March 31, 2004
FREE EIN BBQ
WHAT: THE SPRING NETWORKING BARBEQUE
WHEN: THURSDAY, APRIL 1ST. 5:30-8PM
WHERE: THE GARDEN LEVEL OF THE CINEMA SCHOOL
WHY: IF YOU DON'T COME, THEN NO ONE WILL KNOW WHO YOU ARE!!!
FREE FOOD AND GREAT CONVERSATION!!!
ALL FACULTY AND STUDENTS WELCOME
Famous authors of "Game Design Workshop"
Professors Chris Swain and Tracy Fullerton signing copies of their new book on Game Design at GDC.
Collateral Romance, et al.
for those not at GDC (and even those who were) --> discussion / etc. from slashdot re: the GDC panel on Game Design Challenge: Love Story
March 30, 2004
Tripp Millican
Since Thursday of last week, Tripp has been in the hospital due to the severe symptoms of his colitis medical condition. Yesterday, while visiting him, he seemed really exhausted, both from fighting the disease and from worrying about his obligations to school and work. Calling him is probably not a great idea right now but I'm sure that small visits to his room would be welcome, just don't expect to stay long because he needs rest more than anything else.
IMSC put together a collection to get him a gift and it made me think that we should do the same. Just knowing that we're thinking about him will help cheer him up. If you would like to contribute, please come by the Interactive Media Division office at Lucas 310 and ask for Kurt or Jen.
March 29, 2004
IGF disappointments
for those who attended the gdc, below is a nice article about the Independent Games Festival.
Considering all these factors I believe that March 24th, 2004 may go down in history as the day that the IGF lost its luster. This was the day that marked the end of the IGF representing the indie community and spotlighting the efforts of unknown developers. Instead the IGF has set itself up to being a complete facade, being just another place where mainstream developers can get accolades for their games.
I agree w/ this, more or less. The most innovative and indie game there, Facade, developed by a couple Georgia Tech guys, won no awards, while the stupidest, most obviously mainstream game there, Savage won both the overall and audience awards...ugh.
Visiting Speakers for 3/31/04: Alan Kay & David Smith
Alan and David will talk about their respective work on Squeak and Croquet and summer intern opportunities.
More about Alan here and here.
More about David here and here.
David Smith and Yoshiki Ohshima navigating the Croquet virtual space.
(Alan couldn't make it this time due to illness).
CALL FOR ENTRIES: INTO THE PIXEL
INTO THE PIXEL
A Juried Exhibition of Digital Game Art
in celebration of the 10th anniversary of E3Expo
May 12- 14, 2004
Los Angeles
Into the Pixel is a celebration of computer and video game art curated by interactive entertainment industry art veterans and experts from the art establishment.
Premiering at E3Expo 2004, Into the Pixel is an opportunity for published video game artists, Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Members, and E3Expo exhibiting companies to be reviewed and recognized by their industry and the art establishment.
Up to sixteen images will be selected and exhibited in a gallery setting at E3Expo, where more than 60,000 entertainment and interactive industry executives, designers, developers, animators, journalists and retailers will view the exhibition. Artists will be recognized at a VIP Opening Reception on Wed., May 12th from 5:30 pm - 8 pm.
Deadline for submission: April 5, 2004
Eligibility:
* Open to Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Members and E3Expo Exhibiting Companies
* Submissions must be taken from or been used to create published,
or soon to be published (ship dates confirmed), video games.
* Artists may submit up to 3 original works
Go to http://www.iqmailer.net/rt.asp?I=11E82X9DCX0&L=26253 for additional information on the exhibition, jury members, and submission requirements.
In Video Games, What's New?
The industry faces a creative dry spell as developers rehash proven material for an aging demographic, insiders say.
SAN JOSE — The video game industry is facing a hardening of the creative arteries as aging gamers' tastes increasingly shift toward sequels and games based on movies, industry participants said this week.
LA Times Article: In Video Games, What's New?
Don't Look Now
The DVD of the 1973 classic Don't Look Now is sent through a piece of software written in processing. Every frame is rendered as a 1 x 300 pixel line making up 162 individual images for the entire film.
March 25, 2004
Video Games as Art
Nice article by Alex Pham in today's LA Times on " Action Morphs into Art" with several pithy quotes from CTIN Professors Chris Swain and Tracy Fullerton and some slick snaps (by Luis Sinco/LAtimes).
Who's heads are those....
