We visited the PM studios today, and three individuals spoke to us about their work. It was most interesting to see the spectrum of varied work being produced there. I found it useful to gain a clearer understanding of what kind of projects the PM studio produces.

Luke Jerram’s work certainly gave food for thought; it was diverse by nature and he truely explored the possibilities of technologies. I have admired the work of Anit Vj for some time so it was great to here from one the members aswell.

It was useful to learn how he created the projections onto seemingly 3D objects..this is something I may look to explore in my work. He also mentioned LEGOMAN…who I am going to look at. He mentioned he was one of the first to think about projections onto surfaces which were not flat.

At the Future of Television in Hollywood a few days ago, a high-level panel took a look at the opportunities and challenges facing the television industry. Moderated by Bill Sanders, president, Pervasive Media, panelists included Tim Connolly, vp, mobile distribution, Disney/ABC/ESPN Media Networks; Kraig Baker, partner, David Wright Tremaine LLP; Jim Eadie, vp,

Bill Sanders moderates mobile TV panel

digital distribution, MTV Networks; John Lawson, evp, ION Media Networks;Steve Bradbury, vp, business affairs, GoTV Networks; and Jonathan Barzilay, svp, programming and advertising, MediaFLO USA.

Sanders started off by polling the audience on how many watched video on their mobile phone–streaming or downloading–or a weekly basis. As is typical for these casual polls, the answer was…almost no one. But Sanders wasn’t discouraged. “We need to move beyond it being a ‘gee whiz’ thing to where it’s a business,” he said. He asked every panelist to describe some development they’ve seen in the last year that has changed the game…or will change the game in the next 6 to 12 months.

Steve Bradbury, GoTV: I think when you go beyond the iPhone and start talking about the Android that’s come out of the box strong and will have a proliferation, that’s interesting. LG will do a store, Blackberry and Palm will have a store. The whole idea of carriers no longer being that central focus [is a game changer]. Handset mfrs trying to take back control of content is a coming trend.

Kraig Baker, David Wright Tremaine LLP: The two things that I think are really interesting is the way mobile is morphing and creating rights issues. The first is that everyone thinks mobile is a carrier-based platform. But look at iTouch, Nintendo and so on…There are huge numbers of mobile entertainment devices that don’t have a carrier tied to them. People can get bandwidth without being tied to a carrier. Secondly, people are using mobile devices also for mobile storage devices. I take my iPod and listen to it while I’m on the bus but then stick in my player at work and at home to play music. It’s become a portable device.

Jim Eadie, MTV Networks: In the next 6 to 12 months, I would say that a third element we’ve noticed is really a shift in expectations around the ad market. We were pretty bullish on mobile video market. If you look at E-Marketer expectations from a year ago and [compare that with] today, you’ll see annual estimates down two to three times. That’s a pretty incredible statistic. But we’re bullish on the market coming back. That stat has to do with the macro-economic environment.

Barzilay & Eadie

Jonathan Barzilay, FloTV: If I look at things over the last 6 to 12 months, Barack Obama and the NCAA are the most significant things. There were tremendous spikes around the presidential inauguration and debates. Similarly last weekend, with our partner AT&T, we carried four dedicated channels of NCAA basketball – you could watch every [March Madness] tournament. If you look to watershed moments [in mobile television], political and sports driven by immediate live events will be formative.

John Lawnson, ION Media Networks: Broadcast TV goes all-digital on June 12, but broadcasting won’t go away. Wireless is a massive wireless distribution platform [for broadcasters]. LG and Samsung learned how to provide a robust video programming service. We think that this represents the biggest upside to the broadcasting industry in decades. The last few months has seen the adoption of an open standard by the ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee). At NAB, we’ll be announcing a partners-development group that will include programmers. At CES, we announced we’d be launching a free-to-air advertiser-supported mobile network. It is an open standard so it enables a wide range of business models – pay-per-use, subscriber and advertiser-supported. The key is not just the mobility but in the 60 year history of TV broadcasting, this will be the first time we won’t be sending out content to a dumb devices. We’ll be able to get data back in terms of what the consumer is watching, how much, what their transactions are, where they are. With permissions, of course, it enables a new generation of broadcasting and transactions. The consumer will have a lot of control; we’ll have a DVR capability. People want real television and they’ll use these devices to watch it. We think the return channel enables commerce and measurement. But there’s an opportunity with providers – carriers and others – to continue to provide one-on-one on-demand content. Our ability to push out massive amounts of video creates opportunities for partnerships with those taking advantage of the spectrum.

Tim Connolly, Disney/ABC, ESPN: Formative for the market overall in the last 12 months is the fact that we now have more than 10 million people subscribing to video services. Across our properties, we’ll see more than 100 million views over a 12 month period. That’s still fairly small when you think of the numbers of mobile phones in the US, but it’s a strong number. We can say there’s really a market.

