By Randy Astle in News
on Friday, January 27th, 2012

Excerpt:

“…All of this greatly expanded HBO’s audience for the new season, which reached 8.7 million viewers, and along the way hardcore fans were also offered a series of puzzles, embedded in each phase, that allowed them to advance along the “Maester’s Path” and unlock footage from the shows. The site is still live at http://themaesterspath.com and is well worth exploring. Social media was included throughout the campaign, and one important component of mastering the Maester’s Path was recruiting five other users.

Along the way Coulson learned several lessons he shared with us. Some include:

* In an increasingly digital world, physical objects can surprise and delight.

* Nothing creates story more evocatively than great actors.

* When world-building, define the experience as a story and you will find the story in the experience.

* Use live events to congregate communities.

* Use the community you’ve created to reach out and expand the community; deputize them by allowing them a creative role.

* Be like “old Lego,” which let users determine what to create out of their blocks, rather than “new Lego,” which predetermines what each set is designed to build. Create the materials and give users free range.

And finally:

* Everything you need to know about marketing you can learn from magicians, the technique they use to tell a story/perform a trick….”

Read the full post here for more details:

http://www.filmmakermagazine.com/news/2012/01/storycode-and-game-of-thrones/

Excerpt:

post by: Jacob Aron, technology reporter

“The MakerBot Replicator is the kind of personal 3D printer that could help with the Pirate Bay’s plans (Image: MakerBot Industries)

The Pirate Bay, one of the internet’s most well-known sites for downloading copyrighted material such as music, films and ebooks, has launched a new category of digital downloads: physical objects.

“Writing on the site’s blog, a Pirate Bayer calling himself WinstonQ2038 explained the thinking behind the new category: “We believe that the next step in copying will be made from digital form into physical form. It will be physical objects. Or as we decided to call them: Physibles. Data objects that are able (and feasible) to become physical.”

“…Objects currently listed in the Physibles category include a 3D version of the Pirate Bay logo, a toy race car and a model robot. The latter two are potentially infringing versions of existing designs, but WinstonQ2038 claims the site has more egalitarian aims: “The benefit to society is huge. No more shipping huge amount of products around the world. No more shipping the broken products back. No more child labour. We’ll be able to print food for hungry people….”

Read the full post from the newscientist.com here:

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2012/01/filesharing-site-serves-…

January 27, 2012

On Transmedia and Education: A Conversation With Robot Heart Stories’ Jen Begeal and Inanimate Alice’s Laura Fleming (Part One)

This week, I want to showcase two innovative projects which seek to explore the intersections between transmedia storytelling, participatory culture, and education — Robot Heart Stories and Inanimate Alice. Here’s some background on the two projects, taken from their respective home pages:

Robot Hearts Stories is an experiential learning project that uses collaboration and creative problem solving to put education directly in the hands of students. This fall, two classrooms, a continent apart, will work together to get a lost robot home, and they will need your help… The experience begins when a robot crash lands in Montreal and must make her way to LA in order to find her space craft and return home. Two class rooms in underprivileged neighborhoods, one in Montreal (French speaking) and the other in LA (English speaking), will use math, science, history, geography and creative writing to help the robot make her way across North America. At the same time, Robot Hearts Stories extends beyond the classroom, as the project welcomes involvement from a global audience. We need participants of all ages to share their own passions in the form of a creative act involving a robot they can print, customize and document. For each photo or piece of art featuring the robot that is submitted, the “signal strength” of the robot grows stronger and helps her to get back home. Robot Heart Stories is the first in a trilogy of experiential learning projects from award winning storytelling pioneer Lance Weiler and creative producer Janine Saunders.

Robot Heart Stories from WorkBook Project on Vimeo.

Read the full interview here & watch for Part 2!:

http://henryjenkins.org/2012/01/on_transmedia_and_education.html

Excerpt:

“Online users will be able to use access an augmented reality app that depicts an interactive forest environment rich with bears, cougars, sheep, and deer. They can also use their webcam and social media channels to get involved with the documentary through various gamification elements. According to NFB Executive Producer, Loc Dao:

The augmented reality app is a feature unique to the installation–that runs for 10 days at New Frontier and for four months at UMOCA (Utah Museum of Contemporary Art ). Online the user faces the disconnect from nature by the very form they are using — sitting in front of their computer. Similarly, at the installation the viewer is out of their element, being in a public space, and like many of us who live our lives through iPhones and digital cameras, the user at the installation experiences the grandiose 24-foot wide digital grid world of Bear 71 through a tablet app, limiting their view of the bigger picture and giving them safe distance from what’s happening in front of them.”

The installation premiered at Sundance Film Festival and has been installed in The Yard in Park City and UMOCA until April 19.

Bear 71 here: http://bear71.nfb.ca/#/bear71

via PSFK: http://www.psfk.com/2012/01/interactive-ar-documentary-nfb.html#ixzz1kZ4ZLjiu

2 Teens, a Weather Balloon, a Camera, & a LEGO Man. So unbelievably cool.

More details on the story here:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2012/01/25/lego-balloon-space.html

Image courtesy of Flickr, Maggie Osama

David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” Inspires An Animation And A Legal Saga

Kevin Holmes October 18, 2011

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Everybody likes a bit of David Bowie in their lives, it’d be rude not to. And to help people cultivate an appreciation of Bowie from a young age, back in August illustrator Andrew Kolb created a children’s picture book with cutesie drawings based around the song “Space Oddity” and released it online as a free PDF.