On a flight across the Atlantic today I decided to rewatch Mary Poppins. It is a film that I revisit often, but I had not seen it in several years.
As it happens, one of the talks I will be giving this week is on the future of interactive cinema. And I realized, watching this Walt Disney movie for children that is now exactly half a century old, that it has much to say for our time.
The vision of being able to paint a picture, and then simply jump into that image to visit a desired alternate reality, is one that still, after fifty years, speaks to the child within us.
The difference is that now we suspect that soon we may be able to make it a reality.
I recently showed the LEVIATHAN project to my NYU classes — ART & NEW MEDIA and THE HISTORY OF COMIC BOOKS AND GRAPHIC NOVELS. Here is the link from a recent article written about this project:
http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/show/leviathan-the-future-of-storytelling-video
I am a big fan of Scott Westerfeld’s work (particularly his Steampunk novels), LEVIATHAN, etc.:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_(Westerfeld_novel)
http://scottwesterfeld.com/
Thus, I was quite pleased to find out about USC’s and Intel’s digital storytelling project. I hope it is as interesting as The Creators Project article (written by one of my students) makes it out to be.
Cynthia