With a score, custom scents, a new high-tech delivery system, the creators produced a nice show.  By creating characters out of paired scents and sounds, they broke new ground. 

The work “Green Aria: A ScentOpera” was written and directed by Stewart Matthew with music by Nico Muhly and Valgeir Sigurdsson; the scents were by French perfumer Christophe Laudamiel; the innovative scent delivery system was by Fläkt Woods. Look here for a great review by The New York Times. 

How can you reimagine storytelling with a different sense – how about taste or touch?  Think about the amazing experience theme parks craft by incorporating kinesthetic storytelling (like the great Adventures of Spiderman at Islands of Adventure in Orlando).

What could you do by avoiding the most obvious storytelling media?

Always interesting Tim Manners  blogs on Reveries about two related topics:  Restless Desks and Baby Buggies.

“Restless Desks” looks at a recent innovation to provide desks that can be for either sitting or standing to allow children choices in school.  According to the inventor (a teacher herself), it reduces fidgeting, increases attentiveness, and cuts down on discipline problems.  Does it help them do well on the standardized tests?

Meanwhile, “Baby Buggies” is a look on what the developmental impact of forward versus rear facing infant strollers is.

How I sit in that theater seat isn’t just related to mycomfort after all, it turns out it might even have something to do with what I get out of the experience.

How is the impact of your story affected by the viewer (or listener) and their physical space?

Two new coaster projects aim to change all that. Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit, Universal Studios Florida’s brand new music-themed coaster will let you pick a personalized soundtrack for your ride, record video of you while you ride, allow you to edit the video and add effects, and then post it online – before you leave the ride.

Six Flags doesn’t want to be outdone; they’re creating Jimmy Olsen’s Truth2Power, a viral marketing game (or ARG – Alternate Reality Game) blends live events (protestors at the park against rumored changes to the ride), multiple websites, puzzles, media outreach, and more.  It’s all to support the re-theming of two roller coasters (one at Six Flags New England and one at Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey).

These kinds of experiences that transcend media and offline channels, while tweaking our sense of what’s real, are created by folks like 42 Entertainment, the rumored creator of the Six Flags ARG.

What part of your story could take a life in multiple realities?  How do you feel as a participant or bystander knowing that you might be part of an elaborate hoax? 

I’m looking forward to seeing the impact (and potential blowback) from these efforts.  It’s worth noting that to roller coaster enthusiasts, both of these projects were panned as unexciting renovations or boring designs until after these features leaked out.  To these enthusiasts, the ARG or media elements have raised expectations considerably.

Maybe the story before and after the ride will be better than the ride itself.  Maybe the ride and media will complement each other to enhance the experience.  Maybe the real life and online components connect with different audiences and feel disjointed.

Let’s see what the verdict is when both projects open this summer.  Can anyone get me any tickets?

“As the last man on Earth sat alone in his house, he heard a knock at the front door.”

Jon Steel, in Truth, Lies and Advertising, writes that he thinks the record for shortest story is the sign often held by homeless people, “Will Work For Food,” which he thinks packs more meaning into four words than you realize at first:

1. I’m desperate but not crazy
2. I’m not begging, I’m willing to work
3. I need to eat, I’m not asking for cash for drugs or alcohol

To me, both are examples of Occam’s Razor applied.  According to Wikipedia, William of Ockham was an English friar and philosopher seen as one of the great minds of Medeival thought; his Occam’s Razor is often stated as:

“entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity.”

How could applying Occam’s Razor help your writing be brief and direct?  How could it immediately engage your audiences’ imaginations?

What can a 14th century friar teach you about telling a better story?

Going even deeper (as always), in this  NY Times story, where the imlications for cocktail parties, athletic uniforms, and more are considered.

Does any of this surprise you or just validate what you’ve always thought? How might it change the way you communicate?

1. Wired brought the math and its limitations to life by explaining (with as little math as possible) and putting into context gaussian cupolas, credit default swaps, tranching, and a mathematician named Dr. Li who was an economic hero until it all came crashing down.
2. PBS’ Frontline told the chronology of the crisis from a personal point of view, primarily Henry Paulson’s, in the riveting segment Inside the Meltdown
3. St. Louis PBS affiliate KETC created a blog, forums, broadcast content, and a resource page to engage the community (with significant results) through the Facing the Financial Crisis programming it created with an eye toward community engagement.
4. Finally, in the book Panic: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity, noted economics writer Michael Lewis gathers contemporary commentary from various financial crises going back into the 1980′s to illustrate that, really, we shouldn’t have been surprised by this one.

What have you seen? What’s been effective at informing? What’s gotten in the way?  How can we help make sense of all this and move forward together?  How will that story be told?

Enter Dining in the Dark - a dining experience where everyone loses the sense of sight for a meal where all the other senses have to pick up the slack?

At these restaurants (there are others around the US), you are completely sightless once you enter the restaurant. How much do you think your typical dinner experience would change without the use of vision to make sense of your environment, your company, and the food?

It’s not just a US thing; Cologne’s trendy Unsicht-Bar is covered in this 2002 Time review.

How would you tell a story without engaging the sense of sight? What would a touch-based, or scent-based story be like?

I especially liked the piece by mechanised about the caravan, but could see myself returning again and again to Dr Chris Mullen’s Lyrical Encyclopedia of Visual Propositions on his Visual Telling of Stories site.

Finally, the Purposes of Visual Storytelling are wonderfully summarized in this post from Visuual.com. All in all, there’s plenty here to whet the appetite for more and stir your own personal curiosity.

Where does it take you?  What stories can you give voice to today that you couldn’t yesterday?

Petri Purho is a guy who looks at interactive games completely differently.  Crayon Physics might very well be the answer to the question, “If Harold and his purple crayon had made puzzles for us to solve, what would they be like.”

Harold and the Purple Crayon, of course, is the classic children’s book by Crockett Johnson about a boy that draws his world and interacts with it with his ever present crayon.

How could you completely re-imagine interactivity for your digital storytelling project?  How could the interaction tell more of the underlying story?

It all started, according to Avi Savar in his blog post from Content to Commerce, like this:

“Did You Know?”(then called “Shift Happens”) was originally created as a PowerPoint presentation for a faculty meeting at Arapahoe High School in Centennial, CO.

The creator wanted the faculty to think about new and different ways to prepare students for the world they would enter after high school. In early 2007, Dr. Scott McLeod, Director of the UCEA Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education, revamped the presentation by altering timing and additional content. Although this version went viral in February 2007, the video didn’t receive as much popularity until it was re-designed by XPLANE, an electronic design firm. XPLANE created a brand new version that featured a graphic redesign, updated information, and music.

Since going viral, the video has received over 15 million views.”

XPLANE is a great firm; their St. Louis office is just a block from mine, and they have some very talented visual storytellers (I’ve been fortunate to work with Scott and Bill).

How can you use factoids to tell your own story?  How much clearer would your story be if you reduced it to the fewest words possible?