Christy Dena - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Books by Christy Dena
Narrativas Seriadas: Ficções televisivas, games e trasmídia, 2021
This piece is an updated script of a keynote, “Transmedia and the Pluriverse,” I gave at Seriais,... more This piece is an updated script of a keynote, “Transmedia and the
Pluriverse,” I gave at Seriais, Seminário Narrativas Seriadas – Ficções
Televisivas, Games e Transmídia, in Salvador, Brazil, on the 2nd July, 2019.
In the book Narrativas Seriadas, edited by Maria Carmem Souza and Lynn Alves. Resource entry: https://repositorio.ufba.br/handle/ri/32929
The Routledge Companion to Transmedia Studies, 2018
A long-held view by transmedia theorists and practitioners alike is that adaptation is not part o... more A long-held view by transmedia theorists and practitioners alike is that adaptation is not part of the phenomenon. While there are those that have argued against this exclusion (Dena 2009; Ruppel 2012), and there has been a softening of the arguments (Jenkins 2011, 2017; O’Flynn 2013; Harvey 2015), the no-adaptation approach has helped many identify and understand the area. Given the consensus regarding excluding adaptation, this chapter investigates the underlying assumptions informing the exclusion and looks at the costs involved. What do we miss when we exclude adaptation from transmedia projects, and is there another way we can distinguish transmedia phenomena? We begin this investigation by revisiting the adaptation exclusion arguments.
Transmedia Practice: A Collective Approach, 2014
What is ‘transmedia’? This chapter attempts to understand what this phenomenon is from a transhi... more What is ‘transmedia’? This chapter attempts to understand what this phenomenon
is from a transhistorical perspective. The transhistorical nature of media
combinations is interrogated in light of media specificity and in relation to the key
phenomena of Intermedia. Transmedia is argued to be a transhistorical urge
towards unifying that which has been artificially estranged.
This is a chapter in a book edited by Deb Polson, Ann-Marie Cook, JT Velikovsky, and Adam Brackin.
In the past few years there have been a number of theories emerge in media, film, television, nar... more In the past few years there have been a number of theories emerge in media, film, television, narrative and game studies that detail the rise of what has been variously described as transmedia, cross-media and distributed phenomena. Fundamentally, the phenomenon involves the employment of multiple media platforms for expressing a fictional world. To date, theorists have focused on this phenomenon in mass entertainment, independent arts or gaming; and so, consequently the global, transartistic and transhistorical nature of the phenomenon has remained somewhat unrecognised. Theorists have also predominantly defined it according to end-point characteristics”such as the "expansion" trait (a story continues across media). This has resulted in the phenomenon being obscured amongst similar phenomena. Therefore, rather than investigate the phenomenon as it occurs in isolated artistic sectors and with an end-point characteristic, this thesis investigates all of these emergences through the lens of transmedia practice. That is, this thesis investigates the nature of transmedia practice in general, according to the way practitioners conceive and design a fictional world to be expressed across distinct media and environments.
To do this, this thesis draws on the semiotic theory of "multimodality" and "domains of practice" (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2001) to illuminate the unique knowledge and skills of practitioners involved in the design of transmedia projects. The industrial and aesthetic implications of the employment of distinct media are discussed, along with their semiotic activation. Related theories such as "hypertextuality" and "transfictionality" are problematised in light of transmedia phenomena. Since the phenomenon involves both narrative and game modes, a new methodology is introduced to study their presence at various stages of design: transmodality. The employment of the actual world in transmedia practices is discussed in light of Aristotle's "dramatic unities" and through "deictic shift theory". Through research questions from media, narrative and game studies as well as semiotics, this thesis aims to explain how transmedia is a peculiar practice that demands its own research area and methodologies.