The conversation then turned to the business model that would make mobile television take off. Connolly noted that his company is not a big believer in the advertiser-only model.”In order for us to spend the money necessary to acquire and create great experiences for users, we’re convinced the only way to make that work is a dual revenue from subscription, with advertising as the complement,” he said. ” I don’t think you’ll find many people who think $50 a month is a bad deal to get 200 cable channels at home. I think we can create a similarly good deal on the mobile phone.”

Barzilay pointed out that in today’s hyper-linked world, the TV, computer and phone “are all part of the same eco-system.” “We have to make it simple, recognizable and familiar, particularly on mobile,” he said. Bradbury seconded the concept that familiarity was “the shortest distance for consuming media,” but noted that mobile devices’ short battery life still stood in the way of consuming long-form content. “Ultimately there’s room for long-form content, for content on a particular schedule and short-form on-demand content,” he said. “We made our name in short-form on-demand but we acknowledge long-form opportunities.”

Barzilay agreed that there’s room for both short and long-form content. “The mobile primetime is wider and deeper than traditional primetime on TV,” he said. “It’s much more consistent from late morning through early evening. There’s room for a lot of time-shifting within that model. We have live programs, like The Today Show when you’d expect it to be on But if you miss Late Night with Conan, that’s made available to you throughout the day.”

“At the end of the day it’s about user experience,” said Bradbury. “Whether it’s long form or short form, you’ll be drawn to a better experience. The mobile phone is still early in its evolution of consuming video, which started in 2005, commercially. We’re only a few years into this experience. As the carriers in general improve that hype, we’ll all benefit from it. That will lift all boats. The mobile phone still isn’t as compelling an experience as your TV or you computer monitor – but it’s getting better.”

Sanders noted that, with PlayStation and portable DVD players, there is no shortage of small video devices. He asked if the mobile video industry is asking viewers to “go back to regular, linear TV on the phone.” “Or will it be as interactive and social as online?” he asked. Panelists agreed that “we’re not going backwards.” “I think we’ll start to see mobile morph into just another platform where people are consuming in five or six different ways,” said Baker.

“If nothing else, the iPhone has made us take a step back and take a look at what is mobile, what is online,” said Eadie. “We have a number of distribution partners that have created iPhone apps, and, in each case, there’s a different philosophy. It’s driving more of a convergence experience.” Connolly added that the iPhone NCAA app gives the user a great capability to look at stats and move seamlessly between video capabilities, as the live game is going on. “We’re in the early days of mobile video,” he stressed. “For the most part, we’re taking our traditional franchises to this new platform. But we try to create something unique for each platform it’s residing on, and have those unique capabilities have a mutually reinforcing capabilities back to the other platforms. That make you want to watch Lost on TV, but go online to do other things related to the program.”

The discussion turned to brand, and whether it belonged to the program or the network. Connolly noted that “Disney Channel as a brand and as a channel has a unique brand attribute that resides within each of the programs within Disney Channel – Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Hannah Montana.” “Whereas with our broadcast network ABC, there isn’t as much of a consistent theme between Ugly Betty, Lost and Desperate Housewives,” he said. “There it’s more about the franchise than the ABC brand.” Just as cable operators license Disney (or ABC) content, said Connolly, so wireless operators have an opportunity to create a bundle. “You can get TV cable, broadband and home phone from the same provider,” he said. “Both cable operators and telcos can then say, Now you can get mobile from us.”

Sanders pointed out that “there are more and more different avenues to get video that don’t come through the carriers deck.” “Discoverability will become really really important,” he said. GoTV’s Bradbury noted that discoverability is an on-going challenge. “We don’t have the resources of some of my colleagues on the panel have. We don’t have an established media base. We are doing more and more partnerships with Fortune 500 companies: Lexus, Wrigleys.” But the challenge is on-going. “You hope the cream rises to the top and to some extent that happens,” he said. “Does that get you to the gross number of viewers you want or do you remain a niche player? We’re peddling as fast as we can.”

Television broadcasters have enormous clout in getting the word out about their mobile TV capabilities, says Lawson, who pointed to the very high public awareness of broadcast television’s transition to digital. “Broadcasters still have enormous power to reach people across the country and we will dedicate some of those resources to make sure the public understands that broadcaster will offer free-over -the-air broadcast to a wide range of mobile devices,” he said. “And with regard to branding and discoverability, we’ve learned with consumer trials is that people really want local. They want news, weather, sports, restaurant reviews, information about retail. The broadcasters have always played that role. We feel it gives us a tremendous opportunity as we roll out mobile to maintain that. “

How to keep consumer interest is incumbent on broadcasters as well as anyone else in the mobile television business. One way to keep that interest, said Sanders, is through talent. “That’s how we look at it,” said Connolly. “And the same holds true for sports, news and other information services. The information is a commodity but you develop a brand through personalities.” MTV’s Eadie reported that they’ve started rolling out free ad-supported video on their mobile websites. “We look at that discoverability element as very important,” he said. “We want to provide a good content experience.”

