by Matthew Cohen, Jeff Blagg, Rafael Ruiz and Lowell Bartholomee
With the release of Holy Hell, the first movie to premiere as a Ipad App, a new distribution frontier opens up for independent filmmakers. As a new business model of DIY cinema, the app suggests a new model for release, serializing the movie in distinct chapters that include additional Transmedia bonus materials. The filmmakers (Rafael Antonio Ruiz and Lowell Bartholomee and programmer Jeff Blagg) document the intricate production process involved in adapting their film to this emerging format as well as how the app also opens up new narrative strategies, creating a new business model for cinematic material.
by Scott Snibbe
For twenty years, Scott Snibbe has advocated for a new form of interactive entertainment that moves beyond video games to treat interactivity as a full medium in its own right. He argues that interactivity has the same potential for emotional impact and engagement as cinema and music. In this talk, Snibbe will present two of his companies’ most powerful interactive experiences from last year, which point to the growing maturity of this medium: Björk’s Biophilia App, the world’s first App Album; and The James Cameron Avatar Experience, a fully immersive gestural interactive exhibition.
Scott Snibbe will discuss these two ends of the interactive spectrum, and the space between: from intimate apps beneath our fingertips, to fully immersive, social exhibitions spanning thousands of square feet. He will situate this work among selections of twenty years of his companies’ interactive exhibits, interactive art, and interactive music, as well as key examples from the last 30 years’ history of interactivity, and make a bold claim for the rise of this medium to rival movies. Snibbe will also discuss the educational, societal, and industry benefits of interactivity; and the joys, challenges, and research involved in the creation and distribution of these new forms of interactive media.
by Molly Sauter
Hollywood and the international news media delight in presenting us with depictions of hackers and hacktivists as subterranean Ohmian "Super Users," capable of hacking *all* the ISPs with a few keystrokes in between shots of Red Bull. How do these depictions, both in fiction and news coverage of hacktivist actions, affect the development and implementation of Internet policy and regulations? In this talk, I'll be examining how media coverage and depictions of hackers and hacktivists has changed as the hacktivist movement has developed since the 1980s. I'll be describing how such coverage, from "Sneakers" to photo galleries of Fawkes-masked Anonymous protests, influences policy on subjects from intellectual property and communications regulations to information security and cyberwar. I'll be questioning what these trends of laws, regulations, and apparent media biases mean for the future of hacktivism and digital activism.
Terra Networks CEO and co-founder Fernando Madeira will discuss behavior and trends of consumption of news and entertainment, particularly music and video, in Latin America. Just as sports has become entertainment, entertainment has become news. What do people really expect of the media? Madeira believes that only digital delivery can meet their expectations. After all, 100 million Latin Americans can’t be wrong.