" Da Contracapa: "É complexo ignorar um fenômeno tão expressivo, e ao mesmo tempo de tão pouca p... more "
Da Contracapa: "É complexo ignorar um fenômeno tão expressivo, e ao mesmo tempo de tão pouca penetração acadêmica, como a ascensão dos jogos eletrônicos a um formato universal – um dos pilares da experiência social midiática desse século que se enseja. O livro Realidade Sintética: Jogos Eletrônicos, Comunicação e Experiência Social, organizado por Luiz Adolfo de Andrade e Thiago Falcão, oferece uma coletânea de artigos que versam sobre a relação entre comunicação, sociabilidade e jogos eletrônicos. A obra reúne textos de pesquisadores nacionais e do exterior, distribuídos em partes distintas que se aproximam do problema através da relação entre jogos eletrônicos, redes sociais, espaço urbano e mundos virtuais. O volume apresenta o pensamento de especialistas ora da alçada da comunicação, ora relacionados à pesquisa a respeito de video games. os pesquisadores internacionais convidados disponibilizam neste volume seus trabalhos traduzidos de modo pioneiro para a língua portuguesa. Os assuntos tratados neste volume dialogam com temas atuais presentes em diversas esferas acadêmicas, dentre elas a comunicação social, cibercultura, computação ubíqua, teoria social, estudos culturais, estudos de mídia e, naturalmente, game studies".
"
Talks by Christy Dena
Game Narrative Summit, Game Developers Conference, 2018
You've seen how Blizzard has extended the 'Overwatch' game into animated shorts and digital comic... more You've seen how Blizzard has extended the 'Overwatch' game into animated shorts and digital comics, the same with Ubisoft's 'Assassin's Creed', Bungie's 'Halo' and many other franchises. You might be thinking about how you can extend your own game on a much smaller budget, like Jordan Thomas did with 'The Magic Circle' game and associated in-fiction websites. How do you decide what extensions to create? In this talk, Christy Dena will detail what players find appealing about these extensions. Using examples from existing games, you'll be given guidelines on how to make effective choices to make satisfying experience for your players.
This is the script for the presentation I gave at the Game Narrative Summit, GDC on 19th March, 2018. Link to video at GDC Vault: https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1025280/The-Secrets-to-Creating-an. Link to video on the GDC Youtube channel: https://youtu.be/h7dOaShW4VQ. Link to script on Christy's website: https://www.christydena.com/2018/06/the-secrets-to-creating-an-indie-game-franchise-my-full-gdc18-talk-with-slides/
Papers by Christy Dena
Game Developer, 2024
We’re currently developing a mini open world local co-op called Bugging Humans. It has a shared a... more We’re currently developing a mini open world local co-op called Bugging Humans. It has a shared asymmetrical UI — where one player doesn’t see the screen but they have the controller, and the other player sees the screen and they have the keyboard. This means best practices, for instance in level design, have to be adapted. It also means blind and low-vision players can play with sighted players. The game could involve many innovations, unless we stuff it up by avoiding player discomfort. We know what we need to do, but perhaps our playtesters can meet us half-way.
British Science Fiction Association's Vector Magazine, 2023
Review essay discussing the relationship between narrative design and social change in the film S... more Review essay discussing the relationship between narrative design and social change in the film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.
Many people regard cyberculture as the territory of boffins, sci-fi enthusiasts and 'iti... more Many people regard cyberculture as the territory of boffins, sci-fi enthusiasts and 'itinerant wanderers', and inescapably limited to computer technology. However, the term is also applied to a field of research, one that has always been interdisciplinary: traversing philosophy, ...
Digital Arts and Culture Conference, Bergen, Norway. In Proceedings of the Digital Arts and Culture Conference, 2005
How do we compare eliterature forms? What does it mean for a work to be implemented as hypertext,... more How do we compare eliterature forms? What does it mean for a work to be implemented as hypertext, interactive fiction, or chatbot?" Benchmark fiction" is a methodology for creating'benchmarks'-sets of adaptations of the “same” eliterature content across different media for the purpose of comparative study. While total equivalence between the resulting'benchfic'is impossible, praxis remains important: by creating'equivalent'media and then critiquing them, we revealing our own definitions of ...
