The Getty Museum is currently hosting “California Video,” a survey of 40 years of video art made in California. To complement this show, the IML’s Anne Bray has curated a stellar program of cutting edge videos from 1980 forward called “Hotbed: Video Cultivation Beside the Getty Gardens"; it will feature 20 videos projected outside on the walls of the Getty in a spectacular and unprecedented display this Friday, May 9 (7:00 - 9:00 p.m.). The show continues on Saturday, but this conflicts with the IMD thesis show opening, so plan accordingly!

The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences is now accepting applications for the Dr. Randy Pausch Scholarship Fund for the 2008-2009 academic school year. The scholarship will provide four students with $2,500 in financial aid in preparation of entering the game industry.

Submission requirements, details, and the application form are all available in PDF via http://www.interactive.org

The deadline for submission is May 15.

thatgamecompany is featured in today's issue of Variety as one of "10 Innovators to Watch For."



From the article:
"The men and women on Variety’s inaugural “10 Innovators to Watch” — 15 names, actually — are looking beyond 2008 to build the entertainment industry of the future, from the digital studio to the home and cyberspace.
Meet them today. Before they turn your world upside down tomorrow."

Yeah, so watch out! =)

For the article as well as video interviews (although nothing new to most of you IMDers):
http://www.variety.com/index.asp?layout=hottopic&id=innovators

The IML is pleased to announce a workshop May 27-30 for faculty and graduate students to create multimedia projects with Sophie, an easy-to-use free software application developed by the Institute for the Future of the Book and presented by USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. Sophie allows users to design interactive texts that incorporate images, video and sound, and it deploys creative formats for analysis, annotation and citation.

Please join me in congratulating the three winning teams for the 2008-2009 Advanced Game Project class. As you may know many teams submitted proposals in March, five finalists were chosen to present their work to a selection committee from USC and industry yesterday, three winning teams have been greenlighted to move forward. They are:
1) Minor Battle - Andre Clark and team
2) Runesingers - Ethan Kennerly and team
3) Reflection - Keith Co and team

Thanks to all the students who participated in this intensely competitive process. Congrats again to this year's winners.

BRIGADE PARADE
Animated Experiments in Non-Theatrical Socialization
May 2nd - May 13th

Friday, May 2th, 1-5 PM
Saturday, May 3rd, 8-11 PM opening
Sunday, May 4th, 1-5 PM
Friday, May 9th, 1-5 PM
Friday, May 9th, 8-11PM opening
Saturday, May 10th, 8-11PM opening
Sunday, May 11th, 1-5 PM

Sea and Space Explorations
4755 York Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90042
www.seandspace.org
Tel.: 323-445-4015. email: info@seaandspace.org

Through this series animation is presented as a political and personal act of expression. The works presented stress animation as a fertile terrain for experimentation and activism. The screening location and tactics are dependent upon the subjects and issues dealt with within the films produced allowing installation (gallery and outside locations) to become the primary presentation methodology instead of the festival model. The intent of presenting in an alternative model being to experience a greater sense of agency in determining how our films are to be made visible, to communicate with a different public, and to encourage discussion during the presentation process which the festival model does not foster.

Time: Wednesday, April 30, 6-9pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC),
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Featuring Spring Semester Class Projects from :
- CTIN 485L Advanced Game Development - Brinson
- CTIN 544 Experiments in Interactivity (Hoberman)
- CTIN 463 Anatomy of a Game (Hight)
- CTIN 405 Design and Technology for Mobile (Bleecker)
- CTIN 406 Sound Design for Games ­(Diamante)
- CTIN 488 Game Design Workshop (Swain/Arey/Diamante)
- CTIN 484/489 Intermediate Game Design (Brinson & Fullerton)
- CTIN 491 Advanced Game Project ( Swain)
- CTIN 492 Experimental Game Topics (Bleecker)
- CTIN 544 Experiments in Interactivity( Production 1) (Kratky)
- CTIN 542 Interactive Experience Design (Bolas)
- CTIN 590 Directed Research - Fisher

and more....

