La Gaîté Lyrique - enchanting immersive interactive website

 

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I just posted some thoughts on the beautiful teaser video, La Gaîté Lyrique, while exploring the interactive site for the new digital arts and music venue La Gaîté Lyrique, slated to open in December 2010, and the site is GORGEOUS.


 

 

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Each space (café, sound space, studio, production hub, concert hall, mediatheque, auditorium, exhibition galleries, and grand foyer) is a unique environment housing different creatures and the interface design is beautifully conceived, playing with variations from space to space. On a less busy day I could easily spend a long time here and with a busy day I’ve spent almost an hour playing in this enchantingly immersive space.

 

http://www.gaite-lyrique.net/

 

http://www.gaite-lyrique.net/experience/

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La Gaîté Lyrique -Passion Paris's trailer for interactive online experience & digital arts venue

 

Oscar winning animation house Passion Pictures have a record of buzz-generating, visually extraordinary videos, Sony Bravia's Play-Doh, Gorillaz' Stylo and the Scary Girl Game Trailer, amongst many others, and their showcase is well-worth a visit: 

 

http://www.passion-pictures.com/flash.html#page=p5

 

Directed by Yves Geleyn, with 3D by One More Production, La Gaîté Lyrique is a video teaser for an interactive experience now online promoting  "a new venue in Paris dedicated to digital arts and new music," also called La Gaîté Lyrique. 

 

The press release, quoted in Todd Denis' piece on Jawbone TV describes the renovated Parisian 19th century theater as: 

 

"a crucible of inspiration, of intellectual and sensorial experiences ... exploring hybrid forms of visual and musical culture at the forefront of technology, both physically in the heart of Paris and virtually on the web ... it will produce, host and broadcast concerts, live shows, conferences, screenings, performances, exhibitions and even interviews and workshops." 

(source here: http://bit.ly/aoJmJK)

 

Watching this again, Yves Geleyn's gorgeous abstracted aesthetic seems an echo of the monochromatic palette shot through with flashes of colour and light and simplified Commedia dell'arte design of Neil Gaiman's Mirror Mask, which was produced with the Jim Henson Company. See what you think.

 

Implantable Electronics - amazing medical applications - scary commercial prospect?

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While the medical applications are obvious & valuable, the logic of commercial applications is pretty clear - do I want streamed advertising in my cortex? I've been fighting an ear worm for days as it is (Swiffer commercial 'Who's that lady? sexy lady?' song - evil) and I don't want to imagine commercial content streaming into my brainwaves - but then I don't have to as M.T. Anderson's Feed follows that logic to its consumer-driven conclusion

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Original article:

A topic that goes one step further than Wearable Electronic: Implantable Electronic. Wearable of course but this new field of electronics g=does not stop on the skin, it goes under the skin.

For me, implantable electronic is as fascinating as wearable electronic as both aim to use cutting edge technologies to improve life quality. Wearable technologies in medical application, although a by far not really explored area, offers clearly demonstrable benefits.

Implantable Electronic in the medical field can be used for monitoring of vital signs like blood test and even could deliver pharmacy directly to the areas needed avoiding the ‘flush out’ treatment usually used today.

Tufts University biomedical engineer Fiorenzo Omenetto uses silk as the basis for implantable optical and electronic devices that could provide a clearer picture of what’s going on inside the body to help monitor chronic diseases or progress after surgery.
Collaborating with Kaplan and materials scientist John Rogers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Omenetto has produced implants that combine silk with flexible silicon electronics.

The group used silk films to hold in place arrays of tiny silicon transistors and LEDs, forming a possible basis for implantable devices. The advantage of the teams invention: it will degrade completely inside the body when the job is done unlike previously developed implants which have to be removed making incisions.
Implantable Electronic seems to be the next frontier, pushing the boundaries of wearable skin deep. A field I will certainly keeping an eye on in future reporting.

Transmedia: 5-Steps to Selecting the Right Platforms « Culture Hacker

By robert pratten, May 17th, 2010

In my earlier post on Culture Hacker and in my SlideShare presentation created for the Sacramento Film Festival, I described the process for creating transmedia entertainment as shown in Figure 1.

In this post I’d like to focus on selecting the right platforms.

This post is in TWO PARTS.

