OTOCRON

Jeff Gomez is the CEO of Starlight Runner Entertainment, that develops transmedial storyworlds for the best known franschises in the world like Pirates of the Caribbean, Fairies, Prince of Persia and Tron for The Walt Disney Company, James Cameron’s Avatar for 20th Century Fox, Halo for Microsoft, Happiness Factory for The Coca-Cola Company, and most recently Transformers for Hasbro. So you can safely say he is at the hi-end of this practice.Today he spoke at the exciting  Transmedia Conference at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam (where I spoke as well on the concept of Situated Storytelling, but more on that later)

When Jeff Gomez explained what in his view were the prime succes parameters of transmedial storyworlds, it suddenly struck me: this is not an newly emerging expressive genre at all, it is actually one of the oldest succesful forms of creating experiences that we know… All organised religion that really pulled off is set up like what we would call now a transmedial storyworld.

This is Gomez’s list of succes factors:

1 content is originated by one or a few visionaries
2 cross media roll-out is planned early in the life of the franchise
3 content is distributed over at least 3 platforms
4 content is uniqe, adheres to platforms specific strengths and is not re-purposed
5 content is based on a single vision of the story world
6 concerted effort is made to avoid fractures and schisms
7 effort is vertical across company third parties and licensees
8 rollout features audience participatory elements including webportal, social networking and story guided user generated content

The rules neatly describe the way organised religion is run. Minor incongruencies occur, but certainly for Catholocism, there is a tight fit.

1: Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, what have you.

2: Texts, participatory rituals, songs, buildings, specific dress codes or hairstlyes

3  See above, by all means!  But also: there is always a clear ‘driving platform’ : the Bible, Quran, Bhagavad Gita, Book of Mormon etcetera.

4 To some extent yes: pictures, and statues are made to reach illiterate vup’s (viewer/user/player) , canonical books for the general audience,  mystical texts come from - and are meant for the hardcore fanbase. (But bascially a lot of the IP is actually re-purposed. )

5 This was the plan that was adopted at the Council of Nicea. There the biblical canon was established. But a lot of the stories had been living a life of their own the past hundreds of years, so were hard to bring totally in line. Complete cherence proved a hard job in practice. There are two conflicting accounts of creation in the first pages of the Bible. God is both a vengeful god, as well as a forgiving god, etcetera.

6 For Catholicism (the example I know best) yes, a lot of coordinated effort has been put in that. The Inquisition was a coordinated effort to root out the Cathar and  Albigensian heresy.  The Reformation turned out into a schism, but was actually an attempt to restore purity in the core intellectual property. The Counter-Reformation tried to counter the Reformation (!) and to restore unity.

7 Indeed - there is a clear hierarchy in place. The Pope, cardinals and bishops run the show. Third parties have been developing the buildings and the films for instance, but according to clear guidelines from the central authority.

8 Of course  - the whole thing is entirely participatory and experiential. Fans are encouraged to have personal, yet canonical transgressive experiences, they in turn convey new fans. Evangelists, hardcore fans, followers, casual passers-by.

It actually seems really obvious now that I made the comparision. I just wonder if the big transmedial developers actually studies the way religions are organised.  Otherwise I would suggest they look into some of these tested models…

For too long music was either a sphere on its own - an autonomous system of producing meaning that effectively bypassed abstract symbolic levels and language by entering the perceptual system through a unique sensual shortcut, òr it was  a representation: a symbolic narrative of consecutive emotional states. Music was either a world of its own, or it re-mediated a specific emotional continuum with sonic means.

Situated music is a third way - it is not a narrative, mor an autonomous sphere - it is a music that touches the world, a music that the world touches.

Situated music is a music that brings play to its environment. It doesn’t absorb environments into the sphere of music-making, it is the other way around: it makes music-making an act that follows from its immediate material and memetic surrounding - a situated act.

Situated music is a porous practice.

‘Things’ don’t become instruments - instruments are things among other things, each with their own sonic agency. Some things can be directional - in them is discovered an agency that is more on a par with that of a conductor than that of a player or an instrument. Other things may have a capacity for listening.

Situated music is indeed a way of listening, that allows for holes to be present and to be filled with givens. But it is also a way of playing - as much a way of acting as of allowing. Situated music allows a place to appropriate the sonic sphere and its related means of perception.

The time has come for situated music.