Index @ Post
Announcing: Index @ Post
Exhibition Dates: March 27 through April 24, 2004
Reception: Saturday, March 27th, 7 - 10 pm
1904 East Seventh Place
Los Angeles, California 90021
[map]
Exhibiting Artists:
Janie Geiser, Lane Hall, Perry Hoberman, Lewis Klahr, Bill Leavitt,
Lisa Moline, Lisa Parks, Mat Rappaport, Miha Vipotnik, Paul Zelevansky
Curated by: Lane Hall, Lisa Moline, Paul Zelevansky
March 22, 2004
Electronic Arts Game Design Program at USC CNTV
ELECTRONIC ARTS ANNOUNCES MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR GIFT
TO USC SCHOOL OF CINEMA-TELEVISION’S
INTERACTIVE MEDIA DIVISION
Funds Will Expand School’s Global Leadership
in Computer Game Research and Education
Press release below
ELECTRONIC ARTS ANNOUNCES MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR GIFT
TO USC SCHOOL OF CINEMA-TELEVISION’S
INTERACTIVE MEDIA DIVISION
Funds Will Expand School’s Global Leadership
in Computer Game Research and Education
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
REDWOOD CITY, Calif., March 22, 2004, 2004 — Electronic Arts (EA) (Nasdaq: ERTS) announced today that it has made a multi-million dollar donation to the USC School of Cinema-Television (USC-CNTV) to advance interactive media education and create a launch pad for the next generation of interactive entertainment. The contribution, part of EA’s global educational and talent development effort, will fund two new facets of USC-CNTV’s Division of Interactive Media: the Electronic Arts Interactive Entertainment Program and the Electronic Arts Endowed Faculty Chair. The EA Interactive Entertainment Program is a 3-year Master of Fine Arts degree program. The program will help forward USC-CNTV’s goal to educate the next generation of high-level gaming design and visionary thinkers in what will be one of the 21st Century’s primary entertainment media.
“The School’s rich storytelling tradition and long-standing commitment to technological experimentation make it an ideal partner for EA,” said Don Mattrick, President, Electronic Arts Worldwide Studios. “This is an excellent opportunity for EA to invest in the future of the industry by providing today’s students with the skills and knowledge they will need to push technology and entertainment forward.”
Mattrick, the newest appointee to the School’s Board of Councilors, will be part of a high-profile team — the ranks of which include entertainment giants Jeffrey Katzenberg, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, John Wells, and Robert Zemeckis — that will work to ensure that interactive media studies at USC continues to move confidently in the direction of growth and innovation.
“This gift clearly demonstrates EA’s commitment to expanding the frontiers of game design, and to developing a well rounded, highly skilled, and forward-thinking talent base overall,” said Elizabeth M. Daley, Dean, USC School of Cinema-Television. “The School’s position as an international academic leader is further solidified by its relationship with the world’s number-one interactive entertainment developer — a partnership that will set new standards of excellence in a field that is truly changing global culture.”
The EA gift will fuel the growth of the School’s Interactive Media Division’s gaming component, and enable the Division, headed by Scott Fisher, to define and expand this nascent, multi-faceted field. With the aid of these funds, the School will grow its efforts to graduate students who are visionary thinkers, but who also have a deep understanding of the crafts and skills required to produce quality content for a diverse media array.
Specifically, the Electronic Arts Interactive Entertainment Program will spawn the creation of a curriculum and research lab to explore the boundaries of interactive entertainment and to study the emerging discipline of game development. The gift will enable the creation of an intra-USC gaming community that will bring together creative and technical expertise in cinema-television, the arts, and technical sciences, and will provide students with invaluable real-world experience through internships and work-study programs at EA, including its newest Los Angeles campus.
The Electronic Arts Chair will enable the Division to meet the intensifying demand for talented game developers who are solidly grounded in story and content. The endowed funds to support faculty specializing in game development elevates the field into the ranks of other professions, such as law and engineering, worthy of scholarly study and specialized training.
"It's astonishing how quickly games have become an essential part of the entertainment arts, and there is no better place than USC to nurture the creative and conceptual thinkers who will take the medium to places we can only imagine," said USC alumnus George Lucas, a longtime supporter of the School of Cinema-Television, the founder of game-design studio LucasArts and the filmmaker behind the Star Wars series. "USC is a major force in cinema education, and thanks to Electronic Arts, it can become a leader in interactive arts education as well."
“To create the next generation of entertainment, we need the next generation of talent,” said Rusty Rueff, Executive Vice President of Human Resources, Electronic Arts. “Melding storytelling, art, music, game design, and technology has become so complex that it is imperative for tomorrow’s designers and producers to acquire an education with both depth and breadth in order to achieve success in our ever-growing industry.”
“Our new development studio in Playa Del Rey and this investment reflect EA’s long term commitment to Los Angeles and Southern California,” said John Batter, Vice President and General Manager, Electronic Arts Los Angeles. “We are proud to be expanding our presence within the region by fostering creativity through education and by stimulating current and future growth within the entertainment industry.”
###
About Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts Inc. (EA), headquartered in Redwood City, California, is the world's leading interactive entertainment software company. Founded in 1982, Electronic Arts posted revenues of $2.5 billion for fiscal 2003. The company develops, publishes and distributes interactive software worldwide for video game systems, personal computers and the Internet. Electronic Arts markets its products under three brand names: EA SPORTS™, EA GAMES™, and EA SPORTS BIG™. EA's homepage and online game site is www.ea.com. More information about EA's products and full text of press releases can be found on the Internet at http://info.ea.com.
