October 31, 2004
San Andreas draws good reviews
"While the game is drawing fire from the mainstream media for the mayhem it contains, inside the gaming world, it is being heralded as a landmark achievement."
Also, the article brings up an interesting point:
"Why is the 'Godfather' trilogy, which is about the same kind of stuff [as the GTA games], considered an icon in American culture, while this game is seen as completely bad?"
October 29, 2004
ConQwest Big Game
conqwest 2004 :: big game + treasure hunt + phone cam + semacode + giant animal totems
ConQwest is a Big Game in the evolving tradition of B.U.G. (Big Urban Game) and Pac-Manhattan. The gameplay was designed by Frank Lantz, with help from Mattia Romeo.
[via gizmodo]
October 27, 2004
Cooperative Games Experiment
A CALL FOR REFEREES
The USC Game Design Community will be hosting a day mid-November to examine the games of The New Games Movement of the 70's. The New Games Movement took on the task of affecting culture through the games people play, and created/adopted games that accented cooperation and fun over winning. "Play Hard, Play Fair, Nobody Hurt" became the mantra of the group, and they held "New Games Days" to experiment with and teach these New Games.
We are currently looking for referees to help teach and referee the games. There will be one or two meetings, including a practice day to run through all of the games.
Interested? Email me at ksantiag@usc.edu.
IM Forum Speaker for 10/27/04: Tracy Fullerton
This week's speaker will be Tracy Fullerton, Visting Assistant Professor, Interactive Media Division, USC School of Cinema-Television.
And Co-Author of Game Design Workshop
Title: “Game Studies”
Location: USC Zemeckis Center, Room 201
Time: 6:30pm-9pm, 10/27/04
October 23, 2004
social video editing
From: Many-to-Many
October 19, 2004
Could we have social video editing? (posted by Kevin Marks)
Mark Cuban has some ideas for improving TiVos. However, only one of them is slightly social.
Last week I did a little experiment - I took David Weinberger's presidential debate irc chat heckling and combined it with an mp3, giving a recorded social interaction.
This reminded me of an idea I had while watching the Olympics on TiVo. TiVo collects data on which programs have been watched, which bits were fast-forwarded, and which were played more than once or in slow motion.
Imagine if it took the Olympics, or a baseball or football game, or presidential debate, and collated everyone's replay speeds, and then offered up various highlights packages- the most viewed 5 minutes; most viewed hour and so on. This would naturally edit out all commercials, and the commentators padding, and show which parts people as a whole found interesting.
Posted at 05:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) & TrackBacks (0) | Email this entry
Polar Express opens as 3D Imax
The process also promises a new level of exhibition. In a first for a major studio feature, "The Polar Express" will open both in conventional theaters and in a 3-D Imax format in some cities, including New York. "And all we had to do was run it through the computer again, just flip a switch and put the parallax in," Mr. Zemeckis said. "It's all 3-D already, so boom, it's just there."
Full story on Polar Express in today's New York Times.
October 21, 2004
USC Game Design Community MEETING REMINDER!
(Not meant to over shadow kurt and tripp's invitation, so if you haven't read their party info, please scroll down. )
First meeting this Friday, Oct 22nd!
Inspired by independent and alternative games culture, the Institute for Multimedia Literacy at the Annenberg Center for Communication and the Interactive Media Division at the USC School of Cinema-Television are jointly forming the USC Game Design Community, a grassroots, student-governed organization that is dedicated to bringing likeminded students and faculty together to discuss game design history, explore the fundamental characteristics of play culture, and collectively create connections between games and other disciplines.
Monthly meetings will alternate between the IML and Interactive Media Division, and will include salon events, directed dialogues and a call for participation. Through these interactions, the IML and the Interactive Media Division hope to raise social consciousness and empower students to design play experiences that cultivate new freedoms of expression in the 21st Century.
In addition to bringing together talented students, faculty and staff from across the campus, this initial meeting will also unveil the details of the USC Game Innovation Lab Research Grant. The $20,000 award is issued in the fall, spring and summer semesters through the Electronic Arts Game Innovation Lab in the School of Cinema-Television's Interactive Media Division. It will be granted each semester, starting this spring, to multiple student design teams based on project submissions for innovative games. Winning teams will also receive a team office and equipment in the EA Game Innovation Lab for one semester; access to the lab’s usability testing facility; and support from a faculty advisor/executive producer.
The first meeting will take place Friday, Oct 22nd. For more information, visit our website!
October 20, 2004
PARTY! Saturday, 8PM, Hollywood
Party at Kurt and Tripp's place in Hollywood, this Saturday starting 8!
Scheduled to appear, such notables as Scot Fisher, Perri Hoberman, Jenn Stein, Marc Bolas, and Julien Bleecker!
If you're reading this, then you have to come.
Seriously.
Don't give me that look.
