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YouTube -- TED: Andrew Stanton: The clues to a great story

"All well-drawn characters have ... an inner motor: a dominant, unconscious goal they're striving for – or an itch they can't scratch." -- One may renounce a 'law' introduced for his own 'benefit'. (Maxim of Law)

storytelling control repetitioncompulsion
9 weeks ago by adamcrowe

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The Archdruid Report -- The Blood of the Earth, or Pulp Nonfiction

'I’ve talked more than once in these essays about the immense role that narratives play in our mental and social lives. In what we are pleased to call "primitive societies," a rich body of mythology and legend provides each person with a range of narratives that can be applied to any given situation and make sense of it. Learning the stories, and learning how to apply them to life’s events, is the core of a child’s education in these societies, and a learned person is very often distinguished, more than anything else, by the number of traditional stories he or she knows by heart. More technologically advanced societies often, though not invariably, move away from this, consigning their inheritance of stories to children—think, for example, of the role of fairy tales in nineteenth- and twentieth-century industrial societies—while narrowing down the range of stories adults are supposed to think with, until all that’s left are variations on one narrative. Serious thinking in these societies is by definition thinking that follows the accepted narrative.'

storytelling framing metanarratives mythology myth magick JohnMichaelGreer
january 2012 by adamcrowe

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The Last Psychiatrist -- Crazy

'From McKee: "Story begins when an event, either by human decision or accident in the universe, radically upsets the balance of forces in the protagonist's life, arousing in that character the need to restore the balance of life. To do so, that character will conceive of an "Object of Desire," that which they [believe] they need to put life back into balance. They will then go off into their world, into themselves, in the various dimensions of their existence, seeking that Object of Desire ... and they will struggle against forces of antagonism that will come from their own inner natures as human beings, their relationships with other human beings, their personal and/or social life, and the physical environment itself. They may or may not achieve that Object of Desire; they may or may not finally be able to restore their life to a satisfying balance." -- Everything that happens in your life is digested by you through this process, so it would be worth your time to memorize it.'

psychology psychoanalysis psychotherapy storytelling mythology mecosystem fantasy reflexivity narrativefallacy from delicious
july 2011 by adamcrowe

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Seth Godin -- All Marketers Are Liars by Seth Godin: A new cover, a new foreword, but the same book

'Once we move beyond the simple satisfaction of needs, we move into the complex satisfaction of wants. And wants are hard to measure and difficult to understand. Which makes marketing the fascinating exercise it is. When you are busy telling stories to people who want to hear them, you’ll be tempted to tell stories that just don’t hold up. Lies. Deceptions. The thing is, lying doesn’t pay off any more. That’s because when you fabricate a story that just doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, you get caught. Fast. -- “What’s your story?” “Will the people who need to hear this story believe it?” “Is it true?” -- If what you’re doing matters, really matters, then I hope you’ll take the time to tell a story. A story that resonates and a story that can become true. When you find a story that works, live that story, make it true, authentic and subject to scrutiny. All marketers are storytellers, only the losers are liars.'

storytelling marketing framing delusion grifting SethGodin from delicious
june 2011 by adamcrowe

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Periodic Table of Storytelling by ComputerSherpa
storytelling narrative tropes from delicious
april 2011 by adamcrowe

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All in the Game: The Wire, Serial Storytelling, and Procedural Logic by Jason Mittell

'One of the central elements of games, especially those centered on simulations, is replayability... Instead of viewing each of The Wire's seasons as a singular book within an epic novel, we could view them as one play through its simulation game. Season three offers a replay with some changed variables and strategies for all sides: What if drugs are decriminalized? The characters, while quite human and multidimensional, are as narrowly defined in their possibilities as typical video game avatars. They each do what they do because that is the way the game is played: Bubbles can't get clean, McNulty can't follow orders, Avon can't stop fighting for his corners, and Frank Sobotka can't let go of the glory days of the docks. The characters with both the will and opportunity to change, like Bell, D'Angelo, or Colvin, find the systems too resistant, the "boss levels" too ... impervious to change, and yet the players keep playing because that is all they know how to do.'

storytelling narrativearchitecture possibilityspace probabilityspace simulation gaming vernacular TheWire from delicious
april 2011 by adamcrowe

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Stanford -- Journalism in the Age of Data: A Video Report on Data Visualization by Geoff McGhee

'Journalists are coping with the rising information flood by borrowing data visualization techniques from computer scientists, researchers and artists. Some newsrooms are already beginning to retool their staffs and systems to prepare for a future in which data becomes a medium. But how do we communicate with data, how can traditional narratives be fused with sophisticated, interactive information displays?'

kipple data statistics numbers journalism information visualization storytelling from delicious
february 2011 by adamcrowe

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Network World -- Layer 8: Thought police? DARPA wants to know how stories influence human mind, actions

'"Stories exert a powerful influence on human thoughts and behavior. They consolidate memory, shape emotions, cue heuristics and biases in judgment, influence in-group/out-group distinctions, and may affect the fundamental contents of personal identity. It comes as no surprise that these influences make stories highly relevant to vexing security challenges such as radicalization, violent social mobilization, insurgency and terrorism, and conflict prevention and resolution. Therefore, understanding the role stories play in a security context is a matter of great import and some urgency," DARPA stated. According to DARPA, STORyNET has three goals: #Are particular approaches or tools better than others for understanding how stories propagate in a system so as to influence behavior?'

storytelling storygraph realityprogramming narrative magick MK thoughtpolice
february 2011 by adamcrowe

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Conversation Marketing -- Everything I ever learned about marketing I learned from Dungeons and Dragons

'Give something to your audience – even warm tingles, and they’re one step closer to being happy customers. Give them something and let them beat the bad guy, and they’re yours for life. Everyone wants to have stories to tell. If they’re in the stories, they tell them better. And more often. This storytelling/folklore is the best part of the whole equation, because your audience loves you for making them part of the story, and they help you get the word out at the same time. If beating the bad guys and taking their stuff is the incentive that gets people involved with you, then telling stories is how you can get existing customers to indoctrinate new people into the club and keep them there. How many people here run businesses that live and die on referrals? What’s a referral? Uh-huh. It’s someone telling others how smart they were to choose you. They’re telling the tale of how they conquered the Great Black Beast of Q1 Sales Goals. #Slay monsters #Take their treasure #Tell the tale'

marketing storytelling status psychographics motivations mythology heroism thegamingofeverydaylife * psychology
february 2011 by adamcrowe

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Near Future Laboratory -- Lab Coats In Hollywood

Kirby: 'I introduce the term ‘diegetic prototypes’ to account for the ways in which cinematic depictions of future technologies demonstrate to large public audiences a technology’s need, viability and benevolence. Entertainment producers create diegetic prototypes by influencing dialogue, plot rationalizations, character interactions and narrative structure. These technologies only exist in the fictional world but they exist as fully functioning objects in that world. The essay builds upon previous work on the notion of prototypes as ‘performative artefacts’. The performative aspects of prototypes are especially evident in diegetic prototypes because a film’s narrative structure contextualizes technologies within the social sphere. Technological objects in cinema are at once both completely artificial—all aspects of their depiction are controlled in production—and normalized within the text as practical objects that function properly and which people actually use as everyday objects.'

