Exploring the ways in which artists, artisans and technicians are intelligently expressing their creativity with a passion for culture, technology, marketing and advertising.
Looking at things from new perspectives is a key part of what it means to be creative. Seeing classic stories we know very well from new points of view is always revealing, not only about the story but about our opinions as well. So far I’ve shared twists on Snow White and The Wizard of Oz. Today we get a fantastic retelling of The Three Little Pigs in an ad for The Guardian that unravels the story as it demonstrates what it means to break news online and print in an age of #opennews.
PBS Arts: Off Book is a web-based series that explores cutting edge art and the people that make it. The 13 episode series focuses on the process, motivation and meaning of a new generation of artists. For the pass several months we've been following the series. Here are the 13 episodes compiled in one location. Visit the links to the individual posts to find out more about each episode.
Subscribe to the new Off Book channel at http://www.youtube.com/pbsoffbook Light painting dates back to Man Ray, but contemporary photographers are taking the practice of "painting light" onto long-exposure photographs to a new level.
Subscribe to the new Off Book channel at http://www.youtube.com/pbsoffbook Type is everywhere. Every print publication, website, movie, advertisement and public message involves the creation or selection of a fitting typeface. Online, a rich and artistic typographical culture exists, where typefaces are created and graphic design seeps in to every image.
Subscribe to the new Off Book channel at http://www.youtube.com/pbsoffbook For decades now, people have joined together online to communicate and collaborate around interesting imagery. In recent years, the pace and intensity of this activity has reached a fever pitch.
Subscribe to the new Off Book channel at http://www.youtube.com/pbsoffbook Steampunk art evokes an alternate reality where steam is the primary source of power. Technology, though highly advanced, has taken on a very different look and feel, and fashion is heavily influenced by Victorian styles. In this episode, we explore the Steampunk aesthetic and art movement.
Subscribe to the new Off Book channel at http://www.youtube.com/pbsoffbook As we become more and more engaged with the internet in every aspect of our lives, powerful questions have arisen regarding the ownership of digital media and information, the relationship between corporations, governments, and individuals online, the power of pop culture influence, and the dissolving border between the digital and physical worlds.
Subscribe to the new Off Book channel at http://www.youtube.com/pbsoffbook The street is a space where art thrives, and a place where artists can shape the public aesthetic. Olek, a sculptor whose medium is crochet, and Swoon, a mixed media artist, disrupt daily life with work that creates wonder, emotion, and humor.
Subscribe to the new Off Book channel at http://www.youtube.com/pbsoffbook America has a long tradition of handmade arts and crafts. In the manufacturing age, however, much of this work was overshadowed by the homogenizing force of retail culture. But the passion for handmade arts didn't disappear, and persisted through the years in local craft fairs.
Subscribe to the new Off Book channel at http://www.youtube.com/pbsoffbook Video games are important. They are a storytelling medium, a place for self-expression, a sandbox for the human imagination, and an extension of an ages old tradition of gaming.
Subscribe to the new Off Book channel at http://www.youtube.com/pbsoffbook Although not every artist is as attentive to fashion as Kanye West, style does make its way into their lives. Sometimes driven by practical purpose, other times by personal expression or as part of performance, fashion plays a role in the aesthetic landscape of many artists.
Subscribe to the new Off Book channel at http://www.youtube.com/pbsoffbook An intriguing combination of programmers, artists, and philosophers, these creators embrace a process that delegates essential decisions to computers, data sets, or even random variables.
Subscribe to the new Off Book channel at http://www.youtube.com/pbsoffbook We swim in an ocean of products. Behind each one, there is someone (hopefully) thinking about the way we experience it. In this episode of Off Book, we explore three aspects of product design: build quality and engineering fundamentals, humanism and sustainability, and speculation on the future of the product experience.
Subscribe to the new Off Book channel at http://www.youtube.com/pbsoffbook Books are in a conflicted state. Should they still exist in a digital era? Will they all be replaced by Kindles and Nooks? These questions dominate the discussion of books in our time.
Subscribe to the new Off Book channel at http://www.youtube.com/pbsoffbook As the 90s came to a close, the business of music began to change profoundly. New technology allowed artists to record and produce their own music and music videos, and the internet became a free-for-all distribution platform for musicians to promote themselves to audiences across the world.
