Project CONNECT Transmedia Documentary Challenge | New Zealand

From the site:

"Project CONNECT Documentary Challenge

About Project CONNECT

Project CONNECT is a multi-platform modern art exhibition, combining media and digital art with traditional art forms, and a celebration of the magic that happens when individuals co-create an authentic, collaborative VOICE.

The launch of Project CONNECT will be a side-event as part of ‘We Can Create’,which will commence at 6pm, 27 August 2011 at the IRONBANK Building, 150 Karangahape Road, Auckland.

This event will transform IRONBANK into a collective and participatory exhibition and performance space, which will bring together a range of creative talents, including The Audience, who are invited to contribute their own representation of connectivity to the exhibition. Presentation pieces will be
interwoven, much like chapters in a book or scenes in a film.

Transmedia NZ is seeking participants for a documentary challenge to document this unique event.

The Challenge
1) The subject of your documentary must be Project CONNECT launch event on the 27th August, 2011.
2) Documentaries may use any kind of media (video, still images, mobile phone, audio, drawings, animation, text, collage etc) and be of any duration, but all projects MUST be completed and submitted to Transmedia NZ in electronic form by 12pm (midday), Monday, 29 August, 2011.(Instructions to follow).
3) We encourage you to push the boundaries of documentary. Think differently, capture something new and unusual and present an original perspective.

All eligible submissions will be featured in the Project Connect publication and on the Transmedia A:M/P:M and Project Connect websites and Facebook pages."

Inspiration videos:

Henry Jenkins @ComicCon: Transmedia 202: Further Reflections


"The above video was shot by Scott Walker during one of my presentations at San Diego Comic-Con, during which I spoke about some of the controversy which has surrounded the definition of transmedia over the past six months or so. I've largely stayed out of these conversations, though you can find a very good summary of the debates here.

I've been focusing on other projects and also I've been more interested in the shapes these discussions take than seeking to intervene in them directly, but over the summer, in a range of venues, I've been pushing and proding at my own definitions to see if I can capture some of my own shifting understandings of transmedia, especially as I am preparing to teach a revamped transmedia entertainment class at USC. Today, I am going to try to put some of this still evolving thinking into writing in hopes that it helps others sort through these issues.

Much of this is covered in the above video so if you process things better in audio-visual than in print, you have your options. I've heard some gossip that Jenkins was going to issue a "new definition" of "transmedia": this is no where near as dramatic an overhaul as that, just some clarifications and reflections about definitions. This definition still covers, more or less, what I mean by transmedia storytelling:

Transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience. Ideally, each medium makes it own unique contribution to the unfolding of the story.

So, consider what follows Transmedia 202, to compliment my earlier Transmedia 101 post.

Given the sheer range of people who have embraced (latched onto?) transmedia, we should not be surprised that:


  1. different groups of people are defining a still emerging concept differently for different purposes for different audiences in different contexts

  2. some of those who talk about transmedia are less immersed in the previous writings and thinkings as we might wish and thus can bring a certain degree of fog

  3. some groups are strongly motivated to expand or blur the scope of the category for self promotional and self advancement purposes.

  4. So, let's start at the top with convergence, which in Convergence Culture, I describe as a paradigm for thinking about the current moment of media change, one which is defined through the layering, diversification, and interconnectivity of media. Convergence contrasts with the Digital Revolution model which assumed old media would be displaced by new media. Aspects of this convergence model are shaping decisions of media producers, advertisers, technologists, consumers, and policy-makers, and thus convergence has many different aspects and consequences...."

Thanks Henry for posting! Thanks Scott for shooting video!

So this is what the Universe Looks like? How a Holographic Universe Emerged From Fight With Stephen Hawking | Wired Science

By John Timmer, Ars Technica

The proponents of string theory seem to think they can provide a more elegant description of the Universe by adding additional dimensions. But some other theoreticians think they’ve found a way to view the Universe as having one less dimension. The work sprung out of a long argument with Stephen Hawking about the nature of black holes, which was eventually solved by the realization that the event horizon could act as a hologram, preserving information about the material that’s gotten sucked inside. The same sort of math, it turns out, can actually describe any point in the Universe, meaning that the entire content Universe can be viewed as a giant hologram, one that resides on the surface of whatever two-dimensional shape will enclose it.

That was the premise of panel at this summer’s World Science Festival, which described how the idea developed, how it might apply to the Universe as a whole, and how they were involved in its development.