productnarratives narrativeobjects liminalobjects objects narrativeenvironments transmedia storytelling sciencefiction prototyping design diegesis from delicious
february 2011 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- TED: Nancy Duarte uncovers common structure of greatest communicators

'In this fascinating talk Nancy Duarte explains the model that she developed for designing transformative presentations.'

storytelling communication narrativearchitecture presentations rhetoric persuasion from delicious
january 2011 by adamcrowe

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Design Fiction Goes From Props to Prototypes

Julian Bleeker at Kicker Studio's 2010 Device Design Day: 'Prototypes are ways to test ideas—but where do those ideas come from? It may be that the path to better device design is best followed by creating props that help tell stories before prototypes designed to test technical feasibility. What I want to suggest in this talk is the way that design can use fiction—and fiction can use design—to help imagine how things can be designed just a little bit better.'

storytelling diegesis productnarratives narrativeobjects objects transmedia prototyping sciencefiction technology temes futurism design from delicious
january 2011 by adamcrowe

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Archetypes on the Path

Order out of chaos -- '#1. Heroes are introduced in the ORDINARY WORLD, where #2. they receive the CALL TO ADVENTURE. #3. They are RELUCTANT at first or REFUSE THE CALL, but #4. are encouraged by a MENTOR to #5. CROSS THE FIRST THRESHOLD and enter the Special World, where #6. they encounter TESTS, ALLIES, AND ENEMIES. #7. They APPROACH THE INMOST CAVE, crossing a second threshold #8. where they endure the ORDEAL. #9. They take possession of their REWARD and #10. are pursued on THE ROAD BACK to the Ordinary World. #11. They cross the third threshold, experience a RESURRECTION, and are transformed by the experience. #12. They RETURN WITH THE ELIXIR, a boon or treasure to benefit the Ordinary World.'

poetics archetypes storytelling gaming transformation therapy mecosystem narrativearchitecture narration metanarratives fantasy mythology heroism ethos magick from delicious
december 2010 by adamcrowe

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Storyteller's Campfire Blog -- The Storyteller Knows Me

'A Peace Corps volunteer or perhaps it was an anthropologist in Africa was in a village when satellite TV made it’s debut there. For a period of time, normal village life came to a halt as people watched (slack jawed I imagine) Then slowly, things began to return to some semblance of normality. When asked why people were not watching as much TV, a villager replied, “We have our storyteller." "I understand said the volunteer, “but your storyteller knows a hundred stories, the television knows thousands of stories.” With a gleam in his eye, the man quickly responded, "That is true, but the storyteller knows me!”'

storytelling mecosystem ractives via:diemkay retribalization from delicious
november 2010 by adamcrowe

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A Smart Bear -- Powerful, unusual startup marketing ideas

'Eventually I developed stories like the following, each tuned to a certain category of listener. Here's the one for the journalists: It's always fun to tell a journalist like you that we enable software developers to review each other's code because your reaction is always: "Wait a minute, you're seriously telling me they don't do this already?" The idea of editing and review is so embedded in your industry you can't imagine life without it, and you're right! You know better than anyone how another set of eyeballs finds important problems. Of course two heads are better than one, but developers traditionally work in isolation, mainly because there's a dearth of tools which help teams bridge the social gap of an ocean, integrate with incumbent tools, and are lightweight enough to still be fun and relevant. That's what we do: Bring the benefits of peer review to software development.'

storytelling pitching selling
october 2010 by adamcrowe

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Examiner.com -- The official version of 9/11 goes something like this...

The ‘New Reichstag Fire’

storytelling falseflag conspiracy
september 2010 by adamcrowe

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WSJ -- JetBlue Flight Attendant Steven Slater: The Animated Version

'“Soon, for TV, animation will be as standard as a color picture on a newspaper’s front page,” Mark Simon, commercial director at NextMedia, said. “It does drive the ‘ivory tower old-school journalism professors nuts that the one Asian news medium now penetrating the West is animation.” Simon said that the animated clips run on Apple Daily’s site, which is now averaging four million video views per day. “But in Hong Kong, every single TV station is now undertaking some form of animation. No secret, a response to us,” Simon said. NMA’s site boasts of its “lightning-fast” turnarounds or less than three hours for animated news features, meaning that its animators can get a story out in the time it takes to watch the entire “Toy Story” series. “Our production methods are unique. ‘Make deadline, not art,’ as one of our executives says,” Simon said. “It is also extremely important that we are part of a news group, our folks know how to make deadline and stay to a schedule.”'

visualization news journalism storytelling
september 2010 by adamcrowe

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CNN -- The blurry lines of animated 'news'

'Welcome to billionaire Jimmy Lai's newest gamble: Animated news. When news agencies didn't have footage of scenes from the car crash involving Tiger Woods, Lai's team raced to put together animation dramatizing the incident, garnering hundreds of thousands of hits on YouTube. The end product drew derision, with critics saying there's a credibility gap because the animated features mix real news footage with dramatizations of often unverified versions of events. Every day they churn out about 20 reports, often a combination of animation and real video, for the Web sites of Lai's Apple Daily newspapers in Taiwan and Hong Kong. "You have a lot of missing images, in the TV, in the news reporting," Lai said. "If this is an image generation or image era that we are in, that is a big gap we are filling."'

visualization news journalism transmedia storytelling virtuality retcon spectacle
september 2010 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- NMAWorldEdition's Channel

'Animation and Animated News, Made in Taiwan.'

visualization news journalism storytelling
september 2010 by adamcrowe

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Center for Media Literacy -- Babylon Revisited: How Violent Myths Resurface Today by Walter Wink

'...how the myth of redemptive violence structures the standard comic or cartoon: An indestructible good guy is unalterably opposed to an irreformable and equally indestructible bad guy. Nothing can kill the good guy... Nothing finally destroys the bad guy or prevents his reappearance... Children identify with the good guy so that they can think of themselves as good. This enables them to project out onto the bad guy their own repressed anger, violence, rebelliousness or lust, and then vicariously enjoy their own evil by watching the bad guy initially prevail. (This segment of the show actually consumes all but the closing minutes, allowing ample time for indulging the shadow side of the self.) When the good guy finally wins, viewers are then able to reassert control over their own inner tendencies, repress them, and reestablish a sense of goodness. Salvation is guaranteed through identification with the hero ...[with whom] one's personal well-being is tied inextricably...'

psychology archetypes tropes storytelling metanarratives evil violence displacement sublimation repression projection morality ethics falseself fantasy magick mysterybabylon from delicious
august 2010 by adamcrowe

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Christy Dena -- Transmedia Practice: Theorising the Practice of Expressing a Fictional World across Distinct Media and Environments

'...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 actual world in transmedia practices is discussed in light of Aristotle’s “dramatic unities” and through the theory of “deictic shift theory”. Through explorations of research questions from media, narrative and game studies as well as semiotics, this thesis aims to explain how transmedia fictions are a peculiar practice that demands its own research area and methodologies.'

transmedia narrativearchitecture poetics storytelling narrativeobjects liminalobjects objects narrativeenvironments diegesis ChristyDena
may 2010 by adamcrowe

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Trendwatching -- "STATUSPHERE"