"Christy Dena’s online-remix-narrative takes iconic images of popular culture and builds wit... more "Christy Dena’s online-remix-narrative takes iconic images of popular culture and builds with them a strange world where the human fallibility is programmatically deleted. Both dystopic and playful, Dena’s work is an ironic reimagining of pleasure as a state of robotic flatlining, using tropes of science fiction to critique processes of social normalisation and increasing alienation from emotionality." This creative response began as a completely different story and form. What excited me in the end was the concept of deletion and how it could be an interesting mechanic: where the only thing you can do in the world is delete. I thought about deleting parts of robots to make them better. Healing comes from taking away, from removing things. Memories of Joseph Weizenbaum’s chatbot ELIZA came flooding back: where the (human) player is a patient talking to a Rogerian psychotherapist. But in this work I’m switching the roles and making the player the doctor, a doctor to robots…a doctor that can only prescribe deletions. I conceived of the work as a branching narrative, and started writing it in Twine. With every robot patient, the player chose one of many deletions. But when I realised I wouldn’t be able to arrange an artist and sound designer I looked for another option. I played with Zeega and felt that I could get the mood I was after with that platform. So the piece transformed into a work where the player/viewer is imprisoned in the decisions of the deleting protagonist…which has its own effect on the experience and meaning.
Vector, 2022
A personal review essay co-written with Yen Ooi about the feature film Everything Everywhere All ... more A personal review essay co-written with Yen Ooi about the feature film Everything Everywhere All At Once, by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. The piece weaves personal response, analysis, and narrative design insights. Published in the British Science Fiction Association's journal Vector on 22nd Oct, 2022.
Journal of the Spanish Communication Research Association, 2018
Discourses around standardization and identity formation forestall alternative approaches to crea... more Discourses around standardization and identity formation forestall alternative approaches to creative practice. Changes do happen, however, through pervasive attitudinal shifts articulated in rhetoric. Drawing on the social science research into economic history and choice-based cultural evolution, this essay discusses changes to the notion of conflict and closure in the creative industries. These changes are argued to be provoked by the idea of a choice-based coevolution, that is echoed by many in discourses surrounding practice.
Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association, 2017
Game designers and game writers do not have the same understandings, processes, or approaches, an... more Game designers and game writers do not have the same understandings, processes, or approaches, and this impedes good practice. This is not due to the two modes being so different or incompatible however, as has been claimed now and in earlier narratology and ludology debates. Instead, this article argues that incompatibilities are due more to the schemas of creation: the mental models we are taught and create with, that thwart more integrated practices. We learn to create and think about games in one way, and narrative in another. This siloing is due to a predictable differentiation rhetoric that occurs at the emergence of a new medium: games are not stories, games are not films, VR is not film, X is understood by not being Y. This arbitrariness of difference facilitates a schism in the creator's mind, where elements, roles and industries become irreconcilable. Indeed, whole swathes of wisdom are put to the side in an effort to be recognised as different. When narrative is used in games, then, developers rely on external design grammars, where models from other artforms are imported and shoehorned. There have been attempts to reduce such siloing, but integration cannot happen merely through recognising common elements or traits within a game object. Instead, this article argues that a common understanding can be found through the common factor of the audience or player. To illustrate this point, two successful audience/player-centered approaches from filmmaking and education are outlined, along with a tweaking of the successful MDA framework, providing structures for creatives to avoid the problem of design schema tension and create better projects.
Direct link to online journal: http://todigra.org/index.php/todigra/article/view/63
Rough Cuts: Media and Design in Process, The New Everyday, 2012
This is a short piece on the changes to the script format I did for my interactive project. It is... more This is a short piece on the changes to the script format I did for my interactive project. It is for Kari Kraus and Amalia Lev's special edition of The New Everyday, a mediacommons project. Their introduction: "The architect Christopher Alexander once said that design is but “a residue of the all important process.” This cluster views the creative process through the scrim of drafts, sketches, mock-ups, rough cuts, and prototypes—the secondary output of art and design."
