Page 69 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report 2014

AC/E digital culture ANNUAL REPORT 2014THEME 6Transmedia storytelling: new ways of communicating in the digital ageby Carlos A. Scolari http://hipermediaciones.com/@cscolariAnalysis of recent developments in the way stories are told in order to consider audience consumption habits more precisely through the delivery of independent stories which, while independent, are linked through multiple media platforms. Analysis of the new creative possibilities given the access to new sources of reve‐ nue and the promotion of deeper levels of audience participation and loyalty.INTRODUCTIONLet us imagine a Museum of Storytelling, organised as if it were itself a story. The first hall would be devoted to forms of oral expression. Let’s imagine a dimly lit space with sounds that emerge from the walls, from the first most guttural expressions to complex stories of love and war, or even better of love and war, that are repeated from generation to generation. The second hall would be devoted to forms of graphic storytelling, from the most ancestral (Altamira cave paintings), to the most contemporary (the graphic novels sold in the bookshops of our cities along with beautiful volumes devoted to design and architecture). One hall, without doubt the largest of all the halls in the museum, would be devoted to the written narrative. In this great hall visitors would be able to see original texts in low‐lit display cabinets: the Epic of Gilgamesh carved on clay tablets, the papyri telling the story of the short life of Nibhurrereya, better known as Tutankhamun, until they reached a volume printed in the workshop of Juan de la CuestaAC/Etowards the end of 1604: El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha. The last halls of our imaginary storytelling museum wouldn’t have walls, but screens. Cinema screens, television screens, interactive screens, each of them telling a story in their own way. On one screen Citizen Kane, and on another, Breaking Bad and, on the threshold of the hall, Grand Theft Auto V. The hall I have just described would be on the ground floor of the Museum of Storytelling and it would be open 24/7. Every day of the year. We can’t stop telling stories.But the Museum of Storytelling wouldn’t end there. The first floor would be in the form of a large balcony overlooking the halls on the ground floor. A stroll around this floor would enable visitors to lean over to see all the story‐telling experiences in the history of humanity and to unify them in a virtual tour linking the cinema screen and the book, the television screen and the graphic novels. There would have to be a poster informing visitors that this second‐floor balcony is devoted to transmedia storytelling.WHERE WE ARE HEADING: DIGITAL TRENDS IN THE WORLD OF CULTURETHEME 6: TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING: NEW WAYS OF COMMUNICATING IN THE DIGITAL AGE CURRENT PAGE...69