Sportcultuur heeft een paradoxale relatie met technologische vernieuwing: sommige sporten - neem voetbal en hockey - zijn een soort beschermde reservaten:  rondom de regels, de materialen, de toegepaste technologieën lijkt een isolerend membraan te zijn aangebracht. Daarbinnen verstrijkt de tijd alleen cyclisch. De gebeurtenissen zijn telkens alleen een nieuwe iteratie van dezelfde parameters. Buiten het membraan verstrijkt de tijd wel lineair: daar worden nieuwe media bedacht en in gebruik genomen, en leiden nieuwe technieken tot nieuwe manieren van doen.

In andere sporten - Formule 1 racen - is de situatie omgekeerd:  menselijke beoefenaren zijn de natte, tere klont aan het been van de door-evoluerende  technologie - de enige belemmering eigenlijk voor het  echt ongeremde volgen technofetishistische fantasieën.  Een logische volgende stap zou zijn om de kwetsbare organische elementen buiten het spel te houden.
Dat gebeurt ook, zij het niet in Formule 1 racen, maar  in Pro-Gaming - waar de sporter een virtuele plaatsvervanger aanstuurt.  En het gebeurt in  Robot Wars. Hoewel die strijdrobots misschien geen vervangers van menselijke sporters zijn, maar eerder van honden en hanen.

In sommige sporten worden compromissen  gesloten tussen wat ‘de sport is’ en slimme herdefinities van sommige van de parameters - het schaatsen en  de klapschaats, het zwemmen en de fullbodysuit   -  het wielrennen en de realtime communicatie media.  Materiaalinnovatie mag, maar binnen strak gereguleerde grenzen.

Maar volgens een moeilijk te volgen logica doen àlle sportbonden echter hun uiterste best - vergeefs zoals iedereen weet -  om pharmaceutische innovatie  buiten de deur te houden. Voor het lichaam van de sporter zijn de regels overal volstrekt  conservatief: zwemmers mogen hun maag niet volpompen met lucht, chemicaliën, hormonen en zelfs extra toediening van het lichaamseigen bloed is verboden.
Maar dat ligt natuurlijk lastiger bij de paralympische sporter: waar ligt de grens tussen lichaam en materiaal bij een hardloper met kunstbenen?

Over deze en verwante zaken gaat achtste aflevering van De Zondagsschool: Sport. Klik hier voor een volledig programma.

Wherever computers are part of processes, increasingly higher speeds are possible (following Moore’s Law) but not always desired… Computers can perform more and more complex tasks (like folding proteines, or cracking encryptions), to an extent well outside the potential of all human agents. If humans want to have a say or even a hand in these processes, their capabilities for handling information  are becoming a severe bottleneck of process design, a primary constraint.  In this context, the design of the temporal characteristics of designed processes in which humans play  a part, is becoming of crucial importance.

To what extent is the unprecedented speed  of the current economic freefall related to the speed of computer-enabled desicion making processes? To what extent is the integration of the overall economic picture handled by computers?

To what extend are human financial decision makers free to formulate their own response to critical financial events ?

Traffic jams are not phenomena that can be erased through improved spatial design - more asphalt just attracts more traffic.  They can only be solved through temporal design.

Japanese product designers in the 90’s tried to speed up the fashion cycle of what was then still called ‘hifi equipment’. For a while, they came up with a new packaging of basically the same components and configuration every half year. For the first round this indeed boosted sales - for one year, Japanese consumers replaced their equipment more then once a year. But then sales dropped again, even to numbers below the previous numbers that were based on a one year fashion cycle. So then  the cosmetic innovation cycle was brought back to its annual rhythm, and also sales numbers climbed again. (source: “Het modieuze discours over innoatie.pdf” by Luc Hoebeke)

One of the main design challenges for the developers of Philips hi-end medical equipment is to allow for the different innovation cycles of the various components. The software innovation cycle is down to a couple of months; the scanner hardware of a MRI scanner for instance, has a much slower cycle. The dedicated chips that integrate data into visuals that allows the doctors to make decisions have a cycle somewhere in between.  Philips spends much effort on developing generic integration protocols that allow the various components to talk to each other, while allowing for different parts to be replaced by newer versions at different speeds.

The biggest internet hype of the moment (may 2009, in the middle of the Twitter explosion) is primarily a step towards the final instance of accelaration: simultaneity. The development of the technology of time travel (for any thing above quantum scale) will keep us waiting for the foreseeable future. But watching, listening and acting at many places at the same time, is a serious option, not far ahead.