Just drop by, have a drink and get your picture taken so your mug shows up when I post the post-mortem. Haha. 'Post the post-mortem'.
Sigh.
interactive media t-shirt
So, I think we need a division t-shirt, and I don't really want to wait for this place to become fully "branded" before that happens. So I think we should have ourselves a little t-shirt design contest. Let's say these are the rules:
1) must be totally cool
2) may or may not be totally ironic/hipster t-shirt (if so, include design for complementary trucker hat)
3) I guess we should incorporate the division logo somehow
4) entries should be made by, let's say Novemeber 10, a wed. Then we can vote at seminar that night (and hopefully there won't be any disputes).
5) post images on this page with the category "t-shirt"
6) the above image is not really my entry...
7) hopefully we can get the divison to pay for the t-shirt, but if not, if we all put in like, $5 we could probably make it happen.
8) If you want, use this template
BAFTA interactive awards
deadline for the BAFTA awards on Oct 25th :
http://www.bafta.org/iawards.htm
The BAFTA Interactive Awards are now in their 7th year. With the coveted BAFTA mask up for grabs, the Interactive Awards are as important and prestigious as ever, recognising and rewarding talent across a broad spectrum of the new media industry.
Funding for Student Games
The Interactive Media Division's EA Game Innovation Lab is offering a grant for innovative student games.
The grant offers a winning student team:
* up to $20,000
* production office in our lab in the Zemeckis Center for one semester
* Faculty Advisor / Executive Producer
* access to all lab facilities including the usability room
Students seeking more info and/or potential collaborators should stop by during the kick-off event for the USC Game Design Community. This is a cross-disciplinary, student-run group dedicated to game design and game culture. The event takes place Friday 10/22 from 3-7 pm at the Annenberg Institute for Multimedia Literacy (746 West Adams Blvd).
Full details about the grant and the game design community are at http://gamedesign.iml.annenberg.edu
October 19, 2004
IM Forum Speaker for 10/20/04: Julian Bleecker
This week's speaker will be Julian Bleeker, Visting Assistant Professor, Interactive Media Division, USC School of Cinema-Television.
Also including a presentation by the IM Division's Mobile Media Research Group on current projects Patholog and Chojo.
Title: “Mobile Experiences”
Location: USC Zemeckis Center, Room 201
Time: 6:30pm-9pm, 10/20/04
Recent interview in "ON" magazine (pg.45)
Julian's project website, Techkwondo.com
October 18, 2004
Dynamic ads in games
Innovative development for product placement in games by Massive,"an audience aggregator and technology provider". Have asked their VP of Technology, David Sturman, to stop by next time he's in LA.
From their website:
Until now, all advertising appearing inside video games was hard-coded into the software during the development process. This means that those ads appeared in every copy ever shipped for as long as the game was sold.
Massive and its game publisher partners have replaced this with a dynamic approach that eliminates hard-coding. Instead, the Publishers denote certain areas inside of games as zones where ads will later appear. When the eventual owners of these games log onto the Internet to play against human opponents, to download additional game elements, or for any other reason, the Massive Ad Server swaps ads in and out of those zones. Those ads will remain in the game even if the gamer heads offline and will be refreshed the next time they log on.
In this way, games are transformed from static, permanent billboards for a single or handful of Advertisers into a dynamic, evolving advertising channel.
Recent Press release:
Massive Incorporated Launches In-Game Advertising Network
New York -- Massive Incorporated, developer of an in-game video game advertising network, on Monday announced the launch of its network targeting the lucrative audience of 18-34 year old males. The company's network enables advertisers including RealNetworks to deliver ads that are embedded into popular online game titles in real-time, from publishers including Vivendi Universal Games, Ubisoft and Legacy Interactive. The service allows advertisers to target according to consumer demography, title genre, behavioral data, day part and other dimensions. Massive said at launch its ad network includes 15 game titles and reaches a weekly audience of close to two million young men.
sos
found this funny.
cnn article
An Oregon man discovered earlier this month that his year-old Toshiba Corporation flat-screen TV was emitting an international distress signal picked up by a satellite, leading a search and rescue operation to his apartment in Corvallis, Oregon, 70 miles south of Portland.
The signal from Chris van Rossmann's TV was routed by satellite to the Air Force Rescue Center at Langley Air Base in Virginia.
On October 2, the 20 year-old college student was visited at his apartment in the small university town by a contingent of local police, civil air patrol and search and rescue personnel.
"They'd never seen signal come that strong from a home appliance," said van Rossmann. "They were quite surprised. I think we all were."
Authorities had expected to find a boat or small plane with a malfunctioning transponder, the usual culprit in such incidents, emitting the 121.5 MHz frequency of the distress signal used internationally.
Van Rossmann said he was told to keep his TV off to avoid paying a $10,000 fine for "willingly broadcasting a false distress signal."