Electronic Arts, EA, EA SPORTS, EA SPORTS BIG, and EA GAMES are trademarks or registered trademarks of Electronic Arts Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
About the USC School of Cinema-Television
In 2004, the USC School of Cinema-Television celebrates 75 years of training the next generation of creative talent and scholars in film, television, and new media. Co-founded by the University of Southern California and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1929, the School offered the first bachelor’s degree in film in the country and today is consistently ranked as the top program of its kind. Its more than 8,000 graduates — the ranks of which include such stellar figures as Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, Ron Howard, James Ivory, Randal Kleiser, George Lucas, Michelle Manning, Bill Mechanic, Neal Moritz, Walter Murch, Jay Roach, Gary Rydstrom, Edward Saxon, Stacey Sher, Bryan Singer, John Singleton, Robert Zemeckis, and Laura Ziskin — are among the entertainment industry’s most distinguished animators, scholars, teachers, writers, directors, producers, cinematographers, editors, sound experts and industry executives.
March 20, 2004
Little Brother is watching
via cnn
Several interesting accounts of mobile cameras used to document crimes, and some brief discussion of the flip side.
When Lisa Johnson saw a man exposing himself to her in a parking lot, she reached for her cell phone -- not to call 911, but to snap a picture."I guess I was just quick on my toes," said Johnson. "I had my hand in my pocket, and rather than hit him and break my phone, I remembered there was a camera."
...
Some officers say picture phones will increasingly help them do their jobs, but they wonder if victims will remember to take snapshots in the heat of the moment."I think it will become a reflex -- it is for me," said Emily Turrettini, editor for the site picturephoning.com. "People will get used to that."
March 19, 2004
Virtual Louvre
If you’ve read Dan Brown’s fiction thriller “The Da Vinci Code,” you probably have a craving to visit the Louvre in Paris and follow the trail of enigmatic riddles left behind by the murdered museum curator. Don’t hesitate to pay a “visite virtuelle” right now at the Louvre web site, featuring more than 60 panoramic QuickTime VRs of the museum’s interior and exterior.
In the VRs of the exterior, you can view the architectural masterpiece of the Louvre itself, as well as the stunning glass Pyramid at the museum entrance. From the VRs of the interior, explore the long parquet hallway of the Grand Gallery filled with amazing artwork and the room now closed for renovation, Salle des Etats, home of Leonardi Da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” and “The Virgin on the Rocks.”
Iso-phone: a total submersion telephonic experience
Media Lab Europe
Human Connectedness
James Auger, Jimmy Loizeau, Stefan Agamanolis
The Iso-phone is a telecommunication device providing a service that can be described simply as a meeting of the telephone and the floatation tank. By blocking out peripheral sensory stimulation and distraction, the Iso-phone creates a telephonic communication space of heightened purity and focus.
"We wish to thank the Guinness swimming pool for their assistance in early Iso-phone trials"
March 18, 2004
HyperText: Explorations in Electronic Literature
The Electronic Literature Organization presents
HyperText: Explorations in Electronic Literature
Friday, March 19, 7:00 PM, at the UCLA Hammer Museum Westwood
Free and Open to the Public
Talan Memmott is the creative director and editor of the online hypermedia literary journal Beehive . In 2001, he won the trAce-Alt-X New Media Writing Award for his work Lexia to Perplexia.
Noah Wardrip-Fruin is the co-editor of The New Media Reader (MIT Press, 2003), and Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game (MIT Press, forthcoming). He has collaborated on such new media works as Screen and Impermanence Agent.
For more information, please visit http://www.elliterature.org
Nokia Lifeblog
BBC NEWS | Technology | Log your life via your phone
Nokia is developing software that will help turn its phones into life loggers.
The Lifeblog software automatically arranges all the messages, images, videos and sound clips people capture with their phones.
Update: And another article today in Wired. the official Nokia press release. and a teaser about linking this all to typepad in the Guardian Blog.
March 16, 2004
"Mobile Social Presence"
TheFeature :: Mobile Social Presence: Who Knows Who's Where Now?
At the technical level, I (Howard Rheingold) reported a few months ago on the work at HP Labs (MPEG) which allows people within Bluetooth range to discover if they have the same preferences without revealing them to each other. "Just what you need for the phenomenon of discovering in real space if you have a community," is how researcher Bernardo Huberman described it to me.
In user-innovation-land, BuddySpace is a Java-based, open-source instant messenger that adds map overlays to the buddy list, and moves the availability function to higher levels of granularity than "online," "offline" and "away." The UK research lab that created BuddySpace and makes it freely available via Sourceforge states: "By studying the semantics of presence, we can also augment the existing impoverished presence states in a principles manner, providing capabilities that are more representative of the way real users work. Forthcoming capabilities will include automatic location updates via mobile devices, and the use of semantic matchmaking via intelligent profile handling, in order to help users quickly find and filter colleagues of particular interest.