'...when it comes to experiences, status can only be derived from being seen by others—while experiencing the experience, which may be a relatively brief moment—or by telling others about the experiences afterwards (which can go on for years ;-). Hence STATUS STORIES becoming more attractive and prevalent: as more brands (have to) go niche and therefore tell stories that aren't common knowledge for the masses. So as experiences and non-consumption-related expenditures take over from physical (and more visible) status symbols, consumers will increasingly have to tell each other stories to achieve a status dividend from their purchases. Expect a shift from brands telling a story, to brands helping consumers tell their own status-yielding stories to other consumers.' -- What's my motivation?

identity status statusupdates storytelling storygraph productnarratives diegesis experience trends
may 2010 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- Freedomain Radio: Heroism Part 1/2

"In all these tales, a depressed life of dumb chores and crushed opportunities gets magically transformed into an 'heroic' – and always violet – adventure when an older man comes and takes you away. All this is just designed to make you want to go to war when the State comes to kidnap you. Real heroism is, however, something very different from what is always portrayed. Real heroism is something you can achieve now, today."

philosophy heroism mythology fantasy grandiosity archetypes storytelling propaganda war StefanMolyneux heroes
may 2010 by adamcrowe

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Wired -- As Lost Ends, Creators Explain How They Did It, What’s Going On

'Wired: Do you still see that as the central issue, man of faith versus man of science? Lindelof: The paradigm has shifted from that to, were we brought here for a very specific reason, and what is that reason? Locke is now the voice of a very large subset of the audience who believes that when Lost is all said and done, we will have wasted six years of our lives, that we were making it up as we went along, and that there’s really no purpose. And Jack is now saying, “the only thing I have left to cling to is that there’s got to be something really cool that’s going to happen, because I have really, really fucking suffered.”'

lost purpose mystery meta storytelling
april 2010 by adamcrowe

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Slate Magazine -- Why are professors at Harvard, Duke, and Middlebury teaching courses on The Wire?

'"...its depiction of [the] systemic urban inequality that constrains the lives of the urban poor is more poignant and compelling [than] that of any published study, including my own." For Wilson, the unique power of the show comes from the way it takes fiction's ability to create fully realized inner lives for its characters and combines with an acuity about the structural conditions that constrain human choices (whether it's bureaucratic inertia, institutional racism, or economic decay) and an unparalleled scrupulousness about accurately portraying them. Wilson describes the show's characters almost as a set of case studies, remarkable for the vividness with which they embody a set of arguments about the American inner city. -- Simon has said that the show is meant to be Greek tragedy but with institutions like the police department or the school system taking the place of the gods: the immortal forces that toy with and blithely destroy the mortals below. '

sociology thewire verisimilitude storytelling drama tragedy empathy
march 2010 by adamcrowe

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The Daily Bell -- David Icke on Earth's Artificial Moon and Why Humanity, Ultimately, is One Big, Biological Internet

'Readers can make up their own mind about David Icke and his vision of the way the world works. But we do want to point out that he does something very interesting - that almost no other public personality does in quite the same way. This former professional soccer player and television presenter has made himself over into an almost shamanistic figure, one who makes a living by clothing his observations (though, yes, he does deny it) in allegory. Here is a man who is singlehandedly proposing a kind of creation myth, and making a living doing so. Again, leaving aside its reality, or purported practicality, the level of imagination and determination he brings to the task is noteworthy. Unnoticed by fashionable thinkers of our modern era - and a little like the poet William Blake, strangely enough - he is in the middle of creating his own cosmogony. Its popular acceptance and penetration in this day and age, for whatever reason, is worth pondering.'

metanarratives pathocracy allegory storytelling archetypes shamanism occult DavidIcke
march 2010 by adamcrowe

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newcurator -- You Are Not a Curator

Comment: Dave Troy: 'Real “curation” is an act of creation of its own: not just “selecting” things, but being part of the context in which these things are created and having a fully-formed intellectual worldview that allows the curator to engage in an act of expression that is often as rich as the works they choose to present. A curator establishes relationships between objects and ideas. A curator puts things into a cultural context. A curator expresses their own cultural background. If you go to an art show, it is often helpful to know who the curator is. While a show could be experienced in a valid way without knowing about the curator’s worldview, it is arguably enhanced by such understanding.'

curation context meaning narrativearchitecture storytelling
march 2010 by adamcrowe

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Science Daily -- 'Counterfactual' thinkers are more motivated and analytical, study suggests

'"The irony is that thinking counterfactually increases the perception that life's path was meant to be," says Kray, "which ultimately imbues one's life with significance." While one might argue that believers of destiny would be less inclined to be analytical, the research also found that people who think counterfactually and find meaning in their lives are more apt to believe life is not a product of chance and that they can make valuable choices. -- "How we react to counterfactuals is a great test of how open- or closed-minded we are on a topic," adds Tetlock, who has studied how people think about what-if scenarios at the organizational and even country level. "In my book Expert Political Judgment (2005), I find that the more imaginatively experts think about possible pasts, the better calibrated they are in attaching realistic probabilities to possible futures."'

irrealism psychology retcon affirmation causality fatalism alternativehistory storytelling scenarioplanning
february 2010 by adamcrowe

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Conversion Rate Experts -- How Apple is brilliantly using a 100-year-old persuasion strategy

'#1. Show the work that went into inventing the product #2. Show the work that goes into creating each individual product. It can give “romance” to the product. People love to associate objects with romantic pasts.'

productnarratives evocativeobjects objects advertising storytelling
january 2010 by adamcrowe

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NYTimes.com -- Year in Ideas: Undead-Austen Mash-Ups

'...some scholars say it's not such a big leap from Austen's mean-girl wit to real violence. In a way, Austen's novels are already zombie novels, says Brad Pasanek, a specialist in 18th-century literature at the University of Virginia. "They are exercises in what the critic D. W. Harding called ‘regulated hatred.' Austen's prose sublimates satire, anger and pain into polite exchange."'

storytelling fiction revisionism fanfiction mashups manners masks snark hate
january 2010 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- Freedomain Radio Movie Review: The Philosophy of 'District 9'

'Becoming alien makes you human - empathy, morality and aliens and falling to the guns of the ruling classes.'

storytelling empathy morality StefanMolyneux
january 2010 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- Freedomain Radio Movie Review: The True Meaning of 'Avatar'

'From crippled soldier to ten foot tall painted hippy - one of the greatest transformations in artistic history!'

storytelling empathy morality StefanMolyneux
january 2010 by adamcrowe

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Winnipeg Free Press -- Sheen willing to tell a story... any story

"The idea people feel there is an inherent validity and importance to real-life stories as opposed to science fiction... I just think that's ridiculous. A writer like, say, Philip K. Dick is far more culturally significant than a lot of writers writing about single parents growing up in ghettoes. There's no inherent validity in stories that take place in the real world. And I find that kind of snobbery just astonishing."

storytelling sciencefiction irrealism
december 2009 by adamcrowe

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MIT TechTV – Keynote: Henry Jenkins: Revenge of the Origami Unicorn

