Cinema for your Domepiece: Esoteric & Mind Expanding Film Experiences

With a bizarre slant in cinematic interests, this is my 1st offering of many film lists . Beyond simply being "Art House" or documentary, this index refers to those films possessing a deeper informative component. They represent a visual expression of the theoretical, often issuing a kind of perceptual challenge to the viewer. They are experimental, but also accomplished productions, both memorable and entertaining. Sometimes dry, though, and best saved for those slow days when you're in a specificly idea thirsty mood...

Maschinenträume (Machine Dreams 1988)
A quirky & abstract meditation on the intersections of technology and the human spirit. NY Times Review

Synthetic Pleasures 1995
With good ambient music and a peppering of experts, artists and kooks, an exploration of the human inclination to create technologies intended to "improve" reality, such as cryogenics, Cyber-sex, and A.I. NY Times Review

Jonah who will be 25 in the year 2000 1976
The Swiss film maker Alain Tanner describes his film as "a dramatic tragi-comedy in political science fiction."
NY Times Review

Wax, or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees 1992
A bomb-sight grid becomes a honeycomb that becomes a map of the brain. The letters of a riddle float in the air and rearrange themselves into another slogan that seems to answer the first riddle. "Wax" imagines an alternative alphabet used to communicate by the spirits of the dead, as a pseudo-documentary on the development of photography and its relation to the occult. NY Times Review

Citizen 1982
"Follows an ensemble cast on an apparently random journey through a disjointed San Francisco cityscape. Along their travels they encounter a succession of madmen and eccentrics, portrayed by various West Coast performance artists, whose impassioned monologues and improvisations satirize the institutions of contemporary American society". Wikipedia entry - Now available on DVD here!


Slacker
Waking Life
Baraka
The Cruise
Fast, Cheap & Out of Control
Apocalypse; Revelations for a New Millennium

I will amend this list soon with more titles, descriptions, and links. Unfortunately, many of these are not released on DVD yet, and therefore unavailable on Netflix. You'll just have to track them down and watch them the old fashioned way: VHS rental or purchase. (Try Reel Video, Facets, or Amazon). Other lists to come include: Arts, "Quirky", Animation, Political, Mainstream, etc etc etc!

"Alternative Reality Gaming"

"So, yes, I think we are going to be seeing more alternative reality games. The movement is gaining momentum, though there is still not a fully developed business model for thinking about how to build on this trend yet, and so it is likely to remain in the hands of marketers on the one hand and amateurs on the other."
- Henry Jenkins, Director of Comparative Media Studies Program and Full Professor of Literature at MIT

To learn about the basic tenets of ARG's, start here:
- Wikipedia article on Alternative Reality Games
- The Alternative Reality Gaming Network

OK, when you read the description of Immersive Media Narratives, you might observe that it sounds remarkably similar to an "Alternative Reality Game". And you would be correct. However, there are a few distinctions I'd like to make. As a genre these ARG's are defined by their adult, macabre, nerded out sensibility. Without exception they are all hard-boiled & dark mysteries, reminiscent of the comic book & video game world that are their breeding grounds. By nature, they are a "cult" activity, accessible mainly to the initiated gamer (adult male). Here's where I believe these games fall short as engaging entertainment.

- Producers are not seeing the "next level" of ARG as a broad entertainment platform with a massive intergenerational audience.
- There are no colorful, playful, joyful, completely integrated examples of this medium.
- So far the major games have been limited to "marketing tools".
- There is a tremendous gap to be filled here.

The "Games of Nonchalance" as an Immersive Media Narrative is different in that:
- it is designed as an ongoing activity for parents and children together in real space.
- There is a different level of immersion, with real stylized sets, rooms, and character actors.
- The aesthetics of the game are on a different creative & conceptual level. It is driven by an arts & entertainment model.
- There is a rough business model.

{ Immersive Media Narrative }

Now we're getting closer to the heart of why this blog exists. It serves as a conceptual safety net for ideas. More specifically: a safety net for ideas related to an upcoming creative project. This project could be described as an "Immersive Media Narrative", and this is what I have to say about it right now...

It is an activity, an "alternate reality game", a story, a novel, a movie, a website, a pirate radio program, a map, a guided tour, an urban exploration, a public art project, a scavenger hunt, a choose your own adventure book, trading cards, both a mystery & science fiction play, socio-reengineering experiment, and new commercial venture. For children & Adults. Foreshadowing the future of entertainment.

The story has online and offline content, that is immeshed. These tools are used as "narrative devices", all guiding the "participant" to real time / real space journeys. Examples of online content include: Google Maps, You Tube Video, Streaming Audio, Websites, Text Messaging & E-Mail. Examples of offline content include: Wheat paste visuals, FM radio transmissions, epoxy figurines, voice-mail boxes, graffiti-like messages, sidewalk chalk, exchanges of alternative currency, vending machines, photocopy tear-off flyers, oddball print ads, buried treasures, lock boxes, actual rooms or "sets", and introductions to the characters (actors placed in real space).

Besides the medium, it is really about the style and the content of the narrative. I'll save that very important subject for another day.