StoryCubes

playful cubes for storytelling, brainstorming ideas or playing games in three dimensions

Community & Events

Diffusion engaging with the community, online and out in the world.

Residencies

an ongoing programme enabling residents at Proboscis studio to create eBooks and StoryCubes for their own projects.

Learning, Schools & Education

eBooks & StoryCubes created for learning and educational purposes

Library

Browse the collection of Diffusion Shareables: eBooks & StoryCubes

Welcome to the Imagination Age by Rita J. King

Submitted by on March 1, 2010 – 6:05 pm

Download
StoryCubes (27 A4 PDFs) Zip Archive 18.2Mb
eBook A4 | US Letter PDF 3.6Mb

AboutThe Imagination Age is a broad approach to rethinking systems through a prism of technology, held up to amplify the bright beam of the imagination. Both the Diffusion eBook and the Story Cubes explore The Imagination Age through the perspective outlined by Giles Lane when he commissioned the project: Transformation: How We Become Who We Are. The Story Cubes take shape across three planes of perceived reality:

Physical Reality: First, the 27 cubes were designed on paper, meant to act as a catalyst in the physical world for people to build stories the way children build castles out of blocks. I thought it would be fabulous if people could make the cubes tremendous or tiny to show the significance of each element in the overall scene of the story created anew each time the cubes are approached. In the physical world, the cubes remain stubbornly one size fits all. You can’t make some of them disappear into the ocean while others float in the sky. That can only be accomplished in the virtual world, so that’s where I went next.

Virtual Reality: For several years I have been working in the field of “virtual reality.” In the virtual world Second Life, participants create avatars for themselves and can design and collaborate on any three-dimensional content they can dream up. Second Life is a creative paradise for those with the vision to give dimension to their own previously intangible imaginations and then allow people from all over the world to enhance their created landscapes. To illustrate the installation in Second Life and segue to the third plane of reality, click the link: www.youtube.com/dancinginktv#p/u/2/Y4KwvsTEHKY

Augmented Reality: Lately, my company, Dancing Ink Productions, has been working in the field of “augmented reality,” which goes a step beyond “virtual reality” by changing the fabric of one’s immediate perceptions in the physical world. Reality is becoming a multilayered collage. 26 of the cubes correspond to letters of the Roman alphabet from which stories are told. The 27th cube has no corresponding letter, so instead, it activates the possibility for a whole new realm of understanding through an Augmented Reality marker printed on it. If you have a webcam, you can print this Augmented Reality marker out and activate the webcam at the following site: www.1000inchesinloveland.com to see the 27th cube create a new reality.

“Welcome to the Imagination Age,” documents some of the main ideas behind a worldwide collaborative movement toward a new global culture and economy in the Imagination Age. If this message of transformation speaks to you, consider it an invitation to join the experiment. Follow @RitaJKing on Twitter and ping me..

Published March 2010 in the Diffusion Transformations series

Rita J. King is CEO and Creative Director of Dancing Ink Productions. Creator of The Imagination Age. Innovator-in-Residence, IBM Analytics Virtual Center. Senior Fellow for Social Networking and Immersive Technologies at the Center for the Study of the Presidency & Congress, and a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, where she collaborated with Joshua S. Fouts on the “Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds” project that spanned four continents as well as the digital culture. Investigative reporter, essayist, artist and adventurer.

*** made with bookleteer.com ***

2 comments - Latest by:
  • tom
    This is all very interesting to me. Curious about the difference between a virtual second life and multiple lives…
    Comment posted on 3-2-2010 at 01:06
  • uberVU - social comments
    Social comments and analytics for this post... This post was mentioned on Twitter by proboscisstudio: new on #diffusion: Welcome…
    Comment posted on 3-1-2010 at 20:00