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  • Exclusive: Aladygma, the interview by alphabet City
di Federica Aliano


Here it is: the english version of our interview. Enjoy and... look in this page

Immagine

When the idea of Aladygma is born?
Aladygma is a work which required a lot of time on planning. Since about a year ago we started some research and moved the first step. Then we passed at action, before February we settled some important “things” in internet and in the “real” world. Adadygma has got a lot of clues that can be revealed following both the virtual and the real world, in the cities, in true places. Some clues are real, some other are not and lead people through a wrong way.

Did you plan all the clues since the beginning or they came at your mind during this time?
The entire Aladygma idea consist in a storyline. Our team follow this storyline, a sort of script, which is very clear and accurate. It’s a sort of “destiny” that have to happen, but every single person who follow Aladygma can step in, every single person who participate and “play” whit Aladygma can modify the route. Like in everyday life you have to fight versus a hard fate, but in Aladygma you “fight” whit other people to achieve a goal. Aladygma is like a road trip whit a digital navigator – the road is showed, but the driver is a real person (like many of our actors) and he’s “playing” his life too. He has to pay attention at the others drivers, the road coul be blocked and he may have to find an alternative way, a deviation, or sidestep the bad drivers. In this case, the driver modify the road showed on the navigator. So you can almost say that the goal is not so important, is more important the path, how, when and where, whit who you participate at the path. It doesn’t matter if is a simple user from his house or a TV whit a message or your magazine. Everyone can contribute to make the Aladygma story more or less good, rich in details, overacted, complicated, or more simple. We look out like film directors, to take back the story on the right path, and we modify the actor destiny according to the users ideas and discoveries. All the users will have a more and more important role.

Have you observed us, haven’t you? Alphabet City, Cineblog and all the other sites which had say something about you. I beg you haven’t loose anything.
We observed a lot, obviously we did our best to supervise who wrote about aladygma. You and Cineblog too, because you both spoke about Aladygma whithout foncing the story in some direction, in a box, but you just let the story be, free to grow up. In this way you took part in and gave aladygma a positive sense. But aladygma grew up on a global level, so we can’t follow some of other web magazines, mostly because le language is an obstacle (Russian, for example) and we needed more time than usual to find out the meaning of those articles. Luckily for us, today all those obstacles are outgoing.

I find all this operation phenomal, especially because instead of fake and imitators, Aladygma become stronger day after day. What do you think about it?
Among all the blogs, youtubber and sites that pass themselves off as Aladygma official, just a few are part of Aladygma from the very beginning, another few became part of us during the operation and many others will become in the future. Many of these sites will still be fakes because don’t collide with our idea and our plot or because they put in danger the safety of Aladygma and of our actors. Our responsibility to reunite reality and pretentious is definitely clear to us and we have to keep great attention about who we decide to concern. Besides we have to fulfil the terms of the agreements we have with actors, producers and company that participate at the game now and in the future.

Thomas datebook is written in many different languages. Does it mean that you are many people and that every single one of you speaks at least one of these languages?
Thomas Dahlem is a real character, but not everything that you read or that you know about him is real. This character knows perfectly what he has to do in a part of his life, but on the other hand he makes a lot of mistakes that are part of a bigger universe. Some of these mistakes are lies, some others are his truth. And it’s a fact that Thomas knows more than one language.

Why among all the Italian sites you decided to choose Cineblog to send the code? Maybe they simply published more articles than others about you?
I can’t say much, because I could break part of the spell of Aladygma. But who knows if they speak the truth or if they are playing as well. Maybe they’re playing and they don’t even know. And besides, are you sure that we sent the code to Cineblog? Being part of Aladygma is easy, finding our role and modify the destiny is not impossible… In any case, Cineblog participates to reveal Thomas’ code with unspeakable precision and strength considering that literally moved half planet!

Is 00|11|22|88 really a start date? It seems to me more a time code on a video…
Who will survive…

If I could analyze Thomas’ datebook in every element I could really discover something? Or there are only more clues? Why in Thomas’ datebook there’s the address one.org? Thomas’ girlfriend is waiting a child from the aliens, he should be worried more of this instead of HIV…
Understanding Thomas’ datebook means understanding the brain of a man with all his craziness, passions, the many different clues of a human mind. May of these pages seem to be personal, others seem to reveal Thomas as both an artist and a crazy guy, but who knows, maybe his follies have a purpose. He didn’t speak the truth every time, Aladygma says. But who knows the truth, Aladygma or Thomas? We proposed to this actor to be part of Aladygma, but this “Adam” has gathered the Apple in the Garden of Eden and has discovered of being naked, so he is or was part of Aladygma but is also independent he follows the road he decides to go through beyond the one he received as a gift. Personally I think that one.org is a valuable organization and so I’m happy that Thomas decided, voluntarily or not, to remember the HIV problem and helped Bono & co in this project, because it’s a very dramatic situation.

The automatic answer of contact@aladygma.com is always the same since many days: "is coming".
What is arriving, someone or something? How much time we have to solve all the clues?
I can appease many of you: a lot will come many clues will be revealed. But who wants to follow Aladygma will have to take some decisions and many people will leave the journey. It will never cost anything to participate, but just the ones with the right strength and the right passion will arrive to right answers. There’s much time, but time goes by fast, so there will be many things to do…

There’s something real for sure behind Aladygma. Have you been inspired by mysterious fact happened in reality?
We have to respect many people, so we can’t say much. As a matter of fact, like many other artists or creative people, we are influenced by what happens around us in the world, getting inspired in a positive or negative way. Aladygma obviously channels many experiences lived personally by the actors than globally.

