Interactive Works

Narrative Driven Interactive Works

Life Story: The Story of the Discovery of DNA

People know the story of Watson & Crick but what about Rosalind Franklin? Life Story, an A&E film, was repurposed at the time along with audio from Anne Sayre, Rosalind Franklin’s biographer. This early interactive hybrid narrative and non-narrative dramatic social justice story follows two competing science teams – James D. Watson and Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin. The elegant interactive plot map interface follows each strand of the story.

While at the San Francisco Apple Multimedia Lab an amazing team worked with Apple producer Fabrice Florin. Co-directing the collaboration between LucasFilm Apple Computer Umbrella (LUAU) and The Smithsonian Institute we produced this prototype with interactive content derived from: BBC Television; A & E Cable Network; Bettman Archive; Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory; Jet Propulsion Laboratory; Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory; University of California, San Francisco; CEL communications; Kings college, Cambridge; Cambridge University; Oxford University; Leeds University; Francis Crick; National Center for Human Genome Research; Wide World Publishing/Tetra; Anthenum books; Basic Books.

Creation Stories From Around The World

With Hands On Media, we co-produced, co-designed and integrated this interactive CD-ROM with fourteen animated folk tales told by storytellers. Creation stories from cultures around the world included cultural information for the associated illustrated  stories. The project involved adapting for screen original folktales, voice talent and early animated techniques to deliver both a high quality stand alone enhanced-audio CD and as an interactive CD-ROM. We integrated the experience with the proprietary  Idaho – multimedia authoring system” developed by Jim Bumgardner at Warner New Media.

As Art Director Hagit Cohen created compelling visuals with a  soft composite look of the product graphics using  simple animation to reveal the story over time. Special attention was paid to the typography of  illuminated written stories with the work of Jocelyn Cohen visual artist and letter-press publisher. This enhanced storybook style moved interactive media a step forward in early multimedia typography design.

“Sidewalk Astronomers, with John Dobson”

An excerpt from an interactive video channel prototype. The story follows Dobson as he gave many of his famous slideshows to San Francisco Bay Area schools with his  engaging astronomy talks. Completed early interface design and user experiences for multi-platform use of online video interaction, produced for Microsoft Corporation.

Paul Park Ranger & The Mystery of the Disappearing Ducks

Experience Designer with an amazing cross-disiplinary team collaboration at LucasFilm and The Apple Multimedia Lab, creating  “Paul Park Ranger & The Mystery of the Disappearing Ducks”  prototype and later as Creative Producer the product version with a Student Case Book and Teacher Guide produced by LucasArts and co-developed with the National Audubon Society, Inc.

Moss Landing - HyperPicture

Moss Landing – “Hyper Picture”

A number of pioneering hybrid interactive narrative and non-narrative design examples were created at the San Francisco Apple Multimedia Lab and with LUAU a collaboration of LucasFilm Apple Computer Umbrella in the late 1980’s. After these works Apple video producer Fabrice Florin gathered a plethora of designers, cinematographers, filmmakers, sound designers and crew to shoot a massive hyperpicture. Key to the digital production design was everyone filming at the same time about a place – Moss Landing, California. The resulting Moss Landing Interactive Documentary gave users an experience of clicking on a Hyper Picture postcard of the shots taken by the multiple point of view filmmakers focused on. Topics included: locals, fishermen, the unique Elkhorn Slough, bird-eye views from the huge local power plant and more. Our role, for example, was two shoot science stories with an infrared camera. The underlying database of these clips created a rich pre-internet connected expereince for viewers to interact with.

Interesting note: After the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in Northern California, the Moss Landing Project had the best record of the Moss Landing University Lab pre-earthquake because of footage captured there.