The Story Arcade

The Story Arcade discovers and celebrates new forms of storytelling, beginning with 20 exhibits at the Future of StoryTelling 2012. We’d love to hear of your favorite new kinds of stories—email us at storyarcade@futureofstorytelling.org.


Dumb Ways to Die

“Keep a rattlesnake as a pet…sell both your kidneys on the internet!” These are just what they sound like-–Dumb Ways to Die, featured in a video of the same name. In it, a variety of cute characters manage to kill themselves in idiotic ways, after which they cheerfully sing and dance about it. The video, along with accompanying song and website, are part of an effort by Metro Trains in Melbourne, Australia to promote rail safety (the dumbest ways to die involve getting hit by trains). In contrast to safety messaging that plays on fear using facts and statistics, the video is entertaining in and of itself, appealing to a wide audience who are drawn in by the catchy tune and the witty stories. After a few viewings, you may even find yourself singing along as these adorable bean-shaped characters meet their grisly ends. “Dumb Ways to Die” has become one of the most successful PSAs of all time, gaining 28 million views within two weeks and winning seven Webby Awards in 2013. It’s a great example of how smart storytelling delivered with today’s technology can spread a message far more widely and effectively than ever before.

A Boy and His Atom

This delightful, one-minute short film, “A Boy and His Atom“, has an incredible making-of story: it was created by moving individual atoms frame-by-frame, and the end result is magnified 100 million times in order to become visible. Created by IBM’s research group, this video now holds the Guinness World Record for the World’s Smallest Stop-Motion film. Behind the scenes footage reveals the cutting-edge science that went in to moving the atoms and gives us fascinating details like the sounds they make as they are dragged to their next position. The final film is a charming story, a spectacular demonstration of IBM’s technology, and a perfect example of how art and science can inspire each other to reach new heights of innovation.

I Love Your Work

Jonathan Harris, a next-gen storyteller who was part of the inaugural Future of StoryTelling in 2012 and featured in Story Arcade for Cowbird, has just released his latest project. I Love Your Work is an interactive portrait of the lives of nine women who make lesbian pornography. The format and interface are non-traditional, featuring 2,202 10-second video clips taken at five-minute intervals over 10 consecutive days. I Love Your Work not a straightforward documentary with a clear message. Instead, it offers an objective view into these women’s lives, challenging you to draw your own conclusions and find your own narrative in the sea of video clips. With Harris’ beautiful interface, intuitive interactions, and elegant presentation, doing so is a pleasure.

Harris’ business model is intriguing as well. Trying to bring scarcity into his monetization models, he limits viewing of the project to just 10 viewers per day, with tickets costing $10 each. With its subject matter, format, and pricing structure, I Love Your Work is provocative in more ways than one and challenges our preconceptions of what documentary storytelling can be.

Mirror World

Enchanted storybooks usually appear only in fantasies and fairy tales, but we get one step closer in the real life with Mirror World, an iPad companion app to Cornelia Funke’s Reckless & Fearless book series. Mirror World takes you into Ogre’s tavern, a fully-realized 360-degree space which you navigate by holding your iPad up as if it’s a window to another world. As you turn around, you can see every angle of the space and explore its nooks and crannies, where objects leading to all sorts of features and mini-stories lie. At the fire you can find a collection of child-eating witch recipes. At a hanging bugle horn you can read fully illustrated story about brothers and sisters Tom and Anna. With its wealth of content, MirrorWorld rewards exploration and fully immerses you in its fantastical world, becoming a great introduction or supplement to Cornelia Funke’s novels.

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#ComedyFest

Twitter is playing host to more than the usual status updates, promotional links, and links to cat Vines this week. Starting Monday April 29, it has also been the mainstage for Comedy Central’s #ComedyFest, the first comedy festival contained entirely on Twitter. With heavy hitters like Mel Brooks and Judd Apatow tweeting, #ComedyFest doesn’t use the brevity of the form as an excuse to shirk on the quality of its content. It featured 68 comedians hosting live-tweeted episodes, Q&A panels, drinking games, and Vine parties. The success of #ComedyFest suggests that it is possible to mount a great show, story, or entirely in 140-character bursts. And though its pieces are bite-sized, #ComedyFest represents a whole, coherent experience that can be accessed by any of Twitter’s 200 million active users—a far larger audience than would fit into a basement comedy club.

The Wider Image

Reuters’ global network of 600 photographers distributes over half a million pictures each year of world events and breaking news. In The Wider Image, their free iPad app, you can gain access to most of them. With a beautiful interface that puts images front and center, The Wider Image is an engaging place to learn about what’s going on in places as far-flung as Bangladesh and Chernobyl through the immediacy of full-screen, Retina-resolution photo essays. While there are accompanying captions and articles that supplement, for the most part The Wider Image allows the photographs to tell full, rich stories on their own. You can browse images by date, location, or photographer and save your favorites. You can even follow individual photographers’ work, becoming familiar with the people behind the camera. New images can be discovered by dragging across a world map and a timeline, allowing you instant access to what would otherwise be far-flung locales. With its intuitive interface, the Wider Image gives its users an beautiful, immediate way of engaging with real-life stories from around the world.

Perrier Secret Place

You approach a nondescript laundromat and hold out a ticket. The woman sees the tattoo on your wrist, nods knowingly, and lets you behind the counter. You push past racks of clothes, open a door, and enter…Perrier Secret Place, where you experience one wild party from the points of view of 60 different characters. You’re able to see all of your surroundings, interact with others, and explore your environment, all done through video. Whenever you get curious, you can click on any other character to “inhabit” them and see the party through their eyes. As you explore, you learn secrets and try to decode them to win a real-life prize: a trip to some of the world’s biggest parties. With its premise of putting you in the shoes of different characters—each of them experienced through a true POV video—Secret Place becomes truly immersive. Other characters talk directly to you, and you can see “your” hands interacting with the world around you. With its rich world and intriguing premise, Perrier Secret Place is an impressive, fun example of interactive storytelling.

Daybreak

At the end of FOX’s TV thriller Touch, viewers were introduced to a mysterious object: the glowing, powerful dodecahedron. With just a glimpse of the object during the show and associated commercials, intrigued viewers could follow clues to Daybreak, a transmedia spinoff that told its own story about the wonders of technology. There, viewers watched web episodes, explored two websites, solved puzzles on a smartphone app, and could even find real-life street posters all integrated into Daybreak’s story. Through their exploration across these platforms, viewers followed a character whose life was turned upside-down by the dodecahedron and engaged with the world of Touch more deeply. Sponsored by AT&T, and produced by FoST speaker Tim Kring, Daybreak is a strong contender in the brave new world of branded content, as well as an exciting high production value transmedia experience.

Do Not Touch

Catch the Dot. Stay in the Green Zone. Make a Mask. Play the Bass. Do all these things and more at Do Not Touch, an interactive music video by Amsterdam design studio Moniker for the song Kilo by Dutch band Light Light. As you watch the video, your mouse cursor’s location is recorded as you follow the instructions that appear at the top of the screen. Making it more fun, you can see the trails of all the mouse cursors that have watched the music video before. The result is a swarm of cursors, all acting together to fulfill the instructions. With its playful calls to action, Do Not Touch can be played like a game, enjoyed as a song, and appreciated for the great example of participatory, crowd-sourced art that it is.

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