Project London video launched

Hey hey! Project London has launched their first clip!

"Project London is an independent, no-budget, feature-length, live action movie with vivid, intense, and marrow-vibrating visual effects and animations created with the open source software Blender (and other traditional software) and 250 (or so) worldwide volunteers. It’s led by The Triumvirate and set in Seattle, Washington. It will be available for worldwide viewing in its entirety very soon. In the meantime, check out an interview with the director: “Project London: The Most Ambitious No-Budget Effects Movie Ever”

SYNOPSIS
After WWII, the Nalardians, an alien race, have brought their technology to Earth. Peace reigns under the world government they helped create, the Joint Command.

Nebraska Higgins plunges into a world of intrigue and struggle when Joint Command kills his father, a hero known by his exosuit, Arizona...."

I started following Project London last year and am really excited to see this project launching content! It looks amazing!

Q&A with Jeff Gomez (transmediaTracker)

Why do you think you have been so successful as a pioneer in this field?

It’s a combination of being able to tap my limited reserves of courage and a bit of luck. For some years I ran around trying to get companies to tell stories this way by almost tricking them into it. Acclaim Entertainment didn’t care how I told all of those Magic: The Gathering stories, so long as the comics and videogames made money. So I connected the stories between platforms and used the Web in 1995 to help tell the story of the Magic world, because it made things fun for me—and apparently to the audience.

Roneil Reddy has a great short interview with Jeff Gomez just posted to his blog, Transmedia Tracker.

What I love about Jeff's thoughts above is the reminder that transmedia storytelling is fun!! Changing the rules in terms of how stories can be told is a challenge and a rush. And finding radically new ways to tell stories has rapidly become a feature of the best transmedia projects with ARGs leading the way in inventing new ways to tell stories.

42 Entertainment founder & ARG developer, Jordan Weisman has that great line:

"If we could make your toaster print something we would. Anything with an electric current running through it. A single story, a single gaming experience, with no boundaries. A game that is life itself."

And love the last paragraph of Reddy's interview - great teaser as to what Starlight Runner might realize next. Can't wait to see!

Decode Exhibition Points Way to Data-Driven Art | Underwire

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The Decode Exhibition looks like a must-experience in London. I LOVED Listening Post which grabs chat room texts with 'like' or 'love' when I experienced it in 2006. The full cycle of the piece provides a canvas of human emotion and desire that makes this one of the most emotionally rich and nuanced data viz works I've encountered.

Other works in the group show of twelve installations are Golan Levin's Opto-Isolater II and Wow Labs Light Rain. Must figure out the time to get there!

Avant Game - Jane McGonigal launching new ARG Evoke

Jane McGonigal, leading ARG developer, is launching a new game & looking for collaborators. This call was posted Jan. 11, 2010, so there may still be opportunities to participate in the running of the game.

McGonigal's ARGs have turned increasingly to questions of how to find real world solutions through the power of collaborative thinking. The goal of Evoke is described as:

"The goal of the game is to help empower young people all over the world, and especially young people in Africa, to come up with creative solutions to our most pressing problems: hunger, poverty, disease, war and oppression, water access, education, climate change. "

You can follow the Twitter feed here:

https://twitter.com/evokenet