storytelling – Kristen Baumlier

Tag: storytelling

Zeega: A New Web Storytelling Tool

Posted on June 7, 2013June 13, 2013 by Kbaumlier

Every few months, I get an email about a new online storytelling tool. I have tried some, but few of them seem to provide an experience that is visually interesting. I’m not exactly sure how I ended up on the Zeega website, but I was immediately drawn in to click on and watch a piece called KOSMO KAT – Silk Water. This Zeega piece was a combination of music and animations that featured a 3d wireframe cat, sushi, and electronic music that sounded like the band Kraftwork.

So what is Zeega? It is a free online website where you can make an account, and use music, gif animations, and movie clips in order to create cinematic experiences comprised of looped clips. The project promotes itself as, “Make the web you want.” I recently navigated to the site, and when watching “The Most Insulting and Offensive Pizza in the World,” I was able to click on strange shaped pizza images, and read text about pizza while a rap song about pizza played. The experience is kind of like an interactive youtube – but the high-quality image, and loops of the videos somehow make it into a new experience.

To make pieces, any media can be used in any cloud or online space, and the entire screen is a canvas to create in. When navigating Zeega, and playing the featured pieces we are instructed to “Turn up the volume, and use arrows and hotspots to explore.” Currently the website features virtual exhibition the creators’ of the website favorite pieces, which were chosen from 1,000 contributions from 60 countries and 6 continents. I must not be the only person who has gotten drawn in to playing Zeega pieces, the project was recently featured at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Some of the pieces featured on the front of the site include The Making of .. Journeys, Ghosts and Thunder, Traveling Man, The Making Of. The City, and Ode au bungalow. Zeega originates from one of the startups in Matter, a San Francisco-based accelerator for mission-driven companies committed to changing media for good. The site is made to be used by anyone, and when you goto the website, make sure you have at least a few minutes free, it’s easy to spend time there checking out the pieces.

Image Source:
zeega.com/

Links:

zeega.com/

Cowbird: A New Online Storytelling Tool

Posted on December 23, 2011December 28, 2011 by Kbaumlier

On November 28th, Cowbird launched a new online storytelling tool called Cowbird. Cowbird is a community of storytellers – who have a goal to tell deeper, longer-lasting pieces than what is on the web. The site started with an online piece called The Occupy Saga and the Story of the 99%, and the team behind the site writes that the tool is meant to provide a “slower” space for self-reflection and a place for personal connections.

I checked out the Occupy Wall Street story- and the images and amount of information and stories on the site provides a broader and bigger view of the Occupy movement. With full size photographs and individual accounts of Occupy events – it was an easy to use interactive platform where I could read about events in Zuccotti Park, Portland, Oakland, and other locations on one site. I also could choose to experience the stories through images or by reading the stories.

The website allows users to create a audio-visual diary, and to collaborate in documenting stories or what the site calls “sagas”. Sagas would include events like the Japanese earthquake, the war in Iraq, and the Occupy Wall Street movement – things that affect millions of lives and human history.

The project aims to make a new participatory journalism which focuses on collecting individual stories behind news events and large themes. The site aims to create a “public library” of human experience so that the information, knowledge, and experiences are available in an area called the commons, for future generations to be able to experience and learn from.

The online tool is unique, in that it provides a platform for full-screen photos, modern typography, infographics, hand-drawn iconography, and a non-distracting environment to support the viewer to be able to experience stories in a “360 degree” perspective. Viewers can view the stories in various views including by timeline, places, “characters,” and stories.

To start a Cowbird diary, you can request an invitation by submitting information about yourself, proposing the stories you would like to tell, and links to any of your past work.

Links:

Cowbird – cowbird.com

The Occupy Saga— the story of the 99% on on Cowbird