Engage In A Richer Narrative, Immerse Yourself In Other Worlds

Our title, paraphrased from Jeff Gomez’ paraphrasing of  Henry Jenkins in Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, as included in Nick de la Mare’s article “The Power of Transmedia Experiences – Another approach to knitting narratives together” in Creativity (online), (phew!), is not really anything new to artists, and seemingly not that new to media “creative” types (read advertising, PR and other marketing communications ilks), either.  That doesn’t mean that it’s not interesting; it is.  It’s essentially what “multi-media art” has been about for, well, forever.

De la Mare’s take on it makes it all, naturally enough, more easily discussed, designed, manipulated, produced and, in the end, billed to clients (the cost of which will be included in the products these “clients” sell, and so, in the products we buy from them, meaning everything we buy).  The technology is here (or there), or most of it is, and our collective technology/media behavior is certainly about up to par.  So, in the probably not particularly distant future, we will no longer see a TV show made into a movie made into a video game with all of the associated products (t-shirts, and all that) developed along the way.  What we will see, it seems, is the use of each of these media to tell their part of the story in their own quintessential way thus, in the end, offering us the aforementioned “richer narrative” and the, no doubt refreshing, opportunity to “immerse ourselves in other worlds”.

So churns the minds of those whose mission, so critical in this time of global economic crisis, is to motivate us to buy more things.  Rest assured, the future is in good hands.

However, and honestly, the simplicity of tone and “terminology” in the article offers perhaps a less abiguous way to look at and discuss the idea of “transmedia experience” as distinct from “multimedia experience”, and that’s nice.  Isn’t it.

nothingisinvisible@live.fr