Bears, Robots and travel
I’m excited to be part of the creative team working on Bear 71, a wonderful project from Leanne Allison & Jeremy Mendes. I’m co-creating the installation and doing experience design in conjunction with the National Film Board of Canada. Bear 71 unfolds at Sundance as an official selection of New Frontier this coming January.
From the Sundance site:
Jeremy Mendes and Leanne Allison’s poignant interactive documentary about a bear in the Canadian Rockies illuminates the way humans engage with wildlife in the age of networks, satellites, and digital surveillance. Audiences from around the world can use their smartphones to become part of an interactive forest environment rich with bears, cougars, sheep, deer, and people as they follow an emotional story of a grizzly bear tagged and monitored by Banff National Park rangers.
Special engagements
Nov 29th in Melbourne
Screen Australia and StoryLabs are teaming up for a special day entitled MULTI-PLATFORM STORYTELLING – FROM IDEA TO MARKET. I’m the opening keynote for the event which is a gathering of top storytellers from around the world.
Dec 7th in NYC
I’ve been invited to do a special day long workshop at the Writer’s Guild of America on the future of storytelling. I’ll be joined by my writing partner Chuck Wendig. The day will explore how to design stories and social experiences that are positioned for the connected world that we live in.
Robot Heart Stories
Over 10 days in October, the beta release of Robot Heart Stories took place. It far exceeded my expectations. With over 50 collaborators in 8 countries the project reached students around the world. Robot Heart Stories engaged two main classrooms (one in Montreal and one in LA) but also spread to mix of students working across different subjects in various grades. Together the students helped Laika (the robot they named!) to travel from Montreal to LA. Early next year, we’ll launch Laika along with copies of the student’s artwork and stories into space. For more on the project visit www.robotheartstories.com
Some coverage
Discovery News
Good Magazine
I wrote about co-creation and participatory storytelling in my Fall Column for Filmmaker Magazine