March 15, 2004
View-Master makes a come back as a toy for architectural buffs
Classic gizmo offers perspective on modern architecture
May 27, 1999
By Laurel Shannon
CNN Interactive Style Editor
(CNN) -- An unassuming retro toy is taking on new life as a show-and-tell show-stopper for the water-cooler set. In an artful blend of the cerebral and the gee-whiz, two architects are producing a series of View-Master reels of noteworthy modern buildings. more
Most Distant Object in Solar System Discovered
NASA-funded researchers have discovered the most distant object orbiting Earth's Sun. The object is a mysterious planet-like body three times farther from Earth than Pluto.
Object Name: 2003 VB16 ("Sedna")
Object Type: Previously undetected Solar System body
Position (J2000): RA: 3h15m10s Dec: +5d38m15s
Current Distance: 8 billion miles
Constellation (15 March 2004): Cetus
March 14, 2004
Tag and Scan
from coin-operated
Cimarrones, a NYC based company recently released, Tag and Scan, a mobile phone application (written in Java) that allows people to digitally tag physical locations with text and images, presumably with camera equipped phones. Although the system is only up and running in the UK at the moment, the system reminds me a bit of late 90s desktop apps like Third Voice and Gooey (RIP) and a lot like GPSter and GeoNotes and scores of similar physical space annotating apps and projects. The system has billing built in - which I'm not crazy about - and each tag costs a specified number of credits. I really want these kinds of apps to be free, so I'm not so into the whole corporate takeover this outlines, but hopefully the open source versions will win out in the end.
March 12, 2004
Oskar Fischinger Screening
Retrospective Tribute to Oskar Fischinger (1900-67)
and
Book release celebration for Optical Poetry by Bill Moritz
Filmforum at the Egyptian Theater
Sunday March 14 at 7:00pm
The American Cinematheque
6712 Hollywood Boulevard
323-466-3456
Optical Poetry is a culmination of William Moritz's 34 years of research and work with the Fischinger Archive, which began upon his meeting Elfriede Fischinger, Oskar's widow, in 1969. Earlier in 1958, as a student at USC’s School of Cinema, he recalls, "I saw my first Fischinger film, and it popped all my buttons!"
Fischinger's pioneering experiments in Visual Music and the melding of graphic arts, abstract design, and sound were instrumental in shaping animation into an art and cinematic form and inspiring animators to pursue its aesthetic potential. An accomplished representational animator who eventually worked uneasily under contract for Paramount, MGM, and Disney, Fischinger produced numerous abstract animated films over his lifetime, invented machines such as the "Wax Machine" and the "Lumigraph" for creating images, and became an accomplished and influential abstract painter.
http://www.filmforum.org/Mar14/Mar14.html
net art funding
This competition is offering funding to collaborations.
Yes, it's specific to net art, but the $5000 award caught my eye.
http://turbulence.org/comp_04/guidelines.htm
March 11, 2004
USC Student Wins Scholarship to Game Developers Conference
Steve Woyach, a CTIN 488 Game Design student (Spring 03), is one of 25 students who were awarded a GDC Scholarship this year. Recipients are awarded a Classic Pass, with access to all sessions, roundtables, and keynotes. Past USC game design students to receive this scholarship include Virginia Suchodolski (2002).
This is a great opportunity -- keep it in mind for next year if you're interested in attending the full conference!
Game Design Workshop on Gamasutra
There's an excerpt on Gamasutra today from the book that Chris and I wrote. It's the "cover feature" -- though I'm not sure how a website mag can have a cover ... :)
ROSUM - Indoor GPS
"The team at Rosum Corporation has developed a series of techniques to take advantage of broadcast television signals to position mobile users and devices, including in indoor and urban areas where traditional positioning technologies tend to fail. Devices equipped with Rosum positioning technology will be able to access a host of location-based applications that can only be made possible with reliable, accurate positioning in areas where most mobile device users spend most of their time -- indoors and in urban areas.
Rosum is working with signals that have six times the bandwidth of GPS and one million times the observed power. Our goal of robust, accurate positioning in traditionally difficult venues is within reach."
March 10, 2004
MGLA March Mtg.
Tuesday, March 16 @ LA Film School from 7:00 p.m. to 10:30 p.m.
MGLA has a very exciting meeting planned for March, hi lighted by the folks who performed motion capture and tracking for the Lord of the Rings. They also have presentations on character animation, scriptwriting, and a new set of plug-ins for After Effects. They'll have time for demo reels, DV411 will be in the lobby during the break (as well as refreshments provided by Discreet), and we have over $2000 in prizes to give away at the end.
BLEEX
Move over Bionic Man and make room for BLEEX — the Berkeley Lower Extremities Exoskeleton, with strap-on robotic legs designed to turn an ordinary human into a super strider.
Read the article
Berkley Robotics Lab
Blast Theory's new game
I LIKE FRANK IN ADELAIDE by Blast Theory
2-13 MARCH 2004
The world's first 3G mixed reality game by award-winning artists' group
Blast Theory in collaboration with the Mixed Reality Lab, University of
Nottingham is starting today and runs for the next two weeks.
Pentagon Robot Race
The pentagon-sponsored robot race aimed at identifying a robotic vehicle capable of maneuvering through a battlefield environment on its own is happening this weekend (the qualifying race actually) - "To win the $1 million, a vehicle must complete the desert course, expected to be as long as 200 miles, in less than 10 hours."