Touch-me Touch-me-not: A Sensitive Hoodie
by Iven Cheung and Aiken Shek

This full zip hoodie is an interactive, wearable piece, which promotes a new way of communication between wearer and people close by. Rather than being just on or off, LEDs attached onto the garment lit up according to duration of contact with switches on different parts of the body and the area where contact takes place.

To some shyer people, direct physical contacts, proactive or passive, could result in embarrassment and awkward responses. Implanting an automatic feedback mechanism that resembles a mimosa pudica 含羞草 on body help express themselves in an ambiguous fashion.

While these illuminant feedbacks might appeal to some, others find them offensive and unintelligible. Interest could cease to develop once the light bulbs are on. Exploration awaits people who make contact with the wearer.

With Arduino’s EEPROM Library, data such as which part of the body / garment has been touched upon most frequently could be recorded for further research or artistic purpose.

Materials: LED, Arduino microcontroller, Full zip Hoodie, Switch button

Today, Pervasive Media president Bill Sanders moderated a panel on “Hollywood’s Online Video Gambit,” with panelists York Baur, executive vp of development at Zango; Ken Wirt, vp of consumer marketing at Cisco; and Sandy Grushow, president of Filmaka and former chief of Fox TV.

Since the panel is about how Hollywood is taking online video seriously, began Sanders, he described how he recently asked his writer friends, when they went out on strike, whether they were doing this to throw down the gauntlet and make a stand…or whether they thought the studios are making a fortune on new media and keeping the money for themselves.”If it’s the latter,” he said. “Think again.” Sanders also noted that if the Holy Grail is advertising support, his question is, if every startup thinks it’ll be supported by sponsorship and advertising, there’ll have to be a thousands times the current advertising dollars.

The questions he has for the panelists began with what they will say to Wall Street about how they’re going to make money, and how will they get the consumer to keep coming back? Sandy Grushow began, referencing the strike and how most writers have gone back to business as usual. “There is a big opportunity in creating high quality content for advertisers desperate to follow the eyeballs that have left television and gone to the web,” he said. He divided content into three buckets: “There is the user-generated folks; those used to making $3 million a year from Fox TV; and those interested in creating high quality programming for the web.” “We’ve demonstrated there are a lot of enormously talented people who haven’t found their way into the Hollywood tent,” he said. “What we’re doing is systematically creating an opportunity for those people to gain access to that world.”

The problem of the “top down” model, from TV to the web doesn’t work he said. “It’s impossible to cut through the clutter,” he said. “The phone never rings.” Thus his “bottoms up” process where Filmaka challenges creative people around the world, through various competitions, with the promise of real access to the Hollywood system that otherwise they’d have a hard time touching. “But everyone is chasing the same ad dollars,” he admitted. “I hate the idea of just being a digital studio, making series and hoping advertisers will come on board. We’ve created a process to engage advertisers in an interesting way.” He said he had a lot of advertisers on deck that he isn’t able to talk about. But he did talk about Miller, with the tagline “Life is what you pour in it.” Filmmakers from 117 different countries were invited to make something of that line. “You can’t replicate that through an agency,” said Grushow. “We’ve turned competitions into a business. People are logging in every day – they’re winning cash prizes, and increasing their odds of having their work seen.”

Is Filmaka a destination in and of itself, or a service? asked Sanders. “We don’t view ourselves as a destination,” answered Grushow who said he was interested in distributing media as widely as possible, working with legacy media and directly with advertisers desperate to figure out the web. “Who better to speak to than voracious consumers of media as opposed to the ad guy who drives behind tinted windows and works in an office? What we get are young people who are really talented with ideas that wouldn’t get born in a Hollywood suit – they’d get killed at the outset.” Grushow, who also noted that Filmaka has a relationship with William Morris Agency, spoke about a contest that Filmaka had when it was in beta: to make the jury laugh, with the topic of extracurricular activity in the office. Two young people from the U.K. submitted a 3-minute piece; he gave them $10,000 to make five more. An agent at William Morris jumped out of his chair when he saw it, saying his client, who was quite picky, would love it. Inside of an hour, a meeting was set up with this Emmy-Award winning comedian who loved the ideas and is now having meetings with the two, very surprised young guys in the U.K. “If that ain’t a paradigm shift, I don’t know what is,” said Grushow. “And the development costs were $10,000.”

