I’m fortunate here, in that other people have already covered many of the possibilities suggested by the new Facebook features, particularly the timeline. Ian Schafer’s piece on the Harvard Business Review site discusses them from an advertising and marketing perspective:
To make the most of Facebook’s changes, brands must:
Understand what the value of each kind of consumer engagement is to their business.
Be comfortable with the fact that they are generally not actually “managing communities” on Facebook, but rather, programming content and engagement channels.
Create experiences that enhance other experiences.
Find each and every way to ensure that as many of the right people have those experiences as possible, so they can efficiently affect their short- and long-term business goals.
One of the most enjoyable games I’ve been a part of in recent times has been an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) being run by an innovative teacher from Australia. We usually think of ARGs as large scale, requiring lots of resources and being part of a marketing campaign for a new movie – or as some funky, alternative techy game that the cool kids play. But it doesn’t have to be.
Jess McCulloch teaches Mandarin in Australian schools and she sent me a tweet asking if my boys (aged 7 and 9 years) might be interested in a game that teaches them about how languages are structured. Of course I said yes. All she needed to begin was our home address and the boys’ names.
The next thing that happened… we received a letter in the mail addressed to my kids. They didn’t recognize the handwriting and they curiously opened it. What they found was an A4 sheet of paper with a Chinese Character on it, and a URL. They were puzzled. My eldest suggested we type the URL into the computer and when we did we were opened up to a world of secret agents, lessons on language and mission after mission that would help them solve the mystery of the character on their piece of paper.
Jess has created an an ARG targeting younger school children called “The Blackline Mystery.” Through email and live Skype sessions with her “virtual agents” she sets missions that they must complete online. She uses video and letters in the mail to give the game a stronger sense of reality and in doing so has my children hooked. They have set up their own agent email and are spending time working their way through missions to gain the next clues about the mysterious character they received in the post. This beats homework hands down – and I’m happy for them to work on this rather than homework because they are engaged and willing participants in a game, developing their digital media literacy skills, their problem solving skills and improving their literacy, their numeracy and understanding things about how languages develop. What Jess demonstrates is that an ARG doesn’t need a huge budget. With a good plot, some free web-based tools and the willingness to invest some time, teachers and parents can create playful and immersive environments for their children to learn in.
I’ve wanted to be part of an ARG since I went to an event on transmedia in Melbourne and heard Steve Peters, a Senior Designer at Fourth Wall Studios talking about an ARG he played that involved going out to a local park and looking for something which was buried. It was the afternoon and raining and he invited his teenage daughter to go with him to look for something in the park. They drove there, wandered around getting wet in the rain and eventually – after a few tries – dug up a canister. In the car, drying themselves off, Steve’s daughter opened the canister to find a digital camera with photos on it (the next clue in the ARG). She said to her Dad, “I feel like I’m in a movie.”
I want that feeling. I want my kids to have, even for a moment, the feeling that they are in the story and part of a narrative that they don’t fully understand but feel amazed by.
For those who haven’t heard, an ARG is a game that isn’t real, but engages with the real world in a way that draws players in because it feels real. ARGs have been run by large production studios around films like The Dark Knight and by emerging organizations of loveliness like Coney whose ARG (which they call an adventure-in-learning) “A Cat Escapes” is a fantastic example of what can be done in a school environment. But, there is no reason why with a bit of planning you could not create your own ARG for your kids based around a book or a poem or even a landmark by your home. And, with the technology we have at our fingertips it can be so much fun.
If you wanted to run your own ARG for your kids you could. What could you do? Well, you just need a good storyline. You could use books, films or your child’s favorite toy for inspiration. Then…
Create a map and leave it in a place where you child can find it or mail it to them… the map could lead to a park nearby where you have buried a digital camera in a plastic tube. When they dig it up it has photos that lead them on a much larger mystery…
You could have a friend that lives overseas create videos of their home country and use them to create a geography-based game about that country.
You could leave notes under your child’s pillow each morning that are written from their favorite soft toy and ask them to complete specific tasks, for which they get rewards (that also appear under the pillow)
Basically, use your imagination – there are no limits
I have found my children’s engagement in an ARG to be so much fun. We all love secrets and we love to play. This is such a great way to engage with children in playful ways that can help them to learn so many things.