7 Core Concepts of Transmedia Entertainment: #Drillability #Mythology: Continuity vs Multiplicity #Immersion & Extractability #World Building #Seriality #Subjectivity #Performance -- On mask play in transmedia activism: "It's a way of taking transmedia back into society and trying to change the world using a shared mythology that shapes our experience." Example: Anonymous [V for Vendetta] vs The Church of Scientology -- It's getting a bit too easy to point to something and say 'transmedia'. HJ: "The best transmedia story of the last few years has been Barack Obama." http://henryjenkins.org/2009/12/the_revenge_of_the_origami_uni.html

transmedia storytelling intertextuality additivecomprehension performance augmentationistsvsimmersionists masks metaphor mythology activism HenryJenkins
december 2009 by adamcrowe

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Russell Davies -- True stories told live

'Malcolm Gladwell suggests that the people with the best stories are those whose jobs involve lots of sitting around with their colleagues; cricketers, for instance, or pilots. I'd suggest it's not just the sitting around, it's sitting around while half paying attention to something else (the match, the automatic pilot). This leaves enough room for proper story-telling, for holding court, not interrupted by sniping, conversation or one-up-person-ship. I don't seem to have that kind of life. The world I move in hasn't carved out that space. People would be embarrassed to be that central to everyone's attention, and it probably wouldn't be allowed by the group, we're all too competitive. That seems a shame to me. I might try listening for longer, encouraging people to luxuriate in their stories a bit more, not trying to top them all the time. -- And I'm still not sure that *story* is that important to stories. What sticks in the head is how the story was told, not what the story was.'

groups communication status storytelling anecdote
november 2009 by adamcrowe

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io9 -- All Your Characters Talk The Same — And They're Not A Hivemind!

'#3. Realize your characers are not talking to you, or directly to the reader. Unless you're really doing some kind of post-modern fourth-wall-shredding exercise, your characters are talking to each other. And think about what kind of reaction your characters are hoping to get when they say something. Not the reaction they actually do get — it's too easy to jump straight to that — but the reaction they expect. -- Zack Stentz, writer on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Fringe, points out another helpful way of looking at this: "Every interaction between two people is on some level a negotiation for status." Remember that, and your characters' speech will automatically get richer and more interesting.'

storytelling writing fiction dialogue status masks
november 2009 by adamcrowe

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Guardian -- X marks the future of game narrative?

'Here's the interesting bit. On page 13 of the online comic, it's possible to click on a computer monitor in one of the frames. This plunges you into a sort of old school text adventure, which borrows the first line from classic of the genre, Zork. This is followed by another mini-game based around assembling genetic codes. Apparently, X will eventually be a cross-platform retail game release, which will include consoles. It will also turn up as a printed graphic novel and an online community-driven ARG. Somehow, they will all align and interact. "We've introduced a world inside a graphic novel that people can come and explore at their own pace, go as deep down that rabbit hole as they want, and join and interact with a community of other people all doing the same thing. Now, once you have a global universe evolving, and the player's experience unfolds within that universe, you have some real potential for complementary, parallel stories."'

storytelling gaming virtualworlds narrativearchitecture narrativeenvironments narrativeobjects liminalobjects objects ARG alternativerealitygaming immersion epistolary comics transmedia
november 2009 by adamcrowe

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Times Online -- The internet is killing storytelling

'Stories introduce us to situations, people and dilemmas beyond our experience, in a way that is contemplative and gradual: it is the oldest and best form of virtual reality. The internet, while it communicates so much information so very effectively, does not really “do” narrative. Plot lies at the heart of great narrative: but today, we are in danger of losing the plot. Paradoxically, there has never been a greater hunger for narrative, for stories that give shape and meaning to experience. Our fascination with other people’s stories is as great, if not greater, than any time in history. What is needed is a machine that can combine the ease and speed of digital technology with the immersive pleasures of narrative. It may not be far off. Japan has recently seen an explosion in the popularity of thumb novels... Here is proof that the ancient need for narrative, hardwired into human nature, can sit comfortably with the wiring of the newest technology.'

storytelling narrative narrativearchitecture cognitivesurplus continuouspartialattention additivecomprehension literaryculturevsoralculture comics
november 2009 by adamcrowe

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TEDxMidAtlantic -- Tyler Cowen: The Story Bias

Three problems with stories: #1. Stories are too simple. #2. Stories end up serving dual and conflicting functions #3. Markets and politicians don't always send us the right stories. -- "We should be more suspicious of stories. They're like a kind of candy we're fed: when we consume political information, when we read novels, when we read non-fiction books. Narratives tend to be too simple; stories strip away detail. We're too inclined to tell the 'Good vs Evil' story. You can't make a movie and say it was all a big accident. No, it has to be a conspiracy. A story needs intention. A story is not about spontaneous order. Another simple story line: 'We have to get tough.' This is a story we fall back upon all too quickly when we don't really know why something happened and we want to blame someone. The single central way we screw up is that we tell ourselves too many stories or we are too easily seduced by stories. -- Don't let stories make you too happy. Be more comfortable with messy."

* psychology storytelling narrative narrativefallacy deception selfdeception bias cognitivebias bellyfeel dogma skepticism TylerCowen
november 2009 by adamcrowe

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Scientific Blogging -- Addicted To Being Good? The Psychopathology Of Heroism

'The X-altruistic person [has] a need to live in "a fair and just world", and will go to great lengths to try and maintain that. They are driven by factors outside of themselves, externally motivated drives, such as aiding the plight of society or serving the "greater good". ...the sociopath and the X-altruist, may appear similar in their displays of behavior, and at times, even confused for the other type. If an X-altruistic person is compelled to break rules without remorse in order to help a disadvantaged person, it may seem as if he is acting rebelliously, especially if the motives behind his behavior are not known. On the other hand, a sociopath may donate a large sum of money to a charity, a seemingly altruistic behavior, but his actions may have been motivated by his selfish need to appear better than or more generous than a colleague. The defining characteristic that separates the two personality types is their ability to empathize, either not at all or too much...'

psychology psychopathy sociopathy compulsion altruism empathy heroism selflessness martyrdom archetypes storytelling masks antihero duplicity motive heroes
october 2009 by adamcrowe

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Ribbonfarm -- The Gervais Principle, Or The Office According to “The Office” (1)

'#The Organization as Psychic Prison: ...it divides people into those who get how the world really works (the sociopaths and the self-aware slacker losers) and those who don’t (the over-performer losers and the clueless in the middle). This is where Gervais has broken new ground, primarily because as an artist, he is interested in the subjective experience of being clueless. ...the ultimate explanation of Michael Scott’s (and David Brent’s) careers: they are put into a position of having to explain their own apparent, unexpected and unexamined success. Remember, they are promoted primarily as passive pawns to either allow the sociopaths to escape the risks of their actions, or to make way for the sociopaths to move up faster. They are presented with an interesting bit of cognitive dissonance: being nominally given greater power, but in reality being safely shunted away from the pathways of power. They must choose to either construct false narratives or decline apparent opportunities.'

storytelling psychology groups work business management sociopathy power narrativefallacy falseconsciousness delusion thegervaisprinciple transactionalanalysis status communication gametalk
october 2009 by adamcrowe

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Salon.com -- The man who invented the future

