hive

HIVE

In 2023, Hive (human interface for virtual evolution) is an augmented-reality technology that consolidates an individual's devices and technology into a holographic visual display that is projected from their mind. Millions connect and become a collective consciousness, while The Disconnected are left in its wake; forced to adapt to a primitive lifestyle in the outskirts of Hive cities. Conflict is inevitable, however the reality behind Hive may be even stranger than anyone realized. Propolis follows nine-year-old Samantha Plessis, as she witnesses her family opt-in to beta testing this new product to receive health insurance benefits to treat her immune disorder. Since her disease prevents her from connecting to Hive, she becomes gradually alienated by her family whose method of communication is now changing. Hive is a science-fiction transmedia project told through a series of books, films, social media and real-world interactive events. This six-part novella series is the main narrative. The story takes place from the year 2023 to 2050.

All It Takes Is The Right Story. Mythos Media

Bedlam Stories, (origins)

After my upcoming move back to the Hudson Valley, I'm going to be digging into the 'origins' story for Pearry Teo's movie / transmedia franchise Bedlam Stories. If you'd like to follow along with the project -- and/or have an interest in a horror take on myths such as Oz and Alice In Wonderland -- then like the Facebook group!

Here's some of the concept art so far (click the images for credits and more project info):

A Year Later: Retrospective. Create to Destroy.

The alchemy of the process...

About a year ago today the fundraiser for Words of Traitors kicked off. A year later, it’s been released as a book, an ebook, and some of the pieces have been featured in numerous art shows across Philadelphia. Moving on to new projects in the same general world over the next year. Many thanks to the artists that collaborated with me on this one, and of course to the contributors to the Indiegogo campaign, who helped me defray the costs of producing a project like this.

But I have a bit more to share here then just the usual back-patting and congratulations for making it past the finish line without dying or whatever. With a project like this you're really talking about 40-50 hours a week for five or six months to get it from concept to first edition. Definitely a labor of love. Why do it? I am forced to wonder what the meaning behind all of this is, when all is said and done. Beyond the narratives, beyond the art and brass tacks, what's the meaning and the message? I can't say I've found anything definitive, but I haven't found nothing, either. It isn't about me and it isn't about the characters in the stories. It's about all of you -- and the distance we create between one another in the midst of all these "communication tools" that we have at our disposal. It's a bit about signal to noise but not about marketing--

Listen up. Seriously. Maybe these videos convince you to check out the final book (or eBook, if you can't cover a full color illustrated book). It's the most meaningful way that I think I enter the world, so I hope so. But just as importantly -- maybe more importantly -- I hope it inspires you to realize that there's nothing standing between you and your own creative muse, so long as you are willing to sacrifice whatever it takes to get from here to there. We don't do it to get famous, we don't do it to get rich -- those goals are perfectly delusional -- we do it because we have no other choice. But sometimes we need a little push from someone else to remind us that it's time, right now, to stop thinking about it and start doing it. 

It's not about identity branding, it's not about con-vincing anyone of anything. It's about listening to your dreams, listening to your fears, to your history, to your losses, and engaging with them. It's about finding your weak spots and splitting them wide open. It's about being crazy enough to not only do that -- but to share the results with the world. Being genuine has been something I've been willing to sacrifice anything for. I'm certainly not giving that up for the approval of strangers. And yet we make these things to be heard. We don't create them to lock them up in a box. The process transforms us, but the detritus at the end of the process is what gets transformed by the audience from lead back to gold.

Time to destroy and create. I expect to be hearing about your projects shortly, yeah?

One final thing... While running the fundraiser, I made a habit of updating everyone every few days with a video. At first it was the usual stuff, details and updates. But when you're babbling in front of a camera without a real plan, sometimes you'll find yourself saying the darndest things. In a way making these videos really helped inform me as well in terms of what the hell this thing was all about. It becomes a sort of weird feedback mechanism. Looking back, I think some of these may actually be of some use to others that are willing to slog it out against all the challenges that face "indie production," from the bare bones financial ones to the common creative ones to the physical hurdles -- you start to discover that the challenges themselves can even inform the narrative.  There's more, but I think I've typed enough words here. I hope some of these videos are useful for other artists and writers out there, as they are embarrassing as hell for me but I'm plenty willing to get past that so long as some of you are likely to get something from it:

Free eBook of Chasing The Wish comic!

