#andreaphillips

Another cover illustration from the Daring Adventures of Lucy Smokeheart series, a puzzle book serial by the lovely and talented Andrea Philips.  

Go to 

http://www.amazon.com/Skeleton-Daring-Adventures-Captain-Smokeheart-ebook/dp/B00JHRP1PQ/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00HZ3Z1V8&linkCode=as2&tag=deuexmac056-20

to purchase the e-book and 

http://lucysmokeheart.com/blog/

September 15 2013 at the Istanbul Biennial writing workshop :

On Sunday afternoon we sat on the terrace of the Galata Greek Primary School to discuss Networks of Dispossession, the collective data compilation project made by many contributors that maps networks of power and money in Turkey’s rapid and violent urban transformation projects exhibited at the Istanbul Biennial. http://mulksuzlestirme.org/ We tried to find ways to describe what had happened in Turkey since we last met in May and how the modification of the Biennial public programme could be understood as a response – or what could be the right response? Most of you had been in Istanbul during the occupation of Gezi Park and the sustained and repeated resistance in Taksim Square to Turkish urban transformation in the summer. I had been watching and reading from London, laboriously translating tweets and blogs from Turkish to English to try and understand. As the co-curator of the public programme, I felt like we needed to discuss the questions openly as actors in a situation that was cultural and political: is it true what the protestors who attacked the public programme said, that a Biennial, particularly one that has such a wealth of sponsorship engaged in the destruction of the city, has no right to take that very subject as its theme? That in so doing a hypocrisy and an erasure (a double violence of its own sort) is enacted? Or is this prohibition imposed upon the Biennial by its critics another type of censorship? What of the act of parrhesia that Foucault speaks about, the addressing of truth to power? Can those with power find ways to withdraw from their own power? What power does a Biennial have?

Knowledge@Wharton has posted a report/interview on the subject of "Transmedia Storytelling, Fan Culture and the Future of Marketing"

The post features a lengthy interview with Andrea Phillips, author of "A Creator's Guide to Transmedia Storytelling: How to Captivate and Engage Audiences across Multiple Platforms."

Phillips (quoting University of Southern California professor Henry Jenkins') provides a nice definition of transmedia to start things off: "One story over multiple media where each makes a unique contribution."

The interview goes to some interesting places (checking off "Star Wars" and "The Matrix," the transmedia promotional campaign for the Kubrick/Spielberg film "AI," and Microsoft's "Beast" campaign for Halo): Among the topics this interview touches upon is the difference between transmedia, cross-media and gamification. Phillips also sets up a nice West Coast Transmedia v. East Coast Transmedia distinction.

Here are some other highlights:

Phillips: "A lot of student projects seem to love to start with fliers plastered around campus [saying], "Missing girl." They think that's really great. The problem is that they're thinking about the experience with the eyes of someone playing a game. They don't step back and realize that context is everything, and not everybody who sees these pieces of content is going to come into them with the correct context. So you have to analyze everything from that surface level: What does this really look like? Is a normal person going to look at it and think, "This looks like a fun game." Or are they going to think, "Oh no, some girl is missing; I shouldn't go out after dark by myself."

---

Knowledge@Wharton: How do you make sure people find out about a game built around stealth websites and other online secrets? How is a project like this launched?

Phillips: Badly, usually. There's a myth that if you make something interesting and you tell a couple of people, it will spread virally across the Internet. That is, by and large, a terrible, terrible lie. It is not true that the cream rises to the top on the Internet.

When you launch something, don't just send someone a mysterious box. Send them a mysterious box if you have to, but also send them a letter with a URL telling them what you're doing. Send out a press release. Make sure people know what it is you're going to do, and make sure that they know before it's almost done or nobody will look at it.

Well worth checking out.