal story. Exquisite.
• I love dance. I watch this on tv and realize that I may be witnessing the evolution of the dance form:
And then I learn there is more.
• The LXD is launching an online, episodic series, with hints of graphic novel myth-making all told through dance. This is a creative endeavor that is practically custom made for me.
• The Top 10 Flash Mobs Of 2009: If we are ever together in a crowded public space and music starts playing, people start dancing, there is a very big possibility I’ll be joining in.
• Paloma Faith is the latest eclectic British singer to do the soul thing. A former magician’s assistant, she delivers a great record that feels a bit like the anti Amy Winehouse’s Rehab. Do You Want the Truth Or Something Beautiful
• Jill Taylor’s My Stroke of Insight recounts a neuroscientist’s experience with a stroke and her recovery. It is an inspiring exploration of human consciousness.
Storytelling is at the center of a massive convergence of technologies used for everything from advertising to arts and culture building or to simply entertain. This past November The Futures of Entertainment Conference, hosted by the Convergence Culture Consortium, took place at MIT. The conference brings together scholars and key thinkers from television, advertising, marketing, and the entertainment industries to discuss the unfolding future of the media landscape.
Here are all the sessions from the conference along with complementary presentations, blog summaries, tweets and other related materials all in one convenient location for easy study. If you work in these industries and storytelling is at the center of what you create you must watch, they are an intensive course in the things that you will be expected to know how to execute in the very near future.
Before we proceed, it is in your best interest to become familiar with Henry Jenkins, his blog, and his book “Convergence Culture.” Mr. Jenkins coined the term transmedia in 2006, was the Co-Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies program and is currently a Provost Professor of Communication, Journalism, and Cinematic Arts at USC. The future of entertainment owes a lot to his visionary study of the field.
Keynote: Revenge of the Origami Unicorn: Five Key Principles of Transmedia Entertainment by Henry Jenkins
“7 transmedia concepts: 1.drillability, 2.multiplicity, 3.immersion, 4.worldbuilding, 5.seriality, 6.subjectivity, 7.performance #foe4” via @tomhimpe “brian clark: transmedia: media creators catching up to what fans have already been seeking and doing with stories. #foe4” via @PSFK
Through the whole conference Rachel Clarke live-blogged each session with incredible thoroughness. Her notes to this keynote are here.
Session 1: Producing Transmedia Experiences: Stories in a Cross-Platform World
As the production of transmedia experiences becomes more commonplace, this panel seeks to pick apart some of the tensions emerging around transmedia as creative practice. As a narrative form, what is transmedia anyway? How can we keep it from being more than a shorthand excuse for multi- or cross-platform narratives? Is it anything more than that? Need it be?
Focusing around a series of case-studies, this panel digs into questions around genre, interactivity, and franchising? Are there certain genre constraints to transmedia narratives, particular genres — science fiction, drama — better suited to become transmedia properties than others? What might a transmedia event built around a romantic comedy look like? What role does interactivity play in transmedia narratives? Can transmedia narratives be satisfying simply by distributing their narrative in lots of forms, or does an “effective” transmedia narrative require opportunities for the audience to “participate” in a more active way than simply interpreting and discussing amongst themselves? Does transmedia require room for the audience to take a narrative in their own directions?
Moderator: Jason Mittell – Middlebury College Panelists: Brian Clark – Partner and CEO, GMD Studios; Michael Monello– Co-Founder & Creative Director,Campfire; Derek Johnson – University of North Texas; Victoria Jaye – Acting Head of Fiction & Entertainment Multiplatform Commissioning, BBC; Patricia Handschiegel – Serial Entrepeneur, Founder of Stylediary.net
“My undergrad degree is in religion, so I’m really digging this discussion of how religion is basically transmedia in pure form #foe4” via @flourish
”@futuresof agreed! it’s a diff type of storyteller for transmedia. more curator, collaborator, steward, strategist braincells. #foe4” via @michaelhb
Audience Research has long been a vital part of the media industries: research helps determine which ideas get produced, where content is distributed, and how content is monetized. Transmedia storytelling has forced media researchers to re-evaluate their notions of the audience since transmedia, by definition, allows audiences to engage at different levels across platforms. Research must now determine how to value audiences across different sites of engagement as they participate in different ways.
This panel will explore how research practices have adjusted to new ways of gauging audiences and making that knowledge useful. How does research understand and predict audience behavior? How does research contribute to monetization models for transmedia properties? How has traditional research adapted to keep up with the demand for better metrics? This panel will draw from a variety of industrial and academic perspectives to understand how we imagine media audiences and how we make them valuable.
