Erik Blankinship started things off by discussing his current company, Media Modifications, which develops tools for exposing and enhancing the structure of media in order to make its full creative and learning potential accessible to all. This is a theme he promises to return to throughout the course of his comments and demonstration.
If one starts with a black screen, you have the space to create a screenplay and ultimately a film or video. In the case of his demonstration, the video was a clip from Star Trek the Next Generation. On the left-hand side of the screen the video of the scene appeared, on the right side, the text of the script. Blankenship was able to drag and drop sections of the script which in turn reordered the words and action in the video. He described it as being similar to magnetic poetry, exposing the structure of the media and allowing it to be rearranged and reloaded.
He next demonstrated how this type of remixing and restructuring could be used to create new content. In this case, he created a countdown by selecting and connecting numbers used by Star Trek characters in many different episodes. Giving fans access to the structure of media – as in this case – can be a lot of fun.
This project led developers to begin further work around the idea of adaptations. In the case of the Star Trek countdown, he was able to adapt the Star Trek content to tell the simple story conveyed through the numbers in an interesting and original way. At this point he announced adapt.tv, a soon-to-launched Web site that will provide access to tools for media adaptation.
He used adapt.tv tools to demonstrate on how people can expose the structure of media to create new adaptations.