The Waking Heart. An immersive storytelling experience
The ABC was due to release a new TV show The Gradual Demise of Phillipa Finch, an animated TV series based on the work of author Emma Magenta. The ABC needed to promote their show to new audiences to improve viewership and provide an experience for existing audiences to engage with the show across ABC’s existing web and mobile platforms.
The ABC engaged Based On Birds (Simon Jankelson, David Kaldor, Arash Katrak) to help design and deliver a creative campaign to promote the show to new audiences and further engage existing audiences.
Provided expertise:
Creative Direction, Technical Direction, Digital Production
Design process.
As a studio director, I worked with the two other directors to interpret the brief from the ABC and design a cross platform (transmedia) storytelling experience that would promote their show. The resulting customer experience offered new audiences a series of touch points to immerse themselves into the story of the show including the street, at public events, the web and through mobile.
How it worked.
Named the Waking Heart machine, we designed an interactive drawing machine that drew the emotions of users to produce a giant public art work that represented the collective emotion of the Phillipa Finch audience.
Users record their sound and movement and answer a series of questions via the Phillipa Finch website or iPhone application. The information is sent to the Waking Heart machine, where it is processed and printed on a large continuous paper roll, streamed live on The Waking Heart website.
Heartworks are physical manifestations of users’ emotions and present an ever-changing visual story of a collective state of being.
The result.
In creating a public platform for the sharing of emotion, The Waking Heart Machine connected over 10,000 people with the simple ideals of the Phillipa Finch story: an appreciation of life’s ups and downs, and an awareness of our fellow human.
The project was featured in TEDx talks around Aus and was nominated as a finalist for best interactive at South by Southwest Festival and Australia’s AIMIA awards. It was also featured in numerous design magazines like InDesignLive.