FONTANA, Calif., March 9 - A robotic vehicle designed by a team from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh on Tuesday became the first driverless contestant to navigate a 1.36 mile test course in preparation for the Pentagon's $1 million robot race this weekend. [their website here]
March 09, 2004
ego blogging
Backward link:
USC Interactive Media Weblog
I found this blog to be a valuable resource about people who are studying interactive media at the University of Southern California. In this weblog, students from USC talk about assignments, technology reviews, internships, course work, and gossip all realated to interactive media. Professors, students, alumni, and ordinary citizens all talk about the industry and how its changing modern society. The weblog also has journal entries about history, philosophy, the psychology of video games as well as other subjects, news, and even weird and obscure events happening in the world. If I were to create a blog, I want my blog to have as many people on it just like the USC Interactive media weblog. From this site you can gain real knowledge about the industry, internships and job offers, and also communicate to people who have similar interests.
Reminder: Anne Balsamo talk 3/10/04
Anne Balsamo will be visiting the Interactive Media Division and Institute for Multimedia Literacy tomorrow.
Here's the schedule:
Lunch discussion in Zemeckis 201: 12:15pm to 1:30pm
Lecture in Zemeckis 201: 1:30pm to 2:30pm
IML roundtable @IML: 3pm-5pm
Biography:
Anne Balsamo is Associate Director of the Stanford Humanities Lab and a founding partner of Onomy Labs, a Silicon Valley-based technology design firm. She has faculty affiliations with the Stanford University’s Center for Design Research and the Stanford University Feminist Studies Program. Until 2001, she was a principle scientist and a member of RED (Research on Experimental Documents) at Xerox PARC, where she did collaborative research on experimental documents and new media genres. She served as project manager and new media designer for the development of RED's touring museum exhibit, XFR: Experiments in the Future of Reading. Prior to joining the research staff at PARC, Balsamo was an associate professor in the School of Literature, Communication and Culture at the Georgia Institute of Technology where she taught courses in communication and culture, and science, technology and gender. She was also the Director of LCC's Graduate Program in "Information Design and Technology." Her first book, Technologies of the Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg Women (Duke, 1996) investigated the social and cultural implications of emergent bio-technologies. She is currently working on a new book titled, Designing Culture: A work of the Technological Imagination, that examines the relationship between cultural theory and the design of new media.
Virtual Reality: Truth Behind the Screen?
JC Herz, Author of Joystick Nation: How Videogames Ate Our Quarters, Won Our Hearts, and Rewired Our Minds
College of Letters, Arts & Sciences Speaker Series: J.C. Herz
March 9 and 10, 2004 | Bovard Auditorium
General Public: $10
USC Faculty/Staff, Senior Citizens: $8
USC Students w/ Valid ID: $5
J.C. Herz is the principal of Joystick Nation Inc., a research and design practice that applies the principles of game design to products, services, and learning systems. Drawing from an understanding of ecology, online social dynamics, complex systems and information theory, J.C.'s focus is multiplayer interaction design, and systems that leverage the intrinsic characteristics of networked communication. Clients include multinational corporations, nonprofit organizations and the U.S. Defense Department.
J.C. sits on the National Research Council’s Committee on Creativity and Information Technology, and the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s study group on patterns of emergent behavior in massively multiplayer persistent worlds. She is the author of two books, Surfing on the Internet (Little Brown, 1994), an ethnography of cyberspace before the web, and Joystick Nation: How Videogames Ate Our Quarters, Won Our Hearts, and Rewired Our Minds (Little Brown, 1997), a history of videogames which traces the cultural and technological evolution of the first medium that was born digital, and how it shaped the minds of a generation weaned on Atari. J.C. published 100 essays on the grammar and syntax of game design in New York Times between 1998-2000.
via the Daily Trojan, and USC Spectrum
LA SIGGRAPH Meeting in "Real-Time"
The Los Angeles chapter of ACM SIGGRAPH is having its March meeting on Real-Time Visualization (this might interest more of you than the usual VFX topics . . . ). The meeting is next Tuesday, 16 March.
Dan Schmit from Engine Room will be demonstrating “Real-Time Pre-Visualization" using on-set filmmaking technology that combines live action principal photography and computer generated imagery including 3D sets and environments, characters and animated objects in one effective “real-time” shooting event.
Kevin Bjorke from NVIDIA will speak about the next generation of Cinematic Effects. He will demonstrate and discuss some of the newest applications for high-end graphics in real time.
Barnabas Takacs, the founder of Digital Elite Inc. will present real-time virtual humans. The latest advances in real-time graphics hardware have created the opportunity to create real-time responsive and reactive synthetic humans that incorporate multiple layers of non-verbal communication, body language and gestures.
And to top it off two NVIDIA Quadro FX 500 boards will be given away by PNY!
The evening is co-hosted by NVIDIA and PNY.
As always, there is a social hour from 6:30pm-7:30pm, and then the program usually runs from 7:30pm-9:30pm. This month it's at the Covel Commons at UCLA.