Archive of the edition: http://mediacommons.org/tne/cluster/rough-cuts-media-and-design-process
Direct link to article: http://mediacommons.org/tne/pieces/scripting-journey
Creative Industries Faculty School of Media Entertainment Creative Arts, Feb 26, 2010
Creative Industries Faculty School of Media Entertainment Creative Arts, Aug 30, 2013
Espen J. Aarseth put forward that hypertext is indeed new, despite claims that non-linear storyte... more Espen J. Aarseth put forward that hypertext is indeed new, despite claims that non-linear storytelling has been in existence throughout time. Aarseth knighted it 'ergodic literature' because the hypertext user has to act out thoughts through action, whereas the reader merely thinks their paths. This changes the writing- reading process and therefore how we study it. Sven Birkerts has been
christydena.com, 2004
I have observed that within the new media ecology there are currently three research approaches: ... more I have observed that within the new media ecology there are currently three research approaches: developing media specific poetics for digital works only (eg ludology for computer games); revising and development of traditional discourses and media ...
Narrativas Seriadas: Ficções televisivas, games e trasmídia, 2021
This piece is an updated script of a keynote, “Transmedia and the Pluriverse,” I gave at Seriais,... more This piece is an updated script of a keynote, “Transmedia and the
Pluriverse,” I gave at Seriais, Seminário Narrativas Seriadas – Ficções
Televisivas, Games e Transmídia, in Salvador, Brazil, on the 2nd July, 2019.
In the book Narrativas Seriadas, edited by Maria Carmem Souza and Lynn Alves. Resource entry: https://repositorio.ufba.br/handle/ri/32929
The Routledge Companion to Transmedia Studies, 2018
A long-held view by transmedia theorists and practitioners alike is that adaptation is not part o... more A long-held view by transmedia theorists and practitioners alike is that adaptation is not part of the phenomenon. While there are those that have argued against this exclusion (Dena 2009; Ruppel 2012), and there has been a softening of the arguments (Jenkins 2011, 2017; O’Flynn 2013; Harvey 2015), the no-adaptation approach has helped many identify and understand the area. Given the consensus regarding excluding adaptation, this chapter investigates the underlying assumptions informing the exclusion and looks at the costs involved. What do we miss when we exclude adaptation from transmedia projects, and is there another way we can distinguish transmedia phenomena? We begin this investigation by revisiting the adaptation exclusion arguments.
Transmedia Practice: A Collective Approach, 2014
What is ‘transmedia’? This chapter attempts to understand what this phenomenon is from a transhi... more What is ‘transmedia’? This chapter attempts to understand what this phenomenon
is from a transhistorical perspective. The transhistorical nature of media
combinations is interrogated in light of media specificity and in relation to the key
phenomena of Intermedia. Transmedia is argued to be a transhistorical urge
towards unifying that which has been artificially estranged.
This is a chapter in a book edited by Deb Polson, Ann-Marie Cook, JT Velikovsky, and Adam Brackin.
In the past few years there have been a number of theories emerge in media, film, television, nar... more In the past few years there have been a number of theories emerge in media, film, television, narrative and game studies that detail the rise of what has been variously described as transmedia, cross-media and distributed phenomena. Fundamentally, the phenomenon involves the employment of multiple media platforms for expressing a fictional world. To date, theorists have focused on this phenomenon in mass entertainment, independent arts or gaming; and so, consequently the global, transartistic and transhistorical nature of the phenomenon has remained somewhat unrecognised. Theorists have also predominantly defined it according to end-point characteristics”such as the "expansion" trait (a story continues across media). This has resulted in the phenomenon being obscured amongst similar phenomena. Therefore, rather than investigate the phenomenon as it occurs in isolated artistic sectors and with an end-point characteristic, this thesis investigates all of these emergences through the lens of transmedia practice. That is, this thesis investigates the nature of transmedia practice in general, according to the way practitioners conceive and design a fictional world to be expressed across distinct media and environments.