Food and Drink will be provided starting at 5:45.

***SCHEDULE below*****

May 3rd, 12pm - 3pm, ZML

I've had quite a few people that said they were interested, but not to many mentioned that they will be bringing a Wii and the game. If you can, please do! As it stands, I will have two wiimotes and two gamecube controllers, so four can be played on my system.... but I want to get as many going as possible! If we can get enough people to bring their Wiis and copies of Mario Kart, we can have up to 14 screens running (with up to 12 racing against each other)!

Anyone that can bring their Wii and game, please contact me ASAP with your friend code. I'll send the collected friend codes out on Friday so we can get that taken care of ahead of time.

In celebration of the end of the year and to those graduating in May, I would like to loosen the blog etiquette for this one post. I’m sure we’re all often tempted to post a favorite (non-relevant) online video on the IMD blog from time to time, but know it's not appropriate to post non-IM content.

But for this ONE post, please reply with a comment ONCE which includes ONE link to a video involving animals that you want to share.

The winner will receive this shirt (in a couple of weeks).




Rules:
- Submissions will be closed on Wednesday, April 30 at noon.
- At that point everyone can email me their vote for favorite video.
- If you don’t vote (exactly once for someone else), you can’t win.
- Don’t embed the video in your comment. Just link to it.
- The winner will be announced at seminar Wed evening.
- In your post, please include your name and the video title next to it like I have below

*Maybe at the end of next year another faculty member can pick a different theme.

Thanks to all students who submitted proposals for the 2008-2009 Advanced Game Project process. The selection committee met Wednesday and reviewed all submissions in detail.

The five finalists in random order are:
1) Reflection – Keith Co
2) Minor Battle – Andre Clark
3) Runesinger – Ethan Kennerly
4) SpliceMeister – Joseph Spradley
5) Bloodlines – RJ Layton

Note that these finalists will present in person to the selection committee on April 30. Three winning projects will be greenlighted for production.

Just got word that Tracy is now Associate Professor of Interactive Media with tenure.
Congratulations Tracy!!

And speaking of Professor Fullerton...check out:
"School of Thought: USC - At USC interactive media division, students make small games with big ideas." A good article on Winterbottom, the GIL, and our game curriculum on GAMETAP. Some nice words about IMD as well (but not so sure about the "thanks to the efforts of a few old virtual reality tech heads who founded the department...").

A very intriguing and curious bit of momentary disruptive street pixel art.

Seen on 9th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues in NYC's Lower East Side. So far, anonymous.

Bravo, whoever.

The New Ecology of Things comes to ZML this Friday April 25 1:00-2:30PM!
The New Ecology of Things (NET) is a research initiative to explore emerging forms of interactive communication brought about by pervasive networked technologies. The project began as a studio class run by Art Center's Graduate Media Design Program (MDP) and has evolved into a conceptual model, a forum for discussion, an ongoing series of projects, technological inventions, and new issues for design pedagogy. The NET website, which is part of a transmedia publication that includes a book, a poster, and video content for mobile devices, just launched in March 2008.

Join us for a panel discussion with three of key designers of the NET project from Art Center College of Design, Phil van Allen, Anne Burdick and Nik Hafermaas, who will discuss the project and its multiple approaches to issues of design, technology and theory. This event is part of the iMAP/Adobe Design | Technology | Theory series and will be simulcast live via Adobe Connect. To attend virtually, please register here.

