During a discussion with some colleagues yesterday it became apparent to me that recently I had stopped talking about transmedial narrative and started using simply the phrase transmedial! This change in words did not mark a change in direction for me and my reading , I still intend to focus on issues around copy right and transmedial narrative , no what it says is that we all must be aware what we are saying when we say it.
Transmedial simply refers to a situation where either the creator or the viewer combine a number of different media types together to create a new and greater story. Transmedial narrative describes a situation where the artist has set out to create a world within which across media platforms his / her audience can interact and enjoy a much deeper richer story experience than can normally be achieved in a normal non transmedial setting.
Part of the journey of the transmedial artist is the invitation he/she sends to their audienec to come and play , it is this positive invitation to become part of the creative process that I feels challenges the moral underpinning of ideas like ownership ad copy right.
Friday, 26 October 2012
Thursday, 18 October 2012
Work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction.
Walter Benjamin (1936).
In his seminal work " the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction" Walter Benjamin offers a new theory about art based on the ideas of Marx and his critique of capitalism. Radical and challenging at the time of writing. Benjamin's work still offers some insight into the challenges of today, as we move not from the preindustrial to post-industrial world, but from a pre-digital to post-digital.
The challenges to pre-existing ideas of art and creativity that Benjamin identifies in the change from manual reproduction to mechanical reproduction are similar in some ways, to the challenges of art, creativity and ownership that we now face as we move from analog based mediums to digital world.
Benjamin, begins his essay by discussing the concepts of originality and authenticity. He trys to describe what happens to theses concepts when they are confronted by reproduction both manual and mechanical.
Benjamin identifies a qualitative difference in the impact that reproduction is on an original artwork ,when that reproduction is undertaken manually, as opposed to when that reproduction takes place mechanically. Pointing to developments in the reproduction of an image or picture. Benjamin shows the way in which changes in methods of reproduction can also directly change the impact that the image or artwork will have on the audience. Within this discussion, he explores the way in which changes in reproduction of media have of themselves led to almost demanded changes in the medium itself.
" Just as lithography, virtually implied. The illustrated newspaper showed the photography foreshadow the sound film,"
In a similar I suggest that the digitalisation of existing analogue mediums and their subsequent convergence foreshadowed and the development of Transmedial narrative. In essence, once you have the ability to combine the film sounds, music, pictures and words onto one single digital platform social, creative, and methods of production would evolve to take advantage of this new opportunity.
In order to explain these new technologies and methods of reproduction on the audience Benjamin explored ideas on authenticity and originality.
" Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one. Its presence in time and space. Its unique existence at the place, which happens to be."
Benjamin offers us the idea that a piece of art has its own or an aura, which is created by its physical place in the world. It is this aura that marks the original as different from the reproduction.
When faced with the manual reproduction, Benjamin states that the original retains its authority, its aura remains unchanged. Lacking the historical providence of the original the manual reproduction, will generally be seen as a forgery.
When confronted with a mechanical reproduction. For example of of the picture or a scene in Benjamin states that the original artifact is faced with new challenges. Challenges created by the mechanical reproductions, independence from the original artifact. So for example, photographic reproduction, may with the aid of certain processes such as slow motion, , enlargement, capture an images which would escape the natural vision. So if the original were announced. Secondly, the mechanical reproduction can put an artefact in a situation out of reach of the original itself.
" By making many reproduction is a substitute plurality of copies for a unique existence and in permitting the reproduction to meet holder or listener in their own particular situation it really activates the object reproduced."
From this first part of Benjamin's work we may see a clue as to why digital immigrants have so many problems regulating digital natives in the realm of copyright in a Transmedial environment. The key element to Benjamin's theories is the concept of the physical presence. For Benjamin, in order for something to be copy or reproduced there must be a physical artefact created as the original. So, for Benjamin, a photograph is a physical mechanical reproduction of something that the photographer has seen. The mechanical reproduction itself can be reproduced and lead to the creation of a new physical product. So, that could mean a new negative or a new photograph created from the negative. But whatever it is is a physical product. With digital, and often with Transmedial creations there is no physical product , no hard copy, no photograph, no statue, no film in a can, no physical presence at all in time or space. Simply a group of one's and zeros stored in computer memory. There really is no context to take them out of. Digital/Transmedial creation exist within a digital world, which has no sense of time or location outside of itself. Each time you see, a Transmedial digital creation you see in new product. Original! There are no copies, no forgeries, just new original. Each viewing as original as the one before.
