Alternate Reality Game
An alternate reality game is a form of narrative told using the real world as one of it’s vehicles. The story itself is driven and determined most heavily by “player” involvement.
From an outside perspective, i.e. non-players, they could easily confuse that game for a true to life story that is actually happening.
Alternate reality games generally make use of multiple different mediums to tell the story, which is generally written as the “game” is played out.
Ingress -an alternate reality game by Google for mobile devices.
Valve’s ARG – For their portal campaign
Halo’s Alternate Reality Game – This one was exceptionally strange from beginning to end.
Emoticons
Emoticons are generally faces or pictures drawn using punctuation and/or letters. Probably the most common and well known is the classic 🙂 .
While emoticons started out as a gimmick they have been embraced by our current technology and, I would argue, now serve a vital role in text based communications. Large enough a role that applications like the Emoji keyboard exist to facilitation the inclusion of small pictographic like representations easily and consistently through many text messages.
While emoticons might seem like they are only a playful, side effect of our “text culture” they serve vital roles in informing readers of the tone and context of short messages sent in text format which lack both our auditory vocal cues and physical body language. In many ways emoticons serve as a digital surrogate for body language, a shorthand for emotion.
Emoticons can also take more esoteric forms, as memes, like the “i dunno lol” ¯\(°_o)/¯ or the “look of disapproval” ಠ_ಠ.
Are emoticons the future of language?– PBS off the books
iemoji – An online translator for turning text entirely into emojis
¯\(°_o)/¯
Flash Mob
Flash mobs are events that can only occur because of the instantaneous and ubiquitous nature of our communication framework. Basically, they involve people rapidly assembling in some location and performing some sort of task/dance/performance/ something out of the ordinary in a public place for a very brief amount of time and then quickly leaving. This gatherings are usually facilitated using social media and mobile devices.
It has become very common to organize flash mobs around wedding proposals, or other significant events and then post those videos to social media. It has become a somewhat self-perpetuating cycle
UMaine Flash Mob-A flash mob in our very own domain
Christmas Themed Flash Mob A massive flash mob, organized in a mall
Geotagging
Geotagging is a growing trend with the rise of the smartphone, which attaches GPS data (Global positioning system) to different forms of media/actions. Media that can be Geotagged includes photos (taken from a smartphone), text messages, tweets, videos.
Due to the ubiquity of the smart phone there has been a major rise in the number of services that take advantage of geotagging or GPS capabilities of smartphones. Most weather apps will give realtime weather for the user’s current location, traffic services will provide alerts, Apple recently implemented a system in their calendar that gives estimated travel times to the user’s geotagged schedules. Services like 4 Square rely almost entirely on GPS services to function, and they allow users to “check in” to places and see the movements of their friends.
GPS is also used for less obvious and mainstream uses such a geocaching, and mobile games. Even so, the ubiquity of GPS system has raised privacy concerns for some.
Geocaching.org
FourSquare
Metadata
Grassroots Movement
A grassroots movement is a cause or some sort of progressive activism that comes about organically. Itis generally started from the local or community level and it not driven by any traditional power lead hierarchy.
The name grassroots is meant to emphasize the natural and emergent nature of the movement and to contrast it with traditionally lead movements.
Maine has a strong “grassroots” tendency and a history of movements on the local level.
How to Build a Grassroots movement – A TEDx talk
What is a Grassroots Movement?
Human-Computer Interaction
Human-computer Interaction is the study of how people engage with computers. This is a quickly growing field because of the increasingly large amount of technology a person will interact with everyday. Sometimes referred to as the intersection between computer science and psychology.
People who concern themselves with human-computer interaction are often called user experience designers. A UX experience designer will try to place themselves into the shoes of different demographics who will use what they are developing to discover flaws and ways that things could work better.
HCI
What the #$%@ is UX Design?
News Satire
News Satire is a old tradition, that has grown in popularity in recent times, in which classic journalism or news is mocked and parodied in order to point out the inherent absurdness of the source material or the way in which it is reported on.
This satire can take a number of different forms, but the defining form of recent times are websites. The Onion is probably the most well known, and it still manages to convince people that its articles are legitimate occasionally. This is probably because they can easily fake credibility on the internet and reach a wide audience by going viral. There are also a number of daily “news” programs that report in a satirical format, e.g. The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.
The Onion News Network
Christwire
The Colbert Report
The Daily Show
Podcast
A podcast is traditionally seen as a series of audio in a sequence that cover a topic. Often they are episodic in format and share similar structure throughout the series. They are called podcasts after apple “iPod” and the word “Broadcast”.
