Whoa! clever! Intel/Toshiba social film InsideExperience has casting call for 'actors' | Fast Company

...Inside launches today with the release of a trailer and an online-only casting call for a supporting role (actors aspiring to work on the very small screen can submit video auditions via YouTube). The film portion will debut at the end of July, with one four-to-five-minute episode released on various social media platforms every few days, linked in between by tweets, Facebook posts, and videologs, all to help viewers get in on figuring out the "film’s" big mystery: Why and where is Christina (Rossum) trapped in a room with a Toshiba laptop (with Intel inside!) and an untraceable Internet connection. Her only hope: Connecting to "friends" on Facebook and Twitter who will aid her quest to free herself. The scenario--not terribly unlike last year’s little-seen feature film Buried, in which Ryan Reynolds played a man trapped in a coffin underground with only a cellphone’s spotty service to determine his captors and whereabouts--culminates in an early August episode that wraps up the mystery, which can be solved along the way by devoted watchers..

Gary Hayes' Excellent Overview! Transmedia Futures: Situated Documentary via Augmented Reality | PERSONALIZE MEDIA

Excerpt:

"...From a present day perspective, the world is becoming saturated by millions of our location stamped ‘social’ stories inside services such as Google Earth, Maps, TagWhat, HistoryPin (more below), Facebook Places, CheckIn+, Foursquare etc: As these stories recede into past events we will start to see some very interesting social and anthropological forms popping up – ARDs (augmented reality documentaries) will be aggregates of the best of those stories and I can see simple parallels – SocialAR extending Reality TV, DramaticAR drawing on Cinema and HistoricalAR evolving alongside Documentary, which is the focus of this post.

There are a range of new services that are various flavours of documentary being delivered in relevant location, as experiential POV events. The ability to recreate historical events, see the world as it was and live temporarily in the past is now becoming a major force in AR falling somewhere between my Intertainment and Experiential Education models from my 16 Business Models post of 2009.

Creating dramatic, emotional and experiential factual stories in this way is the core of transmedia, as carefully placed stories across time, place and platform. I won’t be going into the technologies that deliver these (like Layar, FlashAR or Junaio etc:) or the devices (from smartphones, bespoke handheld devices, glasses, large shared touch-screens all combined with other platforms) but focus on some of the first round implementations made by companies using these relatively crude tools and imagine a very near term future...."

Best Story You Will Read Today: Jason Rohrer's Chain World Videogame Was Supposed to be a Religion—Not a Holy War | Magazine

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...Challenge organizer Zimmerman decided that this year’s theme would be Bigger Than Jesus: games as religion. (“My first thought was, oh my God, it couldn’t have been a more inappropriate topic for me to tackle,” Rohrer says. “I’m an atheist.”) It was timely, since much of the liveliest territory in gaming these days involves the ways that games can influence our real-world behavior. Massively popular social games like FarmVille and its clones permeate everyday life in a way that is both low-key and ubiquitous. The broader idea that game mechanics should permeate life is known as gamification. There are commercial uses of gamification (getting consumers to engage more deeply with a brand or service) and political/philanthropic uses (getting people to use less gas, say), but either way, gamification advocates—like religious figures—seek to superimpose an invisible reward system on top of the world. Many gamers find this ethos patronizing, as if games were simply Skinner boxes for manipulating people into buying burgers or donating to Darfur charities. And if the detractors have a champion, it’s Jason Rohrer. More than any other game designer, Rohrer embodies the idea that games can be ends in themselves, expressions of the ineffable. His most famous title, Passage, simulates an entire human lifespan in five minutes. Inside a Star-Filled Sky is a shooter that explores the idea of infinity. “All his ideas fit together pragmatically in a way that seems very spiritually serendipitous, but that’s really just him being a smart designer,” says Leigh Alexander, a journalist who covered this year’s challenge for the industry news site Gamasutra...

