Raiders of the lost European Media Culture

One of the objectives of the MC2020 project is to identify and make demos of prospective European interactive media culture. Below is my brief of the assignment given to team 4 preparing now on-line the MC2020 workshop to begin in three weeks in Tampere.

Team 4 online assignment: Identify examples of present interactive European media culture

1. Backgound: our pitch to European Union
Our proposal to EU Erasmus programme included a promise to make research and demos of interactive media culture 2020. We wrote:
“The Eurovision Song Contest and other contests arranged by European Broadcast Union and television formats like Euronews and Eurosport are established broadcasting centered Media Culture actors.
But where is the European vision of 21st Century Interactive Transmedia and Cross Media for young audiences who are not pleased with reception, but urge to participate and create?
Convergence and Divergence are the megatrends in media culture. Old and new media formats converge but at the same time media consumption is diverging from television and Internet to smart phones, tablets, public huge interactive screens and multimedia players. Through Social Media, audiences do not merely receive broadcasts, but interact with them and create new contents.
Where are the European platforms and formats of the new Media Culture Scene? Our project aims at finding some answers to this challenge by inviting students and lecturers possessing different knowledge and skills to create mixed media contents which reflect the richness and diversity of new European Media Culture for various devices at our workshops.”

2. This assignment: research of the present interactive European Media Culture
You have three weeks time to produce a one page document making a review and analyse of the present European interactive media scene.
Yes, I know it would be easier to make a three or five page paper, but you must try to serve the other project participants well and write a focused and compact report.
The workshop will then start creating concepts of Media Culture 2020 and the best of them will be created to working demos in our last workshop in Liepaja in October-November this year.

3. Something to start with
Just to offer some aid to start with the assignment I list here some examples of what could be present interactive media culture.

a) TV and Movies
The Spiral was in my opinion a very good attempt to meet the criteria for interactive European Media Culture. Both the tv-series and the game became quite popular in the six countries involved. Do you know or can you find similar examples?
The series: http://www.thespiraltheseries.com/
The game: http://www.thespiral.eu/
Something quite different - could this develop to something more?
Eurochannel: http://www.eurochannel.com/

b) Media Art
I always say artists are most international and at the cutting edge of applying new technologies. Is it possible I am right? Study these and above all find more:
European Media Art Network http://www.emare.eu/
Interartive http://interartive.org/
European Media Art Festival: http://www.emaf.de/english/start.html

c) Games
Some weeks ago my grandson Henri (4 years) taught my wife a new funny thing on her iPad and now I'm afraid to stay an Angry Bird widow for the rest of my life.
Gamification is one of the really big trends. It is a global trend. Is there room for European game culture? (After all, Rovio and Supercell are Finnish = European ;-)
European Games Developer Federation http://www.egdf.eu/
European Games Award http://www.european-games-award.com/

d) Others
You can find other examples to ponder and analyse, like:
Surprising Europe http://surprisingeurope.com/

4. Deadline
You should start working on the Google Document I have created for you in the Team 4 folder. You better start now, the one page document must be finished before you start your travel to Tampere. So Friday April 12th the deadline is!

Good luck!