Why Transmedia?

Parthiv Haldipur. "A pampered culture." From Flickr used under CC BY NC 2.0.

I've never been particularly keen on taking notes. I'm better with images, but I'm not much of an artist, either. I prefer images in the ephemeral sense, the potent ones that pop into your mind and stick around for only a few second before disappearing back into the ether.

For me, transmedia storytelling is reaching into the ether and building stories from those brief, elusive and often disparate pieces. It's capturing and connecting the dots, translating to a narrative, and finding the best way to take advantage of their limitless shapes and forms.

Transmedia Storyteller gives a simple definition of transmedia as “telling a story across multiple media and preferably, although it doesn’t always happen, with a degree of audience participation, interaction or collaboration." That medium could be film, music, print, web, theatre, spoken word, graffiti, skywriting--the possibilities are endless. It might seem daunting to think of telling stories this way, but it's the only way I've really ever been able to do it.

My adult life has thus far focused on only a few artistic interests: literature, film, hip hop, and electronic music. Those interests encircle a insatiable curiosity for cities, people, and social patterns, as well as a fascination with world-building. It's no coincidence that the subjects and forms that I love combine so frequently and naturally, and cause me to explore further. When I listen to hip-hop, I listen for its reflections of urbanity, from the hood-set lyrics to the funk and jazz samples behind them. Or, I'll find references to literature, and myself delving into stories of the Harlem Renaissance. Likewise, the best electronic music walks a line between being both organic and futuristic, much like a city, and the aural soundscapes give me visions of the urban scenes that would play out over top. This is what art is all about, telling a story and encouraging exploration elsewhere, perhaps even in other forms.

When I write stories, I'm often held back by a tendency to make my writing all-encompassing, to include every detail on the page and leave no stone unturned. When I learned about transmedia, it took massive pressure off my my writing, showing me the freedom to leave loose ends in one place to be tied up elsewhere.

It keeps stories moving, constantly changing, and if all goes to plan, keeps the audience on the lookout for what comes next.