The whole argument started when Stephen Hawking attempted to describe what happens to matter during its lifetime in a black hole. He suggested that, from the perspective of quantum mechanics, the information about the quantum state of a particle that enters a black hole goes with it. This isn’t a problem until the black hole starts to boil away through what’s now called Hawking radiation, which creates a separate particle outside the event horizon while destroying one inside. This process ensures that the matter that escapes the black hole has no connection to the quantum state of the material that had gotten sucked in. As a result, information is destroyed. And that causes a problem, as the panel described.

As far as quantum mechanics is concerned, information about states is never destroyed. This isn’t just an observation; according to panelist Leonard Susskind, destroying information creates paradoxes that, although apparently minor, will gradually propagate and eventually cause inconsistencies in just about everything we think we understand. As panelist Leonard Susskind put it, “all we know about physics would fall apart if information is lost.”

Unfortunately, that’s precisely what Hawking suggested was happening. “Hawking used quantum theory to derive a result that was at odds with quantum theory,” as Nobel Laureate Gerard ‘t Hooft described the situation. Still, that wasn’t all bad; it created a paradox and “Paradoxes make physicists happy.”

“It was very hard to see what was wrong with what he was saying,” Susskind said, “and even harder to get Hawking to see what was wrong.”

The arguments apparently got very heated. Herman Verlinde, another physicist on the panel, described how there would often be silences when it was clear that Hawking had some thoughts on whatever was under discussion; these often ended when Hawking said “rubbish.” “When Hawking says ‘rubbish,’” he said, “you’ve lost the argument.”

‘t Hooft described how the disagreement eventually got worked out. It’s possible, he said, to figure out how much information has gotten drawn in to the black hole. Once you do that, you can see that the total amount can be related to the surface area of the event horizon, which suggested where the information could be stored. But since the event horizon is a two-dimensional surface, the information couldn’t be stored in regular matter; instead, the event horizon forms a hologram that holds the information as matter passes through it. When that matter passes back out as Hawking radiation, the information is restored.

Susskind described just how counterintuitive this is. The holograms we’re familiar with store an interference pattern that only becomes information we can interpret once light passes through them. On a micro-scale, related bits of information may be scattered far apart, and it’s impossible to figure out what bit encodes what. And, when it comes to the event horizon, the bits are vanishingly small, on the level of the Planck scale (1.6 x 10-35 meters). These bits are so small, as ‘t Hooft noted, that you can store a staggering amount of information in a reasonable amount of space—enough to describe all the information that’s been sucked into a black hole.

The price, as Susskind noted, was that the information is “hopelessly scrambled” when you do so.

From a black hole to the Universe

Berkeley’s Raphael Bousso was on hand to describe how these ideas were expanded out to encompass the Universe as a whole. As he put it, the math that describes how much information a surface can store works just as well if you get rid of the black hole and event horizon. (This shouldn’t be a huge surprise, given that most of the Universe is far less dense than the area inside a black hole.) Any surface that encloses an area of space in this Universe has sufficient capacity to describe its contents. The math, he said, works so well that “it seems like a conspiracy.”

To him, at least. Verlinde pointed out that things in the Universe scale with volume, so it’s counterintuitive that we should expect its representation to them to scale with a surface area. That counterintuitiveness, he thinks, is one of the reasons that the idea has had a hard time being accepted by many.

When it comes to the basic idea—the Universe can be described using a hologram—the panel was pretty much uniform, and Susskind clearly felt there was a consensus in its favor. But, he noted, as soon as you stepped beyond the basics, everybody had their own ideas, and those started coming out as the panel went along. Bousso, for example, felt that the holographic principle was “your ticket to quantum gravity.” Objects are all attracted via gravity in the same way, he said, and the holographic principle might provide an avenue for understanding why (if he had an idea about how, though, he didn’t share it with the audience). Verlinde seemed to agree, suggesting that, when you get to objects that are close to the Planck scale, gravity is simply an emergent property.

But ‘t Hooft seemed to be hoping that the holographic principle could solve a lot more than the quantum nature of gravity—to him, it suggested there might be something underlying quantum mechanics. For him, the holographic principle was a bit of an enigma, since disturbances happen in three dimensions, but propagate to a scrambled two-dimensional representation, all while obeying the Universe’s speed limit (that of light). For him, this suggests there’s something underneath it all, and he’d like to see it be something that’s a bit more causal than the probabilistic world of quantum mechanics; he’s hoping that a deterministic world exists somewhere near the Planck scale. Nobody else on the panel seemed to be all that excited about the prospect, though.

