Master Exhibit & Public Design, La Sapienza, Lezione 1

Narrative Transmediali
Salvatore Iaconesi & Oriana Persico
“La Sapienza” Università di Roma
Master in Exhibit & Public Design
Thursday, May 23, 13

- presentazioni
- avanzamento
- metodo/processo
- narrative transmediali

gli output del corso
• una narrativa transmediale
• una pubblicazione
• elementi da esposizione

Narrative Transmediali

SIMULACRI
Organize a fake holdup. Verify that your weapons are harmless, and
take the most trustworthy hostage, so that no human life will be in
danger (or one lapses into the criminal.) Demand a ransom, and
make it so that the operation creates as much commotion as possible
— in short, remain close to the "truth," in order to test the reaction of
the apparatus to a perfect simulacrum. You won't be able to do it: the
network of artiﬁcial signs will become inextricably mixed up with
real elements (a policeman really will ﬁre on sight; a client of the
bank will faint and die of a heart attack; one will actually pay you the
phony ransom). [p. 20]
“The Precession of Simulacra”, Jean Baudrillard

a terrorist sect called
The Panther Moderns
takes advantage of the fuzzy boundary
between the simulacra and the real
to create chaos at the Sense/Net Corporation

NEUROMANCER
Nine Moderns, scattered along two hundred miles of the Sprawl, had
simultaneously dialed MAX EMERG from pay phones.Nine
different police departments and public security agencies were
absorbing the information that an obscure subsect of militant
Christian fundamentalists had just taken credit for having introduced
clinical levels of an outlawed psychoactive agent known as Blue
Nine into the ventilation system of the Sense/Net Pyramid. Blue
Nine had been shown to produce acute paranoia and homicidal
psychosis in eight-ﬁve percent of experimental subjects.
“Neuromancer”,William Gibson

• phone emergency
• show video footage inside Sense/Net that triggers seizures in a certain
percentage of employees
• introduces images of contamination
• audio of a news segment dealing with a dangerous human growth
hormone
• By creating panic among the Sense/Net employees,The Panther Moderns
simulate the effects of introducing Blue Nine into the ventilation system to
the security forces
• at the same time, the presence of the security forces reafﬁrms the
employees' belief that there are biological agents in the ventilation system
• it only required nine phone calls and ﬁve minutes of video feed

the characters fail to distinguish
reality from simulation

a transmedia story represents the
integration of entertainment
experiences across a range of
different media platforms
Henry Jenkins, 2007

Transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of a
fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery
channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated
entertainment experience. Ideally, each medium makes its own
unique contribution to the unfolding of the story.
So, for example, in The Matrix franchise, key bits of information are
conveyed through three live action films, a series of animated shorts, two
collections of comic book stories, and several video games.There is no
one single source or ur-text where one can turn to gain all of the
information needed to comprehend the Matrix universe.
Henry Jenkins, 2007

In 2007, some songs from theirYear Zero album were
thought to have been leaked as they were found on a
lost ﬂash drive in a hotel room, while the band was on
tour. On that ﬂash drive there were songs and recorded
phone calls, which later turned out to be parts of a
previously made-up online experience for Nine Inch
Nails fans. From the recorded phone call mp3 fans
decoded a URL of a website that gave them further
clues to decipher.
Nine Inch Nails

CHARACTERISTICS

1. Spreadability vs. Drillability
Spreadable media encourages horizontal ripples, accumulating
eyeballs without necessarily encouraging more long-term
engagement.
Drillable media typically engage far fewer people, but occupy
more of their time and energies in a vertical descent into a
text’s complexities.

2. Continuity vs. Multiplicity
Some transmedia franchises foster an ongoing coherence to a
canon in order to ensure maximum plausibility among all
extensions.
Others routinely use alternative versions of characters or
parallel universe versions of their stories to reward mastery
over the source material.
examples: DC and MARVEL comics; fan ﬁctions; UGC; mash-ups

3.Worldbuilding
Transmedia extensions, often not central to the core narrative,
that give a richer description of the world in which the narrative
plays out.
Exploy both real-world and digital experiences.
Often lead to fan behavior of capturing and cataloguing many
desparate elements.

