Montreal International Game Summit Nov 18-19 2008

Organized by Quebec’s digital industry network, Alliance numérique, the Montreal International Game Summit (MIGS) looks like it’s going to be something special!

Speakers Include:
· Laura Fryer of Microsoft Game Studios
· Dominic Guay of Ubisoft
· Warren Spector of Disney-Junction Point Studios
· Dean Giberson of Slant Six Games
· Edoardo De Martin of Next Level Games
· And a whole lot more.

Price: $355 pre-registered, $475 after october 1st (for individuals)

More information: www.sijm.ca

What Is A Hook?

How do you define a hook in storytelling and story writing? Can you give an example? How do people create hooks? Why do people respond to them?

Are You Creating Stories or Are Stories Creating You?

Do you have a story played out on you? Are you locked at a job you hate because “the man” is keeping you down? Are you stuck in a creative rut and can’t seem to move ahead? Maybe you sleep through your day because everything is just so damn boring.

If this is you, you’re acting like an extra in your own movie. You’re stuck in the background and it really doesn’t matter if you’re in the shot or not. But guess what, you can move into the foreground because you are the star of your own movie!

Years ago I met a man who was rather wealthy. He told me I should wake up everyday and ask myself, “How can I earn money today?”

Lately I’ve been thinking along the same lines, but with a different question. The question I ask myself is, “What story am I creating today?”

In some cases the story of the day isn’t one of excitement or accomplishment. Instead it’s a small step in a larger tale that won’t get told for some time.

On other days I might be dealing with personal conflicts or boring tasks. It is during these times when there’s an opportunity to create a new and exciting story. A good story comes from the extraordinary. Some things seem to be mundane no matter what, but it’s still fun trying to try to jazz them up. How do you think televisions on treadmills and electric toothbrushes came to life?

By acting as the star of my own movie I find myself empowered. It takes a paradigm shift, but once you get the idea that you are able to craft your own tale, everything becomes interesting. 

What is the story that would get told about you today?

Word of Mouth Marketing Summit: Nov 12th - 14th, 2008

All about using word-of-mouth in your marketing efforts. Topics include viral video, email marketing, getting employees to create buzz, and more.

Located in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Prices average $1495 - $1895 for attendance before travel and lodging.

More Information: http://womma.org/summit08

Interview: Twisp River Glass

1. What is your profession?

I am a glassblower who learned his skills through a traditional apprenticeship with a craftsman/ artist.  I have been working out of my own studio space for the past seven years creating collaborative work with my wife, Allison Ciancibelli, and selling it to galleries nationwide.

2. How does story/narrative play a role in your work?

We incorporate narrative in our work to try to inspire a reverence for nature in people.  Most of the time we try to tell very simple stories and sometimes the ideas are more complex.  Much of our work is landscape based and it’s essence is to capture an abstract representation of that particular environment and our interaction with it.  We allow a degree of ambiguity as a means of allowing the viewer to read their own story into the work.  We might be inspired by the color of the minerals in the soil, the lushness of the undergrowth or the stark seen of a lone plant on a hill.  In the presence of nature, there is absence, where our minds can wander and find a sense of calm.  We are always trying to create a visual story that imparts that sense of calm.

We also create mixed media works whose story is a bit more complex.  In these pieces we use reclaimed/ found materials together with blown glass elements to further explore our relationship with the environment.  When you start to really look at how complex of a relationship that we humans have with the environment you realize our amazing dependence on it’s health and well being.  So, these pieces are meant to tell some of those stories of our direct ties and interactions with nature.  Many of these works use glass elements to represent people or society gathered together.  Some represent the landscape as with the other work. The found and assembled elements have embedded meaning in them that adds the rest of the story being told.

3. Your work has a moody, earthy feel to it, which I like. Do you create a traditional “beginning, middle, end” story arc in each piece? If so, where is the beginning, middle, and end?

No, we do not create stories with a beginning, middle and end.  The stories that we are most interested in telling reflect the cycles present in nature.  As the word cycle implies these are timelines that move in a circle and have no start or finish.  Some of the cycles that our work tries to capture include the seasons, migrations, growth cycles, fire cycles and life cycles.  As you spend more and more time looking at how processes in nature unfold every day, you begin to see all of these amazing cycles that work off of each other, with each other and away from each other.  They are all interdependent and yet exist independent of one another.  Human’s role in the environment is just the same.

We feel like an understanding of natures cycles is critical to learning how we fit into nature and is the starting point for society to begin caring for the environment that we are dependent on.  We try to make our work meditative (or moody) to allow the viewer to relax with it and contemplate the story it is meant to tell.

4. When did you discover the narrative aspect of your work in a way that you could articulate? What led you to this discovery?

