Our group was quickly able to settle on a concept for our final assignment but weren’t sure how to frame it with a research question. We divided our work based on the crafts we do in our spare time. My focus in our group project is to create French beaded plants. My designs are based on real plants so for assignment 4 I will create my own patterns. In creating a museum walk-through I hope our audience will enjoy the tactility of my beadwork and the sandbox. The week 8 reading says transmedia works “expand stories from singular linear narratives to multidimensional user experiences” (Routledge 2019) the tactile experience will engage the audience and let them consider the biases our museum has. I recorded Super 8 footage before our project pitch but don’t fully know the role it will take in our work.

We discussed the fallen civilisations our alien world would be inspired by. I am particularly interested in the fall of Rome. While history focuses on the geopolitical reasons for its demise a big part of it was climate change. “Scholars… [argue] that drought in Central Asia and the onset of a cooler climate in North-West Eurasia may have put Germanic tribes, Goths, and Huns on the move into the Roman Empire, provoking the Migration Period and eventually leading to the downfall of the Western Roman Empire.” The combination of political unrest, religious uprising and a changing climate created the perfect storm for its fall. This example reflects the complexity of historiography and the challenges we will have creating a complex world.

Freeman, M & Gambarato, RR (eds) 2019, ‘The Routledge companion to transmedia studies’, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, New York. p350-363.

Marx, W, Haunschild, R. and Bornmann, L (2018) ‘Climate and the decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire: A bibliometric view on an interdisciplinary approach to answer a most classic historical question’, Climate, 6(4). doi:10.3390/cli6040090.