Produced in close collaboration with the late Dave Szulborski, the comic tied together his previous, massively successful ARG Chasing The Wish, with an ARG that was running simultaneously with the comics production and release called Catching The Wish.

Dave was posthumously named the World's Most Prolific ARG Producer by Guinness World Records 2012 Gamer's Edition.

Peter and I are happy to share this comic with you, free, in memory of Dave's creativity.

FULL BOOK 1 (PDF)
FULL BOOK 1 COVERS (PDF)

Chasing The Wish comic credits:

Written by: Jason Stackhouse with James Curcio.

Based on the ARG by Dave Szulborski.

Art: P. Emerson Williams, Jessika Kaos, James Curcio. 

Fallen Nation: Welcome to the Apocalypse

Welcome to the Apocalypse. A free mini comic based in the Fallen Nation world. 

Illustrated by P. Emerson Williams, written by James Curcio.

Get the mini Free comic. 

Participants Wanted for the Transmedia Revolution!

Hello everyone!

For those of you who have been following my posts here for the last few months, you may have noticed I've been talking a lot about how technology has transformed the publishing industry, and how transmedia storytelling has broken down the barriers between a story and it's audience.

But I haven't really gone into the specifics about how this can be put into practice. There's been a lot of talk about transmedia storytelling, but very few good examples of what the medium is truly capable of.  People and publishers have folded their arms, and decided to "wait and see."

And I don't blame them.  

After all the talk about ground breaking-this, cross platform-that, and immersion-everything, not much has really happened, has it?  There's been a lot of smoke, but no one has lit a match.  

That's about to change.  It won't be long before you'll be participating in a story instead of reading it.  How do I know?

I'm going to help make it happen.

Do I have some amazing new browser plug-in?  Some sort of new transmedia authoring platform?  A storytelling social media network, perhaps?

Nope.  (People always seem to get hung up on the technology...)

The technology of the written word changed how stories were delivered, but not how they were created.  It's the same thing with e-books, film, and television...they are all different methods of delivering the same fictional drug.

It's the story that's important.

What's the difference between slapping a button on a coke machine, and visiting a barista at your local starbucks?

Puff the magic dragon by Ahnamal

A can of soda will always taste the same.  A caramel-pumpkin-spice-mocha-latte with a dash of cinnamon and whip, tastes a lot different if you have him add a splash of pickle juice.

There's only one way to have it your way: ask for it.

Here at Modern Mythology, we know that storytelling isn’t passive.

A good storyteller must actively engage their audience.  A story should be tailored to whom it’s being told to, not diluted and homogenized just to make it more appealing to a potential audience of millions.

The goal of a story should be to make people think, feel, and help them blink away their pedestrian view of the world.  A book or movie should draw you in, engage you, make you a part of it--not run you over.

Films shouldn't blind people with cinematic eye candy, and books shouldn't hypnotize them with pages of sex and violence strung together with a meaningless plot.

But they do, and they will continue to do so, because that's the easiest way for Hollywood and publishers to get your money without you noticing.

It doesn't have to be this way.  Really.

(Unless you're into that kind of thing.)

Modern Mythology and the Transmedia Revolution

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In Search of Myth and Meaning...

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"The point of mythology or myth is to point to the horizon and to point back to ourselves: This is who we are; this is where we came from; and this is where we're going. And a lot of Western society over the last hundred years - the last 50 years really - has lost that. We have become rather aimless and wandering."

J. Michael Straczynski

The Power of Myth was one of the most popular TV series in the history of public television.  In a series of six hour-long episodes, American mythologist Joseph Campbell peeled back the layers of mystery that had once shrouded our species ancient storytelling traditions.

Campbell blew away the accumulated funk of centuries of traditional academic inquiry, and connected the dots between mythic traditions that had once been separated by hundreds of miles, and thousands of years.  He postulated that there was a single mythic narrative, a monomyth that had been translated into many different languages, and disguised in the symbols of many different cultures--but one that essentially shared the same structure and sequence of events.

The Monomyth or "Hero's Journey" (Infographic Via The Royal Society of Account Planning)

Finding Joe

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“Nothing will see us through the age we're entering but high consciousness, and that comes hard. We don't have a good, modern myth yet, and we need one.”

Robert Johnson

 

Follow Your Bliss - Joseph Campbell from Christoph on Vimeo.