March 08, 2004
Visiting Speaker (and Workshop) for 3/10/04: Pete Barr-Watson
Location: USC Zemeckis Center, Room 201
Time:
Lecture 3pm-5pm, 3/10/04
Workshop 7pm-9pm, 3/10/04
Title: "Skip Intro"
Abstract:
Flash takes some stick for being the pinnacle of web 'fluff'. Superfluous, bandwidth hungry and pointless. But there's a quiet revolution happening and Flash is getting serious. Rich Internet applications, mobile device content and produced for TV animation are all within the scope of this $500 application. Come and see why the days of 'skip intro' buttons are over...
More from/about Pete here.
March 07, 2004
Gaming News
Nintendo DS: Stereoscopic Hanheld?
"The theory: The two screens won't be placed next to each other; they'll be layered on top of each other to create a 3-D effect.
The evidence: Electronics giant Sharp is a longtime Nintendo cohort and the manufacturer of the LCD screens on Nintendo's Game Boy Advance SP handheld video-game system. Sharp is developing 3-D display technology, and Nintendo is listed as a member of the consortium for said technology."
Read the article
"When Nintendo finally announced its "innovative machine"--the Nintendo DS--on Wednesday night, most people weren't prepared for how different the machine actually was. While Nintendo didn't release any pictures of the portable game system, it did reveal its schizophrenic design. The DS will sport two separate, back-lit 3-inch TFT LCD screens, to give players both an overview and a zoom-able close-up view. It will also have two separate 32-bit ARM microprocessors: a primary CPU from the ARM9 line and a ARM7-family subprocessor. ARM processors are commonly used in cell phones, PDAs, and other many handheld devices--including the Game Boy Advance SP."
read the article
"Stating that the slogan for the new machine is "interactive entertainment", Iwata commented that its prototype has been already developed and that he hopes the final product will allow people to experience a new style of entertainment."
read the article
A History of Video Game Controversy
Read the awesome article
When Two Tribes Go to War: A History of Video Game Controversy
Matchbox Projector
Upstream's unique and revolutionary technology, called Photon Vacuum, practically maximizes the amount of photons sent to the target from the light source in a minimum space. This is not an easy trick since the etendue law of light in physics requires more space for better efficiency. Our special technology enables us to get rid of a variety of components currently used in projectors that unnecessarily waste energy. The current table projectors extract typically only a few watts of light power out of 200W of input power.
via /.
March 06, 2004
Banryu, Robot Or Dragon?
from slashdot:
"Roland Piquepaille writes "When Yoichi Takamoto, president of the small Japanese company Tmsuk, decided to build a robotic guard for your house, he was not able to use the familiar design of a dog. The idea was already taken by Sony, with its successful Aibo. Instead, he decided to develop the Banryu (or "guard dragon") robots. After all, nobody has ever seen a real dragon. So he was free to design it as he wished. The result is a scary robot which is 90 centimeters tall, weighs 35 kilograms, has more than 50 built-in sensors and can transmit an alarm to its master's cell phone if someone tries to invade the house. It doesn't come cheap. The price is about $18,000, but you can choose between five colors. The Asahi Shimbun tells us the story, while this overview includes several pictures of the frightening dragon." This is scary?"
looking at the pics from the last link, i am reminded of the robot steph is working on. so steph, this is what i expect from you now.
Signaling the Verdict
The New York Times has an account of the major news media racing to signal the verdict from the Martha Stewart Case.NYTimes: One if by Land, 2 if by Sea (or Vice Versa) by Bill Carter
"With cellphones, pagers, BlackBerry's and all other electronic devices banned from the courtroom where a jury was deciding Martha Stewart's fate yesterday, television news organizations were reduced to the lowest of low-tech methods to report a verdict: cardboard and wool.
The Fox News Channel, NBC and its cable news sister channels, MSNBC and CNBC, sent producers into the courtroom armed with large square boards or with scarves colored red and green. And when the jury's verdict came down yesterday just after 3 p.m. the color-coded semaphore crowd came streaming out of the courtroom holding up signs like limo drivers looking for arrivals at the airport, or waving scarves like rabid football fans. But somehow in the rush to get the news on the air, the signals got crossed at MSNBC and CNBC. ...
The scarf system seemed to work for Fox News. Its producers waved their signal flags enthusiastically and the channel's reporter, Jamie Colby, interpreted them as indicating guilty on all counts. CNN, ABC and CBS, shunned the color code, opting for a cellphone relay system. They got it right."
March 05, 2004
Gates: "Buy" stamps to send e-mail
...the sender would "buy" postage by devoting maybe 10 seconds of computing time to solving a math puzzle. The exercise would merely serve as proof of the sender's good faith.Some proposals even allow recipients to set their own rates. A college student might accept e-mail with a one-cent stamp; a busy chief executive might demand a dollar.
"In the regular marketplace, when you have something so fast and efficient that everyone wants it, the price goes up," said Sonia Arrison of the Pacific Research Institute, a think tank that favors market-based approaches.