If those who try to regulate the digital world. See it through analog eyes and understand originality, art and creativity as a process which leads to a physical product. Then, clearly, the legislation, they write will have difficulties dealing with a process that leads to something else.
Walter Benjamin (1936).
In his seminal work " the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction" Walter Benjamin offers a new theory about art based on the ideas of Marx and his critique of capitalism. Radical and challenging at the time of writing. Benjamin's work still offers some insight into the challenges of today, as we move not from the preindustrial to post-industrial world, but from a pre-digital to post-digital.
The challenges to pre-existing ideas of art and creativity that Benjamin identifies in the change from manual reproduction to mechanical reproduction are similar in some ways, to the challenges of art, creativity and ownership that we now face as we move from analog based mediums to digital world.
Benjamin, begins his essay by discussing the concepts of originality and authenticity. He trys to describe what happens to theses concepts when they are confronted by reproduction both manual and mechanical.
Benjamin identifies a qualitative difference in the impact that reproduction is on an original artwork ,when that reproduction is undertaken manually, as opposed to when that reproduction takes place mechanically. Pointing to developments in the reproduction of an image or picture. Benjamin shows the way in which changes in methods of reproduction can also directly change the impact that the image or artwork will have on the audience. Within this discussion, he explores the way in which changes in reproduction of media have of themselves led to almost demanded changes in the medium itself.
" Just as lithography, virtually implied. The illustrated newspaper showed the photography foreshadow the sound film,"
In a similar I suggest that the digitalisation of existing analogue mediums and their subsequent convergence foreshadowed and the development of Transmedial narrative. In essence, once you have the ability to combine the film sounds, music, pictures and words onto one single digital platform social, creative, and methods of production would evolve to take advantage of this new opportunity.
In order to explain these new technologies and methods of reproduction on the audience Benjamin explored ideas on authenticity and originality.
" Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one. Its presence in time and space. Its unique existence at the place, which happens to be."
Benjamin offers us the idea that a piece of art has its own or an aura, which is created by its physical place in the world. It is this aura that marks the original as different from the reproduction.
When faced with the manual reproduction, Benjamin states that the original retains its authority, its aura remains unchanged. Lacking the historical providence of the original the manual reproduction, will generally be seen as a forgery.
When confronted with a mechanical reproduction. For example of of the picture or a scene in Benjamin states that the original artifact is faced with new challenges. Challenges created by the mechanical reproductions, independence from the original artifact. So for example, photographic reproduction, may with the aid of certain processes such as slow motion, , enlargement, capture an images which would escape the natural vision. So if the original were announced. Secondly, the mechanical reproduction can put an artefact in a situation out of reach of the original itself.
" By making many reproduction is a substitute plurality of copies for a unique existence and in permitting the reproduction to meet holder or listener in their own particular situation it really activates the object reproduced."
From this first part of Benjamin's work we may see a clue as to why digital immigrants have so many problems regulating digital natives in the realm of copyright in a Transmedial environment. The key element to Benjamin's theories is the concept of the physical presence. For Benjamin, in order for something to be copy or reproduced there must be a physical artefact created as the original. So, for Benjamin, a photograph is a physical mechanical reproduction of something that the photographer has seen. The mechanical reproduction itself can be reproduced and lead to the creation of a new physical product. So, that could mean a new negative or a new photograph created from the negative. But whatever it is is a physical product. With digital, and often with Transmedial creations there is no physical product , no hard copy, no photograph, no statue, no film in a can, no physical presence at all in time or space. Simply a group of one's and zeros stored in computer memory. There really is no context to take them out of. Digital/Transmedial creation exist within a digital world, which has no sense of time or location outside of itself. Each time you see, a Transmedial digital creation you see in new product. Original! There are no copies, no forgeries, just new original. Each viewing as original as the one before.
If those who try to regulate the digital world. See it through analog eyes and understand originality, art and creativity as a process which leads to a physical product. Then, clearly, the legislation, they write will have difficulties dealing with a process that leads to something else.
Wednesday, 10 October 2012
Digital immigrants digital natives copyright law!
In his seminal work on the education system in the early 2000 entitled Digital immigrants, digital natives. Marc Prensky explores the gap that he saw between the students and their teachers. The students he saw as digital natives, individuals born into a digital world, surrounded by computers and the Internet, video games, cell phones and digital music from birth. He saw the teachers as digital immigrants, individuals born into a pre-digital world, and grafted an understanding of this new digital world onto a worldview developed in an analogue age; an age without cell phones, Digital music, computers or the Internet.
