Machines Pensantes

What are your thoughts on Vine videos being limited to six seconds?
I don’t see it as a limitation. The six-second rule forces me to think outside the box. It also gets me to be creative. The short length motivates me to try make my videos loop perfectly. Also, I don't think I would have started creating stop-motions if they had to be longer than six seconds. Each one would take way too much time.

Via The Digital Rocking Chair, Alexandre Simonet

It's been nearly a year now since a couple of McSweeney's alums released The Silent History, a story in app form about a near-future epidemic of EPR—EMERGENT PHASIC RESISTANCE, "a congenital disorder characterized by the inability to generate or comprehend language of any kind." It was all very meta—a story about the loss of language, which of course is the tool we use to tell stories, that was itself a re-tooling of the way we tell stories. It was also beautifully written and published and inventively structured—an intriguing exploration of new possibilities for narrative. But now that it's been out for awhile, what does it tell us about the future of storytelling? 

Via The Digital Rocking Chair

What is a movie or a TV program? Is it the creative message, the story, or the medium of distribution, whether movie theater of living room TV set? Is a movie the once-upon-a-time full-motion b&w and color images of The Wizard of Oz or the grand panorama of Lawrence of Arabia – or is it the stories they tell? Is a TV show the grainy images distributed through a broadcast or cable system and displayed on a tiny living-room set shows – or is Edward R. Murrow, I Love Lucy or Elvis on The Ed Sullivan Show?

 

When is a movie no longer a film and TV no longer TV but video? For more than a half-century, the two dimensions of mass-media visual storytelling – to recall Marshall McLuhan, the medium and the message – have been inseparable. Once upon a time, movies and TV programs were indistinguishable from how they were experienced, whether on a theater screen or a home set. Those days are ending.

Via The Digital Rocking Chair

Seth Rosenblatt:  "Comics fans are getting a double-dose of digital innovation this summer, as DC Comics lets you choose your own Batman adventure and revel in new tales of the campy '60s Batman."

Via The Digital Rocking Chair