What was missing from the discussion was an attempt to tackle one of the issues that plagues string theory: the math may all work out and it could provide a convenient way of looking at the world, but is it actually related to anything in the actual, physical Universe? Nobody even attempted to tackle that question. Still, the panel did a good job of describing how something that started as an attempt to handle a special case—the loss of matter into a black hole—could provide a new way of looking at the Universe. And, in the process, how people could eventually convince Stephen Hawking he got one wrong.

Image: NASA/WMAP Science Team/R2D2 © Lucasfilm

Source: Ars Technica

See Also:

Excerpt:

"...The whole argument started when Stephen Hawking attempted to describe what happens to matter during its lifetime in a black hole. He suggested that, from the perspective of quantum mechanics, the information about the quantum state of a particle that enters a black hole goes with it. This isn’t a problem until the black hole starts to boil away through what’s now called Hawking radiation, which creates a separate particle outside the event horizon while destroying one inside. This process ensures that the matter that escapes the black hole has no connection to the quantum state of the material that had gotten sucked in. As a result, information is destroyed. And that causes a problem, as the panel described.

As far as quantum mechanics is concerned, information about states is never destroyed. This isn’t just an observation; according to panelist Leonard Susskind, destroying information creates paradoxes that, although apparently minor, will gradually propagate and eventually cause inconsistencies in just about everything we think we understand. As panelist Leonard Susskind put it, “all we know about physics would fall apart if information is lost.”..."

Back to David Bohm! How a Holographic Universe Emerged From Fight With Stephen Hawking | via Wired.com

The whole argument started when Stephen Hawking attempted to describe what happens to matter during its lifetime in a black hole. He suggested that, from the perspective of quantum mechanics, the information about the quantum state of a particle that enters a black hole goes with it. This isn’t a problem until the black hole starts to boil away through what’s now called Hawking radiation, which creates a separate particle outside the event horizon while destroying one inside. This process ensures that the matter that escapes the black hole has no connection to the quantum state of the material that had gotten sucked in. As a result, information is destroyed. And that causes a problem, as the panel described.

As far as quantum mechanics is concerned, information about states is never destroyed. This isn’t just an observation; according to panelist Leonard Susskind, destroying information creates paradoxes that, although apparently minor, will gradually propagate and eventually cause inconsistencies in just about everything we think we understand. As panelist Leonard Susskind put it, “all we know about physics would fall apart if information is lost.”

Unfortunately, that’s precisely what Hawking suggested was happening. “Hawking used quantum theory to derive a result that was at odds with quantum theory,” as Nobel Laureate Gerard ‘t Hooft described the situation. Still, that wasn’t all bad; it created a paradox and “Paradoxes make physicists happy.”

“It was very hard to see what was wrong with what he was saying,” Susskind said, “and even harder to get Hawking to see what was wrong.”

The arguments apparently got very heated. Herman Verlinde, another physicist on the panel, described how there would often be silences when it was clear that Hawking had some thoughts on whatever was under discussion; these often ended when Hawking said “rubbish.” “When Hawking says ‘rubbish,’” he said, “you’ve lost the argument.”

Smart: Vimeo to take on Brightcove, Ooyala for video hosting — excerpt via Online Video News

Vimeo is mostly known as a place for semi-professional video producers to host their online video files, but the site is now looking to extend its infrastructure for commercial use by small and medium-sized businesses at a fraction of the cost of other video hosting solutions. With a new Vimeo Pro product priced at $199 a year, the IAC-owned site is hoping to undercut the competition and add a whole new revenue stream to its business.

Over the years, Vimeo has primarily been viewed as an alternative to YouTube. With a flashy video player and fewer restrictions on uploads file sizes, many users turned to Vimeo in part because it had a higher-quality look-and-feel to it, as well as a generally more artistic community contributing to the site. But in the last year or so, YouTube has narrowed that gap by improving the video quality of its player, putting fewer restrictions on upload file sizes and working to build a robust producer ecosystem.

With that in mind, Vimeo is looking to leverage the infrastructure it’s already built out for casual or semi-professional video producers and to extend it to small and medium-sized businesses that need video hosting but don’t want to shell out hundreds of dollars a month for an online video platform like Brightcove or Ooyala.

Vimeo Pro videos won’t be part of Vimeo.com, but will be able to hosted at the customer’s own site. Vimeo Pro also offers features that aren’t available to free users, including customizable “portfolio” websites and players, review pages that can be shared before a video goes public, advanced reporting and analytics, social media sharing tools and advanced privacy settings.

The Vimeo Pro offering costs just $199 a year, and includes 50GB of storage and 250,000 plays. Users that need more storage can buy it in increments of 50GB for $199 each. And for those that need more video plays, they can be purchased in increments of 100,000 views for an additional $199. Brightcove’s lowest-price offering, which allows users to manage up to 50 videos and includes just 40 GB of bandwidth, is $99 a month by comparison.

