Story as an Environment: Carl Bloch Show

In my presentation to the Custom Content Council I shared an example of work that had been done by partners at my consultancy Dyvergent.

The Carl Bloch Art Show: Touch of the Master’s Hand for the BYU Museum of Art was a show in which the curators spent nine years gathering the altarpieces.

The task was to curate the show in a way that would reach 60,000 visitors over a period of six months and have an average patron stay at the show for 2hrs. With only five major works of art, this was a challenge and could only be reached by creating a narrative that patrons dive much deeper into.

Here are some of the media and content solutions that led to success with the show:

iPad Guided Tour
A first-of-its-kind iPad tour guide composed of content that was filmed in Denmark at the original location of these alter pieces. It included interviews with congregation members, pastors, show curators, historical experts, 3D panoramas of the chapels and detailed descriptions of the symbolism.

An immersive orientation room with three walls of projection that detailed the life of the artist, the historical context and the landscape of his homeland. This prepared patrons by putting their mind in the right context before entering the gallery.

In order to create a patron-driven experience the museum space was organized in a network fashion.

Floor Plan Arranged in a Network Fasion – Carl Bloch Art Show

Reproductions of the original breastwork were created around the alter pieces and chairs were placed in rows in front of each piece in order to recreate the experience of sitting in the original Denmark locations. This allowed patrons to experience the art and have access to the content according to their own direction and preference.

This is a fantastic example of a Networked Narrative in the form of an environment, media, and content.

I had a fantastic time presenting some thoughts on storytelling to the Custom Content Council at the annual conference in Charlestion, SC. Thanks to all the wonderful people I met.
This is a summary of a portion of my presentation. Enjoy!

Looking for examples of Object Awareness?Read here

What is Design?

Bill Moggridge, an IDEO founder and father of interaction design talks about Design as the crossroads between People, Business and Technology.

Bill Moggridge description of Design

Design is ultimately just a way of thinking comparable to Science and Writing. Where scientists use experiments and statistics to create theories. Designers use culture and emotion to create meaningful objects and spaces. As writers use plot and grammar, I use aesthetic and experiences for storytelling.

Design thinking compared to other types of thinking.

In my mind, we are passed the era of Design being simply a tool for adding visual polish to a preexisting concept or piece of content. Design is a way of solving problems and pursuing answers to questions—it’s ultimately just another way of thinking.

Change in Media = Change in Story Structure

We all know that the media by which we tell stories has changed throughout history.
Most stories of oral tradition followed a standard linear plot structure:

Standard Plot Structure

With the advent of the printing press, stories became distributable and archiveable.
The newspaper introduced efficiency and succinctness in telling stories and emergence of the inverted pyramid. A structure which places the most important facts first, shifting the climax to the forefront.

Inverted Pyramid Structure

The last 20 years represents another major shift in which stories have become interactive. Here is what today’s stories look like:

Networked Narrative structure for interactive stories

Networked Narrative

This network narrative should be more than just related links on a website. Take this Wikipedia page on Gutenberg for example. It features a link to the word militia and when you click on the link it takes you to this general page on militias. This is a simple connection between content and is not quite there because the two pieces of content are barely related.

Wikipedia page of Gutenburg

A better model for networking content

A better jump would go from “Gutenburg” to “Gutenberg in the Militia.”
If our technology affords us the ability to connect content in specific and intelligent ways than it seems sense there should be more intelligent strategy for creating related content. These stories would connect through both the medium and the message.

Here are some examples of Networked Narrative:






Want to create something like this? I can help you.
Contact: hunter[at]dyvergentdesign.com

As the winner of the Economist Media Forecast, I had the privilege of speaking at the Ad Age Media Evolved Conference. On the docket were media greats such as Martha Stewart, Nick Brien, CEO of McCann World Group, George Bodenheimer President of ESPN, and Scott McCune VP Coca-Cola. I was tasked with making predictions for the future of media in 2011…no pressure. Presenting with cameras flashing in my face was a first, shaking up traditional thinking was not. Here are some highlights from my presentation titled, “Tangible and Hacked Media.”

Tangible media are objects in physical space that can sense, compute, interact and communicate over a network.

Hacked media are instances when we see traditional media used in new ways either by the addition of technology and/or by the application of a new technique.

Here are some examples:
Want to create something like this? I can help you. Contact: hunter[at]dyvergentdesign.com

The capability for tangible objects to become smart and interactive is made possible by physical commutation technology such as the Arduino Microcontroller. This tech is available and becoming increasingly affordable in raw form. In fact, the brain, or microcontroller, is less than $30. The addition of this technology to tangible objects means everything in our environment can be a medium for communication, the kind of interaction we are only used to seeing in the digital world. As these interactive objects communicate with each other over the network, we will see the emergence of the “Internet of things.”

Prediction:

Mass adoption of physical computation technology will result in increased application to advertising media over the next 3-5 years starting in 2011.

Divergent Interactions

The ideal strategy to assume is one of divergent interactions. These interactions can occur through tangible objects supported by a digital infrastructure but are characterized by being hyper individualized and massively scalable. Such interactions move on through the network each time the individual comes in contact with the brand. More specifically, these networked objects create a system or media strategy that allows for customized messages for individual-to-individual rather than target audience-to-target audience.

Media Evolved

Tangible media can also be used to take accurate quantitative data that characterizes the engagement an individual has with a traditional medium. For example, a smart billboard can measure the ways a person interacts with the board. Furthermore, networked tangible media means one billboard can talk to another bus board which can talk to a park bench which can talk to the nearest Starbucks. Thus, we begin to literally integrate media not just the messages.

Shift in Thinking

Massively networked tangible media allows us to target individuals rather than audiences. It means we have to be creative with the way we use the medium and be open to the hacking of traditional forms of media to gain interactive behaviors rather than just being static. We should no longer think of websites as the only destination to interact on the web. Instead the internet becomes an infrastructure for interactions in the physical world.

Apply

Think “interactions” rather than “impressions.” We are no longer in the business of placing ads in front of eyes, but are capable of creating experiences and interfaces for our brands at every touch point. Stringing these interactive engagements together becomes a whole new level of media strategy and planning.

Use the Internet as your tracking and interaction training ground. If it can be done on the web, it can likely be done in the physical world. Make things digitally first and then transform them into tangible media.

For more on the topic of tangible media and advice on how to act on this advance in media contact:
hunter[at]dyvergentdesign.com