This is the first part and the second part is at http://zenfilms.typepad.com where you’ll find downloadable content such as a nicely formatted & printable PDF of the whole post and an Excel tool for ranking platforms.

PART 1 of 2

Figure 1 The Development Process

In this post, when I say “platforms” I mean the combination of media plus technology and here I’d like to get you thinking about how you might go about selecting the right platforms. Of course there is no universal truth in platform selection – the right platforms are those that best suit you and the project.  Although I would advocate that all projects have a community platform but that might not be part of your storytelling.

While keeping in mind the larger iterative development process, I recommend a similar five-stage iterative approach to selecting your platforms:

  • Stage 1: go with your gut
  • Stage 2: consider the relative strengths and weaknesses of each platform
  • Stage 3: support the weaknesses of a platform with the strengths of others
  • Stage 4: consider the timing of platforms relative to each other
  • Stage 5: consider changes to the story to bake-in the platforms and timing.

1. Go with your gut

In the first instance, just go with your gut and list a few platforms that you think will suit your story and audience. This first pass will likely identify platforms based on the following:

  • personal desire or bias
  • experience
  • popularity with audiences (including fashions and fads)
  • ability to collect payment
  • availability to find funding or sponsorship
  • popularity with the press & bloggers (at certain times some platforms are more sexy that others)
  • suitability to the story
  • resources available.

Now take a closer look at each platform.

2. Determine each platform’s strengths and weaknesses

In determining a platforms’ strengths and weaknesses:

  • first – consider the experience you’d like to create and which platforms are best suited to it
  • second – rank a short list of platforms and ensure they create a mix that works synergistically .

Choosing the right platform for the right experience

A senior executive at Yahoo spoke on Fora.tv recently about how Apple asked Yahoo to design an app for the iPad that would be a “coffee table experience”. The idea was that the iPad would be out on the coffee table in the living room when friends visited and the owner would want to pick up the device and share the Yahoo entertainment with her guests. Yahoo tailored its online content to suit the specifics of the iPad – not just the unique form factor but the unique consumption context too.

Device manufactures spend a lot of time thinking about how their products will be used. Learn a lesson from these guys and don’t just partition your story across platforms but take time to adapt it so it works in the context of the device and the audience lifestyle.

Table 1 and Table 2 present possible ways to segment your platforms by the nature of audience participation. Use this type of approach to inform the platform selection around the type of experience you’d like to create.

Table 1 Possible platform segmentation 1

Personal Shared
“Passive”
(Lean back)
Watching movie: mobile phone, laptop, slate

Reading: book, mobile, laptop, slate, Kindle

Cinema

TV

Theatre?

“Interactive”
(Lean forward)
Handheld game

Mobile

Laptop

Slate

Kindle (interactive fiction)

Multiplayer game

Theatre?

iPad/Slate? – see comment above

Table 2 Possible platform segmentation 2

Location agnostic Location-dependent
Personal Shared Personal Shared
Web series

Comic/Graphic novel

Motion comic

Book

eBook

Pin (badge)

Poster

Event

Façade projection mapping[1]

Merchandise Exhibition
Mobile game

ARG (alternative reality game)

AR (augmented reality)

Postcards and flyers

Find the right mix of platforms

Given that each platform will have its own strengths and weaknesses, the goal of this stage is to be objective about why a certain platform should remain in the mix. My approach is to score each platform based on the following criteria:

  • Revenue gained
  • Cost (inc. time) of delivering content
  • Ability of platform to enable social spread of content
  • Fit to audience lifestyle
  • Remarkability (uniqueness/coolness/timeliness/quality) of platform or content
  • Timing of release to audience

The table below shows how these might be scored from 5 to 1 and Figure 2 presents an example from the Excel spreadsheet tool that’s available for download from the Zen Films website.

While the exercise feels a little academic, if you have to justify external funding and justify to yourself that it’s worth putting time into something, it’s worth quickly running through the numbers – you might find some surprising results.

