Transmedia - attractor objects and signal trails

I have been away for a while, as I explained in previous posting , I had  a break and some bastard took my lap top .... Fcukers ... and be honest its taken me longer than expected to get my self back together. I haven't put pen to paper to advance my project the SEER really since the break in , but I spotted this article on the web and just had to blog about it.
http://goonth.posterous.com/transmedia-narrative-ecosystems-and-experienc

( I know it looks like I have missed a letter off the end of the sentence but trust me this link takes you to the site , so click and dive in, this takes the theory around transmedia narrative a step further, and certainly has made me think about my project in another way.)

"the analogy of ant and hive-like food gathering and pheromone signals to describe how the extraction & collaboration process gives rise to the evolution of new stories.

I am not really sure that I agree or even really understand this proposal, in essence it seems to be saying if you offer your potential audience an interesting enough narrative playground , and allow them to explore that world without restriction , then almost as an organic process new narrative lines will emerge from there exploration.

What is interesting is this idea of direct line between free exploration and emergence of new narrative.  The exploration is encouraged by the discovery of attractor objects by the consumers - and these attractor objects are identified within the text as written narratives;mash ups;tagging and geo-tagging - these attractor objects effectively creating a signal trail which the consumer follows and adds to as he/she collects the attractor objects - drawing them deeper and deeper into the transmedial narrative.

The area that I am not so sure about is the idea that this free exploration ( is it freeif you have your viewers/consumers following a trail which you have laid out for them!) the of itself leads to the creation of new narrative. I am not saying that it does not simply that I would like to know how often this is the case? How does the saying go , give a room full of monkeys a typewriter each and enough time and they'll produce Shakespeare - the question is always how long to give the monkeys and how often do they do it. I suppose my question would be how long do you need to give your participants to participate and how often do they do it?!

The phrases attractor objects and signal trails really chime for me because they encapsulate one of the ways in which I feel transmedial narrative work.  The micro narratives that surround and dissect the Macro narrative are the attractor objects which build over time into signal trails which lead reads/consumers into my transmedial world. SO in the SEER it will be the twitter feeds , blogs, and ,film , webisodes which act as attractor objects and signal trails leading people into the world of J.J and the Heath.

Time to start working on creating some attractor objects and signal trails!!!