But keep in mind that even prior to the advent of the special relativity theory, questions have been raised (see, e.g., Poincaré, 1898) as to whether simultaneity is absolute; i.e., whether there can be a unique event at location A that is simultaneous with a given event at location B.

For conveniency:  “Simultaneity is the property of two events happening at the same time in at least one reference frame.”

Realtime is a a working translation of simultaneous, since both are defined against a reference frame.

It was explained to me that the Chinese value system runs on obligations, rather than on rights, like the Dutch. Prior the the 2008 Olympics, efforts were made to make street traffic more safe for pedestrians, as there were huge numbers of foreign pedestrians expected with no experience of the ways  of Chinese traffic (which are rather cruel.) Pedestrians were given rights: they were officially protected, and they would be able to claim financial compensation from car drivers that hit them, if such a thing had occurred.  The rumor goes that the first weeks of experimenting with this new regime, saw an significant increase in the number of elderly ladies that were hurt or killed in traffic.

Not having been to any other place in the far east, nor to L.A, Beijing reminded me quite a bit of the city of Blade Runner, without the air traffic. The hyper modern skyscrapers with huge urban screens, surrounded by rackety medieval alleyways where you can buy steaming street food of unidentifiable origin.

Not from Blade Runner were the vast imperial symmetries crossing the urban landscape, maintaining harmony between heaven and earth, creating unique single spots where power concentrates to be wielded by the Son of Heaven.

The nephew of the most recent Son of Heaven (Last Emperor Pu Yi)  now runs a small calligraphy workshop in the back of the Forbidden City. Very approachable guy, knows his price, but is willing to bargain, as is custom in China.

Sim cards come in two prices. Ones with many 8s and 6es are more expensive than ones with 4s and 7s. 6 is for harmony, things going smoothly, 8 is for wealth, currently the main Chinese trigger for activity. 9 (for longevity) used to be the main lucky number, but nowadays old age is not considered very desirable without accompanying wealth.  Everything that carries numbers is subject to deeply ingrained superstition. Reportedly, the number plate carrying H6666 was sold for 500.000 yuan, about €45.000.
Also impressive was the very advanced vegetarian food, designed for Buddhists. Artificial shrimps, artificial mackerel, artifical tripe,  etcetera.

The documentary High Definition Combat Footage in Operation Homecoming, see here and here looks stylized, aestheticised, crisp. More so if it is compared to the (fictional) combat footage of high production value war movies like Black Hawk Down: jumpy, hazy, and glitchy shots, with frame drops, and pale colours and stark contrasts.
The hi-def camera in Operation Homecoming recorded more detail than the camera in Black Hawk Down. Yet, the footage in Black Hawk Down looks more realistic in the sense that it looks like it was recorded during actual combat, while the HD footage of Operation Homecoming looks fictional, although it wasn’t.
From seeing Operation Homecoming - especially the way the interviews were edited - that was not the intention. The interviews suffer from the same excessive effort to achieve authenticity. All interviewees are made to look like straight honest guys who talk about their suffering without complaining too much, and they deliver nicely packeted, easily swallowable tragic war stories without being overtly patriotic.

In Black Hawk Down the camera is part of the action, is subjectively present, it is kicked around, maltreated, nearly breaking down. In Operation Homecoming the camera feels like its outside the action and it can’t help but making glamorous whatever it records.

High fantasy movies like The Lord of the Rings and others apply the first strategy to achieve a realistic effect - but there it seemed to have worked.
More horror-like fantasy like the Blair Witch Project uses this second, more hypermedial strategy to create a realistic effect, and here it works as well - the camera being very subjectively present in the story world, passing on fragments of events, requiring the viewer to fill the gaps, engaging him/her actively. Also the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the Pasolini’s The 120 Days of Salo apply the second strategy to achieve an experience of realism. But I wonder why the first strategy (a strategy oriented towards the transparant immediacy of mediation) works as well with high fantasy.

Would it be possible at all to use the second realism strategy (the hypermedial one) with high fantasy movies? Would that not introduce an irritatingly present camera in the story world, an odd technological device that implicitly inserts itself in the same plane of representation as the events of the story? Or would it be possible, in high fantasy movies,  to suggest an alternative mediation device that was used to capture the footage, a kind of fictive hypermedial strategy ?