Transmedia Experiences That Blur the Boundaries Between the Real and the Fictional World

Background

In Lev’s Manovich article “Post-Media Aesthetics”, from 2001, the author considers that “along with the arrival of mass media throughout the twentieth century, and the proliferation of new art forms beginning in the 1960s, another development that threatened the traditional idea of a medium was digital revolution of the 1980s- 1990s. The shift of most means of production, storage and distribution of mass media to digital technology (or various combinations of electronic and digital technologies), and adoption of the same tools by individual artists disturbed both the traditional distinctions based on materials and conditions of perception and the new, more recent distinctions based on distribution model, method of reception/exhibition and payment scheme.” (Manovich, 2001) The merge of various methods of distribution and the changes in reception, where people experience stories spread throughout several media but also create their own fictional path, is crucial to thing about narrative paradoxes where stories are simultaneously open for interpretation and action (Gouveia, 2009). In a recent conference at the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT, May 2017) in Lisbon, named “Post-Internet Cities”, Giselle Beiguelman spoke about hybrid urban relations in city spaces like São Paulo. Beiguelman gave the example of Connected Drains (Sepiridião, 2014), a digital mobile application project that connects the town drains with citizens, creating a mobilization and decision taking environment around preventive and corrective actions for the social well-being. The aim of the project is to fight against accidents caused by lack of maintenance but also mobilizing people for a social cause in a cooperative and collaborative manner. If we want to solve the problems we've created for ourselves and our ecosystems we will have to get involved and transmedia experiences can help create participatory environments for people to connect.