Xerxes Atlas Blog

I have just come back from NetHui, a gathering of people who are interested in the future of the Internet in New Zealand. It's been pretty good - for me the people there are probably a bit more interesting than the topics although I am certainly learning things! Cudos to InternetNZ for making it accessible (read cheap tickets) to everyone.

There's been one person I've been looking forward to meeting ever since I heard he was going to be there: Lawrence Lessig - the father of Creative Commons. Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand held a meetup this evening I got to hear of a number of projects and organisations that could be a good fit with this project. I had no idea that MusicHype was started in New Zealand for example. I just met the Chairman who lives in Wellington. I didn't get to chat to the guy from People in Your Neighbourhood, but he's done similar things in years gone by in terms of collaborative music creation backed by the British Council.

But Lawrence Lessig was the highlight. He's a pleasant and encouraging and unassuming man that takes an interest in projects no matter how small. His little spectacles top him off as a professor. This guy just ooses intelligence. He seemed genuinely interested in the wikimusical project, writing the URL in his iPhone for later. He then went on to tweet about it to his 150,000+ followers. Awesome.

Really looking forward to his keynote tomorrow morning.

AUCKLAND, New Zealand -  The Xerxes’ Atlas team in Auckland have today announced they’re ready for contributors to the world’s first wikimusical.

Like the jet boat, the bungee jump, and even the humble pineapple lump; this is a true New Zealand invention. ‘Xerxes’ Atlas’, the world’s first wikimusical, aims to re-connect the theatre with young people through the power of the internet as a tool for collaboration.

The term 'wiki' - like 'open source' – usually refers to a website or free software designed for multiple people to collaborate by adding and editing content. For Xerxes’ Atlas this means anyone with internet access from around the world can contribute.

Chairwomen of the Xerxes’ Atlas Board, Bridget Marsh, said “declining theatre numbers, especially among younger generations, is a very real threat to the industry. We’re reaching out to a younger audience by developing a musical that connects with them through the internet and social media.”

Xerxes’ Atlas is about community and collaboration on a scale not seen in modern times in theatre,” said 28-year old creator and Board member Jade Wood. “It means anyone with internet access from around the world can contribute the music, lyrics and even choreography.”

“People can visit the website right now to read the song briefs and hear others’ contributions,” says Wood, “bringing together creative people from all around the world.”

Marsh is former Head of Performing and Screen Arts at UNITEC while entrepreneur Wood has a background in website development. Other members of the team include Business analyst Chad Carter and Lawyer and Documentary Edge Film Festival Organiser Alex Lee.

Information about Xerxes’ Atlas is accessible online. Read more on their website wikimusical.com or alternatively, follow them on Facebook and Twitter.

About a week ago most of the Xerxes' Atlas team met for a drinks and nibbles night in Auckland, which was something of a creative summit about the project.  We invited a bunch of smart and talented people were able to pick their brains regarding our project to see what was working, what wasn't and try to find areas that we could expand into.  

While not as many people showed up as we expected, that turned out to be a good thing because we got some really quality feedback and had a great discussion going that might not have been possible with a larger group.  

One important distinction to come out of the meeting was the idea of the difference between product and process, and whether a finished theatrical production was the final product for us, or whether the actual PROCESS of developing a wikimusical is the product.  

Producing and premiering a new musical is a pretty massive undertaking, and it would take a lot of funding to be able to do it properly.  However, what makes this project interesting is not that it's a NEW musical, but that it's an OPEN SOURCE musical, or a WIKIMUSICAL.  I think we came to realise that in order to complete the project we don't have to mount the production ourselves, but develop the tools and resources for other people to produce their own versions of it.

Jade's unique vision is for a musical that can easily be changed and adapted for each production, and where open collaboration is a central part of the creative process.  In focusing just on that aspect, as well as reaching out to groups that might be interested in eventually producing XA, we'll be able to use our resources better and hopefully be a  bit more efficient.

All of this came out of the meeting last week, and while it's changed the parameters of the project a bit, we're very excited about this evolution.  So as far as we're concerned, the meeting was a big success and I'm sure you'll hear more about our new direction in the coming weeks.

Hi everyone!  I'm Aaron Humphrey, and my awesome co-writer Justin Eade and I are going to be writing the script for XERXES' ATLAS.  I feel very fortunate to have been chosen to work on such an exciting project with along with a group of really passionate, talented people.  I'll be blogging here over the coming weeks to update you all on the progress we're making with the script.

Justin and I spent the first part of 2011 hashing out a detailed outline which will inform the rest of our work on the script.  Now we've moved on to trying to nail down the appropriate tone and language for the dialogue, which is a very different discipline than writing an outline as it's a lot less analytical and involves more trial and error to get the right "feel."

I think so far we have both enjoyed working together and having another writer to bounce things off of.  Justin is a very accomplished, knowledgeable writer, and I'm lucky to have him as a writing partner.  And the fact that I live in Australia and he's in New Zealand means that an International Team of Writers is collaborating on the script, which sounds pretty cool.

I'll have more updates soon, but in the meantime you can check out the blog I kept while I was working on my proposal to write the script for Xerxes' Atlas for a look behind the scenes of my creative process.  

I was thinking this morning about all the possible objections to this project as to why it might not work. Years ago when I was first thinking about the idea I decided to test the idea to see how much interest there was in the project. I put up the project on a session musos site, sat back and watched what happened.  The result? in about 2 weeks I had about 40 people for 16 different countries. Many of them emailed me with stuff they wanted to show me even though I told them I couldn't officially accept their submissions. Many of them and one in particular were very good. So my logic is, if I can get 40 people without trying to be interested in the project and I know at least one of them is excellent - all I need to do is multiple that by 10 and I'll have 10 excellent people working on the project.

Check out the original test although I think some people left the project since and it looks like that you might have to sign up to see it.

Poor words. As they get more popular, as we give them more love, we also keep trying to shove in new meaning to see if they can take it.

In the technology industry, this happens over and over. Take "cloud computing," which used to mean something pretty specific and now means essentially "on the Internet" as far as I can tell. Outside the technology industry, take "news," which also used to mean something, and now is a muddy mess of news/editorial/advertising.

So we've probably been guilty of this too. We decided that we needed to coin a new word for our project and we've come up with wiki-musical and wik-emusical. I'm still in two minds as to which one is best - Wik-emusical places emphasis on the electronic (internet) creation of the project but I'm wondering if this would lead people to think that it was a musical that you could only see on the internet.. which of course isn't true.

Wiki of course is easily understood if you've heard of wikipedia - the online user-generated Encyclopedia. And that's exactly what we're doing but with a musical.

Inspiration for this post came from this blog on opensource.com: http://opensource.com/business/10/4/word-community-losing-its-meaning