Moderator: Eleanor Baird – Director, Partnerships & Analytics, Tube Mogul Panelists include: JuYoung Lee – Co-Founder & Chief Scientist, ACE Metrix; David Spitz – Director of Business Development, WPP; Trapper Markelz – VP Products, GamerDNA; Joel Rubinson – Chief Research Officer, The ARF; Jack Wakshlag – Chief Research Officer, Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. “Jack Wakshlag #foe4 the 3 metrics of all projects in media: how many, how often, how long” via @dutchart
“‘how many, how often, how long’ is goal of audience measurement - absence of ‘why’ is disturbing. #foe4” via @jmittell
Case Study: Transmedia Design and Conceptualization – The Making of Purefold
A collaboration between Free Scott (Ridley and Tony Scott’s newly launched entertainment division) and Ag8 (an independent studio based in the United Kingdom), Purefold is an upcoming transmedia narrative extension of the Ridley Scott classic Blade Runner. Set in the near future, the project explores what it means to be human. This case study discussion will examine how Purefold’s creators have guided the project through its early concept and design phase.
Drawing together members of Ag8, creative collaborators, and representatives from a major brand sponsor, this panel will examine the project from a variety of perspectives. Exploring the motivations for building a transmedia project around Blade Runner, the panel looks at the potential transmedia might offer for revitalizing older properties. It explores the roles different stakeholders play in the conception and design of a project, as well as the challenges of meeting varying desires and ambitions. The panel considers whether some genres are better suited for transmedia properties than others, and looks at how to extend existing properties with substantial fan bases, considering questions of co-creation and fan/audience production.
Moderator: Geoffrey Long – Gambit-MIT Panelists include: David Bausola – Co-founder of Ag8; Tom Himpe – Co-founder of Ag8; Mauricio Mota – Chief Storytelling Officer, co-founder The Alchemists; C3 Consulting Practitioner; Leo Sa – Petrobras
“In transmedia storytelling: ‘Ideally, each medium makes it own unique contribution to the unfolding of the story’ - Jenkins #foe4” via @christinewhuang
This panel will broaden the discussion of transmedia properties to areas beyond the commercial or promotional. What are the potentials for transmedia to be used to affect social change? What parallels can we draw between the activities fan communities and other sites of collective activity? How does participation in the collectives that emerge around transmedia properties equip young people with skills as citizens? What responsibilities should corporations bear, if any, as they try to court fan communities and deep engagement?
This panel will also consider the cross-over between the forms of collective activity that mark participation in transmedia narratives and other forms of collective activities that harness entertainment media for social good. With the ability to mobilize (often) large and passionate groups of people quickly in response to actions that threaten their values and practices, fan communities constitute collective bargaining units acting on the behalf of consumers. Increasingly, fan communities are also deploying their social networks to try and bring about political and cultural change, resulting in an emerging form of activism which may impact on public policy or social welfare concerns.
Moderator: Henry Jenkins – Provost’s Professor of Communication, Journalism and Cinematic Arts, USC Panelists include: Stephen Duncombe – NYU, author of Dream: Re-Imagining Progressive Politics in the Age of Fantasy (The New Press); Andrew Slack – The Harry Potter Alliance; Noessa Higa – Visionaire Media; Lorraine Sammy – Co-creator Racebending; Jedidiah Jenkins-Director of Public & Media Relations, Invisible Children ”#foe4, World without Oil, ‘Just accepted that the world was transmedia and designed accordingly’ (Eklund)” via @henryjenkins “Great transmedia experiences are contextually responsive, not reactively scripted. #foe4” via @scott_walker
Session 4: The ROI of ROFL: Why Understanding Popular Culture Should Matter to the C-Suite
Too many corporations outsource their understanding of culture to trend hunters, cool watchers, marketing experts, consulting firms, and, sometimes, teenage interns. The cost is in the billions, for data and insights that often don’t help companies better understand their role in the cultural landscape. In his forthcoming book Chief Culture Officer: How to Create a Living, Breathing Corporation, Grant McCracken argues American corporations need a new professional — a Chief Culture Officer — to prioritize cultural knowledge into the C-Suite level. American corporations need to look not at the internal culture of a company but instead outward, understanding entertainment, leisure, and word-of-mouth trends. This panel will explore how major brands and entertainment properties are, or should be, listening to the patterns of popular culture to make their brands, products and services more responsive to and reflective of the desires of relevant audiences. McCracken will introduce the concept of the “Chief Culture Officer,” followed by a panel discussion of the promise and pitfalls of applying cultural knowledge to a for-profit infrastructure, how the humanities intersects with this mission, and the benefits and limitations of concepts such as “the CCO” for advocating deeper cultural knowledge into a corporate setting. What new trends are developing that might impact the appeal of a brand’s products or services tomorrow, or even today? How does corporate America understand the developing etiquette and ethos of social media platforms? What benefit does knowing popular culture bring to brands and entertainment properties? What are the benefits to our society if brands are more tapped into cultural trends?