I’d love to hear other people’s experience of ARGs with kids. Let us know how you get on.
MEXICO CITY — Before the police or news reporters had even arrived at the underpass outside Veracruz where gunmen held up traffic and dumped 35 bodies at rush hour last week, Twitter was already buzzing with fear and valuable information.
Twitter users in Veracruz posted updates last week when gunmen held up traffic and dumped 35 bodies in an underpass during rush hour.
“Avoid Plaza Las Américas,” several people wrote, giving the location.
“There are gunmen,” wrote others, adding, “they’re not soldiers or marines, their faces are masked.”
These witness accounts have become common in Mexico over the past year, especially in violent cities where the news media have been compromised by corruption or killings. But the flurry of Twitter messages about the bodies arrived at a telling moment — on the same day that Veracruz’s State Assembly made it a crime to use Twitter and other social networks to undermine public order.
The TaskRabbit iPhone/iPad app allows you to get tons of stuff done by paying a small fee. Task Makers are people who bid on performing these services for people who are willing to pay for them. It’s all done online. TaskRabbit charges a 15% fee to the Task Maker, so it’s important to keep this in mind when deciding how much money you’re willing to do the job for (if you apply to be a Task Maker). You can also link TaskRabbit to your Facebook account in case you want to let all your friends know that you used the service. I hope someday something like this comes to Atlanta (but I would never link it to my Facebook #justsayin). Here is the iTunes link.
I have been running Curating.info as a free resource for curators of contemporary art since 2006. It was borne out of a “why not” attitude towards sharing and openness, since I was compiling research on curating anyway. I also thought it would help me make my research more rigorous, as writing on this blog during my Master’s thesis did. A few years later and Curating.info is getting fan mail and picking up a lot of attention. Today I’m able to easily recruit four fantastic interns to share the burden and we have nearly 5000 fans on Facebook. The question was what to do next with this great platform. With thousands of people paying attention, what can you do and what should you do?
I had a vague idea that I’d like to create a Curating.info Scholarship, part funded by donations from the Curating.info community (that I had, thus far, never directly asked for any money) and could think of several good curatorial Master’s programmes that would benefit from a scholarship in place. I went to the IKT Congress in Luxembourg this year, and in the cavernous and highly atmospheric basement of the Casino Luxembourg, ended up chatting with Sally Tallant, Head of Programmes at London’s Serpentine Gallery. Sally, who as it turned out knew and loved the site, listened as I tipsily described the nascent plan for the Curating.info Scholarship. “But why not do even more?” was her response. “Make it an experience in a gallery you love and trust, something where people can get real experience. There are already loads of scholarships out there.” Immediately I saw how right she was, and changed course accordingly. My first thought was to partner with the Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA) in Glasgow, in part because it’s a great institution and a fellowship would fit with its ethos, and in part because it’s Director, Francis McKee, is that rare combination of visionary and highly trustworthy person. Francis was onboard, and so it was born: the Curating.info Fellowship in collaboration with the CCA in Glasgow.
The Fellowship is a chance for individual to conduct curatorial research and produce an exhibition at the CCA. The Fellow will work at the CCA four days per week over the six month fellowship, developing a curatorial project or body of curatorial research. Fellows will be paid a flat fee of £8,000. Ideal candidates for the Fellowship are emerging or mid-career curators who can demonstrate passion and fresh thinking in curating and writing about contemporary art, and who have a vision for what the role of the curator means today.
The deadline for applications is October 21, 2011. Applications will be judged by Francis McKee, Sally Tallant, and myself.
We’re really excited about it. I hope you will spread the word, contribute to the crowdfunding campaign, and apply to be our first Fellow.
CBC News correspondent Nahlah Ayed and Radio-Canada's Ahmed Kouaou and Danny Braün spent two weeks documenting life in Shatila, a Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut whose 12,000 inhabitants are among the oldest group of refugees in the world. The web documentary above will introduce you to some of the remarkable people they met there.
Palestinian refugee camps exist throughout the Middle East, but Shatila is one of the poorest and most densely populated. More than 60 years after it was established, its residents remain in limbo, with no state of their own and few rights within Lebanon, raising generation after generation in a place never intended to be permanent.