The Uncanny Valley of Transmedia (via Have a cup of tea - Swedish Transmedia Co/blog)

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Excerpt:

"Ok, so something has been bothering me for a while now. At the dawn of the transmedia-crossmedia-newstorytelling era, people were amazed about the possibilities of immersion that transmedia presented the participants with.

A dream began to grow in the darkest corners of internet. A dream of the seamless 360° story. In fact, one of the earliest attempts to define the format that I ever heard spoke of the magic circle - and in all right. Pervasive transmedia cross-platform projects were indeed based on the fact that you could not tell game from reality.

Now, here is where we should have taken a few steps back and sobered up. A game where noone knows they are playing a game must defeat it’s own purpose (unless that purpose is to manipulate people against their will or better judgement - see the pro’s and con’s below).

Now this was in fact being discussed, but only as a moral dilemma, not whether or not it was good design or practice. However, out of those discussions sprang the one thing that has allowed the format to stay alive; the ludic marker.

The ludic marker was a way to inform participants that they were taking part of something fictional. There were three main ways to create a ludic marker;

The popup disclaimer, leaving websites themselves intact and ‘unharmed’ by the not-so-seamless conducts.
The constant marker, putting a symbol, logo or other common denominator on all pages and content, making sure that when participants understood that they were in fact playing a game, they would not have to doubt weather or not new content was a part of the experience or not.
The spectacular setting, where the story was simply so unbelievable that it had to be obvious that it was not real.

Now, ludic markers have always been something that I’ve pushed for. I think they are a great way to give participants some perspective on what they are doing. In fact, I think they should be used much more than they are already..."

Props to Bjork! Bjork trusts pirates to take 'Biophilia' cross-platform (Wired UK) #infdist

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By Duncan Geere, 29 July 11

"Bjork's latest album, Biophilia comes in the form of several apps, but they're only accessible on iOS devices. The singer wants software pirates to make it more widely available.

She told Drowned in Sound that the apps had been specifically designed so that they could be easily ported to other platforms -- like Symbian, BlackBerry and Android. "We really made sure when we wrote all the programs that they will transfer to other systems."

DiS asked whether opting for an iOS-only development policy conflicted with her and the project's proclaimed "punk values", and she replied: "Yeah, for sure, there's definitely another polarity there, a conflict. The only solution for me was to somehow be some sort of a 'Kofi Annan' and try and make these two worlds speak to each other."

"I'm not supposed to say this, probably, but I'm trusting that the pirates out there won't tie their hands behind their back."..."

From A to Zeega: New open-source web platform for collaborative multi-media docs in development | Harvard Gazette

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Excerpt:

Justin Ide/Harvard Staff Photographer

"Harvard affiliates Kara Oehler (from left), Jesse Shapins, and James Burns have won the Knight News Challenge, a fiercely competitive international contest, and will use the funding to develop a prototype software called Zeega, an open-source web platform designed to make collaborative multimedia documentaries cheaper and easier to produce.

Three Harvard affiliates — two fellows and a graduate student — have won the Knight News Challenge, a fiercely competitive international contest that funds digital news experiments that use technology “to inform and engage communities.”
There were 16 prizewinning projects selected from 2,500 submissions. The awards were announced today (June 23).

Contestants from Harvard have won a few times during the five-year life of the Knight contest, but never for as much money — a grant worth $420,000, said Colin Maclay, managing director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. The competition is “insane,” he added. “Getting into Harvard College has nothing on this.”

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which sponsors the competition, calls its winners “journalism futurists.” They are described as thinkers and designers who employ emerging technologies to make citizen journalism more accessible, compelling, and intellectually rich.

Starting Sept. 1, the three Harvard team members, who were Knight finalists last year, will use their 18-month funding to develop a prototype software called Zeega. The open-source web tools will be designed to foster new genres of investigative journalism and media art, making collaborative multimedia documentaries cheaper and easier to produce.

The Knight project “grows out of a unique combination of documentary arts and experimental media research we’ve been doing within Harvard and beyond,” said Jesse Shapins, one of the three winners. He is a Ph.D. student in Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, where he also lectures in architecture.

James Burns, who graduated in May with a Harvard Ph.D. in economics, is a creative technologist and relational knowledge fellow at the metaLAB (at) Harvard. Shapins and Burns worked together on courses such as Media Archaeology of Place and The Mixed-Reality City, which have used test versions of Zeega, with support from the Presidential Instructional Technology Fellows program..."