Where is Danny Torrance? is an interactive experience that users access through two screens: a smartphone and a computer. It is part of a marketing campaign for the release of Doctor Sleep, Stephen King’s sequel to The Shining.

“In Where Is Danny Torrance?  Google Chrome to take part in the experience, which incorporates video, HTML5, Web Audio API, and WebSockets. Multiple browsers pop up to create eerie mosaics as users interact with the site on their phones. It's seasonally spooky—and we can almost start imagining the film version now.”

-from Advertising Age (http://adage.com/article/cat-creativity-and-technology/danny-torrance/245057/)

Clarke’s Third Law

Like the Arthur C. Clarke quote, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” the second you begin interacting with the game and you realize you are controlling it with your phone, it feels like magic. To date, there have only been a handful of interactive experiences like Where is Danny Torrance? that subverts the traditional expectation of what you can do on a website. When you factor in the mysteriousness of what Danny Torrance actually is (the creators released very little information beyond the technical details), how little interactive tie-ins are explored in mainstream media, and the disconnect between the disparate devices used to navigate the game, the act of interacting feels like a magical experience. 

Audio-Visual Storytelling

The interactive experience of Danny Torrance deepens the relationship between the user and the source material by breaking down the boundaries between the mediums. Most interactive promotional material, such as interactive movies, fail to reach that level of interaction because movies are meant to be passive experiences. Since the user is in control of the interaction in Danny Torrance, this website leads a new kind of storytelling experience, one that challenges our traditional expectations of how a human is supposed to interact with a machine.