To do this, this thesis draws on the semiotic theory of "multimodality" and "domains of practice" (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2001) to illuminate the unique knowledge and skills of practitioners involved in the design of transmedia projects. The industrial and aesthetic implications of the employment of distinct media are discussed, along with their semiotic activation. Related theories such as "hypertextuality" and "transfictionality" are problematised in light of transmedia phenomena. Since the phenomenon involves both narrative and game modes, a new methodology is introduced to study their presence at various stages of design: transmodality. The employment of the actual world in transmedia practices is discussed in light of Aristotle's "dramatic unities" and through "deictic shift theory". Through research questions from media, narrative and game studies as well as semiotics, this thesis aims to explain how transmedia is a peculiar practice that demands its own research area and methodologies.
" Da Contracapa: "É complexo ignorar um fenômeno tão expressivo, e ao mesmo tempo de tão pouca p... more "
Da Contracapa: "É complexo ignorar um fenômeno tão expressivo, e ao mesmo tempo de tão pouca penetração acadêmica, como a ascensão dos jogos eletrônicos a um formato universal – um dos pilares da experiência social midiática desse século que se enseja. O livro Realidade Sintética: Jogos Eletrônicos, Comunicação e Experiência Social, organizado por Luiz Adolfo de Andrade e Thiago Falcão, oferece uma coletânea de artigos que versam sobre a relação entre comunicação, sociabilidade e jogos eletrônicos. A obra reúne textos de pesquisadores nacionais e do exterior, distribuídos em partes distintas que se aproximam do problema através da relação entre jogos eletrônicos, redes sociais, espaço urbano e mundos virtuais. O volume apresenta o pensamento de especialistas ora da alçada da comunicação, ora relacionados à pesquisa a respeito de video games. os pesquisadores internacionais convidados disponibilizam neste volume seus trabalhos traduzidos de modo pioneiro para a língua portuguesa. Os assuntos tratados neste volume dialogam com temas atuais presentes em diversas esferas acadêmicas, dentre elas a comunicação social, cibercultura, computação ubíqua, teoria social, estudos culturais, estudos de mídia e, naturalmente, game studies".
"
Game Narrative Summit, Game Developers Conference, 2018
You've seen how Blizzard has extended the 'Overwatch' game into animated shorts and digital comic... more You've seen how Blizzard has extended the 'Overwatch' game into animated shorts and digital comics, the same with Ubisoft's 'Assassin's Creed', Bungie's 'Halo' and many other franchises. You might be thinking about how you can extend your own game on a much smaller budget, like Jordan Thomas did with 'The Magic Circle' game and associated in-fiction websites. How do you decide what extensions to create? In this talk, Christy Dena will detail what players find appealing about these extensions. Using examples from existing games, you'll be given guidelines on how to make effective choices to make satisfying experience for your players.
This is the script for the presentation I gave at the Game Narrative Summit, GDC on 19th March, 2018. Link to video at GDC Vault: https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1025280/The-Secrets-to-Creating-an. Link to video on the GDC Youtube channel: https://youtu.be/h7dOaShW4VQ. Link to script on Christy's website: https://www.christydena.com/2018/06/the-secrets-to-creating-an-indie-game-franchise-my-full-gdc18-talk-with-slides/
Game Developer, 2024
We’re currently developing a mini open world local co-op called Bugging Humans. It has a shared a... more We’re currently developing a mini open world local co-op called Bugging Humans. It has a shared asymmetrical UI — where one player doesn’t see the screen but they have the controller, and the other player sees the screen and they have the keyboard. This means best practices, for instance in level design, have to be adapted. It also means blind and low-vision players can play with sighted players. The game could involve many innovations, unless we stuff it up by avoiding player discomfort. We know what we need to do, but perhaps our playtesters can meet us half-way.
British Science Fiction Association's Vector Magazine, 2023
Review essay discussing the relationship between narrative design and social change in the film S... more Review essay discussing the relationship between narrative design and social change in the film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.