Cisco’s Wirt talked about the rapid growth of digital media usage in the HDTV/broadband home, which uses 1.5 terabytes. Future projections go into the exabytes. It all represents an enormous growth of video traffic on the Internet. “What we see really driving this is a combination of social networking combined with video, which we call visual networking,” said Wirt. Eighty-four million people saw “The Evolution of Dance” on YouTube, he noted. How did so many people get to it? Social networking, he said, and that’s the phenomenon driving the consumption of video. People tell you about a video, it’s been rated and ranked.

Sanders asked what gets people to come back to the same destination again and again? Wirt said people come back to a place because of the quality of the video, the quality of the product. Does the guy who produced “The Evolution of Dance” have one more in him? If he doesn’t, people won’t come back. But he has awareness, and the opportunity is come back. Grushow added: It’s a series, not that different from normal television. “It’s just harder because there’s so much bloody choice, but someone will come up with “Seinfeld” on the web and that’ll be the game changer.”

Baur said that his company isn’t about generating content but exclusively about monetizing it, for the last nine years – “Successfully,” he added. Baur then proceeded to dump several buckets of cold water on the conversation that went before. “Video is not about quality – all that matters is the popularity,” he said. “In my view, and it’s easy for me to say, you want to ultimately want to be the platform on which everyone else can create. The world will vote. You can’t create popularity. ” He said his company spends a lot in online marketing to become one of the top sites for online gaming. “I would also tell you casual gaming is much bigger than video on the Internet,” he said. “And games are considerably more profitable. Games are addictive and video is not. Video is by definition a transitory experience.” To the ad side, Baur said the reality of online advertising, 42 percent of the total ad dollars spent in the U.S. were spent on search. “What does this tell you?” he said. “Search works really well and all the other stuff [doesn't]. If you can make advertising appear as content, you’ll do really well.” He also doused the idea of the subscription model, asking the audience to raise their hands if they subscribed to video online, outside of subscriptions related to work. Out of the audience of 100+ people, only two raised their hands. “That’s kind of the way it is,” he said. “We trained a generation of people who want it for free.” [For the record, both Sanders and Wirt came up with examples of subscriptions that are financially successful.]

Grushow, who joked that he didn’t want to argue with someone with a successful business, nonetheless told Baur that he thought his view of the web was static. “This is the bet that those are making in the content creation business,” he said. “High quality means having a narrative, and if you can create that for small amounts of money, I believe it is a model that will start to work on the web with advertisers as partners.” Baur agreed, saying that building content around advertising does work, so it doesn’t feel like an ad anymore. “The interesting thing is that if your Ford Explorer, you’re spending a lot of money on search,” he said. “If you had an episodic site that people come back to, how much would you spend, especially when you’re having so much success with Google and other search engines?”

“It’s all about distribution,” added Grushow. “Content generators need to get in bed with distribution platforms. That’s when brands are going to become interested, because they can show how many people they can deliver. There are all sorts of interesting deals that are going to be made, and advertisers will be able to spend money in a meaningful way.”

“Movies, television, DVD, internet. It’s all the same thing, just different configurations…it’s an incredible landscape.” Quincy Jones, Film Producer

Described by The Simpsons creator Matt Groening as “a funny film-making genius”, Hazel Grian, Creative Director of Licorice Films, has been at the sharp end of cutting edge new forms of interactive content, including Alternative Reality Gaming and online drama. In November 2007 I caught up with Hazel in Bristol to chew the fat on her involvement in KateModern, the first drama commissioned by a social network, and the state and future of the strange-shaped genre known as interactive drama.
(NB: This is a bastardisation of what was originally an academic essay so forgive the over icing of the digital cake.)

Convergence of television and the internet

Marshall McHuhan, the guy who dubbed the wired world the “global village”, believes the content of any new medium is actually from an old one. This certainly applies to the recent phenomenon of online video and the convergence between broadcast television, digital television and online content.

Television has become a predictable, institutional ‘old’ media – but its original ambitions were akin to those of interactive media today – immersion, extension and communication. Its form has evolved through its history – a storytelling medium enabled by technology. Television is considered a ‘push’ medium – like print and newspapers – whereas the internet is a ‘pull’ or search medium, its take-up dominated by communication over publishing.

Convergence disrupts the tripartite relationship of print, telecoms and broadcast. Broadband offers the ‘multiplexing’ of TV, potentially an additional video platform (e.g. 4oD, iPlayer) but also an enriched, additional experience.

Throughout the 1980s and 90s audiences became more active, critically aware and discriminating. This has led to a rejection of television in favour of genres exploring interactivity, niche interests and virtual reality where viewing is replaced by active participation.

