This document provides details about the student's concept for an online transmedia work for their Production Project course. The concept is an online cemetery inspired by the Mexican Day of the Dead festival. It would allow users to upload profiles of deceased loved ones with photos, videos and text in vibrant colors. The profiles would be accessed through a world map interface and each entry would celebrate the person's life in keeping with the festive spirit of Day of the Dead traditions. Other inspirations for the concept included Bjork's "Biophilia" app-album and the "In Their Room" documentary project which featured candid video diaries.

1. Task #1 Project Report
Joshua Maddox Wellington
S3233774

2. BRIEF
At the beginning of the Production Project course,
we were given a brief that would act as a compass
for us to create an online work that would
eventually become an industry-standard piece that
would exist alongside a 50-minute radio
documentary being produced by Robyn Ravlich. The
documentary will be aired on Robyn’s “Into the
Music” program which is featured on Radio
National. The role the students will play is to create
a bridge between Robyn’s documentary and the a
more multifaceted, trans-media work that will be
rich in texture and diversity.

3. BRIEF
The concept of the Day of the Dead is quite fascinating to me.
Ever since I was young, I’ve had a fascination with death, the
underworlds, the macabre and so on and I knew that this was
an interesting way for me to indulge my fascination. I used to
read stories about Greek gods, Aztec sacrifices and such, and I
used to have a morbid fascination with the drama and
glamour of it all. One thing that is very appealing to me about
the Day of the Dead is the vibrancy and passion that the
festival embodies, and it’s very interesting for me to see death
portrayed in technicolour and with a great deal of lustre. I
found this very inspiring, so it gave me a lot of direction and
allowed me to see the kinds of work that I wanted to create in
Production Project 2.

4. MY OWN CONCEPT
My own proposal for an online trans-media work that incorporates all of these
elements and that is also rich and is in keeping with the Day of the Dead is to create
an online cemetery. The concept incorporates elements of social media, video, text
and photography and is both an educational database, but is also a forum for people
to tribute their loved ones in a style that fits the mood and perspectives of the
Mexican Day of the Dead. The online cemetery would be formed by a world map,
which would act as a ‘motherboard’, and from their, the participant could view an
online graveyard from anywhere in the world. Once a graveyard is selected, a
contributor could upload an entry about someone who’s deceased and provide a
snippet of their life in either a video, a piece of text, a photograph, and so on. Each
entry would be viewed as a miniature profile and would exist to celebrate the
departed person’s life. In keeping with the spirit of the Day of the Dead, the profiles
would be colourful and vibrant and would be encoded with traditional Mexican Judas
statues, skeletons, women in floral headdresses and so on. The concept of the website
is to not be gloomy and sullen, with a more westernised view on death: the aesthetics
and richness of the Mexican festival counter those attitudes to make a hub that is
lustrous and beautifully-textured, more in keeping with the spirit of the Day of the
Dead.

5. BJÖRK- BIOPHILIA
Icelandic musician Björk’s online work and iPad app series ‘Biophilia’ was another
great inspiration to me. The work is an educational app-album that fuses music,
technology and science and is an attempt to detail the relationships between music,
emotions and natural forces. For instance, the work features an app called ‘Virus’
where the user must make a cell contract a virus in order for it to die so that the user
can progress in the game. Another app allows the user to form lightning patters to
compose a song. The app called ‘Moon’ teaches the user about the phases of the
moon and allows the user to create chords based on what phase the moon is in. My
concept for my own work incorporates much of these basic elements, mainly in terms
of a compass and ‘motherboard’, but also ‘Biophilia’ is interesting to me because it
attempts to have its user see or experience things from an unusual perspective.
Typically, one wouldn’t cheer for a cell to contract a virus or for the tectonic plates in
the earth to cause friction (in order to create musical beats), but Björk has created an
app that makes the user want to learn about these slightly morbid things. This is partly
because the design and layout of the apps are visually rich and stunning and partly
because a dark part of human nature is to have a fascination with peril and doom. My
Day of the Dead concept adheres to this philosophy to a large degree.

11. IN THEIR ROOM
One online media feature that appealed to me was the ‘In Their Room’
project, which is a document of gay men in New York City. Much like the film
‘Tarnation’ by Jonathan Caouette, the film acts as a creative-confessional for
young men on the fringes of the world. The project details the lives and
environments of its subjects by requesting that participants film short
vignettes of themselves in their bedrooms. The subjects discuss their
quotidian aspects of their lives as well as discoursing into their innermost
feelings and points of view about various issues. By veering into the
bedrooms of its subjects, the project endeavours to portray a pocket of
society that much of the mainstream is largely unfamiliar with. The result was
a series of short films that highlighted some of the experiences documented
in the video diaries. The reason I found this inspiring was because I liked the
idea of people uploading their own content onto the hub, and I also liked the
candidness of the interviews as well as the visually rich style that the videos
possess.
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