Creating Worlds as Collective Inquiry: Realitycraft's New Home

We create worlds to explore new ideas.

Stories are scenarios we play out together to figure out if a future or opportunity is worth pursuing. We've done this throughout time with any tools at our disposal. Now that the tools are powerful and potentially damaging when used in harmful ways, do we need to change course or change how we communicate how we use our tools in mediamaking? Do our standards need to change?

Last week I gave a talk on generative media for PBS station innovators & leadership to explore how #genvideo and generative production workflows will impact their choices in programming, content and mediamaking for years to come. Leadership of media stations, channel programming heads and specifically program directors and station leadership need to be able to communicate consistent standards on how to AND how NOT to use generative tools in their productions while experimenting on the edges of storytelling.

Here's a few highlights from that talk on Realitycraft and our inquiry-based process to creating media experiences that reflect the value of the collective and the individual creativity while maintaining standards for attribution and production:

• Is it clear this is a generative clip? Provide generative attribution or tagging when using video clips in any documentary or non-fiction work, especially when pivotal to storytelling. "Generative simulation" or "AI Generated" on the bottom of the clip is useful while in the story with detail in credits as needed.
• Keep raw files and be ready to show the process behind every clip in your work. Attribution starts with showing how the clip was built, upscaled, edited.
• Consent-driven approaches start with asking people or their families/estates before using any form or likeness, whether voice or other trained content and not using proper names or other people's IP in your training or worldbuilding. If the person/family is not asking for this media, is it ok for you to share it?
• Choosing the right tools for each endeavor starts with a deliberative approach where stakeholders need to come together and decide which of the thousands of AI and generative media tools and workflows out there will be appropriate for their audiences and use cases in experiments such as animated bumpers, intros and the short media clips between features.

Public media in particular has a vital role to play in modeling effective interactive and generative standards that can work for all ages and types of audiences. Special thanks to Chad Davis for this invitation to return to his innovation group.

There are millions of us exploring these edges and figuring out together what the collective standards and inquiries will need to look like for the future. We've already seen that the "engineering" of prompting is now learning to ask the right tool in the right way in the right order of operations and in line with our needs, both collectively and individually as creators. Collective innovation work makes the magic wand seem less magical and more practical in its effects.

Sci-fi writing, disaster preparation and public art can all be rapidly evolved through new approaches to media workflows, combining inspiration with spatial data, collective process and inquiry to tackle real world questions and challenges. This work can be interactive, valuable and shared with all ages in public spaces, creating media shaped by engagement with it.

Our collective approach is not unique in this moment, but our futures will be shaped by how we choose to communicate these standards & choices today.

Just as game worlds are shaped by their fandoms, we have an opportunity now with the thousands of generative tools finding their way into our media tools to reshape how we choose to create new worlds effectively WITH EACH OTHER. Standards, credits and "ownership" are sections of this evolving puzzle. Our next mutual steps toward a protopian future will need to focus our collective capacity for creativity and generative play to speak to our mutual challenges and use tools wisely, rather than focusing on one company, tool, story or transformer.

Filling our toolboxes with the right tools for us and our people makes our work possible - and the tools are not the production NOR the final output. In media production, the choice of technology tools is often less important than how we choose to use them with our teams as part of a collective process of creativity. Choice of when/how to use AI can be made together in a mutually beneficial process that informs everyone throughout the exploration.

As the technologies will change our media and the ways we work together, we will need to find new ways to express those relationships and be in active inquiry about where those technologies are taking us. Is it where we want to go? Is one solution effectively better than others for what we're trying to create? These are not one-and-done questions to answer once then never revisit; iterate these inquiries into your media management process, including reviewing choice of tools and generative outcomes with your people on a regular basis.

Ethical engagement behind these tools and transformers will continue to change. Every media maker, programmer and creative team has to determine where it is appropriate to experiment -- and when it is right to publish or share those new methods and media. New channels will continue to emerge that focus specifically on the generative media revolution as filmmakers around the world make new types of features, music videos and stories.

For channel and network leaders, media programmers, producers seeking guidance and people leading new media initiatives we are all finding our way through this space together.

No one company or policy maker has the perfect code or standard.

There is no one wrong or right way to guide producers and team members to experiment, but there may be wrong ways for your audience or people that are not honoring of the existing creative process.

These creative production & AI topics we will be diving deeper into next month at AWE in Long Beach on a panel with Erin Reilly - Julian Reyes - Craig Allen & Rachel Joy Victor exploring creative experimentation with AI and how we choose to create at these edges with our teams and audiences. If you'd like to join us for executive roundtables at AWE, DM me for a discount code and let's talk about how we can align and join forces to grow your new initiatives.

As immersive worldbuilders seeking to be ethical in all work, it helps when we are transparent, honoring and clear about our experimentation process with the people we touch through our work. Our transparency into the inquiry and the questions we're asking helps us do this experimentation more effectively as part of an interactive process. For channel leaders and producers, I encourage everyone in the workflow to err on the side of giving the public more information.

Try asking these questions inside your teams or with your communities:

• Are we creating a valuable space or story for exploration?
• Are we honestly representing our subjects or creating a new spin on an old story, and is that transparent to the audience?
• Is this the best way to go about sharing this experiment, story or inquiry?
• What happens if we open up this inquiry to our community for feedback?

While it can feel risky at first to open up these conversations to a broader community, there can be great value when leaders such as public media programmers choose to include local story producers, creative technologists and others experimenting on the edges of interactive and generative media. The fruit of these experiments can help shape boundaries and build standards for attribution and media management that help creative teams everywhere.

These experiments are happening in tandem with millions of creators worldwide. I am lucky to be experimenting and exploring with many of you at these edges.

I'm currently working on three different but related endeavors:

• Holo Art : global quantum art summits, science/tech exhibitions
• Virtual Worlds Museum : global virtual tours of worlds, new series
• Realitycraft : Grand Opening: new antiques store located in the Niles Antiques Co-op, just down the block from the Niles Essanay Museum.

Niles Canyon (Fremont, CA) was home to the Essanay Movie Studios from 1912 to 1916, where Charlie Chaplin and Broncho Billy starred in many silent films. If you've seen The Tramp, you've seen Niles. I met Broncho Billy this weekend in my store as we talked about the Besbee Ediscope I have for sale for a film editor into the top of the line 1930 model for 8 or 16mm editing - and it turns out Broncho Billy is also head of a modern film history society. Old and new keep converging.

I sell antiques as part of my worldbuilding design process as it allows me to help inform the creation of new worlds and experiences that feel resonant to past, present and the futures we want to share. While these old technologies were once state of the art, we can learn a lot from the development and evolution of these tools as part of the evolution of media and storytelling. Having the antiques store offers us thousands of unique artifacts to use in new types of worldbuilding, concept design and generative story works; some of these items show up on set as well as in virtual production, #NeRFs and #Gaussiansplats.

If I can help you create any form of world or treasure, get in touch. I look forward to hearing how we can create new worlds together.