Many people regard cyberculture as the territory of boffins, sci-fi enthusiasts and 'iti... more Many people regard cyberculture as the territory of boffins, sci-fi enthusiasts and 'itinerant wanderers', and inescapably limited to computer technology. However, the term is also applied to a field of research, one that has always been interdisciplinary: traversing philosophy, ...
Digital Arts and Culture Conference, Bergen, Norway. In Proceedings of the Digital Arts and Culture Conference, 2005
How do we compare eliterature forms? What does it mean for a work to be implemented as hypertext,... more How do we compare eliterature forms? What does it mean for a work to be implemented as hypertext, interactive fiction, or chatbot?" Benchmark fiction" is a methodology for creating'benchmarks'-sets of adaptations of the “same” eliterature content across different media for the purpose of comparative study. While total equivalence between the resulting'benchfic'is impossible, praxis remains important: by creating'equivalent'media and then critiquing them, we revealing our own definitions of ...
"Christy Dena’s online-remix-narrative takes iconic images of popular culture and builds wit... more "Christy Dena’s online-remix-narrative takes iconic images of popular culture and builds with them a strange world where the human fallibility is programmatically deleted. Both dystopic and playful, Dena’s work is an ironic reimagining of pleasure as a state of robotic flatlining, using tropes of science fiction to critique processes of social normalisation and increasing alienation from emotionality." This creative response began as a completely different story and form. What excited me in the end was the concept of deletion and how it could be an interesting mechanic: where the only thing you can do in the world is delete. I thought about deleting parts of robots to make them better. Healing comes from taking away, from removing things. Memories of Joseph Weizenbaum’s chatbot ELIZA came flooding back: where the (human) player is a patient talking to a Rogerian psychotherapist. But in this work I’m switching the roles and making the player the doctor, a doctor to robots…a doctor that can only prescribe deletions. I conceived of the work as a branching narrative, and started writing it in Twine. With every robot patient, the player chose one of many deletions. But when I realised I wouldn’t be able to arrange an artist and sound designer I looked for another option. I played with Zeega and felt that I could get the mood I was after with that platform. So the piece transformed into a work where the player/viewer is imprisoned in the decisions of the deleting protagonist…which has its own effect on the experience and meaning.
Vector, 2022
A personal review essay co-written with Yen Ooi about the feature film Everything Everywhere All ... more A personal review essay co-written with Yen Ooi about the feature film Everything Everywhere All At Once, by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. The piece weaves personal response, analysis, and narrative design insights. Published in the British Science Fiction Association's journal Vector on 22nd Oct, 2022.
Journal of the Spanish Communication Research Association, 2018
Discourses around standardization and identity formation forestall alternative approaches to crea... more Discourses around standardization and identity formation forestall alternative approaches to creative practice. Changes do happen, however, through pervasive attitudinal shifts articulated in rhetoric. Drawing on the social science research into economic history and choice-based cultural evolution, this essay discusses changes to the notion of conflict and closure in the creative industries. These changes are argued to be provoked by the idea of a choice-based coevolution, that is echoed by many in discourses surrounding practice.
Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association, 2017
Game designers and game writers do not have the same understandings, processes, or approaches, an... more Game designers and game writers do not have the same understandings, processes, or approaches, and this impedes good practice. This is not due to the two modes being so different or incompatible however, as has been claimed now and in earlier narratology and ludology debates. Instead, this article argues that incompatibilities are due more to the schemas of creation: the mental models we are taught and create with, that thwart more integrated practices. We learn to create and think about games in one way, and narrative in another. This siloing is due to a predictable differentiation rhetoric that occurs at the emergence of a new medium: games are not stories, games are not films, VR is not film, X is understood by not being Y. This arbitrariness of difference facilitates a schism in the creator's mind, where elements, roles and industries become irreconcilable. Indeed, whole swathes of wisdom are put to the side in an effort to be recognised as different. When narrative is used in games, then, developers rely on external design grammars, where models from other artforms are imported and shoehorned. There have been attempts to reduce such siloing, but integration cannot happen merely through recognising common elements or traits within a game object. Instead, this article argues that a common understanding can be found through the common factor of the audience or player. To illustrate this point, two successful audience/player-centered approaches from filmmaking and education are outlined, along with a tweaking of the successful MDA framework, providing structures for creatives to avoid the problem of design schema tension and create better projects.