Prensky saw the gap between the digital native and a digital immigrant. As more than simply cosmetic, clothes, music, slang, except. He saw it as a fundamental change in the way these two groups thought and viewed the world. He suggested that the students brains and physically change and that they thought patterns were different from those of the digital immigrant.
I think that this idea of native and immigrant can help us to understand why the enforcement of copyright law and the regulation of intellectual property within the digital environment has proved so difficult. I suggest that the native versus immigrant conflict, which Prensky identifies as happening within the educational system is also happening here and now within the legal system . The digital native born into a digital environment, constantly pushing the boundaries of both the technology and the medium , exploring their digital world; and the digital immigrants attempting to fence in the native and control this exploration through copyright and international intellectual property legislation.
Prensky talks about first-generation digital natives, we now face the world of second and third generation of digital natives. Individuals who have grown up not simply with computers videogames, cell phones and digital music, but in a world dominated by the connectivity of the world wide web. A world of social media, file sharing, and active consumption. A world where the consumer does not passivley accept the media which is placed before him,but expects to be an active part of that creative process. Responding directly to what they have seen heard and read.
Prensky states that the difference between the digital immigrant, and the digital native is far more than just cosmetic. The digital native, and the digital immigrant, and do not simply wear different clothes, and listen to different music. They think about the world in completely different ways..
"our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language."
This conflict between digital immigrant and digital native has moved out of the classroom and into the court room. We now have a system where digital immigrant legislators who speak an outdated pre-digital language, are struggling to create new laws to regulate a population of digital natives who speak an entirely new post digital language.
To the Digital Natives - school often feels pretty much as if we’ve brought in a population of heavily accented, unintelligible foreigners to lecture them.They often can’t understand what the Immigrants are saying.
Prensky
A similar gap appears to exist between the digital immigrants, who are in control copyright and the digital natives who want to use the copy written material within the digital arena. The immigrants see the natives as pirates and thieves, or simply misguided who can either be bludgeoned or educated into accepting copyright regulation and the natives and see the copyright owners as oppressive, stifling, exploitative.
Recording industry Association of America website titled stance on digital piracy for
Q: What is the RIAA's official stance on digital music piracy?
It’s commonly known as “piracy,” but that’s too benign of a term to adequately describe the toll that music theft takes on the enormous cast of industry players working behind the scenes to bring music to your ears. That cast includes songwriters, recording artists, audio engineers, computer technicians, talent scouts and marketing specialists, producers, publishers and countless others.
While downloading one song may not feel that serious of a crime, the accumulative impact of millions of songs downloaded illegally - and without any compensation to all the people who helped to create that song and bring it to fans - is devastating."
At the ACMA Young Citizens in a Changing Media World forum earlier this week, one of the young speakers said " young people “don’t care” about internet piracy because the moral codes of their generation differ from those of generations before them.
“I think for young people, our morals and our guidelines are very different to perhaps what our parents’ generation, our grandparents’ generations think is right or wrong,” said 18-year-old Ella.
Network Ten’s head of children’s television and documentary unit, Cherrie Bottger, who was one of the adult speakers at the forum, attributed this indifference towards copyright piracy and infringement among young people to a lack of education on the issue.
However, Ella knocked back claims that young people were uneducated on the subject and instead, reiterated: “I think a lot of young people do understand that the song or movie they clicked or whatever it was does belong to someone else… The thing is, young people don't care.”
http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/409812/youth_increasingly_apathetic_towards_internet_piracy/
• Diana Nguyen (Computerworld)
• 09 December, 2011 13:22
Transmedial narrative; the economic and legal structures, which grow up around it may well be the next battleground for this ongoing conflict between digital immigrant and digital native. Can a legislative system, drawn up by digital immigrants, regulate successfully an environment created and dominated by digital natives. It is the digital natives, who are now and will be tomorrow to consumers of the copy written material owned and guarded by digital immigrants. I will continue to explore this conflict between native and immigrant with in a Transmedial setting in blogs to come.
Prensky saw the gap between the digital native and a digital immigrant. As more than simply cosmetic, clothes, music, slang, except. He saw it as a fundamental change in the way these two groups thought and viewed the world. He suggested that the students brains and physically change and that they thought patterns were different from those of the digital immigrant.