I'm a big fan of the Futures of Entertainment conference. It brings together artists, artisans, technicians, academics and real-world producers for a lively conversation about the future of media, culture, marketing and entertainment. The conference was started by Henry Jenkins and is now also the sister conference to Transmedia Hollywood, which occurs on alternating years. Jenkins explains the conference best:
The goal of the conference is to provide a meeting ground for forward thinking people in the creative industries and academia to talk with each other about the trends that are impacting how entertainment is produced, circulated, and engaged with. Through the years, the conference has developed its own community, which includes alums of the Comparative Media Studies Program who see the conference as a kind of homecoming, other academics who have found it a unique space to engage with contemporary practices and issues, and industry leaders, many of them former speakers, who return because it offers them a chance to think beyond the established wisdom within their own companies. Our goal is to create a space where academics do not read papers and industry folks don't present prospectus-laden powerpoints or talk about "take-aways" and "deliverables," but people engage honestly, critically, openly about topics of shared interest.
This year FoA5 took place on November 11-12 with a special event on the eve of the conference. Here are videos of all the sessions.
Pre-Conference
Global Creative Cities and the Future of Entertainment. Today, new entertainment production cultures are arising around key cities like Mumbai and Rio de Janeiro. What do these changes mean for the international flow of media content? And how does the nature of these cities help shape the entertainment industries they are fostering? At the same time, new means of media production and circulation allow people to produce content from suburban or rural areas. How do these trends co-exist? And what does it mean for the futures of entertainment?
Moderator: Maurício Mota (The Alchemists) Panelists: Parmesh Shahani (Godrej Industries, India), Ernie Wilson (University of Southern California) and Sérgio Sá Leitão (Rio Filmes)
Day 1
Introduction (8:30-9:00 a.m.) William Uricchio (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and Ilya Vedrashko (Hill Holliday)
Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Society. (9:00-10:00 a.m.) How are the shifting relations between media producers and their audiences transforming the concept of meaningful participation? And how do alternative systems for the circulation of media texts pave the way for new production modes, alternative genres of content, and new relationships between producers and audiences? Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green-co-authors of the forthcoming book Spreadable Media-share recent experiments from independent filmmakers, video game designers, comic book creators, and artists and discuss the promises and challenges of models for deeper audience participation with the media industries, setting the stage for the issues covered by the conference. Speakers: Henry Jenkins (University of Southern California), Sam Ford (Peppercom Strategic Communications) and Joshua Green (Undercurrent)
Collaboration? Emerging Models for Audiences to Participate in Entertainment Decision-Making. (10:15 a.m.-11:45 p.m.) In an era where fans are lobbying advertisers to keep their favorite shows from being cancelled, advertisers are shunning networks to protest on the fans' behalf and content creators are launching web ventures in conversation with their audiences, there appears to be more opportunity than ever for closer collaboration between content creators and their most ardent fans. What models are being attempted as a way forward, and what can we learn from them? And what challenges exist in pursuing that participation for fans and for creators alike? Moderator: Sheila Seles (Advertising Research Foundation) Panelists: C. Lee Harrington (Miami University), Seung Bak (Dramafever) and Jamin Warren (Kill Screen)
Creating with the Crowd: Crowdsourcing for Funding, Producing and Circulating Media Content. (12:45-2:45 p.m.) Beyond the buzzword and gimmicks using the concept, crowdsourcing is emerging as a new way in which creators are funding media production, inviting audiences into the creation process and exploring new and innovative means of circulating media content. What are some of the innovative projects forging new paths forward, and what can be learned from them? How are attempts at crowdsourcing creating richer media content and greater ownership for fans? And what are the barriers and risks ahead for making these models more prevalent? Moderator: Ana Domb (Almabrands, Chile) Panelists: Mirko Schäfer (Utrecht University, The Netherlands), Bruno Natal (Queremos, Brazil), Timo Vuorensola (Wreckamovie, Finland) and Caitlin Boyle (Film Sprout)
Here We Are Now (Entertain Us): Location, Mobile, and How Data Tells Stories (3:15-4:45 p.m.) Location-based services and context-aware technologies are altering the way we encounter our environments and producing enormous volumes of data about where we go, what we do, and how we live and interact. How are these changes transforming the ways we engage with our physical world, and with each other? What kind of stories does the data produce, and what do they tell us about our culture and social behaviors? What opportunities and perils does this information have for businesses and individuals? What are the implications for brands, audiences, content producers, and media companies? Moderator: Xiaochang Li (New York University) Panelists: Germaine Halegoua (University of Kansas), Dan Street (Loku) and Andy Ellwood (Gowalla)