Grazie Gary Hayes! Are You Experiential 101? Place Based Storytelling Panel Video | PERSONALIZE MEDIA

Excerpt:

"...In my short intro I mentioned that experiential media have been with us for millennia and how ‘surround’ & interactive art, theatre and music has paved the way for more contemporary mass media examples (last 100 years!) such as:

  • Visual – Crowds experiencing something they thought was real in 1895 for the Arrival of the Train at La Ciotet “the audience was so overwhelmed by the moving image of a life-sized train coming directly at them that people screamed and ran to the back of the room”
  • Narrative – Audience so caught up in the 1938 Orsen Welles Company version of War of the Worlds radio narrative they actually believed it was happening “Newspapers reported that panic ensued, people fleeing the area, others thinking they could smell poison gas or could see flashes of lightning in the distance”
  • Marketing – How decades ago Starbucks were ahead in attaching experience to media as coffee houses aligned with cinema “They can look forward to us introducing them to the movie in a fun, experiential way. We believe that Starbucks can ultimately change the rules of the game for film marketing and distribution”. Howard Schulz
I rushed through broad definitions of experience from a users perspective, kind of in the street answers to the question “what do media experiences mean to you”?...

Tablet Gaming Disruption Is on Its Way | VentureBeat

With more than 25 million units sold, the iPad has become much larger than a number of other historic game platforms (the Sega Dreamcast sold about 8 million units). As such, it’s helping Apple to swing developers back into its fold, according to a recent survey by Flurry. Android tablets are expected to catch on at some point as well.

“I think this is going to be incredibly disruptive,” said Giancarlo Mori, chief creative officer at mobile game publisher Glu Mobile, speaking on a panel at VentureBeat’s GamesBeat 2011 conference last week. ”It’s fueled by the desire to have your gaming device with you at all times.”

Don't Let City Close Riverdale Farm! Residents Against Closing Riverdale Farm - Petition Online Canada

As a Toronto resident who frequents Riverdale Farm, I have freely signed this petition to express my anger at KPMG’s recommendation to close Riverdale Farm.

Riverdale Farm is a Toronto jewel that connects our complicated world to the simpler and serener aspects of current culture. Riverdale Farm welcomes, teaches, relaxes, entertains, soothes, and unites. Riverdale Farm is a public destination, school, museum, theatre, place of worship, gathering spot, camp, and unifier.

Though located in Cabbagetown, each year thousands of families from many parts of Toronto enjoy this unique venue in every season. It is an explicit destination of visitors to our City who enhance our local economy.

KPMG’s evaluation of only the service costs excludes the Farm’s immense benefits. KPMG presented neither the social return on investment nor measured the considerable impact of the Farm on the community’s social cohesion and quality of life. Sadly, that is short-sighted and abjectly mis-represents the Farm’s true value for money from a societal perspective.

Joining my fellow neighbours, I have signed this petition to tell you that by closing the Riverdale Farm you will destroy an historic resource and destination for thousands of Torontonians who are content that a portion of their taxes support the Riverdale Farm.

I urge the City not to support closure of Riverdale Farm.

Intriguing: Whodunit with the paperknife in the library? | MetaFilter

Whodunit with the paperknife in the library?
July 17, 2011 11:42 AM   Subscribe

Someone has been leaving mysterious miniature paper sculptures in various locations in Scotland. They seem to all be tied to Scottish author Ian Rankin, twitter, and the magic of the written word.

The first sculpture showed up at the Scottish Poetry Library in March. The librarians found a tree growing out of a book, with a note addressed to their twitter feed, @byleaveswelive, saying "this is for you in support of libraries, books, words and ideas." (Audio of the librarians describing the sculpture on the Guardian article is fantastic.)

Then in late June more sculptures started appearing. The National Library of Scotland received a sculpture of a gramaphone and coffin. The sculpture was created out of a hardback copy of Ian Rankin's Exit Music. That same week, staff at the Filmhouse Cinema found a miniature cinema cut from the pages of several books, and featuring a model of Ian Rankin in the audience drinking a Deuchars beer. Both have similar notes, addressed to their respective twitter addresses.