Cross-platform content creates permeable boundaries and intertextuality between forms, blurring the boundaries between producer, distributor, consumer and reviewer. Content is not always top down publisher-led, but blogs, chat rooms and message boards create a market for perishable, instant content. Interactivity also allows for emotive, collective participatory experiences.

Also dubbed “transmedia” storytelling or “polymorphic narrative”, multi-platform creates different entry points into the product’s heavily franchised world. And many platforms equates to more cash – there are more platforms for a brand than ever before. But it’s not a noughties phenomenon: “Wizard of Oz” was a book (1900) then a stage play (1902), then a film in 1910 and 1939, which spawned variations like “The Wiz” and “Wicked”. The heavy corporate hand has been a part of transmedia rich history; the first Broadway production of Oz featured its own sponsor placement content: the Irish wizard sings “Budweiser is a friend of mine”.

Interactive drama – a brief history

Online interactive drama is a synthesis of broadcast drama, live role play, game play and interactive social media, relying heavily on a sense of user engagement, interactivity and playfulness. However, interactivity creates a dilemma of intellectual property – who ‘owns’ the content, therefore who can exploit and monetise it? Fan fiction – cultural fan production – especially creates added dilemmas. Harry Potter Puppet Pals, a totally unauthorised puppet response to the films and novels of JK Rowling, is gathering quite a following of its own thanks to bottom-up user platforms like YouTube.

Interactive drama is an evolving phenomenon, relatively immature in its development. The first experiments (2001-5) were single platform with “Wheel of Fortune” (2001), broadcast simultaneously on Radio 3, Radio 4 and online where viewers were told to ‘bet now’ to access 90 million possible permutations of the story. This complex, futuristic approach was later replaced with the controlled and easily understood method of voting – viewers chose between three ‘voices’ in Radio 4’s “The Dark House” (2003) voting on a love triangle on Five’s “Family Affair” (2004) and a life or death ending in “Casualty” (BBC1, 2005).

The next wave (2005-7) productions were more truly interactive, exploiting the nuances of the internet. Nickelodeon’s CGI animated “Jimmy Neutron” was an early 360 degree cross-platform application – existing on TV, video, comic, internet and film. BBC’s “Jamie K” and “Wanabees” (2006), both aimed at teens, could be seen as the first interactive dramas – ‘broadcast’ online, allowing the characters’ ‘friends’ (online viewers) to vote and build up ‘friendship scores’.

During this period, broadcast drama became increasingly cross-platform e.g. “Dr Who” (BBC) online games relating to plotlines, “Hollyoaks” (Channel 4) enhanced content on mobile phones and “Skins” (E4) mini-‘webisodes’ available online. Interactivity allowed for deeper character development and for users to interact more intensively than in the weekly broadcast of a typical TV soap opera.

“Dubplate Drama” (2005), commissioned by E4 and MTV Base, was an interactive format for TV, similar to the 1980s publishing phenomenon of Bantam’s “Choose Your Own Adventure” books. A six-part gritty urban drama about grime musicians, it starred urban celebrities Miss Dynamite and Rodney P (So Solid Crew) and was available on 3 mobile network and Sony’s PSP. Each episode ended in a dilemma cliff hanger, encouraging viewers to text in what they should do next. The producers believed the social element of the drama as a means of getting teenagers to discuss complex social issues.

Kate Modern – drama played out online

KateModern is an online, interactive drama commissioned by Bebo – the UK’s most popular social networking site with 31 million users, predominantly youth and teen. Bebo proves a great proposition for marketers: users spend on average 41 minutes online, making it a more “sticky” platform than television, and a means of reaching the lucrative teen market, turning off their TVs in droves.

Aimed at teens, it is part-comedy, part-drama, part-mystery (described as “a kind of Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Skins”) telling the story of troubled art student Kate and her three friends. Running from July to December 2007, users can send messages to the characters, help solve puzzles, vote and generally participate in the story. The interactivity is principally through the Bebo network rather than the ‘vote now’ model, however, few episodes are shot at a time, allowing for user feedback to be accommodated within a defined plot arc. This is a revolution from the pre-digital means of influencing drama where a letter to the editor or BBC’s “Points of View” (featuring the ever-youthful Anne Robinson and her infuriating wink) would be the primary form of viewer feedback (other than voting with the off switch).

KateModern is produced by the team behind the Lonelygirl15 phenomenon – the most subscribed YouTube channel showing the diaries of an attractive American teen who becomes embroiled in cult activities – which intrigued and frustrated new media exponents and marketers, and was later revealed to be staged.

Set in London and boasting a cast including Ralf Little (“The Royle Family”), it combines the inter­activity of social networking – where fans can do everything from commenting on episodes to interacting with characters – with scripted “webisodes”. It is a UK sister series to Lonelygirl15 - aping its ideas of an undercurrent of horror, cult themes and humours – but KateModern stays in the realm of fiction, encouraging the intense quasi-realistic relationships between viewers and makers in soap operas.

