Innovation, Content, Creation
Just what is it we are creating?
This session kicked off Digital World’s first-ever day devoted entirely to content — the consumable fruit of the digital convergence. An opening panel of some of the best-known names in the world of new media demonstrated products and discussed the delicate balancing act between creativity and technology.
Though many of us like to think that “content’s the thing” that will fully engage us in the digital revolution, putting the discussion in those terms is slightly disingenuous. If it weren’t for digital technology, none of the great ideas and products under development would even be conceivable.
A collaborative middle ground.>> The point is well taken that digital production tools are still in their early stages — both in terms of being affordable and easy to use. And the way that artists think about technology is also in its formative stages. As session moderator David Baron said, “Like the early film industry, content was first created by technologists — the people who invented the machines — and it shows.” As the price of technology continues to drop and tools become easier to use, he said, we’re coming closer to a “collaborative middle ground” between artists and technologists.
What was most exciting about Saturday’s “content day” was not necessarily the demonstrations themselves, most of which were representative of a new media in its infancy. Instead, the variety and imagination of what these artists are striving to create energized the entire audience, and made us all aware that after all the talk and hype of the past few years, a new creative outlet has indeed arrived.
NO ONE DREAMS HERE
Greg Roach, Hyperbole
Bucking popular thought, Greg Roach of Hyperbole (recently purchased by Media Vision) launched his discussion by rejecting out of hand the idea that interactive fiction is not worth pursuing as a genre for new media. “They said the same thing about film (being derived) from theater,” he said.
At first, film used the existing theatrical metaphors and processes — that is, a still camera pointed at a proscenium stage — until it evolved its own. Now we easily absorb the meaning of filmic punctuation such as cuts and wipes and camera angle as a language unto itself. The new media will evolve its own language, too, he said. What’s more important is how you affect people’s emotions.
Today, the concept of interactive fiction is a synthesis between video games, films and books, said Roach, launching a demo of his latest interactive fiction, called No One Dreams Here, Hyperbole’s first venture into what Roach calls “virtual cinema.”
Using a variety of media, from text (“as enhancement,” Roach said) to video, to new media concepts such as hypertext to deliver pertinent information about getting from one place to another in the story line, No One Dreams Here allows the viewer not only to navigate the environs of the fictionalized realm, but also to learn what is in each character’s mind from various points of view.
Despite Roach’s protestations to the contrary, the general attitude toward the title seemed to be “it’s neither fish nor fowl.” Although visually stunning with a clever interface, No One Dreams Here seemed to suffer from the synthesis that Roach described. Those who come to No One Dreams Here looking for a game are likely to be daunted by its density and unhappy with its lack of traditional video game “play.” Those who approach it as a film or book may be equally daunted by the clue-seeking required to maneuver around the fiction, and a little discombobulated by the variety of points of view that they can assume.
That said, it is clear that Hyperbole intends to keep gnawing away at the concept of interactive fiction until it finds something that clicks. The imagination shown in all of the company’s work to date, not just No One Dreams Here, is a good indicator of the company’s likelihood of success.
CREATING THE ‘NEW HOLLYWOOD’
Allee Willis, Willisville
Allee Willis, Grammy Award-winning songwriter and one of interactive media’s most avid supporters, expressed some disappointment that not much had changed since her well-received keynote speech at last year’s Digital World conference. At that time, she’d seen nothing even remotely resembling a mass media product.
Market before art.>> “The stuff that’s out there now is (still) boring compared to mass entertainment,” she said. “The public, mass, pop mind is moving quicker than this stuff.” Part of the problem, she said, is that the entertainment business is trying hard to figure out how to make interactive media a “market” before it has had a chance to be art. “I do not think that Old Hollywood is going to create New Hollywood,” she said. “It absolutely won’t happen.”
More concerned with how to make money on “the next lunchbox or the next movie of the week,” said Willis, these people don’t see the potential. Interactive products with pop culture appeal have to come from artists who have vision about how to make something that’s completely new. Whereas the formulas are already set for how to make a “hit” movie or a “hit” record, and you can be punished if you’re unwilling to follow the rules, today’s new media market is wide open. “That’s the turn-on today — no one can say that you’re doing it wrong.”
What’s particularly exciting to Willis about interactive media, and why she thinks it’s so incredible even though “I haven’t made a dime yet,” is its potential to allow people to experience their own creativity by participating in an interactive experience.
Imbued with confidence.>> The highest compliment to her as an artist is “pulling up to a stoplight and seeing the person in the car next to you singing your song at the top of their lungs, completely out of tune,” she said. “It’s an unbelievably fabulous experience to know you’ve imbued someone with so much self-confidence. It’s (allowing the expression of) creativity that draws the public in.”
So, said Willis, she increasingly finds herself collaborating with the technologists that can make her particular vision of interactivity happen. The fact that she is largely unfamiliar with the technology involved, she said, has proven to be more an asset than a liability. “It’s valuable to be (technically) illiterate,” she said. “They want to know what you need. And Silicon Valley is not so tainted with Hollywood to ignore the independents.”
