Jane Austin’s gossipy plots are so perfect for the Facebook interface (forgive me Jane), take a look here.

Technorati Tags: remediation, social networks, Web 2.0

Very interesting experience in Tampere, at the annual Seminar, this time on the topic of “playful experiences”; the title must have sent several people’ s creativity spinning, as it is a very ambiguous concept.

Chaired by Frans Mayra, Olli Sotamaa, Aki Jarvinen, Oskar Juhlin, several stimulating interventions, my humble contribution was “Playfulness and trust in the Obama campaign on Facebook: bringing civic engagement into play”.

Only another paper, by Maaike De Jong, related to play and playfulness as a philosophical concept; I was expecting more work along that line, instead Olli Sotamaa talked about Little Big Planet and co-creativity, Annakaisa Kultima about the latest developments of the “expanded game experience” concept: she and other Finnish researchers, I remember only Kuittinen, published this key paper in 2007 about casual games that developed the idea of casual games being just a part in a larger scheme, called “expanded game experience”.
Jessica Enewold presented a really cool research on playing mums, and also Markus Montola’s presentation was very inspiring, on the general concept of play; I wish I could remember more presentations, these were my highlights
Here is the programme

It has been a loooooong time since I posted something, I really have no excuses, except the force (or weakness) of habit.
News: all my paper proposals this year have been accepted, so I will be going to Tampere, at a seminar on Playful Experiences, then in May at Video Vortex in Split, then again at Modernity 2.0 in Urbino, and ISEA in September. (wow, I have been busy last January).
My research topic is now slightly different: on one side I am considering (visual) reception in transmedia storytelling, just to keep up with my film studies lineage; on the other side I am considering the dynamics of play and playfulness in, again, transmedia storytelling, but also in social networks, with an eye on politically connoted communication.
Fun, uh?
The news and bits I will be posting will belong then from now on to slightly different areas, such as social games and activism in social networks, although I still see my interests as quite homogeneous, and ready to be transformed into a PhD project.
Soon on these screens, then…..

Technorati Tags: conferences, personal

Have your Twitter followers follow you in real life on your T-shirt

The paper proposal for “The Participatory Off-screen: Spatial Perception and Suture in Interactive Soap KateModern” has been accepted at the ChART conference “Seeing.. Vision and Perception in Digital Culture”, so you will see me there, Birbeck, University of London, November 6-7, here is an overview of the program.

The subject of this paper is very dear to me, because it was (almost) the subject of my MA thesis on Imax filmmaking, and it brings me back to my film theory studies, some, ehm, years ago.

The goal is actually to apply a very special adaptation of film theory to explain the spectator’s place and the reception strategies enacted in transmedia storytelling, in this case KateModern, although I was thinking mostly of Lonelygirl15 and other more openly transmedial projects, although you could argue that a soap on a web site which you comment to on another website and which you can access through your cell phone is transmedial enough.

“Loser Generated Content: from Participation to Exploitation” That is the title of a very cool paper by the ITU new entry Soren Mork Petersen (sorry about the spelling).
Take a look here.

I might be very deluded, but I can’t help feeling filled with hope each time one of these alternate reality games about thinking up new ideas to save the world come out.

Superstruct is a “massively multiplayer forecasting game”, in which you will chronicle the world of 2019, which is actually just a few years before the end of the human race, due to come in 23 years, says Jane McGonigal. Hey, don’t smile, this is no laughing matter, you should start having panic attacks and participating in the game.

The Institute for the Future appointed as first research fellow Howard Rheingold, so you will be in good company for producing creative visionary material.

Get instructions here from September 22, 2008

Technorati Tags: alternate reality games, augmented reality

Mobile projection platform in Calgary, to make the city a canvas with your text messages - actually the slogan of TXTual Healing is “Creating public performances with your text messages since ‘06″.

http://www.txtualhealing.com/

Yours truly is going to be in the panel on social media at Mindtrek conference, in the selected company of Frans Mayra and Steffan Bjork, October 9, Tampere, Finland, with the presentation “Facebook Applications and Playful Mood: the Construction of Facebook as a Third Place”.
The title is similar to some previous work, but don’t be mistaken. You will be able to download it here.
Take a look at the conference program.

A remediation of Félix Fénéon’s Novels in Three Lines (1906) by the New York Review of Books
novelin3lines

Novels in Three Lines

“Fénéon’s three-line news items, considered as a single work, represent a crucial if hitherto overlooked milestone in the history of modernism…. They are the poems and novels he never otherwise wrote, or at least did not publish or preserve. They demonstrate in miniature his epigrammatic flair, his exquisite timing, his pinpoint precision of language, his exceedingly dry humor, his calculated effrontery, his tenderness and cruelty, his contained outrage. His politics, his aesthetics, his curiosity and sympathy are all on view, albeit applied with tweezers and delineated with a single-hair brush. And they depict the France of 1906 in its full breadth, on a canvas of reduced scale but proportionate vastness. They might be considered Fénéon’s Human Comedy.” —From the Introduction by Luc Sante - New York Review of Books

(from if:book)

(in fact I somehow disagree, and find the twitter interface clogging the text, and the “web” signature somewhat of a missed opportunity. Still, it is great to experiment)

Technorati Tags: books, educational, remediation, social networks, Web 2.0