'There's so much information to absorb in "From Hell" that it's almost impossible to gather it in at one sitting. In one 38-page chapter alone, Moore's Jack the Ripper takes his driver on a city-wide tour of London's points of diabolical interest, connecting the bastions of secret societies, mythical and true lineages, transcendent architectures, phallic topographies and other landmarks into a pentagram shape. This allegorical voyage, which Moore says he made himself, relying on both recent and ancient maps of London, so terrifies Jack's driver that he vomits, sick with the realization that he is connected to his culture, his history and his employer in ways he never could have conceived. -- The lesson there, as Moore explains it, is that to understand the world one lives in, one has to give "coherence to ... complexity, to say that it is possible to think about politics, history, mythology, architecture, murder and the rest of it all at the same time to see how it connects."'

storytelling complexity reality AlanMoore
october 2009 by adamcrowe

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Wikipedia -- Sookie Stackhouse

'Sookie did not have many suitors until she met Bill Compton. Being able to read her date's minds was usually a big turn-off for Sookie. And her reputation as a weirdo didn't make her very attractive to ordinary men either, even though she has often been the subject of bar patrons' lewd thoughts. Sookie finds herself attracted to dominant men with supernatural abilities. Vampires and other "supes" are harder to read than humans, muffling the effects of her telepathy and giving Sookie a refreshing break from the constant noise of other people's thoughts. Vampires seem especially immune to her ability. Their brains appear to be blank spaces when compared to the busy tangle of ideas that come from a human's mind. Because of this relaxing blankness, Sookie is able to experience her first physical and emotional romantic relationship...'

storytelling orphan telepathy transparency trueblood
september 2009 by adamcrowe

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IKEA Heights

'Ikea Heights is a melodrama shot entirely in the Burbank California Ikea Store without the store knowing.'

IKEA storytelling narrativeenvironments narrativeactivism sitcom
september 2009 by adamcrowe

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Easy to Assemble

'Easy to Assemble follows Illeana Douglas as she quits her Hollywood career and goes to work at IKEA Burbank in an attempt at a ‘normal life.’ However your past is often more difficult to leave behind than you think. Especially when Hollywood craziness with its gossip columnists, stalkers and celebrity friends follows you. Can Illeana assimilate in "civilian" life and prove that "art is where you make it?"'

IKEA storytelling brandedcontent narrativeenvironments sitcom
september 2009 by adamcrowe

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Los Angeles Times -- IKEA's Burbank store and the guerrillas in housewares

'Brand-wise, "IKEA Heights" is absolutely harmless. In fact, Seger and his friends have essentially done for free what "Easy to Assemble" cost IKEA $50,000 to do. And done it better. As of Sept. 7, "IKEA Heights" had been downloaded 14,168 times. And yet, "IKEA Heights" has the company smiling through gritted teeth. "I thought it was very playful and fun and complimentary to our brand," Liss says. Nonetheless, she says carefully, "We didn't give [Seger] permission. People need to ask." Permission, alas, ruins it. Virality -- that must-see, must-share quality that marketers so desperately want to capture -- requires some transgression, Seger says, some stunt."Every Web job I've ever had," Seger says, "they've said, 'OK, let's manufacture a viral video.' You can't do it because so many elements of luck and charm go into making something that doesn't feel like you're selling something."'

storytelling narrativeactivism narrativeenvironments narrativeobjects objects sitcom IKEA thesims
september 2009 by adamcrowe

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The New York Observer -- Brand-tastic! Ben Silverman Might Look Back to Find Ad Models for the Future

'Consider Illeana Douglas’ Easy to Assemble, a Web show written and produced by Ms. Douglas, who stars as an Ikea worker trying to escape showbiz. Ikea signed on as a sponsor, and marketing head Magnus Gustafsson joined to oversee story lines and plot outlines. Yet, for the most part, they let Ms. Douglas do as she pleased, even poking a little fun at the store’s quirkiness. When she first told her friends she was going to make a Web show sponsored by Ikea, “it was very, very controversial with people,” she told The Observer. “People had no idea why I was doing this and asking why would I do this instead of doing a movie. I said, ‘Well, you know, Ikea is the 400th most viewed Web site in the world.’ Who cares about NBC and CBS, I said, if you can get them to show your show in an IKEA.”'

storytelling entertainment narrativeenvironments productnarratives IKEA brandedcontent content
september 2009 by adamcrowe

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Commercial Alert -- Mad Men's Secret Product Placements

'Fans of the AMC’s Mad Men know that the show, about fictional 1960s advertising agency Sterling Cooper, names other real-life agencies and brands to achieve some verisimilitude. What they may not know is that some of those are actual product placements. The show’s third season, which premiered Sunday (Aug. 16), featured placements with London Fog and Stolichnaya vodka that both brands said were engineered. -- When asked whether other brands mentioned on the show on previous seasons like Utz and Cadillac were paid placements, AMC president and general manager Charlie Collier was coy: “We absolutely have product integration on the show, but you shouldn’t know which ones are paid and which ones aren’t.”'

madmen productplacement narrativeobjects objects storytelling verisimilitude retcon via:murketing
september 2009 by adamcrowe

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Tru Blood Beverage

'The official site to buy Tru Blood Beverage. Enliven yourself with this uniquely carbonated, slightly tart, lightly sweet blood orange drink.'

transmedia storytelling trueblood narrativeobjects objects liminality liminalobjects extradiegesis carrierobjects blood infection vampires productnarratives productplacement metabrands defictionalization merchandise
september 2009 by adamcrowe

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Derek Sivers -- Kurt Vonnegut explains drama

'Our lives drifts along with normal things happening. Some ups, some downs, but nothing to go down in history about. Nothing so fantastic or terrible that it'll be told for a thousand years. “But because we grew up surrounded by big dramatic story arcs in books and movies, we think are lives are supposed to be filled with huge ups and downs! So people pretend there is drama where there is none.” That's why people invent fights. That's why we're drawn to sports. That's why we act like everything that happens to us is such a big deal. We're trying to make our life into a fairy tale.'

psychology storytelling storygraph drama narrative narrativearchitecture reflexivity
september 2009 by adamcrowe

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io9 -- Are Science Fiction Franchises As Popular As Religion?

'Like all great religions, the franchises have mysterious histories, preserved in decaying books and obscure pamphlets. The thread that unites all of them is an overarching tale of social outcasts who find holy books that show them the light, and lead them to secret congregations where mystical debates and opinions are exchanged. Converted by these ancient books, the earliest fans began to build the franchises that would transform their visions of other worlds into the pillars of new belief systems. In the end, religious fervor is good for the pocketbook of the culture industry. The more we worship, the more we are willing to pay for action figures, for DVD box sets, for expensive reissues and signed first editions. These things are trinkets for our shrines, outward signs of our devotion. And like all religious objects they are dosed with a symbolic meaning that goes way beyond their unbroken plastic seals. They ward off what hurts us in the world. They promise better things to come.'

transmedia storytelling entertainment franchise sciencefiction religion fandom cults mythology meaning culture #storage
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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ImageTexT -- The Tides of History: Alan Moore's Historiographic Vision by Sean Carney

'"History, unendingly revised and reinterpreted, is seen upon examination as merely a different class of fiction [...]. Still, it is a fiction that we must inhabit. [...] All that remains in question is whose map we choose, whether we live within the world's insistent texts or else replace them with a stronger language of our own." --- ... Moore understands that in order to change history one must become a part of history, and thus engage in a kind of human sacrifice, as much as he would like to imagine some other way. -- "There's no space and there's no time. It's just as easy for you to think about what you were doing this morning as Victorian street scenes. You can go there instantly. You can imagine a scene from ten years in the future." Idea Space is the medium through which human consciousness draws connections across space and time, finds meaningfulness in the immediate through its mediation within larger contexts. -- Fiction is how reality is made...'