Direct link to online journal: http://todigra.org/index.php/todigra/article/view/63
Rough Cuts: Media and Design in Process, The New Everyday, 2012
This is a short piece on the changes to the script format I did for my interactive project. It is... more This is a short piece on the changes to the script format I did for my interactive project. It is for Kari Kraus and Amalia Lev's special edition of The New Everyday, a mediacommons project. Their introduction: "The architect Christopher Alexander once said that design is but “a residue of the all important process.” This cluster views the creative process through the scrim of drafts, sketches, mock-ups, rough cuts, and prototypes—the secondary output of art and design."
Archive of the edition: http://mediacommons.org/tne/cluster/rough-cuts-media-and-design-process
Direct link to article: http://mediacommons.org/tne/pieces/scripting-journey
Creative Industries Faculty School of Media Entertainment Creative Arts, Feb 26, 2010
Creative Industries Faculty School of Media Entertainment Creative Arts, Aug 30, 2013
Espen J. Aarseth put forward that hypertext is indeed new, despite claims that non-linear storyte... more Espen J. Aarseth put forward that hypertext is indeed new, despite claims that non-linear storytelling has been in existence throughout time. Aarseth knighted it 'ergodic literature' because the hypertext user has to act out thoughts through action, whereas the reader merely thinks their paths. This changes the writing- reading process and therefore how we study it. Sven Birkerts has been
christydena.com, 2004
I have observed that within the new media ecology there are currently three research approaches: ... more I have observed that within the new media ecology there are currently three research approaches: developing media specific poetics for digital works only (eg ludology for computer games); revising and development of traditional discourses and media ...
Digital Arts and Culture Conference, Bergen, Norway. In Proceedings of the Digital Arts and Culture Conference, 2005
How do we compare eliterature forms? What does it mean for a work to be implemented as hypertext,... more How do we compare eliterature forms? What does it mean for a work to be implemented as hypertext, interactive fiction, or chatbot? "Benchmark fiction" is a methodology for creating 'benchmarks' -sets of adaptations of the "same" eliterature content across different media for the purpose of comparative study. While total equivalence between the resulting 'benchfic' is impossible, praxis remains important: by creating 'equivalent' media and then critiquing them, we revealing our own definitions of media through process. Work on the first story to be benchmarked, "The Lady or the Tiger" (1882) by Frank R. Stockton, inspired a framework for displaying sources through interchangeable display modules. The project is considered in terms of historical precedents (Lorem Ipsum, Hello World, Cloak of Darkness, Gabriella Infinita), contemporary theories (adaptation, remediation, media-specific analysis, transmedial and cross-media storytelling), and current experiments (chatbots, wikis, search art, cellular automata), with some discussion of design and pedagogy.
Convergence: The International Journal of Research Into New Media Technologies, 2008
Proceedings of 1st International Conference on Crossmedia Interaction Design, 2007
Content can be repurposed, adapted and stretched across platforms. A story can start in one mediu... more Content can be repurposed, adapted and stretched across platforms. A story can start in one medium and finish in another. How are audiences moved between platforms, and how can one make this traversal a part of the entertainment experience itself? This paper provides an introduction to multi-platform and multi-format entertainment and then outlines the factors that influence cross-media interaction design. What is to be considered when designing for movement between platforms? How are audiences moved between platforms? What influences the choice of traversal? Critical factors will be listed, as a first step towards developing patterns in cross-media interaction design. This first step is a primer for part two, which will be delivered at a conference.
