I was listening to Digital Human on Radio 4 on the way home from work this afternoon and this week’s edition was about how storytelling is changing, rather interestingly one of the people interviewed claimed that storytelling is taking a step backwards to older times with people telling stories they’ve heard from others in different mediums, similar to how stories would move from place to place as people travelled but now travel can be a digital step, rather than a physical one.
A lot of the episode was about something I’ve never heard of called Slender Man, which has apparently got a large following. However another part of the episode involved Alison Norrington, who has in the past used Second Life as part of a transmedia storytelling project, that was back in 2007 so it isn’t new. Transmedia is using different formats to tell your story, each one delivering a unique piece of the project, so for example, in Alison’s case she used blogs, emails, Second Life, YouTube etc. to tell the story, rather than having the whole story on each format … I think I’ve got that right!
I don’t think Alison is in Second Life anymore, maybe The Blarney Stone was too much drunken debauchery for her, but the project and use of Second Life was an interesing concept.