"Let me tell you a digital story," Firesign Theater alumnus Peter Bergman teased the audience at the first Digital Storytelling Festival in 1995. "1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0...." Bergman will be back at this year's festival, to be held 18-21 September in Crested Butte, Colorado.
What makes one of the oldest human pastimes relevant in the age of the clickthrough and the info-bite?
"Everything moves so goddamned fast now, you've got lots and lots of little things demanding little bits of your time," observes DSF director Dana Atchley. Learning how to use new media to tell the stories that made you who you are can help you "glue it all together," Atchley says, and is one of the most promising applications for the Net. Festival producer Denise Aungst adds that crafting narratives "is the human legacy - it nourishes your soul."
Previous years' festivals have brought together tech-savvy scouts from Nike, Hallmark, and Pixar with teachers who are just learning how to use computers in their classrooms, says Aungst. There is only room for 175 participants in Crested Butte's tiny Center for the Arts, and festival planners expect the three-day event - which will be announced next week - to sell out early.
The focus of this fall's gathering in the Rockies, Atchley says, will be storytelling and the Web. Scott Rosenberg of Salon and Abbe Don of Abbe Don Interactive and bubbe.com are on the roster of speakers, as are Joe Lambert of the San Francisco Digital Media Center; George Jardine, a "digital video evangelist" for Adobe; and Susan Abdulezer, who uses QuickTime VR to teach deaf students in New York City. In addition to the speakers and workshops, participants will port their narratives to the Net in the festival's "Web Kitchen."
The festival's major underwriter is Apple. Though the company is approached by "50 festivals a month" hoping for sponsorships, says marketing manager Jennifer Bossin, Apple chose to underwrite the DSF because "it's not just a one-off, it's more like a movement - a marriage of technology and creativity with heart." (In email, Apple staffer Ralph Rogers told the festival organizers that the company feels the festival is significant because there are as yet "no seminal works to define forms of expression for new media.... Let's face it, even with a Mac this stuff is hard.")
Another topic on this year's hotlist will be brand building in the digital era. Atchley - a multimedia performer who began documenting his own life when he was 7 with a Brownie Twin Lens Reflex Camera - has been tapped to help build the most recognized brand of all: Coca-Cola. An ambitious "global storytelling theater" mounted by Atchley's production company for "World of Coca-Cola," will open in Las Vegas this July.