Live events including concerts and “flash mobs” link the real with the fictitious world. Actual up-and-coming band, “The Days” feature in the plot, with the intent of leaving viewers guessing what is real and what is fiction.

With a speculated £1 million budget – similar to a comparable terrestrial drama series – KateModern is commissioned by Bebo and financed by sponsors including MSN, Pantene, Gillette and Orange who have difficulty reaching a youth market on TV. Unlike typical film and TV product placement, the brands are integrated into characters’ dialogues and plotlines. This links with recent advertising trends of integrated marketing, brand profile and below-the-line marketing e.g. ‘seeding’ discussion of brands in internet chat rooms. Paramount Pictures UK used the drama to get characters to discuss plotlines from their new horror film “Disturbia” and episodes mirrored the film’s plot and themes.

The writing team behind KateModern are Luke Hyams (“Dubplate Drama”) and Hazel Grian. Hazel has a varied background as an actress, writer and director in TV, theatre, short films, animation and radio, working particularly in improvisation, comedy and science fiction. Prior to KateModern she created MeiGeist, an Alternative Reality Game, collaborating with HP Labs and Watershed Media Centre, which was the first to use video in addition to actors, live events and online game play. Regular short-listing in Watershed’s Depict! 90 second film challenge was a good learning ground for things to come.

Luke and Hazel’s writing process started with a sketch of characters and the same genre and rules as LonelyGirl15. Unlike TV soaps, each episode was micro, condensed and variable length, running from one to four minutes (15 to 20 minutes of content a week). The narrative presents a single vision (i.e. each episode is self-contained) and linearity but recognising it may be experienced in non-linear fashion, and to appeal to the ‘YouTube generation’ who prefer short bursts of activity and will likely fast-forward what they see as ‘the boring bits’.

The directing is intentionally lo-fi ‘guerilla’ style, with no ‘hidden cameras’ but video diary style, with characters seen reportage recording on mini-DV cameras and mobile phones, with intentionally staged ‘pieces to camera’ rather than the usually ‘fourth wall’ theatre or television drama approach. The production is more similar to user generated content video uploaded to YouTube than “Play of the Day”.

Hazel’s greatest challenge as a writer was working with sponsor brands to make product integration fit with the show’s dark material – like reflecting Ralph Little’s excitement at installing a wireless router and integrating references to Tampax (‘What, is she on her period again?!’). Hazel believes:

“The advertiser dominated framework made me experience what it was like to work in 1950s television on the original advertiser soap operas.”

Some product placement worked better than others as a natural synergy between brands and actions e.g. Live Maps and MSN Messenger – but the constant ‘name checks’ can grate on the viewer. The character Charlie works in PR and creates viral adverts for brands within the narrative, making the advertising self-referential.

Hazel believes interactivity creates a richer user experience – a role play between audience and producer. It creates a new dimension and depth of exploration with a story, from ‘lurkers’ to active participants and hardcore fans. It also creates a complex relationship – Babylon 5 producer J Michael Straczinski went online daily responding to fans posts. Hazel posted ‘in character’ as Kate, responding to fans posts and messages (she later trained a junior web producer to do this). Interactivity and reaction is essential to the dramatic believability of the form. Hazel believes that future audiences:

“…will not simply be ‘viewing’ or ‘watching’ interspersed with an injection of hated, in your face advertising. What you will be producing for your audiences must be commissioned and sponsored ‘experiences’. Film and television will have the feel of live theatre. Cinema and radio with the feel of a conversation.”

The show’s Executive Producer, Miles Beckett, believes “viewers interact with the characters in a way which is impossible with television.” Yet the rules of ‘old media’ drama are still tightly obeyed: “We have very consistent conflict, resolution, cliff hanger at the end of the week, A-plot action, B-plot character and interpersonal development.”

The jury is out on the popularity of KateModern. Although scoring three million views in its first eight weeks, in interactive media, the depth of interaction is more significant than numbers and viewer’s belief in the show’s authenticity could be compromised with its overt in-your-face productisation. All sponsors have signed for a second season, indicating they belief the association is boosting their brand. KateModern is a microcosm of contemporary entertainment convergence –interlinking localisation (based in London), regionalisation (a UK version of a US format) and globalisation (distributed to a potential global audience).

Hazel believes the future of interactive drama will be a TV-style model of broadcaster fee with core sponsors, not product placements. She is currently working on a production with Henry Normal/Steve Coogan’s Baby Cow productions sponsored by Ford. Rumours of a MySpace interactive drama at $400,000 per episode may be greatly exaggerated, but Bebo have already commissioned its next online hit: “Sofia’s Diary”.