... In Sammeeeees, as in most ARGs, the rabbit hole was meant to surprise, delight, confuse and i... more ... In Sammeeeees, as in most ARGs, the rabbit hole was meant to surprise, delight, confuse and inspire action. At the crucial stage of inspiring cross-world migration, the rabbit hole also represents a slippery slope of inter-and hypertextual links. ...
In 2001 Henry Jenkins discussed the growing prevalence of 'transmedia storytelling'. Transmedia s... more In 2001 Henry Jenkins discussed the growing prevalence of 'transmedia storytelling'. Transmedia storytelling is, simply put, franchises: a movie is followed by a game, then perhaps a comic, website and so on. An example is the Wachowski brother's Matrix franchise. For Jenkins each media, each channel, communicates different aspects of a storyworld. Since 2003 Jane McGonigal, and others, have been researching the phenomenological and social aspects of 'alternate reality gaming'. Alternate reality gaming requires players to traverse websites, games, public play, SMS and so on. Microsoft's The Beast was the first of such 'games' that required participation with websites, posters, faxes, hacking, chatbots and Spielberg's film AI .
The Internet is an indisputably influential force in changes to the way entertainment is conceive... more The Internet is an indisputably influential force in changes to the way entertainment is conceived, produced, distributed, experienced and critiqued. My research is of course, therefore, entering the theoretical discussion in medias res. I do not wish to duplicate ...
In part one of this series I asked the question: is there a new way to experience art in SL? Usin... more In part one of this series I asked the question: is there a new way to experience art in SL? Using Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin's types of remediation I showed examples of how, at present, the real life art space (particularly the 'white cube' aesthetic) is mimicked and refashioned in SL. In part two of this series I explore aspects of SL that have the potential to be a new way of experiencing art specific to a virtual world.
After the Art, 2023
It was 3 January 2020, when I sat in the Astor Theatre to watch Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a T... more It was 3 January 2020, when I sat in the Astor Theatre to watch Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood. It was actually near the end of the film that I come to you. The film was building up to the Sharon Tate murder that actually did happen on the 8th August, 1969. I felt myself tensing, ge ing anxious. But … then … it didn't happen. The murder didn't happen. And in that moment I felt relief and I felt brave. I felt freed from the story of this violent, senseless, world.
Self-published, 2010
In the past few years there have been a number of theories emerge in media, film, television, nar... more In the past few years there have been a number of theories emerge in media, film, television, narrative and game studies that detail the rise of what has been variously described as transmedia, cross-media and distributed phenomena. Fundamentally, the phenomenon involves the employment of multiple media platforms for expressing a fictional world. To date, theorists have focused on this phenomenon in mass entertainment, independent arts or gaming; and so, consequently the global, transartistic and transhistorical nature of the phenomenon has remained somewhat unrecognised.
Theorists have also predominantly defined it according to end-point characteristics—such as the “expansion” trait (a story continues across media). This has resulted in the phenomenon being obscured amongst similar phenomena. Therefore, rather than investigate the phenomenon as it occurs in isolated artistic sectors and with an end-point characteristic, this thesis investigates all of these emergences through the lens of transmedia practice. That is, this thesis investigates the nature of transmedia practice in general, according to the way practitioners conceive and design a fictional world to be expressed across distinct media and environments.
To do this, this thesis draws on the semiotic theory of “multimodality” and “domains of practice” (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2001) to illuminate the unique knowledge and skills of practitioners involved in the design of transmedia projects. The industrial and aesthetic implications of the employment of distinct media are discussed, along with their semiotic activation. Related theories such as “hypertextuality” and “transfictionality” are problematised in light of transmedia phenomena. Since the phenomenon involves both narrative and game modes, a new methodology is introduced to study their presence at various stages of design: transmodality. The employment of the actual world in transmedia practices is discussed in light of Aristotle’s “dramatic unities” and through “deictic shift theory”. Through research questions from media, narrative and game studies as well as semiotics, this thesis aims to explain how transmedia is a peculiar practice that demands its own research area and methodologies.