The HBO Voyeur Project is an Alternate Reality Game which gives you an inside look on different stories happening in different flats in NYC. There are two interesting facts about the project.
First it’s heavily using spatial montage to show connections between the different stories. There is an option on the website, which shows these connections by highlighting certain flats while dimming others. This technique gives some interesting new options for spatial storytelling.
Second interesting aspect is the marketing claim “Do you like to watch?”. For me it seems like HBO uses the Voyeur Project as an research tool to find out more about coverging media usage of it’s viewers. It’s not only the questions if you like to watch but where (or in which medium) you like to watch.
Get some backgrund information on the project’s blog “The story gets deeper”.
“The HBO Voyeur Project is a collection of multi-media stories that HBO has built around the theme of voyeurism.
See what people do when they think no one is Watching
is the tagline that they have used to describe the experience that starts in the streets of New York City, behind the countless windows that we pass everyday. It comes together in a silent film that will be projected on the side of a building, and extends to the HBO channel, HBO on Demand, and online at HBOVoyeur.com. There are also “artifacts” of the characters everywhere, pieces of story which have been sprinkled around the web and in the real world to heighten the experience for those who like to get involved. However it is experienced in whichever medium, the point of the HBO Voyeur Project is to get the viewer to confront the uncomfortable question: “Do You Like To Watch?”
Link via Bewegungsmelder.



July 5th, 2007 at 2:00 pm
I’m feeling your take on spatial storytelling - when television was a one way show the audience didn’t have the authority to make connections by changing the perspective. In a new era the audience is empowered because media is so easily manipulated, edited, and re-interpreted. I guess HBO is riding that line between story-telling and story-making.
July 9th, 2007 at 9:47 pm
Spanner 2.0…
Der gemeine Voyeur, im Volksmund auch abfällig einfach nur Spanner genannt, dürfte an HBOs neuem Projekt seine helle Freude haben.
Der US-amerikanische Fernsehkanal startet unter der Adresse http://www.HBOVoyeur.com ein Projekt, und beschreibt es mi…
February 27th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
[...] Found this theatrical trailer for the very interesting HBO Voyeur project at Bannerblog. Fits in very well in the hypermedia marketing concept of HBO. Read my thoughts about the campaign here. [...]
March 6th, 2008 at 7:13 am
http://www.listeninginthedark.blogspot.com/
October 1st, 2009 at 6:52 pm
[...] aired a new project on the net and in public locations some days ago, following the HBO Voyeur project, experimenting with new forms of storytelling. It’s called HBO Cube and introduces a cubic [...]