Moderator: William Uricchio – Principal Investigator, Convergence Culture Consortium Panelists: Grant McCracken– Chief Culture Officer: How to Create a Living, Breathing Corporation (Basic Books); Sam Ford – Director of Customer Insights, Peppercom, and C3 Research Affiliate; Jane Shattuc – Emerson College; Leora Kornfeld – Research Associate, Harvard Business School
“Speaking of Nielsen, I feel no need to watch shows I like live b/c no one will -ever- know and I hate it. #foe4” via @laura47
“the only way for companies to embrace popular culture is to not just take & steal from it, but add to it and open it back up #foe4” via @tomhimpe
Session 5: Producing Transmedia Experiences: Participation & Play
While much of the discussion around transmedia tends to focus on the idea of non-linear storytelling, this panel will explore the idea that transmedia experiences — narrative-driven and otherwise — are also characterized by a high degree of audience participation, decision-making and collaboration. As users engage with transmedia narratives, worlds and experiences across multiple platforms and spaces, participants make a series of personal choices that shape and define their experience and understanding of “the whole.”
If we assume that transmedia experiences introduce new opportunities for the audience to participate, what are the new opportunities and challenges for the creators and owners of these transmedia properties? One of the most overt forms of transmedia storytelling, the Alternate Reality Game (ARG), often makes participation a central and defining aspect of transmedia experiences, and creates opportunities to engage participants in play, performance and game-like systems. How can these interactive and participatory experiences be planned for? What is their function in the larger transmedia experience, and how do we understand the relative roles of the “author” and the “audience” in creating transmedia experiences?
Moderator: Ivan Askwith – Director of Strategy, Big Spaceship Panelists include: Frank Rose – Wired contributor and author of Welcome to the Hyperdrome (W. W. Norton, forthcoming); Jordan Weisman – CEO and Founder, Smith & Tinker; Louisa Stein – San Diego State University; Mia Consalvo – MIT; Ken Eklund – Writerguy, World Without Oil
”#foe4, the first step is not to think of content as “widgets,” undifferentiated products for undifferentiated consumers” via @henryjenkins
”#foe4, ARGS rely on “storymakers,” not “storytellers.” (Ken Eklund)” via @henryjenkins
What counts as “radio” when it comes via podcast rather than over the air? How do we create “television” as the limitations of spectrum scarcity slip away and content is delivered online? Media is determined by conventions that emerge from both technological constraints and cultural practices – the technologies of content delivery shape the industrial and the creative modes that define something like “television.” In a world of convergence, the basis for many of the conventions that define media are in flux. How can we come to understand and redefine the industrial, consumption and creative practices of media as convergence works to erode some of the distinctions between them? How is radio affected once it moves from the Hertzian waves to the podcast? What happens to the comic once it moves from the page to a Playstation? How are audiences responding to and shaping these shifts? And how are business models adapting to these changes?
Moderator: Joshua Green – Research Manager, Convergence Culture Consortium Panelists include: Dan Goldman – Illustrator of Shooting War (Grand Central Publishing [US] and Weidenfeld & Nicolson [UK]); Jennifer Holt – UC Santa Barbara, co-editor of Media Industries (Wiley-Blackwell); Brian Larkin – Milbank Barnard College; Avner Ronen – CEO & Co-founder, Boxee
“The problem with trendspotting is that it focuses on WHAT is popular, when it should be trying to understand WHY it’s popular. #foe4” via @ivanovitch
“I think HBO is interesting, b/c it’s possible to interpret them more as a content brand than a network. #foe4” via @malbonnington
Session 7: Free? Contemporary Media Business Models
While the industry discussion has meandered from questions surrounding the validity of the ‘Long Tail’ to a debate about the notion of “free” and the generation of value itself – viable business models have begun to emerge. In these models, fan communities continue to figure prominently, as do monetized value networks and innovative advertising exchanges. Questions remain: How are these models different for the artist, band, brand, media text or transmedia property (print, film, tv, music, etc.)? How are meaningful relationships forged in an online culture that values non-monetary exchanges? How do these relationships benefit people and how do they benefit brands? How have fan communities responded when companies and brands try to participate in their communities? What is being sold? Content? Access? Authenticity? Notions of community itself? And how are fans and audiences being engaged to conceive of, launch, and contribute to the growth of these new business models?
Moderator: Nancy Baym- University of Kansas Panelists include: Lara Lee – Principal, Jump Associates; Mark Zagorski – Chief Revenue Officer, eXelate Media; Seth Arenstein – Editorial Director/Assistant Vice President, Cable Fax; Paul Dalen – Owner, Reverse Thread “‘Free’ things still involve exchange — labor, attention, information, data. These are all commodities with worth. #foe4“ via @xiaochang
“What’s the business model behind YouTube or Twitter? “If VC’s keep giving money, that’s a business model”. Laughter #foe4” via @tomhimpe Rachel Clarke’s notes.
: It delivered what is perhaps the most poignant animated sequence ever created. 
is a brilliant comedy series about what it takes to run a Shakespeare festival. And what it takes to be creative. 
.
: For the visual artist in you. Produced by David Fincher and Spike Jones. Incredibly rich visuals used to tell a simple, universal story. Exquisite. 
. Which in turn gave us the innovative transmedia marketing campaign for the movie. 
is a must read.
Chandler Burr renders the complex science of fragrances into compelling poetry.
by Ken Robinson will inspire you.
recounts a neuroscientist’s experience with a stroke and her recovery. It is an inspiring exploration of human consciousness.