Hazel believes comedy and parody work best for online drama – serious online drama doesn’t yet work yet as the medium itself is not yet considered serious. Interactive drama is still seminal and embryonic – investment and publicity is skewed more in its innovation than in meaningful content. But she remains optimistic of the future: “New roles are emerging from new forms of entertainment; I feel I am not at the forefront at an exciting time.”

The jury is likely to be out for some time on the uptake of interactive drama. The non-linearity of interactive drama may encroach a dramatic vision and never step out of the deepness of Hollyoaks. However, rich integration of character, personalised responses and the ability to influence action may in time prove a more rich medium, closer to emulating the emotive responsive of theatre than television or film. Many computer games already combine live action film or humanistic CGI characters within sophisticated interactive platforms, shaped by the user’s vision and their unique exploration of the game’s virtual world.

The trend for users migrating their time away from broadcasting and onto interactive platforms is likely to continue, and so will evolve how new hybrid medias work with audiences to create collective dialogues (e.g. MMROGs, social networks) and new interpretations of dramatic forms.

This one day event, Unwired’s Worktech North, brought to the shores of Salford Quays, Manchester c/o the North West Development Agency and MediaCity:UK, explored a futurologists and near futurologists vision of how digital technologies will evolve cities, and specifically our workplaces. Speakers from world-leading digital city projects in Spain, Finland, USA and UK gave us an insight into the workplace technologies of the near-future and new digital design for work and living.

Michael Joroff, a guru among many from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, started off by telling us:

A city is a city.
A ‘second city’ is a city in Second Life.
A ‘third city’ is a connection between the physical and virtual, like a phone call connects the physical using virtual technology. A world of ‘bricks and clicks’ – both are needed, yet some things you can only do in one and some things only in both places.

‘Media city’ becomes not physical but a place in your mind.

Ambient technology, or pervasive technology, is experienced any time, any place. Wifi allows you to respond to your environment – in the future broadband/wifi will become the norm, cities without it will be disadvantaged.

What the media city will look like:

• Digital cities will have experimental street lighting – bright for single women, playful colours when the pubs close.

• Responsive buildings with “skins” will respond to their inhabitants – depending on volume, density, time of day etc.

• Interactive transport – delivery based on demand rather than a rigid timetable.

• Interactive kiosks – build around communities of interest.

• Also permeable walkways, interactive buildings with interactive display screens.

Then let’s all have a ‘flash mob party’ – it happened in Feb 07 when 300o people arrived through a bluetooth message in Paddington to come down to the station, tune in to a channel and dance, silently, listening to the DJ playing on their iPods.

Jose Carlos Arnal told us about the Digital Mile project.

Zaragoza is Spain’s 6th largest city. Spain’s ambition is for 50Mb connectivity – the ‘digital divide’ in the future will be between not the ‘have’s’ and the ‘have not’s’ but between high and low speeds of connectivity – everyone will need to be digitally literate in the 21st century.

The Digital Mile, developed with Massachusetts Institute of Technology, incorporates pervasive media into all parts of the public realm in an experiment to enable technology to make the space more useful, enjoyable, playful, and colour the user’s mood.

Permeated by a central digital walkway, virtual waterfalls and interactive fountains are triggered by commands. Intelligent street lighting adjusts according to time, day and artistic expression. Street furniture pratically displays timetables, menus, parking availability.

Kari Raina then talked about another future city in Arabianranta (Helsinki Virtual Village), a residential area which the Helsinki authorities want to transform into a leading centre for design and industry before the decade end. Then there will be 10,000 residents, 8,000 jobs and 6,000 students there. It is part of a European network of living labs. Raina claims there is a need for political and business leaders to have buy in and believe in the benefits of investing in the digital city.

Each household appoints an eHousemanager prior to moving onto the site and six universities and technical colleges in the city worked together to produce content. Apartments all have 10Mb broadband installed, there is a household of mentally disabled people – it’s a true social experiment in an inclusive, digital community. People are inspired to come here to share the experience.

Philip Vanhoette from Plantronics and Philip Ross from Cordless Group talked about “Technology in the Digital Age”.

Vanhouette argues that broadband is essential – like hot water…or loo roll.

Terrifyingly, email represents 40% of all our communications, taking up a minimum of 2 hours a day (10 years a lifetime!). Of which 1/3 are irrelevant, 1/3 are important, 1/3 are essential.

Microsoft’s Powerpoint is 20 years old – some sectors (like sales) spend 50% of their time reading, preparing and presenting with it.