* meta storytelling liminality fiction reality dialectics time space simultaneity literaryculturevsoralculture history metanarratives postmodernism language culture ideaspace magic shamanism sacrifices semiosis realityprogramming consciousness philosophy mythology meaning AlanMoore comics
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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vanityfair.com -- Don and Betty’s Paradise Lost

'“He’s in trouble and you really can’t tell. I feel that way, and I know other men feel that way, too.” A few minutes later, after a question about his creative process, a long answer winds up here: “I start with me, like any writer. I start with what I’m feeling, what I identify with—like Don, I’m trying to hold on to what I have. He invented himself. He is always going to be presenting something to the outside world that’s not who he is. You don’t have to be from his background to understand that. In fact, all you have to do, really, is to have any success at all and you immediately feel like a fraud—most of us, right?”'

theamericandream madmen storytelling psychology masks fraud deception doubt
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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Gamasutra -- The History and Theory of Sandbox Gameplay

'"Sandbox" sometimes challenges traditional narrative, but it always puts something new in its place. ...[it] transforms predetermined narrative into dynamic, responsive narrative. ...the sandbox game distinguished itself by making the responses more significant and meaningful. -- ...a common challenge in sandbox design: player commitment to open story. ...that game design is so fun in itself that, if properly packaged, it can well be reinterpreted as gameplay itself. -- Sandbox play is essentially amoral/non-moral, in the sense that real action is often governed by the hypothetical: "What happens if I run this guy over?" ...until GTAIV, the PC personality was something of a narrative problem; the hero was a bi-polar thug for whom nothing was truly out of character. Such a character is not terribly interesting... With GTAIV, however the scarred warrior turned ironical and embittered anarchist justifies much better the peculiar range of action of a GTA hero.'

* meta gaming play gameplay gamedesign design sandbox possibilityspace space narrativeenvironments virtualworlds simulation simcity spore GTAIV puppetry augmentationistsvsimmersionists storytelling framing probabilityspace narrativearchitecture causality contiguity continuity morality realism psychology motivation narrativeacts emergence existentialism
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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Tubefilter -- 10 Lessons From A Studio Exec For Web Series Creators

'#4. Don’t produce too many episodes. Online audiences are finicky. They are constantly looking for something new. Don’t believe that you can keep their interest in something for several weeks or months. Program content in event bursts. If success is found, produce a new “season.” (The exception to this is news/lifestyle programming. Audiences do build relationships around these subjects and will check back often if not daily.) -- #8. Have a point of view/voice. This lesson is ubiquitous to all formats – web, print, film, TV, etc. A unique point of view with a compelling story is the most important thing a storyteller brings to the table.'

web entertainment storytelling narrativeactivism spread
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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Wikipedia -- Little Red Riding Hood

'"Little Red Riding Hood" is a famous fairy tale [folk tale] about a young girl's encounter with a wolf. The story has been changed considerably in its history and subject to numerous modern adaptations and readings. -- The tale makes the clearest contrast between the safe world of the village and the dangers of the forest, conventional antitheses that are essentially medieval, though no written versions are as old as that. -- The antagonist is not always a wolf, but sometimes an ogre or a ‘bzou’ (werewolf), making these tales relevant to the werewolf-trials (similar to witch trials) of the time (e.g. the trial of Peter Stumpp).'

folktales storytelling liminality masks mythology archetypes space allegory agriculture
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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BBH Labs -- The Storyteller’s Story

'Mark Cridge talked about the need for a creative director to be comfortable with the idea of curation, rather than control. -- The new movie marketing model shows us that storytelling doesn’t need to be written off as antiquated, one way communication, quite the opposite. Sophisticated stories are spun around the core characters & concept behind a film, all with the aim of driving anticipation, buzz and deeper, more rewarding relationships with fans. -- ...the fundamental shift in storytelling is simply this: we are now in the business of starting stories, not attempting to nail them down from beginning to end. Letting stories take on a life of their own, to be played with, passed around, modified and enriched by the audiences they’re developed for. -- #4. Fans may want to be “hunter gatherers” (see Henry Jenkins on the subject of world-building), piecing together dispersed pieces of content in order to build a fictional world, but they only have so much time to do so.'

literaryculturevsoralculture transmedia storytelling entertainment marketing huntergatherer collectiveintelligence curation tidying additivecomprehension meaning retribalization
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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Smokescreen

'"You don't know me, but I know you..." Smokescreen is a cutting-edge game about life online. We all use Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and MSN to keep up with our mates - and we've all heard the stories about parties on Facebook being mobbed, or people getting stalked on MSN. The question is, what would you do if it happened to you? -- Smokescreen is a game about online identity, trust, and privacy. Launching in September, Smokescreen is from Channel 4 and Six to Start.'

sixtostart channel4 transmedia storytelling games seriousgames privacy security identity identitytheft stalking paranoia trust
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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Brad Ideas -- Battlestar's "Daybreak:" The worst ending in the history of on-screen science fiction

'#The confirmation/revelation of an intervening god as the driving force behind events #The use of that god to resolve large numbers of major plot points #The use of “big secrets” to dominate what was supposed to be a character-driven story. -- A story where literally anything can happen has no suspense and little mystery. This is why, even though readers will suspend disbelief on a story’s fantastic elements, they must be introduced at the start of a story. If a writer resolves a problem by bringing in a new and unexpected fantastic element at the end, the audience feels cheated. -- ...divine intervention robs all the other characters of meaning. The story is no longer about how they struggled and overcame adversity. They did not battle their mortal and natural adversaries and triumph or fail. Rather, things came out as they did through divine will. When gods appear as real characters in fiction, their job should not be to resolve the plot, but rather to create it.'

BSG storytelling fiction sciencefiction fantasy realism consistency prophecy puppetry divineintervention deusexmachina god catharsis
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT [Trailers 1 & 2]

'In October of 1994, three student filmmakers disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland while shooting a documentary. A year later their footage was found.'

epistolary storytelling blairwitch
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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Los Angeles Times -- Searching for 'Blair Witch' a decade later

'These guys were never heard from again -- but their promotional savvy lives on. Many at the early screenings believed that the film's novel premise -- three student filmmakers disappear in the woods while shooting a documentary about the legend of a local witch and their footage is found a year later -- contained some grain of truth. "The blurb on the poster said this was 'found footage,' and there was nothing in the marketing to lead you to believe it was anything but that." That perception was reinforced by the movie's clever website, launched before Sundance, which expanded the "Blair" lore with bogus news reports, historical timelines and video interviews. "Did the marketing overshadow the movie? Yeah, in some respects," "Blair" co-director Eduardo Sánchez says. "But since we created 90% of the marketing, I never had a problem with that."' -- Haha-hackers.