Has Aladygma anything to do with movies? I start to doubt about it, especially that is in some ways connected with J.J. Abrams. Is the idea of this viral completely yours? Or somebody arrived to you with some ideas that you developed for him?
We can’t say much to not reveal some secrets and for contractual reasons. From the very beginning it was clear to us that we wanted to be contacted by actors, artists, producers and so on. Aladygma is a story that includes many trails. Our actors share or meet many different stories that are part of their lives, the real and the virtual ones. Many people has contacted us, but we refused a lot of good offers because Aladygma is not an advertisement space on the web and when the game ends we say “here’s the soft drink, here’s the movie”. But when the first of episode of Aladygma will end, you’ll discover, for example, that many things, like a movie or a drink or a book are linked with Aladygma. We didn’t sell the story to an artist or a company, but we gave the opportunity to each of them of being part of Aladygma, because Aladygma is something that goes through that share their stories getting them more real. During the game you’ll discover who these people are. But the idea of Aladygma is totally ours. When we get new ideas submitted, we analyze them and than we decide if the links with the various stories are good or not. And in this case has no relevance to use if the idea was submitted by Steven Spielberg or J.J.. Abrams or Coca Cola Company (these are just examples!!!), the important thing is the game, the art, the interactive, the player. As I said, at the end of this first episode you’ll discovere that Aladygma is not just one product or one advertisement campaign, but a lot more.

How do I have to use Unicode inside the clues that you give us?
We can’t reveal how much important is and how to use it. Some clues are real, others are fakes, more others are part of the art of Aladygma. When you see a movie, for example Heat by Michael Mann, the director shoots a colour, the sea, a room, a simple detail, these details are not important for the plot, but without them the movie would be flat and similar to many others. The colours and the shades of Aladygma are sometimes just art, but… ok, some other times hide a secret.

How much you believe in Internet to spread news, create curiosity and reach a great number of people? Do you think that this media has finally overcome borders and different languages? Do you use all the web 2.0 issues and this is admirable. Is it everything predetermined or you get new ideas during the operation?
On February there were zero results about Aladygma searching on Google or other search engines. Today, after few months, we’re over 100.000 on Google and over 500.000 on the others. We had more than 3 millions visitors, many of them unique. This is the power of the Internet. The goal of Aladygma is to demonstrate that borders are in our minds, but not in the issues that man creates. A media must overcome borders. Aladygma is an example of how a language like German or Japanese could be accepted by a whole community: we all share a goal, we are all looking for a “treasure” that could be useful to everybody and so finally we translate every kind language to help each other.
It was clear to us from the beginning that we wanted to use all the possible issues, but particularly the ones used by simple people: blogs, videos made with a simple camera and so on, we mean things approachable by everybody, because the beauty and the craziness of Internet is that everyone can recreate the story. Obviously there’s someone who do this for meaningless, but we want to demonstrate that people has an enormous artistic potential, we just have to look at all the blogs born around Aladygma and how many videos has been shoot all around the world. Lorenzo Cherubini (a.k.a. Jovanotti) said once during an interview that is beautiful floating on internet because you can find what you are not looking for and you get lost, opening you boundaries. It’s much better than a packaged tour, it’s like a TV show where everything has been decided in advance by an entity and you just to accept this for good. Internet is a weapon clasped by rebel folks that could be exploit or used for mean purposes, but it could also reveal the loss of freedom in far countries or at your own home and reunite all the minds in the world to create a brand new real global democracy or a global piece of art.

Answer sincerely: how much is funny drawing people insane whit this riddle? Sense of humour, irony, sarcasm: are them required qualification to do a good job like your?
Of course you need to be a little crazy like us, to create stuff like aladygma… First of all we laugh at ourselves for our craziness! This helps us stay calm, despite success. We never proposed a whitespace o a clue only to disconcert people; everything has a sense, also the stuff which lead us on a wrong way. Wrong paths, mistakes, are revealing, just like in everyday life… but we laughed at some exaggeration which some huge fan wanted to see in a clue. For example, someone wanted to see a peculiar type of shoes in the foot-mark on the underground map and, according to this fan, an actor in a movie wore the type of shoes…

V.M. are the initials of one person? Or are you two persons, V. and M.? How I have to call you? Are you the two guys in the German TV?
Well, V.M. is our secretary :-) Our names will be revealed at the right time. The two guys on German TV may be an idea of the German TV o two actors, who knows… Anyway, the main team consist in two people and 15 “helpers”.

And now the question that everyone want to ask: what is Aladygma? I know you’ll never answer clearly, but you could give me an undefined and enigmatic answer to decipher. So we can have fun a little bit more…
Aladygma is what you do whit your destiny. Aladygma is the route that you need to arrive in the zone where a lot will be revealed. But the route is important, not the arrival. Quite similar to “Stalker” movie, directed by Tarkowski. Who wants understand Aladygma have to keep clear the target in his mind, but most of all he have to understand the route and perhaps change the REASON from what he step towards that target… Some people will only try to discover who is behind Aladygma, other people will wait that everything is revealed. But those who PARTICIPATE will get the greatest revelations. Enjoy your Journey.

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