"To think the Internet can shatter class distinctions that exist offline is "living in Fantasyland," Arrison said.
damn Marxist e-mail users. Shame on you all.
Women in Gaming Event at GDC
From Bill Fulton at Microsoft:
The third annual "Women Celebrating Women in Gaming" event is happening this month at the Games Developer Conference in San Jose. I would like to invite you and any of your fellow women colleagues in the industry to attend this event. The event's objective is to promote networking opportunities for women, reflect on women's contributions to gaming, and just have fun making connections and meeting new people. This event is free and requires no pre-registration.
3rd Annual Women Celebrating Women in Gaming Event--hosted by Microsoft
Date: Wednesday, March 24 2004
Time: 4:30 – 6:30 P.M.
Place: Hyatt Sainte Clare
302 South Market Street, San Jose, CA 95113
Tower of Terror @ DLR
"The big news at the Disneyland Resort this season is the much anticipated West Coast version of The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. Set to open in early May, the attraction will be similar to the popular Disney-MGM Studios version at Florida's Walt Disney World, with one notable exception: the elevator cars will not move horizontally."
March 04, 2004
OZ - story, toys, book, movie deal, then game?
Disney [and Jerry Bruckheimer are] making three films based on the iconoclastic designer American McGee's unreleased game "Oz."
I'm posting this article in relation to our last lecture by Tracy Fullerton in Seminar in Digital Game Studies (CTCS 564), where we talked about Games relation to other media such as cinema and television.
AM: "Truth is that game publishers aren't buying original game ideas these days. They want either a sequel to an existing successful game or a piece of Hollywood IP with someone else's marketing dollars behind it"
http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/action/americanmcgeesoz/news_6087040.html
3d disney videos
some neat movies, the highlight being the haunted mansion filmed in stereo, from start to finish. we need to watch this in the lab - todd, bring your glasses.
from boingboing
re-edit 'psycho'
online, in flash4, you can now reedit the shower scene from 'psycho' and then compare yours to the originals. certainly nothing completely new, but the technology and subject matter is interesting.
from boingboing
miranda july's 'learning to love you more'
this has been around for a while; ive had friends turn in assignments. but for some reason, i havent thought to post it on here til now. 'learning to love you more', a website that assigns open ended tasks. people send in their results, which get used at various shows and events. there have been 30 assignments thus far, #29 will be features in the 2004 whitney biennial from march until may.
from the 'hello' part of the site:
'Learning to Love You More is both a web site and series of non-web presentations comprised of work made by the general public in response to assignments given by artists Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher and various guests. Yuri Ono designs and manages the web site.
Now that you are here you will want to accept an assignment, complete it by following the simple but specific instructions, send in the required report (photograph, CD, video, etc), and see evidence of your work posted on-line. Like a recipe, meditation practice, or familiar song, the prescriptive nature of these assignments liberates you from creativity and allows you focus on what you are feeling and experiencing.
Since Learning To Love You More is also an ever-changing series of exhibitions, screenings and radio broadcasts presented all over the world, your documentation is also your submission for possible inclusion in one of these presentations.'
March 03, 2004
interactive entertainment awards
This Thursday in Las Vegas, the video game industry will be holding its equivalent of the Academy Awards, the Annual Interactive Achievement Awards. Okay it’s not as glamorous as Hollywood’s big night, and Joan Rivers would probably have a field day with her worst dressed list, but it’s a notable event, put on by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, recognizing talent in a too often unrecognized field.
'Ghosts' as Campus Guides
Somewhat banal considering the more innovative research in this field but still interesting:
"Hambone.dk writes "The students at Copenhagen's new IT University will soon be guided by invisible, but talkative digital agents, known as ghosts or Disembodied Location-specific Conversational Agents. The ghosts are to compete amongst themselves for privileges such as better vocabulary or the ability to clone themselves. Ignored ghosts can die out completely. This project is a lot more serious than it sounds at face value - several papers have been published already."" via /.
March 02, 2004
water cooler games
another nice gaming weblog I found recently.
Water Cooler Games is a site about video games with an agenda. It is about games that go beyond entertainment. Water Cooler Games explores the emerging field of games want to do more than simply being fun: they want to make a point, share knowledge, change opinions. This includes new genres such as advergaming, newsgaming, political games, simulations and edutainment. If you think that video games have a strong potential for communication, persuasion and education, come and join our discussion by the Water Cooler.
Link via I can't remember. was far down a branching path of link lust...
Norman Klein: Mapping the Unfindable
March 2- March 21 and April 6-24
Tuesday – Saturday, 12 noon- 5pm, Friday 12 - 8pm
Opening reception March 2, 6-9pm
http://beallcenter.uci.edu/calendar/mapping.htm
The Beall Center for Art and Technology is honored to be collaborating with the indefinable and indefatigable Norman Klein, Los Angeles writer, theorist, media historian, urban philosopher, cultural critic and new media experimentalist on the first-ever retrospective of his diverse body of work. This unique installation/exhibition will bring together all of Klein's major works-his trio of books, The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory, his unforgettable tour of the real and imagined Los Angeles, Seven Minutes, a definitive history of animation, and the long-awaited The Vatican to Vegas: The History of Special Effects, as well as his new media collaborations, including the U.S. debut of Bleeding Through: Layers of Los Angeles, 1920-1986, a cinematic database novel ... The exhibition will explore the interweaving themes of Klein's body of work-the relationships between collective memory (and amnesia), mediation and power; the creation of illusion and scripted space-from special effects to animation to digital culture; and the thin line between fact and fiction, the "social imaginary" and historical record. The opening reception will include a book-signing party for The Vatican to Vegas.