Even though podcasts are traditionally thought of to be audio , they have branched out recently into many different media and they name sticks because it has “become its metaphor”. Podcasts now regularly consist of video, and can be live or pre-recorded, scripted or unscripted, can contain music or other interactive elements. The idea of podcasting has sort of disseminated into other types of “personal” broadcast media, like the advent of Let’s Play videos on youtube and websites like twitch.tv and most recently the PS4 partnership with twitch.tv meaning the corporate model for gaming has embraced the idea of broadcast.
Twitch.tv
Podcast
Apple Podcasts
Public Art
The meaning of public art is evolving constantly. It’s most traditional meaning is any art that is placed/performed/built/engaged with in a shared public space. In that past that many meant solid, art installations but today we are seeing a massive shift in both the definition of art and what art can and does take place in public spaces.
While public art includes most “traditional” forms (sculptures, murals, painting, architecture) in recent times it has become more ephemeral. Public art has moved toward performances, , temporary installations and other forms or creative community enrichment often involving technology at their cores. Flash Mobs, street performers, graffiti artists, or ARGs could all be considered sources of “public art”.
Banksy A famous graffiti artist who has an international reputation
Jurassic Park in Real Life – A group of people recreate different movies in public places
Streaming
Streaming is the act of getting data, in most cases media of different kind, in realtime, while you are consuming in. There has been a massive surge in the amount of streaming that is occurring recently with the wide availably of high-speed internet and mobile devices.
There are many different things that can be streamed, pictures, videos, audio, data (say from a drone), weather data ect. If it’s something you think of it can probably be streamed.
There are also a large number of services free and commercial that provide streaming media to customers. Netflix, Hulu, HBO GO, Amazon Video are all examples of services that provide video streaming. Spotify, Pandora, and iTunes radio are all services that provide streaming audio. It is being said the next form of media is streaming, in the same way that the DVD replaced the video cassette and the DVD was replaced by blu-ray.
Transmedia Storytelling
Transmedia Storytelling is a form of storying tell that uses multiple digital technologies to tell different parts of experience of the same interlinked narrative. Most forms of mass media are becoming transmedia now. People can watch a TV show, then get web only content on their laptop, and pick up geolocation based bonus on their mobile by walking by a branded area. Advertising campaigns for blockbuster films are increasingly becoming dependent and gradually morphing more and more toward transmedia ARG’s then traditional advertising campaigns.
Marvel Cinematic Universe – Does this extensively between comics, online, and different movies
Capitol Couture– A transmedia story/ advertisement campaign for the massively popular Hunger Games series.
Upworthy.com
Upworthy.com is a website devoted to viral media with a cause. “Things that matter. Pass ’em on.” is one of their many mottos. They focus mainly on popularizing and generating buzz around viral media that have socially and politically progressive themes.
Upworthy was founded by Eli Pariser ( the original creator of MoveOn.org (which we talked about in class several times) and the former editor of The Onion (a satire news website).
Like Buzzfeed Upworthy tends to err on the side of a very distinctive naming scheme for the content, Upworthy generally has very long names that are both vague and uplifting at the same time.
Viral
Viral in its most general definition is anything that results in the replication or spread of an object.1
In the context of New Media, viral is a term applied when an idea or movement spreads through a network (i.e. The Internet or any of its subcommunities) and sees a massive increase in popularity over a relatively short period of time. The evidence of this popularity is often in Google searches/trends2, Twitter hashtags3, Tumblr reblogs4, Youtube views, Facebook likes and other forms of quantifiable sharing or interest.
“Objects” that go viral can be a number of different forms (dances, songs, social activism, images or phrases and many others). Often these objects become memes and inspire online communities to create parodies and remixes.
“Gangnam Style”
Gangnam style is a song and music video by the Korean superstar Psy. It went viral in mid-2012 and is currently the most viewed video on youtube with 1.76 billion views as of September 2013.
“Kony 2012”
Kony 2012 is a documentary produced by Invisible Children which garnered 100 million views in just 6 days giving it the dubious title of “most viral video ever”.
Webcomic
Webcomics are the 21st century equivalent of the comic section in the Sunday Newspaper. There are an enormous number of webcomics on the internet, likely because the internet serves as an easy way to both self publish and reach a very large number of possible viewers.
The most popular webcomics are generally spread through content aggregating sites, and also through social networks like facebook, tumblr, and buzzfeed. This comics have a wide variety of topics from math and language to the esoteric and weird.
Many webcomic creators have turned webcomic creation in their business like The Oatmeal, which has an exceptionally large viewer base which the website owner and author (Matthew Inman) leverages for activism, such as funding a Nicola Tesla museum.
