Exploring the ways in which artists, artisans and technicians are intelligently expressing their creativity with a passion for culture, technology, marketing and advertising.
What was the last magazine article you read? Where did you see it? Why did you read it?
In a few days Apple is expected to introduce a new device, affectionally known as The Tablet until then. Very few know what it will be, what it will do, whether it will be some kind of e-reader. Many publications are hoping, and preparing for, Apple doing with them what it managed to accomplish with music via the iTunes store. This is not about The Tablet, though inspired by it, but instead it is about magazines.
I love magazines. I blame my parents.
On alternating weekends, while growing up in Puerto Rico, my parents would get me and my sister in the car and travel to a different town, half hour away, to visit a small, hole-in-the-wall newsstand. I remember the place being crowded with books and shelves upon shelves of magazines from Spanish speaking countries. It felt foreign, European. I think it was owned by a Spanish family. I am probably romanticizing the memory.
My mother would collect stacks of oversized fashion magazines held for her. My father would pick up obscure books to complement his massive law book library. My sister and I would pick up comic books from South America. We would then visit a cafe and get small bags of deep fried treats, savory and sweet. And while nibbling on churros and drinking coffee we would read.
In that newsstand I discovered magazines. Back then my favorite was Muy Interesante - Very Interesting. Not Interesting but Very Interesting. A Spanish magazine full of fun science. I remember reading articles about how soap is made, about oxygen, about the vastness of the oceans. Every issue a perfectly random collection of information that I devoured with intense curiosity. I remember also looking at all those magazines, from all those different countries and noticing the ads, the designs, the diversity of the Spanish language.
Around the same time my parents introduced me to computers. A Tandy TRS-80, a Commodore 64, a Colecovision, with their big rubbery keyboards, my welcoming hosts luring me into the digital realm. I have vivid memories of my father sneaking me into a BASIC programming class he was taking at night, and me discreetly sitting at a terminal writing and compiling code for the first time, a simple program that printed “Hola” on screen.
In the early 90s, after college, and with me now living in New Jersey, the passion for technology and magazines grew. I dove into the deep end of the web before most people knew what it was. I created a website to promote the Rutgers Arts Center, completely text-based, an experiment really. I had an email account as early as 1987, one of the perks of studying computer science. In 91 or 92, I am not sure which year, I received a holiday gift (a mousepad, a coffee mug) from Amazon.com with a letter telling me that I was one of their Top 50 customers in New Jersey.
And I subscribed to everything.
I had subscriptions for Premiere, The New Yorker, American Theater, Theater Crafts International, GQ, Esquire, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Interview and on and on. I can’t even remember everything I was subscribed to. I slept little and read a lot. I had books and magazines with me at all times using train delays and other inconveniences of travel as opportunities to catch up on reading. To me magazines were the perfect tool for exploration. By getting magazines I was allowing myself to be within reach of a multitude of ideas, opinions, visuals. I would clip and save articles and layouts I liked. I would get excited when I checked my mail and there would be stacks of magazines waiting for me.
Then the rest of the world embraced the web. Slowly I migrated from reading magazines to reading online with the added advantage that most everything was easily available and free. I still subscribe to a few magazines, Wired, Esquire, Communication Arts, because I like them as physical things - the thickness and richness of the paper, their fantastic layouts and spreads — as much as I like them as distribution mechanisms for information. On the other hand, the list of RSS feeds, twitter lists, and other online content I read surpasses what I read on any printed page.
Now we are exposed to as much random information as we want at all times. Feeds and streams of information like a fast moving river we can look at, dip a toe in or swim in as we wish. Then we write about our experiences in the river, our words contributing to the streams that make the river bigger. The problem with this transition is of course that we become the editors of the information we consume and therefore limit the amount of new information that enters our lives. For the most part we only read things we are interested in. Additionally, with that much information constantly available to us, a keen ability to discern, very quickly, what content we will engage with and what will be dismissed is needed.
There is great value to having an editorial voice, aesthetic and vision. A group of eclectic individuals curating ideas, putting together issues that include things familiar and completely new. That is the power of the magazine. The advantage that people that still seek magazines acquire.
There are sites online that have editorial voices as strong as any printed magazine. Even magazines that exist exclusively online, though they don’t call themselves magazines. There are individuals that single-handlely curate information in a way that rivals any established magazine. Printed magazines have begun to embrace the norms of the web in their formats with Esquire going as far as sometimes underlining in blue, like hyperlinks, phrases and words that have footnotes. What we are witnessing is the mashup of both worlds: rich content with a specific voice, supported by advertising, presented in a format that readers would embrace and pay for whether online or printed.
Online magazines are looking to grow and printed magazines have to change their business model or perish. Last year we saw the atrophy and death of many magazines, from the obscure to the Gourmet and I.D. Perhaps magazines should evolve to be printed only a few times each year as a supplement to the web, the reverse of the current model, with exclusive print-only content.
As a consumer of magazines and books, as a reader, something interesting has happened to me as a side effect of this evolution. When I am reading something that is actually printed I find myself completely aware of how much longer I have to read before I finish. It is not a short attention span or lack of concentration, I can still comfortably read for hours. It is a constant, almost unconscious calibration of the time spent with any given written piece. On the other hand, anything that I read on a screen lacks this distraction. I can read on screen, scrolling and scrolling, completely loosing track of time.
Which brings us back to technology. Next week Apple will, once again, put on The Greatest Show On Tech. Some kind of tablet will most likely be introduced. It will probably handle magazine content like this:
With Apple’s acquisition of Lala and the rumored expansion of iTunes to the web, soon your library of movies, music and most likely books and magazines will be in the cloud. The newsstand, now an ethereal concept, available to you everywhere. Apple will probably surprise us again and the device will not only be a tool for content consumption, but also innovate ways to create content of our own. I will probably get one and read more because of it.
This is all informed guessing, about Apple and the future of magazines, and for those of us that enjoy technology and reading, very exciting. One thing is certain, magazines in digital form guarantee no more loose subscription cards and no more perfume strips.
This. Is. Big Brother. Your group task for the day is to re-brand reality television. You have four hours for this task. Your task begins. Now.
Over the weekend the latest edition of Celebrity Big Brother began in the UK. For the next several weeks a group of “celebrities” will be locked in the infamous Big Brother house performing ridiculous tasks while recorded around the clock. Though most of the houseguests will not be recognizable to anyone outside of the country they include Stephen Baldwin, Sisqo and Heidi Fleiss.
I have to confess, I do not like Big Brother and the US variation of the “game” is particularly boring to me. My favorite “reality game show” is The Amazing Race, where contestants go all over the world performing tasks and bickering while I wonder how on earth the crew is producing the show, let alone filming it while constantly on the run.
Dislike of Big Brother notwithstanding, as soon as I heard about Celebrity Big Brother I had an idea. I would love to see a Creativity Big Brother. A group of unlikely creatives locked in a large house, every one of their working habits recorded for us to see, solving problems as their tasks.
The house would be a creativity dream space. A studio with rows and rows of drafting tables with lots of Field Notes available for doodling. The best in Apple computers set in a Genius Bar - Apple would probably be a sponsor of the show. A library with all the classics of literature, design, music, and all the best reference books. All the rooms in different Pantone colors. On everyone’s desks those new bladeless Dyson fans. Because fitness is important to creativity, the gym would be the only source of energy for the computers, do 40 minutes on the bike or no Photoshop for you. And the ubiquitous confessional room? Made out of legos, with tables full of Playdoh, the better to squeeze their frustrations out of their systems.
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.