DESIGN AND BUILD YOUR DECK
Stu Gannes, Books That Work
By far the most impressive demonstration, by audience standards, was done by Stu Gannes of Books That Work. More than half the audience members said they would buy a personal computer for their homes solely on the basis of what they could do with Gannes’s title, Design and Build Your Deck.
Distributed by Sunset Books, Gannes said Your Deck is a digital extension of the home improvement books that Sunset made its reputation upon. Designed as the first in a series, it does exactly what its title implies: it provides you with an elegant, visually delightful means of designing a custom patio or deck by taking advantage of the power of computer-aided design tools.
By using the simple point, click and drag features of a graphical user interface (the Windows version was released first, with a Macintosh version soon to follow), Your Deck allows you — with virtually no keyboard input — to create a 3D deck design, futz around with different styles, see it in blueprint mode if you’d like, then when you’re ready, compile and print out a stunningly complete materials list. In addition, it contains simple animations showing how to use certain tools and perform specific kinds of carpentry functions, and teaches a neophyte some valuable “tricks of the trade,” such as how to avoid wet rot or termites, or the best way to set a wood screw in a tight corner.
Gannes’s demo generated spontaneous applause on a few occasions. The flawless logic behind its design and the elegance of its execution seemed to reacquaint the audience with why they were interested in new media in the first place.
Gannes, formerly an editor with Time Life Books, said the genesis of the product was twofold. First, he discovered that the computers in people’s homes were often more advanced than those they had in the office; second, the company wanted to make consumer products that use the computer only for what it does well. “We think of it as ‘publishing on a digital platform’ versus ‘multimedia’,” he said. “There’s a line drawn between what is compelling versus what is entertaining.” The audience was delighted to hear that the next title in the series will help users design and plant a graden.
NEWSWEEK INTERACTIVE
Michael Rogers, Newsweek
A few months ago, when the country’s largest weekly news magazine announced it was going into the CD-ROM business, many people thought that Newsweek might be too far ahead of the curve to be successful. But Michael Rogers, managing editor of the Newsweek Interactive division, took time before his demonstration to disagree.
Rogers, for many years Newsweek’s technology correspondent, said that questions like “How can you afford to do this?” and “How much money can you make?” became less important than the lessons to be learned. “You learn to swim by swimming,” he said. With the resources of the Washington Post Company (which owns Newsweek) behind the project, he said, those working on the project realized they would have to forget what they “used to be” — i.e., a venerable print publication — and act like a startup.
One of the most daunting problems they faced, he said, was selecting the delivery platform for Newsweek Interactive. They’ve gotten a lot of flak for the decision: the Sony MMCD, a portable CD-ROM XA player with a small, monochrome screen that has not yet caught on in the consumer market. Rogers discussed the logic by which they made their selection.
The fact that the MMCD adheres to the CD-ROM XA standard (see Vol. 1, No. 5) was at first more important than the player itself. Despite the common belief that CD-ROM is less than optimal for delivering fast, high-quality multimedia products, Rogers said that XA’s status as a cross-platform delivery vehicle was the best they could do today.
“Content providers have to be platform independent in a very profound way,” he said. “They can’t count on brand names.” After the decision to go with XA, he said, they had three more basic criteria for their player:
• By 1996 or 1997, he said, they believed the “personal portable” information device would be very important to their customer base;
• To be in the living room, they’d have to learn to live with NTSC (the North American television broadcast standard); and
• It would also have to work with a high-resolution color computer monitor.
The Sony MMCD player is portable, and it has an easy hookup to NTSC and computer monitors. Voilà.
To date, Newsweek Interactive has shipped its first two titles (one on the environment and one on the baseball industry), with others expected to come out on a quarterly basis for the near term. They include video, audio and searchable text. A text archive of the past year’s issues of Newsweek is included on every disc (one of the benefits of CD-ROM’s huge storage capacity).
One of the most important editorial issues that Newsweek Interactive editors are dealing with, Rogers said, is “how to mediate between exploration and narrative.” (Though dealing with factual subjects, they seem to have the same core conflict that Greg Roach encounters with interactive fiction/cinema.)
Subscription offers are included with every MMCD player sold, and the presence of a subscriber base — however small today — will be a boon to the project. “The great thing about publishing on a regular basis is that we can incorporate feedback immediately,” Rogers said.
Newsweek Interactive is an ambitious project on many fronts, not the least of which is its foray into the uncharted waters of advertising. Right now, the advertising has its own discrete section on the CD; despite its different “look and feel” from traditional print publication ads, Rogers said that ad contracts are signed for the next few issues. Though he didn’t believe it at first, Rogers said, their studies show that people do actually look at the ads.
But even more than its print counterpart, interactive advertising is an unproved medium and its presence on the Newsweek Interactive disc is likely to cause a desire on advertisers’ parts to capitalize on its “fad” value. How long they’ll continue is a big question. One of the most valuable lessons that Rogers and his team may learn for us all is what happens when advertising no longer works as a way to subsidize the creation and distribution of sophisticated information products such as Newsweek Interactive.
Denise Caruso