The website's interactive, street-level interface allows you to follow some of their personal stories from inside the one-square-kilometre camp and experience firsthand Shatila’s maze of cramped, dark tenements, narrow alleyways and shabby infrastructure. The documentary is best viewed in full-screen mode.
CBC News correspondent Nahlah Ayed and Radio-Canada's Ahmed Kouaou and Danny Braün spent two weeks documenting life in Shatila, a Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut whose 12,000 inhabitants are among the oldest group of refugees in the world.
More than 60 years after the camp was set up to house Palestinians fleeing the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Shatila's residents remain in limbo, with no state of their own and few rights in the country in which they live.
The web documentary above will introduce you to some of the remarkable people who live in Shatila and the immense obstacles they face as they try to raise families, have careers and live out their dreams within the dismal confines of a place never intended to be permanent.
Through the website's immersive, interactive interface, you'll get a street-level view of the one-square-kilometre camp and experience what it's like to live inside its maze of cramped, dark tenements, narrow alleyways and shabby infrastructure. Click above to begin your journey. The documentary is best viewed in full-screen mode.
Excerpt from original article on mapmagazine.co.uk :
Image: Lisa Oppenheim, ‘Refusal, III’, 2011, unique colour photogram.
Courtesy Harris Lieberman, New York
"A Harry Callahan photograph from the late 1940s or early 50s depicts broadsides peeling off the exterior a city building. It’s either a photograph or series of closely cropped photographs. In fact, there is no real way to tell at first they are indeed billboards, although they seem to be mostly movie and concert posters. Only the odd letter or maimed likeness of a long ago starlet peeks through the decay. In short, this photograph (or photographs) look like abstract paintings. His title is something like, ‘For Paul Klee’.
In The Photographic Conditions of Surrealism, Rosalind Krauss explains, via Breton’s writing on ‘convulsive beauty’, photography has a special relationship to mimicry. Mimicry: a thing in nature, in the world, that imitates another; a moth’s wing carrying the markings of an eye; camouflage of all sorts.
Photography is constituted in part by this mimicry, an imitation and imprint of a thing in the world, of peeling posters. What is represented, however, is marked by distance. A photograph of peeling posters is not the thing; it’s a representation of the thing, always viewed in a space and time different from that of its making or taking. It’s a picture of the outside of a building in a town of which you’ve never heard, but which you see on your computer, in a magazine, or billboard. In this way, photographs are abstracted and decontextualised from any semblance of a natural environment, much like Krauss’ description of a moth pinned to the back of a frame. Images are read in this decontextualised frame through the various other economies in which they circulate, for example, journalism and art. It is this such framing, and Callahan’s clever titling, that a documentary photograph of disintegrating broad- sides can engage in direct dialogue with abstract painting.
For Paul Klee...
There is a secondary level of abstraction not specific to photography but to this historical moment. This is an abstraction of information from its source through a haphazard and accidental process that I am just going to call ‘research’. It’s an abstraction of process. Most research is done in front of a computer screen. Sometimes, when looking for something, I will go to a specific website for specific information, like the New York Times, or Petfinder.com, but often the search is meandering. Looking for a Harry Callahan picture I’ve not seen in years, but assuming it must exist somewhere in my Google search, I find another image and email it to a photographer friend who made something that looks similar. This sets off long back and forth chat about mimicry in research. Sources lead to other sources while emails, eating, and life, get in the way. And yet all of this is part of the thought process. Whatever final form the outcome of this research takes, the information required to make or write the thing (this thing that you read now, even) is dislocated and abstracted from any original context; this is the rhizomatic nature of looking around for stuff online...."
"Reality ends here: A (trans-)media making alternate reality game for cinema students
The strength of the Collegeology project I mention in my 21st Century Scholar posts is intimately tied to our collaboration with Tracy Fullerton, Director of the USC Game Innovation Lab, and her game design team. Jeff Watson’s blog below describes a fascinating project that illustrates just why Tracy and her students are at the forefront of game design. –Zoe Corwin
Just over three weeks ago, we stopped the countdown clock and launched SCA Reality (a.k.a. Reality Ends Here, a.k.a The Game), a collaborative production alternate reality game that takes place over 15 weeks at the USC School of Cinematic Arts (SCA). Since then, groups of students from across all divisions of the SCA have banded together into groups large and small, lasting and temporary, to collaborate on making media artifacts based on creative prompts generated by the collectible trading cards that are at the center of our game. The thing has a momentum all its own, and it’s exhausting to keep up with. But as anyone who has ever run a live action pervasive game or ARG (alternate reality game) would know, it’s also exhilarating and crazy fun.