Hard rules (from Ross’s 2006 book “Space to Work – Space Strategies for Knowledge Workers” – Jeremy Myerson and Phillip Ross):

• Presentations sent to everyone 24 hours before meeting

• Bonuses for short meetings

• Red light messenger – switch off more regularly, don’t be ‘always on’

Comprising of a wheel in 4 quadrants, put simply, spaces to work break down into:

• Academy (colleagues) HIGH VISIBLE Agora (customers)

• Lodge (family) live/work LOW VISIBLE Guild (peers) collaborative

The UK has too many ‘landscape’ open plan offices – too many distractions and too loud.

A nomadic worker’s dream: cheap/free wifi and a quiet lounge.

Philip Ross continued. MySpace has 480 million users, but Murdoch is a digital immigrant not a digital native.

Work is changing:

• 1 in 4 children have a web page

• 1 in 2 people have worked for their company less than 5 years

• A new blog is created every second

• 2.7 billion google searches performed daily

• The number of SMS sent daily exceed population of the planet

• Reading The Times for one week contains more knowledge than a 16th century person learnt in their lifetime

• The speed of knowledge doubles every 72 hours

• Half of what you are taught on your degree is out of date by the end of 1st year

• 33 million in US use mobile to surf web

• By 2011 there will be 4 billion mobile phones

• By 2050, a £500 computer will be more powerful than the entire human species

Not to scare you or anything.

The solution?
The semantic web – FUSE – Find, Use, Share, Expand

You cannot control, only improve. Life and work is a continual Beta (like Google, everything in perpetual Beta). Google is the most valuable brand in the world at $80 billion.

Digital cities are about interconnecting objects – in the future devices will talk to each other.

Pervasive internet/ubiquitous computing/machine-to-machine communications – all terms for “the internet of things”.

• RFID – they now build 1.7 billion units a year, at just 4 cents a piece

• RFID – digital mousetrap in Wembley Stadium

• RFID – food products, log on to web to see what’s in your fridge

• RFID – your washing machine – knows what clothes you’ve put in, the machine does washing automatically

• RFID – Walmart replace the barcode with RFID tags

Clive Wilkinson, one of the world’s leading workplace architects, took the mantle with his talk on “Creative Space at Work”.

Workplace needs to be fit for the IDEA, to advance the PRODUCTION economy.

Small company = extended family
Large company = a community, with complex problems

Planning ideas he helped to deliver:

• WIRED magazine – ‘slinky planning’ – ‘leaking’, creates neighbourhoods

• Chiata – advertising ‘village’ – 500 people on one floor, creatives next to ‘central park’, basketball court, ‘main street’

• Palotta – office made of used shipping containers

• Mother (London) – started as 6 people at the kitchen table, which grew and grew… now UK’s No. 1 ad agency, big planks of kitchen tables. 4 week ‘random rotation’ of desks.
  

Google HQ project
Objectives:

• 1 – Circulation

• 2 – Enclosed meeting space

• 3 – Network learning

• 4 – Work/life balance

• “hot” areas – community, louder, social

• “cold” areas – private, studious

They created permeable spaces/zones:

• Meeting tree – permanent

• Slinky zone – temporary

• Service zone – on demand

• Club house – always there

Frank Duffy from DEGW (author of “The New Office”) chaired the concluding panel discussion on “Creating the Digital Workplace”.

Duffy gave an insightful overview of the history of workplace design. Workplaces are ‘mini cities’.

• 21st century office = security, sustainability, serendipity – the networked office – modular

• 20th century Taylorist Office – destroying guilds and workplace, creating the production line. Control – people in their place. Towerblocks – hierarchical – developer led

• Social Democratic Office (post WWII) – shared spaces

• 19th century, Bank of England – a walled ‘fortress’ but with public places for clients to walk which became an attraction

Business imperatives drive design – potential exceeded by measurables (the easiest things to measure are usually the least important)

In the future, patterns of work and usage of cities/places will become more variable (varying density) and more permeable.

Chris Kane, Head of Workplace at BBC and leading the BBC’s input into MediaCity:UK talked more about the project and showed a rather overblown video about how great it will all be when it’s finished. Kari Raina earlier told us Salford was port of England, MediaCity will be the portal of England.

A Media City needs to holistic and mix A grade with B, C and D office space. It needs to be comfortable, in variance to its inhabitants, from luxury to rugged depending on what/whom.

Buildings should be ‘future proof’, to change in the future, internal more important than external architecture.

In conclusion, many of the ideas and designs discussed today were futuristic, dazzling and almost unbelievable – were it not for the fact that they are already happening. It seems a long way from reality that media cities and advanced workplace technologies will be implemented by anything but the most leading edge companies and most progressive (and wealthy) town planners. Despite a recent trade mission by Arts Council West Midlands, Linz is still a long way from Coventry. And when it comes to civic design on a grand scale, the political buy-in and funds need to be in place – a hard battle for many British cities tackling great needs in housing, education and economic change.