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Symposium:
- ISEA2011: 17th International Symposium on Electronic Art
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Session Title:
- Transmedia Narrative: Modes of Digital Scholarship and Design Across Public Space
Presentation Title:
- Untitled
Presenter(s):
Venue(s):
Abstract:
Chair Person: Kristy Kang
Presenters: Rosemary Comella & Andreas KratkyThis panel will present a body of work by media artists, scholars and collaborators who comprise The Labyrinth Project – a Los Angeles based research initiative on interactive narrative at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. Under the direction of cultural theorist Marsha Kinder since 1997, Labyrinth has been working at the pressure point between theory and practice. With media artists Rosemary Comella, Kristy H.A. Kang and Scott Mahoy working as creative directors, Labyrinth been producing award-winning multimedia projects that juxtapose fictional and historical narrative in provocative ways. In the process, Labyrinth has pioneered a new form of digital scholarship combining archival cultural history and artistic practice. Their “database documentaries” animate the archive and make history come alive for a wide range of audiences across the public sphere. Labyrinth designs their interactive works as transmedia networks—installations, DVD-ROMs, and websites.
Their projects appear not only in cyberspace but also in the networked public spaces of museums, science centers, and other public venues. Labyrinth’s projects all grow out of broad, multi-tiered collaborations with artists, scholars, scientists, students, archivists, museums and cultural institutions. In the process, Labyrinth has developed three signature genres: the digital city symphony that explores urban space through layers of time; the interactive memoir that probes the networked memories and lived experience of complex individuals; and interactive science education that explores the interplay between biology and culture and the respective representation systems of art and science. Several of their works combine these genres. This panel will explore the diverse approaches and working methodologies for designing transmedia narrative experiences across a variety of public spaces by showcasing selected projects from Labyrinth’s repertoire of interactive cultural histories and by presenting emerging works produced by collaborators and members of the Labyrinth initiative.