Transmedia Storytelling for Real-Life Rehearsal

TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING FOR REAL-LIFE REHEARSAL

In his lecture, Robert Pratten discusses his current business of creating participatory experiences for major corporations and governments to simulate disasters and narrative-reality distortions. The marketing phrase “perception is reality” is no truer than in everyday life around confrontations between vaxxers & anti-vaxxers, remainers & brexiteers, preppers, flat-earthers, incels, and the rest of us! The struggle of society is the battle of narratives, and Pratten’s clients rehearse for these confrontations. In this presentation, Pratten explains how audiences and narratives are modeled in a simulation space and how crisis events such as terrorist attacks or wildfires take on a life of their own once the news reaches communities. He explains how the digital domain and the physical domain interact in complex training exercises to create a coherent storyworld and, in doing so, create very realistic, immersive experiences.

Robert’s experience uniquely places him at the intersection of storytelling and technology: with more than 30 years of experience in computing & telecoms and has written & directed two independent feature films. He is an internationally recognized thought leader in transmedia storytelling and has presented at many conferences including the World Innovation Conference and SXSW Interactive

Before focusing on crisis simulation with clients such as UN Office on Counter-Terrorism and the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, he worked on alternate reality games for Kodansha, the world’s biggest manga publisher and with Canal+ to turn the whole of Spain into Westeros for Game of Thrones.

He is the author of the book Getting Started in Transmedia Storytelling: A Practical Guide for Beginners and can be found online as @robpratten

metaLAB is partnering with the Mahindra Humanities Center to sponsor the Transmedia Arts Seminar, chaired by Magda Romanska.