Breaking down boundaries
SCA Reality is a collaborative production game wherein players earn points and “level up” by creating and completing mediamaking challenges. As players cross point thresholds, both in terms of overall points and weekly points, they receive customized “trailheads” leading them to intimate and offbeat encounters with SCA alumni, artists, and other industry professionals. This reward system, combined with the intrinsic fun of creative sandboxing and performance, leads to serendipitous peer discovery and collaboration across the various divisions of the cinema school. Transcending these divisional boundaries is one of the primary mandates of the game—we’ve gone to lengths to make sure that players are not identified by their major, but rather by the kinds of things they say and do in the game. So far our approach seems to be working: players from the screenwriting division are making absurdist video games, writers and animators are working on live action films, production and interactive students are telling stories with “character artifacts” and fake Facebook profiles, and students across the board are quickly embracing a cross-platform or transmedial vision of the future of entertainment.
A Procedural Creative Prompting System
The game is driven by a card-based “procedural prompting system”: by sharing, trading, and combining cards, players create challenges within the constraints of a connectivity play mechanic.
As designers, we knew from the start that it was important that the challenges in our game come from the players, not us. We knew that a set of challenges curated “from on high” would take away many crucial aspects of agency and authorship from our players—and since those things are at the heart of the kind of creative and performative impulses that underly engagement with our game, we knew we needed to protect them. We also believe that players should author the challenges themselves because in our experience, doing so is an integral part of what’s fun and engaging about these kinds of games. In this sense, Reality Ends Here has a lot in common with other open-ended collaborative production games such as SF0 or Super Going.
On the other hand, we felt that a total lack of constraints could be hobbling to creativity, particularly for players who are not already ensconced in strong “maker” or DIY communities and practices. As Orson Welles famously said, “the enemy of art is the lack of limitations.” Brainstorming, story workshopping, or any kind of creative spitballing without clear constraints and anchors will often drift into outright confusion. To address this issue, we devised a simple card game that structures and limits creative brainstorming in a manner similar to a Tarot deck or an idea generator like Grow a Game. Here’s how it works (see above):..."
"Adults are changing their behaviour but kids are born into this," says Tricia Wilber, the Walt Disney Company's chief marketing officer for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, as she explains how so many young consumers are not just embracing the internet, smartphones and video on demand. They have never known anything different.
"Transmedia" is the buzzword that Disney likes to use.
This takes in everything from physical to digital and all points in between - from cinema and cable TV to new fast-growing areas such as online streaming and social media and traditional live experiences such as theme parks and theatre shows.
"Consumers now have access to that brand in any way they want. That creates opportunities for us," says Wilber.
Yet this also makes it more complex for Disney, which owns top children's brands such as Mickey Mouse, Toy Story and Pirates of the Caribbean as well as TV networks ABC and ESPN.
In the transmedia age, no single communications channel is dominant. So Wilber says Disney tries to avoid being wedded to any particular platform. "Our content and story-telling and emotional connections are what make Disney Disney," she says.
Every platform can potentially play a leading role, depending on the particular brand and target audience.
For example, Disney used both traditional media and Facebook to promote the recent Pirates of the Caribbean movie to teenagers. In contrast, Disney Channel on cable TV was crucial for Cars2 to reach younger fans. Clearly digital and social media offer great opportunities to increase engagement - both in terms of depth and over a longer timescale. Disney UK's official Facebook page for Toy Story 3 won half a million followers. But in a sign of the times, a fan from Luton created his own unofficial page, called "Move out of the way, children, I've been waiting 11 years to see Toy Story 3", that got 1.7 million in the space of a week.
Disney had to think fast and decided to collaborate, giving this fan special content and access - an interesting example of how even the world's biggest media company needs to be nimble and willing to cede a degree of control...."