I learned to blow glass by apprenticing with a working artist for three years.  At first I learned the skills of the craft by making the work of his design.  When I had enough skill to start working on my own designs I was confronted with the problem of what to make and why.  I always wanted to express my love of nature and began to work out how to do that within the medium of blown glass.  It has taken years of experimenting with different coloring work and blowing techniques to form the vocabulary with which we are now able to tell our stories. So, it has taken years of working with glass to find a way to articulate our narrative. It has been a slow process involving a lot of experimentation.

5. Do people who understand the nuances of glasswork experience the narrative differently as compared to those who know nothing about glass making? If so, what challenges have you overcome when learning how to communicate to both types of audiences?

I think that having an understanding of glass working techniques will influence how our work is seen, but, I don’t believe that it changes how people experience the narrative that we are trying to express.  Those who understand how we are getting the imagery on the glass will inherently have an opinion of our glass working skills.  Some may think that we are strong glass workers and others may think that we are not very technically proficient.  That isn’t really the point of the work that we are trying to make.  Our work seeks to tell the stories that we find inspiring in our day to day observations and interactions with the natural world.  With our work we try to inspire others to pay attention to our environment and hope that it will lead them to care for it’s health.  We draw on glass techniques to further our ability to tell this narrative but tend to not obsess on our perfection of those techniques.  Like a painter, we hope that our visual language is universal.  The fact that it is made out glass isn’t as important to us.

6. Do you and Allison tell stories in other forms of media besides glass, such as through writing, music, spoken word storytelling, or some other method?

No, glass is our only form of story telling.

7. How is the process of making a glass art work, from concept to completion, like a story?

Like any story, the process of making a work in glass has a beginning and an end.  Starting the story occupies the most time for us.  The most important part of our process is our time spent interacting with the natural world.  It is where our inspiration is derived and where are stories come from.  Time spent interacting might be at home on our farm, in our gardens or out skiing or hiking in the mountains.  It varies widely, but, for us the ideas that come from that time outside start to organize themselves and begin the story of creating the piece of glass.  The resulting sketches on paper and experiments in glass unfold from there until we have a finished work that is ready to be presented to the world.  The presentation at a gallery exhibition is the end of the creation process for us and starts the story of the work’s life away from us.

8. What advice do you have for anyone interested in making a living with their art, and/or specifically with making glass?

That is a very difficult question to answer as the idea of making a living from your art means so many different things to different people.  On the assumption that a person wanted to draw their entire income from the making of their art/ or glass, the most basic of advice rings very true for anyone looking to start their own business.  Have a solid plan on the reality of selling your work, know your markets and make yourself visible to them in any way that you can.  Prepare to work 60 hours a week for the first five years and use every available means to keep yourself focused and creating work that continues to develop your skills within your chosen medium. 

Always set aside time to make work that satisfies you personally, whatever that might mean to you.  That is what keeps you happy as an artist and always looking forward to the next time you get to just “play” and not just work in the studio. Most importantly, the only thing that you have to set your work apart from the rest of the world is your ability to make it as personal as possible.  Allow your personality to shine through and don’t be afraid to go against the grain of your chosen medium.  In fact we like to try to find ways to go against the grain with glass, but, that might just be our way of thinking!

Thanks for the opportunity to share my thoughts with you and your community!

Jeremy Newman
Twisp River Glass, LLC
240 Twisp River Rd.
Twisp, WA 98856
509.997.2120

www.twispriverglass.com

Singapore International Storytelling Festival, Aug 25th - Sept 9th 2008

From the website:

Digital Storytelling is increasingly being used to entertain, teach, train, inform, promote and advertise. It can take the form of tributes to important persons, capturing of family stories and memories for posterity, exploration of places lived in or visited.

Corporations and public institutions use digital storytelling to motivate their human capital, create legacy of corporate stories, impart core values, and devolve to difficult content the ease of understanding.

Digital stories will not only engage learners, but also ensure the development of skills in research, writing, technology, organisational communication and problem-solving.

Looks interesting! Find out more information.

Business Innovation Factory’s Collaborative Innovation Summit

More conversation than conference, BIF-4 will bring together many of today’s most compelling innovators, business model renegades and true transformers to reveal the secrets of innovation success through personal storytelling.

October 15-16, 2008
Providence, RI

Registration fee: $1000 if by August 15th, $1,200 after

More information: BIF Website

Storytelling Goes Pro

“The Business Innovation Factory is a community of innovators collaborating to explore and test better ways to deliver value,” according to their website. And they might have struck gold in the form of storytelling.

The organization has launched the Innovation Story Studio, a forum where innovative and influential professionals get 15 minutes (but no compensation) to tell a story. The stories are then recorded for display on the BIF website.

Another site similar in nature, but not necessarily just for storytelling, is TED - Ideas Worth Spreading which shows interesting live speeches by interesting people.

Imagine that! Corporate culture is embracing personal storytelling. Public speaking and digital media mastery has become quite the skill for professionals.