* epistolary storytelling transmedia authenticity liminality narrativeobjects objects simulacra meta blairwitch
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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Story In Another Dimension -- 4-dimensional characters & cross-media screenwriting

'The reason 3×3x3 is necessary when amplifying your character’s dimension is because it not only adds detail to the past and future of the character and world of story, where a traditional backstory might suffice, it also provides a fully developed backstory and future story that will be directly related and linked to the story in focus (the middle of the three acts). By developing a three-act past for your character, including anything from their journey through the space academy, their near-death experience due to an addiction, or what ever might have shaped them into the character we experience in the story in focus, you’ll create an extensive world of story and character dimension your audience will be able to discover when searching for more about the story in focus … the main attraction – assuming you write a compelling story and character your audience is tempted to learn more about.' -- Endless exposition. (See: SJ on Lost starting at CRISIS on its narrative arc.)

storytelling transmedia narrativearchitecture exposition existentialism
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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Lostpedia -- ITunes Book Club

'Dear LOST reader (and listener!), Over the first four seasons of LOST, we managed to incorporate many books into the show. Now, for the first time here at iTunes we have catalogued a list of books available in audio form that relate in some way to LOST. Some are being read by our characters, such as Sawyer, or are just sitting on shelves in episodes of the show; others connect with various themes of the series. But the audiobooks here were all carefully chosen to refelct some aspect of the story we're trying to tell. To paraphrase one of our heroes, Stephen King, to be a writer one must first be a reader (and listener!). We find ourselves constantly striving for even a small measure of the accomplishment of what these authors have achieved in their books. Pick up and download any of them and experience the richness of storytelling, character and theme, and then allow your imagination to connect all that back into our show. All our best, Damon and Carlton (Executive Producers, LOST)'

lost epistolary storytelling transmedia intertextuality narrativeobjects evocativeobjects objects books
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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Lostpedia -- Literary works

'The following literary works, references or authors have been mentioned or shown in the series to date.' -- Includes: 'Bad Twin by Laurence Shames (Ghostwriting for metafictional character, Gary Troup) Detail: 'Gary Troup delivered the manuscript of Bad Twin to Hyperion Publishing just before his fateful trip on Oceanic Flight 815.' -- '#Sawyer's books. Despite his "redneck" personality, Sawyer is an avid reader. He reads or references books in several episodes: ...' -- The conduit, the fool.

lost epistolary storytelling transmedia intertextuality narrativeobjects evocativeobjects liminality liminalobjects objects books
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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Times Online -- What's going on? Don't ask me, I’m lost... by Steven Johnson

Puzzle: '“They are all dead, it killed them all, please help us.” -- 'If the networks had made Lost 30 years ago, it would have followed a fixed narrative flight path: introduce all the passengers and the pilots and the feuding stewardesses; learn each of their “back-stories”; and then have the engines fail. Abrams did away with that entire prologue: Lost begins seconds after the crash, and so from the very beginning of the show, the 20-odd survivors that we focus on are complete mysteries to the audience. We know nothing about them, and so the narrative pleasure comes from watching these interlinked histories being slowly revealed throughout the season, in flashbacks and reminiscences.' -- No exposition = Suspended mystery. -- 'The genius of Lost is that its mysteries are fractal: at every scale—from the macro to the micro—the series delivers a consistent payload of confusion. Narratives, by definition, work by withholding information about future events...' -- Temporal/Spatial gaps

lost transmedia storytelling narrativearchitecture exposition mystery puzzle suspense
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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GreenCine -- "A Growing Public Distrust": Adam Curtis

'Curtis: I'll tell you what I think about the neo-conservatives. In a way, I admire them for nostalgic reasons. They are the last revolutionaries - and some of them actually came out of a Trotskyite revolutionary tradition. They are making an awesome attempt to remake and reshape the world, much as Trotsky tried to do in the Russian Revolution, using military power. It's amazing. It has an epic-ness to it. I feel nostalgic for it, in the face of a managerial politics that just seem to want to tweak and adjust its policies to those of the focus groups and the soccer moms. -- ...when it becomes obvious that a lot of this is a constructed fantasy, based often on idealism and not necessarily on conspiracy, there will be a growing public distrust about the very nature of how reality is described to them. ...the neoconservatives have taken us into a philosophical quagmire, which is, "How do you describe reality, how do you make sense of the world? How do you construct it?"'

storytelling metanarratives ideology idealism conspiracy reality realityprogramming reflexivity AdamCurtis
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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Vimeo -- ETC Talk: The Cult of Me

Notes: Interesting ideas on prediction markets for storytelling, but that's not story or telling. It's more like a crowd-directed form of fact-finding that has a payoff for accuracy. If reality is to remain stranger than fiction then the 'vitality' of everyday life shouldn't be 'normalised' by a majority-ruled crowd. Whilst people need catharsis, closure, and resolution, they don't get the full impact of those by 'betting' on outcomes. Stories are explorations in psychological probability spaces, not factual/numerical. Not all types of probabilities are equally meaningful -- Mentions ARGs: The unique thing about ARGs is that they are shared sub/dom experiences. It's puppetry/simon says/ludic liberation. Some people like being 'out of control'. Other gameforms demand you *always* be in control. That lack of control makes ARGs feel like stories -- Rather than storytelling, these ideas are closer to reporting, journalling, status updating, 'discourse' or where there's purpose, activism.

internet web transmedia storytelling storygraph predictions markets socialmedia
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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Psychology Today -- Unpopular Popular Culture: Holocaust Films

'... perhaps it was the philosopher Aristotle who was most enlightening when, in his Poetics, he described the core elements and appeal of dramatic tragedy. He specualted that people are driven to watch tragedy on stage in order to purge feelings of pity and fear that life (and its dramatic stage depiction) elicits; but also because through this purging or 'katharsis' as he called it, we derive a certain pleasure from the collective relief we experience as we depart the theater and say "I am so glad it was not me. -- Holocaust movies, as painful as they can be, and perhaps as financially motivated and emotionally exploitative as they sometimes seem to be, are what popular culture is all about. They are about our ability to translate our deepest shame, horror, evil and inhumanity into these magnificent memorials and testimonials to our deepest and most profound courage, strength, resilience and humanity.'

psychology entertainment storytelling horror catharsis
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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CollegeHumor -- Web Site Story

'CollegeHumor's first Broadway musical since (LOL)Cats.' -- GHEY

popculture socialmedia storytelling musical parody :-) culture
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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1AmongMany -- truTV

'The manual includes two primary strategic ideas, both intended to embrace the brand’s ideal of capturing truth and actuality, coupled with a new business model that would redefine the role of a TV network in today’s digital landscape. The first strategy allows truTV to bring their audience into every step of the creation process, from ideation and script-writing to casting and distribution, creating an entirely new show based on the unbelievable moments of “actuality” that truTV viewers have experienced in their everyday lives.'

ideas tv entertainment platform experience serendipity socialmedia cocreation open epistolary storytelling storygraph television
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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Little Atoms -- Adam Curtis Interview

'What's happened is you had an idea – which in a way was quite an heroic idea – that each individual could be themselves, could express themselves and become better people. In fact, what happened in that process is that you shifted the idea of risk away from institutions and onto the person themselves, and in that process is what people began to do – far from expressing themselves – began to monitor themselves to see whether they are the correct definition of the individual, whether it's in psychology, how they feel and how they behave; and they begin to search for – and are given – ways of monitoring that as individuals, and that paradoxically leads them to trying to become what they think is the right individual, which actually leads to homogeneity... that idea of total expressiveness... it may be breaking up now as we enter an economic crisis and politicians discover they have power, institutions have power, and that's the way to change the world. The idea of the self may change.'