I think that this idea of native and immigrant can help us to understand why the enforcement of copyright law and the regulation of intellectual property within the digital environment has proved so difficult. I suggest that the native versus immigrant conflict, which Prensky identifies as happening within the educational system is also happening here and now within the legal system . The digital native born into a digital environment, constantly pushing the boundaries of both the technology and the medium , exploring their digital world; and the digital immigrants attempting to fence in the native and control this exploration through copyright and international intellectual property legislation.
Prensky talks about first-generation digital natives, we now face the world of second and third generation of digital natives. Individuals who have grown up not simply with computers videogames, cell phones and digital music, but in a world dominated by the connectivity of the world wide web. A world of social media, file sharing, and active consumption. A world where the consumer does not passivley accept the media which is placed before him,but expects to be an active part of that creative process. Responding directly to what they have seen heard and read.
Prensky states that the difference between the digital immigrant, and the digital native is far more than just cosmetic. The digital native, and the digital immigrant, and do not simply wear different clothes, and listen to different music. They think about the world in completely different ways..
"our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language."
This conflict between digital immigrant and digital native has moved out of the classroom and into the court room. We now have a system where digital immigrant legislators who speak an outdated pre-digital language, are struggling to create new laws to regulate a population of digital natives who speak an entirely new post digital language.
To the Digital Natives - school often feels pretty much as if we’ve brought in a population of heavily accented, unintelligible foreigners to lecture them.They often can’t understand what the Immigrants are saying.
Prensky
A similar gap appears to exist between the digital immigrants, who are in control copyright and the digital natives who want to use the copy written material within the digital arena. The immigrants see the natives as pirates and thieves, or simply misguided who can either be bludgeoned or educated into accepting copyright regulation and the natives and see the copyright owners as oppressive, stifling, exploitative.
Recording industry Association of America website titled stance on digital piracy for
Q: What is the RIAA's official stance on digital music piracy?
It’s commonly known as “piracy,” but that’s too benign of a term to adequately describe the toll that music theft takes on the enormous cast of industry players working behind the scenes to bring music to your ears. That cast includes songwriters, recording artists, audio engineers, computer technicians, talent scouts and marketing specialists, producers, publishers and countless others.
While downloading one song may not feel that serious of a crime, the accumulative impact of millions of songs downloaded illegally - and without any compensation to all the people who helped to create that song and bring it to fans - is devastating."
At the ACMA Young Citizens in a Changing Media World forum earlier this week, one of the young speakers said " young people “don’t care” about internet piracy because the moral codes of their generation differ from those of generations before them.
“I think for young people, our morals and our guidelines are very different to perhaps what our parents’ generation, our grandparents’ generations think is right or wrong,” said 18-year-old Ella.
Network Ten’s head of children’s television and documentary unit, Cherrie Bottger, who was one of the adult speakers at the forum, attributed this indifference towards copyright piracy and infringement among young people to a lack of education on the issue.
However, Ella knocked back claims that young people were uneducated on the subject and instead, reiterated: “I think a lot of young people do understand that the song or movie they clicked or whatever it was does belong to someone else… The thing is, young people don't care.”
http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/409812/youth_increasingly_apathetic_towards_internet_piracy/
• Diana Nguyen
• 09 December, 2011 13:22
Transmedial narrative; the economic and legal structures, which grow up around it may well be the next battleground for this ongoing conflict between digital immigrant and digital native. Can a legislative system, drawn up by digital immigrants, regulate successfully an environment created and dominated by digital natives. It is the digital natives, who are now and will be tomorrow to consumers of the copy written material owned and guarded by digital immigrants. I will continue to explore this conflict between native and immigrant with in a Transmedial setting in blogs to come.
Wednesday, 3 October 2012
After a break of almost a year I am back, exploring transmedia and blogging about the things I find.
The focus of my exploration will be changing from trying to define transmedial narrative , to understanding copyright/ ownership within a transmedial setting.
I am now preparing for my dissertation which I will hope to have in draft form by Christmas 2012! I have decided to look at transmedial narrative and copyright as the subject of my dissertation. I have not formulated the question yet , but I want to explore the tension that exists between transmedial narrative and copyright as it is currently stated in the UK and the USA.
One of the key elements of transmedial narrative is audience participation , the consumer becomes part of the creative process. The consumer extends and creates new material by his /her interaction with the author of the transmedial narrative and so the owner of the intellectual property generated by it.