At What Cost?: The Privacy Issues that Must Be Considered in a Digital World. (5:00-6:00 p.m.) The vast range of new experiments to facilitated greater audience participation and more personalized media content bring are often accomplished through much deeper uses of audience data and platforms whose business models are built on the collection and use of data. What privacy issues must be considered beneath the enthusiasm for these new innovations? What are the fault lines beneath the surface of digital entertainment and marketing, and what is the appropriate balance between new modes of communication and communication privacy? Participants: Jonathan Zittrain (Harvard University) and Helen Nissenbaum (New York University)
Day 2
Introduction (8:30-9:00 a.m.) Grant McCracken (author of Chief Culture Officer; Culturematic)
The Futures of Serialized Storytelling (9:00-11:00 a.m.) New means of digital circulation, audience engagement and fan activism have brought with it a variety of experiments with serialized video storytelling. What can we learn from some of the most compelling emerging ways to tell ongoing stories through online video, cross-platform features and applications and real world engagement? What models for content creation are emerging, and what are the stakes for content creators and audiences alike? Moderator: Laurie Baird (Georgia Tech) Panelists: Matt Locke (Storythings, UK), Steve Coulson (Campfire), Lynn Liccardo (soap opera critic), and Denise Mann (University of California-Los Angeles)
The Futures of Children's Media (11:30 a.m.-1:00 p.m.). Children's media has long been an innovator in creating new ways of storytelling. In a digital era, what emerging practices are changing the ways in which stories are being told to children, and what are the challenges unique to children's properties in an online communication environment? Moderator: Sarah Banet-Weiser (University of Southern California) Panelists: Melissa Anelli (The Leaky Cauldron), Gary Goldberger (FableVision) and John Bartlett (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
The Futures of Nonfiction Storytelling (2:15-4:15 p.m.). Digital communication has arguably impacted the lives of journalists more than any other media practitioner. But new platforms and ways of circulating content are providing vast new opportunities for journalists and documentarians. How have-and might-nonfiction storytellers incorporate many of the emerging strategies of transmedia storytelling and audience participation from marketing and entertainment, and what experiments are currently underway that are showing the potential paths forward? Moderator: Johnathan Taplin (University of Southern California) Panelists: Molly Bingham (photojournalist; founder of ORB); Chris O'Brien (San Jose Mercury News), Patricia Zimmermann (Ithaca College) and Lenny Altschuler (Televisa)
The Futures of Music. (4:45-6:45 p.m.) The music industry is often cited as the horror story that all other entertainment genres might learn from: how the digital era has laid waste to a traditional business model. But what new models for musicians and for the music industry exist in the wake of this paradigm shift, and what can other media industries learn from emerging models of content creation and circulation? Moderator: Nancy Baym (Kansas University) Panelists: Mike King (Berklee College of Music), João Brasil (Brazilian artist), Chuck Fromm (Worship Leader Media), Erin McKeown (musical artist and fellow with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University) and Brian Whitman (The Echo Nest)
Then again, the Internet is a new kind of barometer for keeping track of exactly how old you feel: how many things you don’t get, how many mini-Internet worlds you can’t find the door to; exactly how many crickets in the world you can no longer hear chirping. Unlike in generations past, when (I imagine) you just kept doing what you and your same-aged friends did, and aged into obscurity in comfort on a cloud of your own tastes and generational inclinations, until you died either thinking you all were still the coolest or not caring anymore about being cool, these days the Internet exists in part to introduce you to all these things you didn’t know about, but in part to remind you how much there is out there that you’ll never know about. The Internet is basically like being at a house party and trying to find the bathroom and opening up a door to a room where a bunch of kids are playing a game or doing a drug or having an orgy (metaphorically) or something and you get all flustered and say, “Oh, my God, I’m sorry!” and they all look at you like, “You pervert,” and you quickly slam the door shut. Everywhere you go on the Internet there are rooms you don’t understand, people playing games you don’t know the rules to, teenagers doing drugs you’ve never heard of and can’t even pronounce. And you just walk through the halls of this house party, aging in fast forward, until you open the one last door at the end of the hallway and it’s Death. Ha, ha.