internet utopia hype temes datamining homogeneity theadvertisedlife storytelling metanarratives individualism self sousveillance narcissism negativeliberty conspiracy discourse recuperation rhetoric journalism ideas AdamCurtis
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- Adam Curtis Interview: Das Internets 2/2

"What blogging lacks is an enthusiasm for finding out about the world, it has no curiousity, what it actually has is the desire to bully and to shape the world in the way you want it... but it gives people security, you've found your home, here is the part of the internet – and therefore of the world – in which there are people who believe that the Iraq war was all about about oil, over here there are those who believe that actually it was about stopping muslim hordes taking over our culture, and here is the neo-conservative lot who believe it's all about idealism... all these groups are working out how to hold each other up... everyone just establishes their position, the media [inaudible] up, and that's it. -- What marks out all these groups is they're fundamentally negative, they're looking for something to criticise, they don't actually have a political ideal, and what they do is retreat into a simplified – and often very dated – view of the world."

blogging status conformity groupthink echochamber myopia journalism storytelling AdamCurtis interviews
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- Adam Curtis Interview: Das Internets 1/2

On the internet: his views on its impact, its potential, and what it has come to represent. -- "The new realism will be something that geniunely reflects to people their experience of the world which is complicated, ambiguous, that we are alone in the world..." -- "Facebook is just a victorian public world reinvented, but it's not the new television because it doesn't tell us stories, and people's experience doesn't tell us stories. Our job is take people's experience and make things out of them which then those individuals will go 'Oh, that's fascinating, it responds to me, I feel that's real but it takes me beyond myself.' -- In our world of individualism, the things that people are really concerned about are being trapped by their own feelings: there is growing sense that people want to know whether their feelings are real, if their feelings are right or wrong, do other people feel these feelings? They want to be taken out of themselves and taken into other emotional dimensions."'

internet storytelling transmedia narrativearchitecture realism mystery sousveillance reflexivity individualism identity homogeneity emotion emotionalintelligence penfieldmoodorgan AdamCurtis interviews
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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Wired -- The Unwritten Blurs Conspiracy, Lit Into Meaty Metafiction

“Stories have real consequences in the world,” Gross said. “They are the driving force of human history — the word ‘history’ pretty much admits that for us — but they are losing their place in fiction and bleeding out into the ‘real’ world. Twenty-four-hour news and social networks, blogging and tweeting lead to a massive need for more paths of information, and the line between fact and fiction is giving in to the need for speed.”

storytelling storygraph narrativearchitecture intertextuality comics meta fiction
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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Seth's Blog -- Magicians, sausage makers and transparency

"Does everything have to become completely transparent? Radical transparency often excites people because of the radical part (it’s new! it’s scary!) than the transparent part."

transparency open mystery storytelling SethGodin
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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Guardian -- Charlie Brooker on Adam Curtis' new documentary experience, It Felt Like A Kiss

"I wanted to do a film about what it actually felt like to live through that time...Where you could see the roots of the uncertainties we feel today, the things they did out on the dark fringes of the world that they didn't really notice at the time, which would then come back to haunt us. The way power works in the world is: they tell you stories that make sense of the world. That's what America did after the second world war. It told you wonderful dreamlike stories about the world...And at that same time, you were encouraged to rise up and 'become an individual', which also made the whole idea of America attractive to the rest of the world. But then this very individualism began to corrode it. The uncertainties began in people's minds. Uncertainty about 'what is the point of being an individual?'" -- Forthcoming doc: "the political and cultural ideas that underlie the internet—and the idea that we are all linked in an interconnected web—out of which can come a new form of democracy."

psychology storytelling metanarratives theamericandream america empire power individualism theadvertisedlife documentaries narrativeenvironments memory AdamCurtis
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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BBC -- Adam Curtis: Into the darkness

"It Felt Like a Kiss started life as an experimental film I made for the BBC last year. My aim was to try and find a more involving and emotional way of doing political journalism on TV. I decided to make a film about something that has always fascinated me - how power really works in the world. To show that power is exercised not just through politics and diplomacy - but flows through our feelings and emotions, and shapes the way we think of ourselves and the world." -- Video: "IT FELT LIKE A KISS. When a nation is powerful it tells the world confident stories about the future. The stories can be enchanting or frightening. But they make sense of the world. But when that power begins to ebb, there are no stories any more. You are on your own. And you have no idea what is coming towards you. Now go into the dark."

psychology storytelling metanarratives theamericandream america empire power individualism theadvertisedlife documentaries narrativeenvironments memory AdamCurtis
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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BBC -- Adam Curtis: The introduction to It Felt Like a Kiss

Vid: "The Introduction. In 1945 America's solider fought terrible battles and saw the horror of death camps. In Japan a new weapon killed hundreds of thousands in an instant. The soliders came home and were told they had fought a Good War. They created a new world for their children. Safe from the horrors that humans can do. And protected from their parent's terrifying memories. But as America rose to supreme power in the world, feelings of uncertainty began to break through the fragile surface. The CIA masterminded coups and assassinations across the world to protect America from enemies in the world outside. It was done in secret so the children would never know and get frightened. But as they grew up the children realised it was a dream. It was only a story told to them by those in power. And they would want to break free and just be themselves. They would create their own enchanted world. Only then they would be *alone. And vulnerable to something else. Fear. Now go into the dark."

psychology storytelling metanarratives theamericandream america empire power individualism theadvertisedlife documentaries narrativeenvironments memory AdamCurtis
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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Guardian -- Have videogames and reality TV given us 'narrative exhaustion', asks screenwriter Paul Schrader

'This exhaustion of narrative is behind the rise of recent "counter-narrative" entertainments, such as: #1. Reality TV: the appearance of being unscripted is essential to its appeal. Weary of so much predicable plot, the jaded viewer turns to "reality". #2. Anecdotal narrative: the enjoyment of watching behaviour encumbered by the artifice of plot. It is not "fake," not "contrived" (although of course it is). #3. Reenactment drama. #4. Videogames: The ability of the viewer to participate in the storytelling process creates an illusion of non-contrivance. #5. Mini-mini dramas. Part of the appeal of three- to five-minute stories created for cellphones, YouTube and original programming is the illusion of not being crafted narratives. Just bits of life. #6. Documentaries. -- Audio-visual entertainment is changing and narrative will change with it.'

storytelling narrative narrativearchitecture
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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Alice and Kev: The story of being homeless in The Sims 3

"This is an experiment in playing a homeless family in The Sims 3. I created two Sims, moved them in to a place made to look like an abandoned park, removed all of their remaining money, and then attempted to help them survive without taking any job promotions or easy cash routes. I have attempted to tell my experiences with the minimum of embellishment. Everything I describe in here is something that happened in the game. What’s more, a surprising amount of the interesting things in this story were generated by just letting go and watching the Sims’ free will and personality traits take over." -- @Baudrillard The desert of the real estate?

sims homelessness recession america simulation simulacra storytelling productnarratives narrativeenvironments virtualworlds machinima liveart art thegamingofeverydaylife
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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