Table 3 Rating a Platform

Rating
Revenue Good=5, Poor=1
Cost Low=5, High=1
Spreadability Good=5, Poor=1
Lifestyle Fit Good=5, Poor=1
Remarkability Remarkable=5, Unremarkable=1

Figure 2 Platform Tool Example

3. Have platforms support each other with calls-to-action

Now you know the pros and cons of each platform, you need to find ways to have them support each other. By this I mean that some platforms will be great for spreading awareness but lousy at making money. To combine the strengths of each platform means getting the audience to cross between platforms.

So how do we do this? Firstly it’s important to remember that crossing platforms introduces friction. So rather than assume that audiences want multi-platform experiences, it’s better to ask yourself three questions:

  • What’s my objective in having audiences cross platforms?
  • How can I motivate audiences to cross platforms?
  • What’s the reward when they get there?

The Call to Action

Before I continue, I’d like to introduce a little jargon: the “call to action”.

In web design, the button and wording on a page that asks you to “click here” or “sign up” is known as the “call to action” (CTA). It’s a plea for the user to do something and good designers make these calls-to-action appear to be the default choice – you’re nudged to take action through clear layout, positioning of the button, use of colors and so on.

The term is also used in advertising: “for a limited time only”, “while stocks last”, “a once in a lifetime offer”. These are all calls to action to get you to do something now and not put off your decision.

A transmedia experience needs similar CTAs to get audiences to cross platforms.

What’s the objective?

Part of your objective will be to create a fun experience but it will also relate to your business model.  Here are three examples.

Example 1. A transmedia project has a comic book and a web series: the comic book will carry advertisements because it’s believed that print advertising is less intrusive than pre-roll video advertising (because the ads won’t get in the way of the story). The value of the advertising is such that it pays for both the comic book and the web series. Both will be given away for free but the advertiser has been promised a minimum number of comic book readers. Hence, it’s important to get web series viewers to cross platforms to the comic book.

Example 2. A transmedia project has a mix of free and revenue-generating platforms: the free platforms build the audience and the revenue-generating platforms pay for the project.

In Example 2 Your first thought might be that CTAs are needed to ensure the free audience migrates to a revenue platform. But this only provides part of the solution. Table 4 compares the relative audience sizes and revenue potentials across platforms and offers possible strategies to maximize the opportunities. Note that CTAs are used not only to grow revenue but to grow the audience – migrating them to more social platforms and providing spreadable content with CTAs to promote further growth.

Table 4 Assessing your call-to-action: comparing audiences across platforms

Audience Size and Loyalty/Enthusiasm
Casual Audience Hardcore Audience
Big Small
Platform Revenue Biggest

Revenue

Big Win. Keep the audience here and keep them spending! Refresh content, allow audience to create content (includes discussions, suggestions, live chat). Provide CTA’s to motivate audience to become Hardcore Respect this audience: don’t milk them for money. Use their enthusiasm to grow casual audience. Invest in community and provide spreadable content with CTAs to build wider audience.
Smaller Revenue Small Win. Can a gentle CTA motivate them towards a bigger revenue platform? Provide CTA’s to motivate audience to become Hardcore – more revenue will likely follow. Maximize spreadability of content (see above). Provide gentle CTA to nudge onto higher revenue platforms.
No

Revenue

If revenue is important, need a CTA to send audience to a revenue platform How is this platform contributing to the experience? Maximize spreadability of content. CTAs to grow audience and nudge this audience to revenue platforms.

Example 3. In my Lowlifes[2] project, physical and device-specific copies of the content is paid content while web-based content is free. My primary, albeit weak, CTAs are:

  • the project “logo” that displays three media types – informing audiences that this story spans multiple platforms
  • the story in each media begs questions that the audience desires to be answered – and expects to find them in the other media; hence enticing them to cross platform.

With Example 3 in regard to moving from a free platform to a paid platform, I’m hoping that the friction of being tied to a desktop (free platform) will encourage supporters to migrate to a paid platform for a better experience more in keeping with their lifestyle – for example, the ability to read a paperback book in the bath!

In these examples you can see that the business model creates different objectives for cross-platform traversal.

CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE

[1]

[2] http://www.lowlifes.tv

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Posted in cross-media storytelling transmedia

robert pratten is an award-winning feature film director, writer & producer that has been fighting the need to return to his marketing consultancy roots since Internet piracy stole his livelihood. Robert has advised international telecoms operators and vendors such as Nokia, Ericsson, Lucent, Telia and Telmex and now divides his time between filmmaking and advising media tech start-ups and producers. Fortunate he enjoys both. He writes a popular blog on movie production, marketing and distribution at www.zenfilms.com

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COMMENTS

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  • Robert! love the clarity of thinking & detail here! Is the devil's pentagram in the first diagram intentional? are you launching an ARG/story project?
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Robert Pratten's very handy how to use platforms for transmedia -is the devil's pentagram intentional?

SpongeLabs Interactive Builds Social Networking Game with a Twist - finalist for MacArthur Grant

Web surfers know you can find just about you want on the Internet, and now that includes pretty much every species living on the planet - estimated at some 100 million.

Toronto-based Spongelab Interactive and the Biodiversity Institute (University of Guelph) are finalists in the MacArthur Foundation 2010 International Digital Media Learning Competition for their social networking game called the Biodiversity Challenge.

Using short snippets of DNA -- that twisted pair of biological code and genetic sequences -- the game is designed to support students by doing real science in the International Barcode of Life Project (iBOL).  

Fewer than two million species have been formally identified, scientists say, so
Over the next five years, participants in the iBOL project are hoping to process more than five million additional specimens Students and youth from around the world, along with local scientists at colleges and universities, will participate in a collaborative social networking educational game in a race to identify and assign unique DNA barcodes to as many species as possible.

The project was developed and submitted by Robert Hanner, of the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario and the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of Guelph.

Collaborators include Jeremy Friedberg from Spongelab Interactive, as well as team members from organizations such as the Encyclopedia of Life; the Program for the Human Environment at Rockefeller University,  and Bioscience Education Canada

Some $200,000 is being sought to ramp up and continue the project, organizers describe.

The U.S.-based John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation launched its five-year, $50 million Digital Media and Learning initiative in 2006 to help determine how digital technologies are changing the way people, especially young people, learn, play, socialize, and participate in civic life.

The project website is here:

http://www.genomicsdigitallab.com/gdl/default.cfm

Conspiracy For Good- Tim Kring & Company P launch ARG for social good

Tim Kring, of Heroes and Heroes Evolutions, has partnered with The Company P, creators of the highly successful ARG The Truth about Marika, in this ARG for social change. Nokia appears as their 'preferred partner.'

The Blog hints at a running ARG game, with a mysterious illustrated book that requires a code to unlock

The site seems to be largely oriented towards encouraging fans to get involved through posting links & information on charities they are interested in & so far there are links for helping the homeless in Mayfair, Children in Sierra Leone, and fostering creativity in kids.

The emphasis on interactive storytelling suggests that the site will function as a forum for participatory storytelling as fans as heroes 'write' the stories they are interested in and heroes of. See Rules below

'Rules

By playing with the idea of a good secret society, we want to create it. Your actions will benefit real causes and people. By taking this seriously, you will make a difference now!

How to participate

Think of this as a movie where YOU are the hero! It’s okay to just sit back and watch, but trust us, you’ll be missing out on the real excitement. Live the adventure, read the signs, fight the bad guys. Welcome to the ride of your life… this is merely the beginning!

Some pointers

Help make the Conspiracy For Good real
Ignore inaccuracies and help keep this reality together
Choose your level of engagement. Watch, solve mysteries online, play games, or visit the London events in late summer.

Read more about Conspiracy For Good by http://conspiracyforgood.com/rules'

Good playing!

Schooloscope: The 4ip-funded project to make Ofsted tables accessible | Media | guardian.co.uk

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Design consultancy Berg have created a site that visualizes the data relating to 20,000 primary and secondary schools in the England. A beautifully designed & functional site, each school's health is immediately visible in the happy/unhappy face, rolling over or searching by name gives you a report card on each school. And a map allows you to compare each school to those around it.

Schooloscope is one of a number of projects funded by Channel 4's 4ip technology investment fund.

Here & There — a horizonless projection in Manhattan - amazing project

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Berg could be my new favourite design consultancy - I love their work

Here & There is a project by BERG exploring speculative projections of dense cities. These maps of Manhattan look uptown from 3rd and 7th, and downtown from 3rd and 35th. They're intended to be seen at those same places, putting the viewer simultaneously above the city and in it where she stands, both looking down and looking forward.