Eight digital media projects have been selected for the second LAMP: Story of the Future Residential Lab, to be held on South Stradbroke Island, Queensland from 7 to 13 November 2007.

Matt Costello, the highly acclaimed games writer behind massive hits such as Doom 3 and the Pirates of the Carribean 3 comes to Australia as one of the nine specialist mentors for the lab, which will be an intensive six-day program developing digital content projects.

The projects selected for the lab include a creative re-imagining of Shakespeare in Second Life and an online multimedia romance novel, with participants including ARIA nominated writer/director Sarah-Jane Woulahan and award-winning playwright Josh Tyler.

The eight successful teams listed below were announced this week by the Laboratory of Advanced Media Production (LAMP) and the the Australia Council for the Arts’ Literature Board, who are collaborating to deliver this new media development lab with a focus on fostering project with strong writing, narrative depth and commercial appeal.

The selected projects are listed below.

• Random Thoughts On Existence and Other Drama QLD – a story about poetry, secret admirers, stalking, art adventures, life, love and every word is true
• What if Shakespeare VIC/NSW – an exploration of hypothetical Shakespearean drama in Second Life. Experience Shakespeare from the inside
• Corroboree VIC – a journey through the wild habitats of the globe that begins in the palm of your hand and inspires you to act!
• Interactive cros media mystery VIC – an interactive cross-media thriller that invites teens to choose which characters to follow in order to discover the clues and unravel the mysteries
• The 13th Samaritan NSW – a virtual journey through vengeance and its consequences
• REDBACK NSW – seven celebrities heading to a secret summit. An outback pub. Environmental espionage on a corporate scale
• Detective Dale TAS – an interactive detective series for crime buffs, interactive puzzlers and 25-49 year olds. It’s Kath & Kim meets the X-files
• MACHINE TAS – building a better world, one person at a time. Are you controlling the great machine, or just playing your part?