Henry Jenkins: Aca-fandom and Beyond: Roberta Pearson and Alexis Lothian (Part One)

Excerpt:

"Alexis Lothian:

I couldn't agree more with Roberta that we need to theorize what it is we mean when we talk about being a "fan" as well as an "acafan." Without that, we find ourselves talking at cross purposes--though, of course, it's the very overdetermination of both those terms that keeps them alive and interesting. That said, it is difficult to engage in this conversation without giving in to a certain urge to self-disclosure. Especially because the way I experience the overlap of academia and fandom in my own life has everything to do with personal ethics, with the contexts and standpoints that shape my participation in knowledge production.

For me, fandom is less an identity than a location, a set of networks and connections within which I'm situated. My participation in fan culture mostly means being accountable to a community that I became part of through my love for science fiction and my interest in transformative works and fan video, but it's been sustained--and friendships formed--more through discussions of feminism, race, queer sex, and capitalism than through exploration of a source text. In fact, I find it difficult to name anything that I am intensively a fan *of* at the moment. Other than to say that I'm a fan of critical fanworks that engage transformatively with the hegemonic politics of the culture industry, which is possibly partly a way of seeking excuses for the extent of the pleasures I take in the aforementioned hegemonic products.

Being a fan is difficult, as Jack Halberstam says in this debate. The things you love betray you and other people just don't understand. In fact, my own movement away from more object-oriented fandom can probably be traced to the intensity of my disappointment with the end of Battlestar: Galactica, around which I participated in an exciting whirl of collaborative fanwork-making, drawing out queer and antihumanist and other critical interpretations through transformative works. The show's last half-season (and here I do speak as frustrated fan!) made a mockery of everything that excited my collaborators and I, and even though the fanworks the group created maintained the queer worldmaking we'd been doing around the show in ways I think are fascinating and important, I've been less inclined to give myself over to a fannish passion since...."

Stefan Sagmeister On Co-Directing His First Documentary, "The Happy Film" | Excerpt via Co. Design

Excerpt from online interview

"The eminent designer tells Co.Design how making a movie about happiness may end up reducing his. (It'll still be worth it.)

Is personal happiness a design problem? If design is "trying out creative iterations toward a specific goal," it just might be. Stefan Sagmeister has turned his designer-y eye on personal existential issues before, with his Things I Have Learned In My Life book/website, and has given a TED talk on design and happiness -- so his latest project, a documentary he's codirecting with Hillman Curtis called The Happy Film, seems like a logical next step.

The Happy Film will follow Sagmeister as he "undergoes a series of self-experiments outlined by popular psychology to test once and for all if it’s possible for a person to have a meaningful impact on their own happiness." He spoke to Co.Design about the project and where it's taken him so far, happiness-wise..."

Nice Post & iDoc list: The story comes first- Caspar Sonnen of IDFA | Openblog by frederic @ Memefest

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Excerpt from original memefest.org post:

CS « Our role is to provide a place for creative interpretations of reality, to motivate the people behind the projects, » he insists. « During DocLab, we're trying to go beyond the online experience. We're creating an installation setting to allow for director navigations or other collective viewing events ».

And to cap things off, Caspar had a little advice for those of you tempted by interactive documentary: « In the 1920s, it's not the theater people who invented film. It's no different today. We're in the digital revolution, so don't worry too much about filmmaker's being defensive and not wanting to recognize interactive documentary ».

Click on the following links if you're ready for the digital revolution...

18 Days in Egypt : http://www.18daysinegypt.com
ARTE webdocs : http://webdocs.arte.tv
CNC : http://www.cnc.fr
From Zero : http://fromzero.tv
GDP Project : http://gdp.nfb.ca
High Rise : http://highrise.nfb.ca
IDFA DocLab : http://www.doclab.org
NFB interactive : http://interactive.nfb.ca
Ro.me : http://www.ro.me
The Wilderness Downtown : http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com
Sould Patron : http://soul-patron.com
Welcome to Pine Point : http://pinepoint.nfb.ca
Ze Frank : http://zefrank.com

Festivals

IDFA: http://www.idfa.nl
South By Southwest: http://sxsw.com
Sheffied Doc/Fest: http://sheffdocfest.com
PhotoStories: http://photo-stories.org

Frédéric Dubois is a reporter, interactive documentary maker and Memefest comrade.

Photo: By Bert Kommerij under CC licence, available here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kommerij/5746966584

Double The Glow: Will Second Screen Apps Change the Way We Watch TV? - Excerpt - GOOD

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"Part of the assumption in this month’s GOOD challenge to unplug at 8 is that we’re robbing ourselves of valuable human contact when we’re online. But if plugging in lets us add social experiences to otherwise-solo pursuits, it might change the equation.

That’s the idea behind a wave of apps that are designed to take your solo media consumption—whether television shows, movies, books or music—and let you tell your friends all about it. And if you’re catching a TV show at home on a weeknight, why not use the Internet to rope in some geographically dispersed pals?

Services including GetGlue, SocialGuide, Miso, and Tunerfish, among several others, allow people to use their computers, tablets and phones to check-in, foursquare style, to their entertainment of choice, then rate it...."

Sneak Peek at Michael Grant's new Transmedia Project - The Secret Life of a Bibliophile

Excerpt:

"Michael Grant, the author of the Gone Series, has a new project in the works.  This winter the new project will be released as a transmedia experience.  A transmedia story is an interactive narrative told through the written word, video, puzzles, and more. But most importantly, it encourages fans to become part of the action.  I love this idea and can't wait to tell my students about it.  Below is a synopsis of the story with links to the transmedia experience.  There is also a Q&A with Michael Grant discussing the experience as a whole and what it all means!




The missing son of a U.N. diplomat... the reemergence of a strange organization... a pair of society twins caught in the middle... this is just the beginning of "Go BZRK," a new transmedia experience from author Michael Grant.

If you're ready to take the plunge in an interactive story like you've never experienced before, visit societytwins.com and register with nexushumanus.com to take your first steps in a strange and compelling universe.

Filled with video, puzzles, community collaboration, and more, "Go BZRK" puts YOU the player right in the middle of the action as you join Nexus Humanus and unravel a mystery that may hold the key to the fate of all mankind.






A Q&A with author Michael Grant

What is “Go BZRK”? Is this a book or some kind of interactive story?
Both. The book comes out this winter, but the interactive part starts now.  One leads up to the other, but they're part of a complete package.

Why “transmedia”?
There are different approaches to transmedia.  Most people take a single story and reproduce it on various platforms.  My philosophy has been to make each element - ARG, app, web, book - a thing unto itself, each revealing some aspect of the world of BZRK.  I've been fascinated with this is as a new way to tell stories.  The book remains central, but now I can reach beyond the book and create a much more complete world.  I can tell stories that enhance the book, and stories that parallel the book, and stories that are offshoots of backstory.  I guess the answer to "why" is "because it's fun...."

Is this the future of publishing?

And Michael Gran's site is here:

http://gobzrk.com/