A recent article that highlights the challenges of Copyright in a transmedial space:
http://www.lawyersweekly.ca/index.php?section=article&articleid=1690
Fifty Shades of Grey, the erotic novel written by author E.L. James, is a runaway bestseller and a popular phenomenon, but as Barbara Amiel recently pointed out: “There are some greyish (no pun intended) areas of copyright hovering about the trilogy.” Indeed, it’s a promising legal subject — Shades raises a host of complex transmedia legal issues.
The novel originated as a piece of online fan fiction titled Masters of the Universe, which, in turn, was based upon characters from the Twilight series of vampire novels written by Stephenie Meyer. Therefore, the author and publisher of the Shadestrilogy must have satisfied themselves that nothing in the trilogy’s “chain of title” infringed the copyright in these other works.
While some may dismiss Shades as lowbrow (Amiel describes it as “bog standard”), they may be missing the point. When fans upload, tweet, post or pin online their sub-stories, mash-ups, artwork and videos (with or without authorization), they become content co-creators, simultaneously pushing their “play and pleasure buttons” by participating in a method of storytelling that engages audiences across various multimedia platforms.
According to transmedia expert Henry Jenkins, this multiplatform story-telling method, where each story element makes its own unique contribution to the whole, is what is known in the entertainment industry as “transmedia.”
In shared story worlds or transmedia projects, fans are often encouraged to create title, character or story-based fan boards, games, videos or other content based on their favourite video game, movie or television series. Is this considered copyright infringement? Although some may consider this a legally grey or shadowy area, it is clear that under Canadian copyright law, authors have the exclusive right to control the reproduction and adaptation of their works into new formats and media.
By Tara Parker June 29th 2012
This is the same in both the USA and the UK is it right , or should we expect more from copyright protect, should the author be forced to share his / her IP ( intellectual property ) rights with those they have encouraged to become involved , infact those who have joined them in the creation of the new work?
The focus of my exploration will be changing from trying to define transmedial narrative , to understanding copyright/ ownership within a transmedial setting.
I am now preparing for my dissertation which I will hope to have in draft form by Christmas 2012! I have decided to look at transmedial narrative and copyright as the subject of my dissertation. I have not formulated the question yet , but I want to explore the tension that exists between transmedial narrative and copyright as it is currently stated in the UK and the USA.
One of the key elements of transmedial narrative is audience participation , the consumer becomes part of the creative process. The consumer extends and creates new material by his /her interaction with the author of the transmedial narrative and so the owner of the intellectual property generated by it.
A recent article that highlights the challenges of Copyright in a transmedial space:
http://www.lawyersweekly.ca/index.php?section=article&articleid=1690
| Transmedia’ a copyright grey area | |
Fifty Shades of Grey, the erotic novel written by author E.L. James, is a runaway bestseller and a popular phenomenon, but as Barbara Amiel recently pointed out: “There are some greyish (no pun intended) areas of copyright hovering about the trilogy.” Indeed, it’s a promising legal subject — Shades raises a host of complex transmedia legal issues.
The novel originated as a piece of online fan fiction titled Masters of the Universe, which, in turn, was based upon characters from the Twilight series of vampire novels written by Stephenie Meyer. Therefore, the author and publisher of the Shadestrilogy must have satisfied themselves that nothing in the trilogy’s “chain of title” infringed the copyright in these other works.
While some may dismiss Shades as lowbrow (Amiel describes it as “bog standard”), they may be missing the point. When fans upload, tweet, post or pin online their sub-stories, mash-ups, artwork and videos (with or without authorization), they become content co-creators, simultaneously pushing their “play and pleasure buttons” by participating in a method of storytelling that engages audiences across various multimedia platforms.
According to transmedia expert Henry Jenkins, this multiplatform story-telling method, where each story element makes its own unique contribution to the whole, is what is known in the entertainment industry as “transmedia.”
In shared story worlds or transmedia projects, fans are often encouraged to create title, character or story-based fan boards, games, videos or other content based on their favourite video game, movie or television series. Is this considered copyright infringement? Although some may consider this a legally grey or shadowy area, it is clear that under Canadian copyright law, authors have the exclusive right to control the reproduction and adaptation of their works into new formats and media.
By Tara Parker June 29th 2012
This is the same in both the USA and the UK is it right , or should we expect more from copyright protect, should the author be forced to share his / her IP ( intellectual property ) rights with those they have encouraged to become involved , infact those who have joined them in the creation of the new work?
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