Janet Murray argues that stories will have to work for two or three
kinds of viewers in parallel:
"the actively engaged real-time viewer who must ﬁnd satisfaction in
each single episode and the more reﬂective long-term audience
who look for coherent patterns in the story as a whole (...) [and] the
navigational viewer who takes pleasure in following the connections
between different parts of the story and in discovering multiple
arrangements of the same material."

4. Negative Capability
When applied to storytelling, negative capability is the art of
building strategic gaps into a narrative to evoke a delicious sense
of "uncertainty, mystery or doubt" in the audience.
Simple references to people, places or events external to the
current narrative provide hints to the history of the characters
and the larger world in which the story takes place.
This empowers the audience to ﬁll in the gaps in their own
imaginations while leaving them curious to ﬁnd out more.
Long, 2007

5. Migratory Cues
The letter in Matrix is a sample of a Migratory Cue – when used at the beginning of the second
movie it exists as a hint to look for more information in Animatrix and in Enter the Matrix.
Yet the story functions even without audience members having experienced either the anime or
the video game, as they can imagine their own answer to the question of where exactly that
letter came from.
They retain the option to go and track it down, and their understanding (and enjoyment) of the
story would be increased by their doing so.
Understand: any reference to external people, places or events as utilizing negative capability to
craft potential migratory cues, and become actualized as migratory cues when those extensions
become available.
Long, 2007

6. Seriality
Transmedia storytelling has taken the notion of breaking up a
narrative arc into multiple discrete chunks or installments within
a single medium
and instead has spread those desparate ideas and story chunks
across multiple media segments

We might understand how serials work by falling back on a classic
ﬁlm studies distinction between story and plot.
The story refers to our mental construction of what happened which can be formed only
after we have absorbed all of the available chunks of information.
The plot refers to the sequence through which those
chunks of information have been made available to us.
A serial creates meaningful and compelling story chunks and then
disperses the full story across multiple installments.
We can think of trensmedia storytelling as a hyperbolic version of the serial, where the
chunks of meaningful engaging story information have been dispersed not simply across
multiple segments within the same medium, but rather across multiple media systems.
Jenkins, 2009

7. Subjectivity
Transmedia narratives often explore the central narrative
through new eyes, such as secondary characters or third parties.
The diversity of perspective oftel leads fans to more greatly
consider who is speaking and who they are speaking for.
examples: backstories; mobisodes; webisodes;
1st, 2nd or 3rd person

8. Performance
The ability of transmedia extensions to lead to fan produced
performances that can become part of the transmedia narrative
itself.
Some performances are invited by the creator
while others are not.
Fans actively search for sites of potential performance.

Cultural Attractors: draw together a community
of people who share common interests.
Cultural Activators: give that community something to do.

Cosa Faremo

non c’è
parte di una
narrativa
transmediale
crea il simulacro:
rende “credibile”
quello che non c’è
stabilisce cross-narrative
tra le varie componenti
per aumentare la credibilità
negative capability
& migratory cues
per creare “buchi”
e suggerire
approfondimenti
shareable +
drillable: facilita
la viralità, ma è
aperto
all’approfondimento
invita alla
collectability
attraverso le varie
manifestazioni
usa punti
di vista molteplici
cultural attractor +
cultural activator

Cosa Faremo
• NARRATIVA TRANSMEDIALE
• tutti: progettiamo (brainstorming, concept)
• in gruppi: lavoriamo sulle parti e coordiniamo (cross-stories,
world-building)
• DOCUMENTAZIONE
• pubblicazione: ognuno documenta per immagini e testo la
preparazione e l’esecuzione
• exhibit: coordinato con gli altri prof; materiale esponibile

progettiamo
risponde alla domanda:
“come sarebbe/cosa ci sarebbe
il mondo se?”
tutti
un gruppo
+
un gruppo
+
un gruppo
+
ogni gruppo/persona
progetta/esegue
le singole azioni
si realizza la
Narrativa
Transmediale
tutti insieme si
produce uno schema
e un breve testo (concept)
che descrive la strategia
ogni gruppo produce
un breve testo sulla sua
parte di Narrativa Transmediale
insieme a delle immagini della
preparazione e dell’esecuzione
si realizza la
Pubblicazione+

Master Exhibit & Public Design, La Sapienza, Lezione 1

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