Speakers: Tom DeFanti, Dan Sandin, Greg Dawe, Todd Margolis, (University of California San Diego/CalIT2, University of Illinois at Chicago, Electronic Visualization Laboratory)
Time: Wednesday, April 23, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

"CineGrid: Networked Digital Cinema Challenges"
Tom DeFanti

"VR W/O Attachments"
Dan Sandin

"The Calit2 StarCAVE, a 3rd Generation VR Room"
Greg Dawe

"CRCA: Examples of Collaborative Practice for Large Scale New Media Art Projects"
Todd Margolis

BIOS

Tom DeFanti is an internationally recognized expert in computer graphics since the early 1970s. DeFanti has amassed a number of credits, including: use of EVL hardware and software for the computer animation produced for the 1977 “Star Wars” movie; contributor and co-editor of the 1987 National Science Foundation-sponsored report “Visualization in Scientific Computing;” recipient of the 1988 ACM Outstanding Contribution Award; appointed an ACM Fellow in 1994; and appointed one of several USA technical advisors to the G7 GIBN activity in 1995. He also shares recognition along with EVL director Daniel J. Sandin for conceiving the CAVE™ Virtual Reality Theater in 1991. Currently he is a research scientist at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2). At the University of Illinois at Chicago, DeFanti was director of the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), a distinguished professor and a distinguished professor emeritus in the department of Computer Science, and the director of the Software Technologies Research Center. Striving for a more than a decade to connect high-resolution visualization and virtual reality devices over long distances, DeFanti has collaborated with Maxine Brown to lead state, national and international teams to build the most advanced production-quality networks available to scientists, with major NSF funding.

Dan Sandin is an internationally recognized pioneer in computer graphics, electronic art and visualization. He is Professor Emeritus of the School of Art & Design, University of Illinois at Chicago, and Director Emeritus of the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has worked on a number of inventions such as the Sandin Image Processor (1971-1973), a patch programmable analog computer for real-time manipulation of video inputs through the control of the grey level information. This modular design was based on the Moog synthesizer, the Sayre Glove (1977), the first data glove, as part of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a type of VR photography called PHSColograms (1988), a system whereby a number of still images were situated in an auto-stereoscopic manner and back-projected with light. In 1991, in conjunction with Tom DeFanti and graduate students, he designed the CAVE™ Virtual Reality Theater. More recently, he has been working on The Varrier™ Auto-Stereographic Display.

Greg Dawe's unique background mixes mastery in electronics, optics, video technology, material fabrication, computers, and software, complemented by a Florida building contractor’s license acquired in the early 1990s. Dawe holds a BFA in design from the University of Illinois at Chicago and an MFA in video art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, working under Phil Morton, the legendary video artist. Working with colleagues Tom DeFanti and Dan Sandin at EVL, Dawe is known for his contributions to the CAVE™ Virtual Reality Theater and its derivatives, the ImmersaDesk™, and PARIS™. The CAVE is a multi-screen, projection-based, virtual-reality system, and the ImmersaDesk is a single-screen, drafting table-style device. Both are commercial products sold by Fakespace Systems (formerly Pyramid Systems Inc.). Dawe also did the mechanical design for and assembled the Varrier™ auto-stereographic display, many large tiled displays and recently a six-wall CAVE (StarCAVE) installed on the ground floor of the UCSD Calit2 building.

Todd Margolis is artist, educator and technologist. He received his MFA in Electronic Visualization from the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is a founding member of the immersive and interactive art and technology non-profit organization, Applied Interactives, and also a member of the art collaborative Sine::apsis Experiments. Margolis ic currently appointed the Technical Director of the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts(CRCA) at UCSD. Margolis was previously a Visiting Research Programmer at UIC developing a new virtual reality system, The Varrier™ Auto-Stereographic Display with Dan Sandin.

The compression on this is not so great So...

You can watch a higher res youtube Here

OR
Download the full res version Here
EDIT fixed the above link

WEEK 14: Thursday, April 24th 12-2+
Jack McMahan
Ethan Kennerly
Andrea Rodriguez
Andre Clark
Maya Churi

Week 15: Thursday, May 1st 12-2+
Jamie Antonisse
Diana Hughes
John Brennan
RJ Layton
Al Yang
Mike Rossmassler