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Instead of universe, I think of transmedia as a multiverse. I've borrowed the word from particle physics. "In the multiverse scenario, the big bang produced not just the universe that we see but also a very large number of variations of our universe that we do not see," say science writers Joseph Lykken and Maria Spiropulu in their article on supersymmetry, and the failure of the Large Hadron Collider to provide evidence. Transmedia is for poets. The spiral image shown here, from Scientific American, suggests the hidden beauty of invisible forms. If you keep looking, you will find more.
The word 'multiverse' is not unfamiliar to poets, who spend their time writing verses. Stanzas are made for associational leaps and shifts in time. Using stanzas as a metaphor, artists and writers can apply the concept of shifts in time and space to the various media used in transmedia. Speaking metaphorically, each type of media in a transmedia project is like one stanza of an emerging poem. One inherently understands that one stanza can not possibly carry the whole content, except haiku. I find term multiverse more interesting than multi-modal or multimedia (the words evoke slide projectors and powerpoints for me) because it expresses the single overall effect, and even the simultaneity, that can be achieved in a well crafted transmedia art.