Norman Klein is a cultural critic, an urban and media historian, as well as a novelist, and an experimental media maker. He has taught and lectured throughout Southern California and the world, and is currently on the faculty of the California Institute of the Arts.
March 01, 2004
DVDs give directors another shot
These days, a filmmaker's job isn't always finished when the movie plays in theaters. Peter Jackson's definitive DVD version of the Lord of the Rings trilogy will top 11 hours — more than two hours longer than the theatrical version. New Line releases the extended Return of the King DVD in November.
Francis Ford Coppola's One From the Heart, a movie he yanked out of theaters in 1982 after just a week and a half because of poor reviews, was resurrected on DVD last month. Coppola's American Zoetrope DVD lab restored the film. "The DVD represents a more direct access to the audience," he says. "(Now) I have the satisfaction of knowing a good version is out there to see."
CTIN 511 Field Trip 3/10/04: IMSC
First Year IM Grads will visit the Engineering School's NSF funded Integrated Media Systems Center (IMSC) next week on 3/10/04. IMSC is located inside the USC campus in building EEB (Electrical Engineering Building), Suite 131, at the corner of McClintock Avenue and West 37th Place. The visit will start promptly at 10am, so please meet there about 5 minutes before.
Visitng Speaker for 3/3/04: John Underkoffler
Location: USC Zemeckis Center, Room 201
Time: 3pm-5pm, 3/3/04
Title: SCIENCE GOES TO THE MOVIES
Abstract:
There is now an unprecedented degree of interplay between science
and the cinema which (though lamentably not much manifest at the
script level, yet) sees the migration of ideas from the science
and technology community into films; while the influence of movies
on science and engineering minds is more palpable than ever. At
the same time, the sudden computational and financial accessibility
of digital production tools -- specialized originally for the needs
of the filmmaking world -- offers the scientist and engineer new
means for prototyping and communication (though -- again a 'though'
-- these opportunities are to date far from fully known,
acknowledged, or seized). In a third interbraided strand, the
filmmaking process is itself emerging as a unique human
organizational structure with the promise of application to other
unsuspecting fields.
In contrast to these abstractions, the seminar itself
will be rife with specificity and examples, drawn
from the production of the films Minority Report and
The Hulk, from two decades of research at the MIT Media
Laboratory, and from recent efforts at hybridizing those
disparate worlds.
From a recent interview in Salon "Will the future really look like "Minority Report"? Jet packs? Mag-lev cars? Two of Spielberg's experts explain how they invented 2054.":
"John Underkoffler, of the left-brained variety, spent the better part of his pre-Hollywood years as a researcher at MIT's prestigious, multidisciplinary Media Lab. There, he toiled on a myriad of intellectually minded projects encompassing everything from holography to computer graphics to electronic publishing. Having survived his virgin foray into the film industry with "Minority Report," Underkoffler now finds himself a wanted man, serving as a science and technology consultant on Ang Lee's anticipated comic-book opus "The Hulk.""
His work at the Media Lab:
"The I/O Bulb and the Luminous Room are the two central ideas in a project whose goal is the pervasive transformation of architectural space, so that every surface is rendered capable of displaying and collecting visual information.."
adventure gamers
a nice site that reviews and discusses both commercial and independent/amateur games. the site also just released the winners of the first Underground Awards.
Although the days of classic adventures may have passed, the heart of adventure gaming lives on through the work of amateur designers who create adventure games in the true spirit of the classics, and make them free for all to play. This site is dedicated to throwing a spotlight on those independent, free adventures.
Link via Grand Text Auto
IMSC Student Council Presents Speaker Series VI
The IMSC Student Council Presents Speaker Series VI - "Special Effects R&D Topics", held on Friday, 5 March, 12:00pm-1:00pm in SAL 101.
In this talk, J.P. Lewis will mention some issues and trends in motion picture special effects, and relate these problems to research projects at IMSC. Topics will include virtual actors, face tracking and computer vision, and software development.
J.P. Lewis is a research associate in the IMSC Computer Graphics and Immersive Technology Lab. He has software R&D credits on films including The Matrix Reloaded, Forrest Gump, and 102 Dalmatians.
Everyone is welcome, and there will be free pizza and soda!
(And for my usual editorial comment, J.P. Lewis is an amazing guy, who worked as the director of software R&D at Disney's Dream Quest Images/The Secret Lab before coming to USC, and at Industrial Light and Magic even before that, and speaks to a lot of groups, including the local USC Linux Users Group.)