Toshiba contacted Rossmann and offered to provide him with a replacement set for free, he said.
going political
Sorry, but on a big political kick the past few months (hrm...not sure why...)
Today is the deadline for voter registration in California. Pls register to vote if you haven't already --
you can get any necessary forms online here.
or stop by any post office.
October 17, 2004
Entertainment Industry Network (EIN)
"The Entertainment Industry Network has worked since its creation to bring the different factions of the USC graduate film school together with parties, pitch fests and social gatherings. Equally important to our mission is putting students in touch with industry professionals with guest speakers and Dinner for Eight events. Dinner for Eights are events in which an industry professional will host a dinner at his or her home, or sometimes at a restaurant, for eight students. This setting provides an intimate forum for some up-close brain-picking.
Each year, as it grows, the EIN puts its best foot forward to make intermingling between writers, production students, producers, animators, interactive media and critical studies students a more integral part of grad life at USC. This year we’re planning a Sundance trip, three large parties, a couple pitch nights, as many Dinner for Eights as we can, and working on getting an information panel started featuring speakers that have been recent festival winners. We’re also concentrating on planning smaller more frequent and casual events like happy hours and screenings, and getting the ball rolling with UCLA and AFI in addition to forming alliances with the business school and entertainment law students here at USC."
I'm honored to be the Interactive Media EIN representative for 2004-2005. Please feel free to email me with any questions, ideas, dinner for eight host requests, and/or to be added to the EIN-email list.
October 16, 2004
AIDS Walk Los Angeles this Sunday!
A last-minute reminder: the walk is tomorrow. I did it last year and it was great. This year, other cares stopped me from what would have been otherwise a fundraising month.
Show that you care and walk or contribute or both. Silence kills and the fight is not over.
All of us still young, old and lucky could benefit from a brisk walk (6.2 miles). USC usually has its own team of walkers you can meet and join.
RAIN OR SHINE!
Join a crowd of tens of thousands for Southern California's largest AIDS fundraiser. The ten kilometer (6.2 miles) AIDS Walk begins and ends in West Hollywood. Walk with your friends, family and co-workers to raise urgently needed funds and to send the message that the AIDS crisis is not over - and that you are changing the course of the epidemic.
8:30 a.m. Sign-In
9:15 a.m. Opening Ceremony
10:00 a.m. Walk Begins!
October 15, 2004
"What Do Women Game Designers Want?"
New York Times (10/14/04) P. E1; Hafner, Katie
Female computer game designers, programmers, and producers are as rare as female game players: About 10 percent of gaming industry professionals are women, and most of them hold jobs in customer service, quality assurance, and marketing, according to informal estimates. Ion Storm executive producer and longtime gamer Denise Fulton observes that a major obstacle to women's pursuit of gaming industry careers is gaming's reputation "as a boy thing." Harvey Mudd College computer science professor Elizabeth Sweedyk, who is designing a female-oriented game design course with a $200,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, thinks that women find computer games unappealing for the most part. At last month's Women's Game Conference in Austin, a common complaint against games in general was graphic violence and sexually suggestive depictions of female characters, while some attendees expressed a desire for games with more immersive story lines and more relatable characters.
Programmer Nicky Robinson, also a game enthusiast, says she felt obliged to improve gaming's appeal to women by designing less cluttered, more intuitive user interfaces. Sony Online Entertainment's Sheri Graner Ray says the first step to getting women interested in careers in game design is to get them interested in playing games by raising awareness. "As we do that, and get more women into the industry, the games they make will have much broader appeal," she remarks. Robinson points out that some game companies are overwhelmingly male-oriented, which can be a further discouragement to women; she notes, for instance, that employees often discuss business in terms of sports metaphors, while upper management harbors a macho attitude.
New York Times (10/14/04) P. E1; Hafner, Katie
d.u.m.b.o. Dance Festival
Last Chance: Up-and-coming choreographer Irina Poulos will be performing NO STRAINS ATTACHED on Sunday October 17 @ 5:00pm for the d.u.m.b.o. Dance Festival (New York) with William D. Arnold.
There is NO charge, and there are some good companies to check out! We invite you to be our guest! Music is by William D. Arnold and Costume design by Irina Constantine Poulos.
This is one of Irina's last performances on stage since she is assuming her full role as choreographer and artistic director of Oxymoros Dance Theatre company.
These performances will be held at the John Ryan
Theater at WHITE WAVE, 25 Jay street (waterfront) in
Brooklyn (literally 5 minutes from Manhattan). To get
there, you need to take the F train to York street,
walk along Jay St. towards the waterfront. Entrance in
on John St. If you are driving, there is a parking
garage on Jay St., three blocks from White Wave.
If you need more info about these performances, please
contact us @718.974.8100 or e-mail us at
fninaki@yahoo.com
October 14, 2004
with folks like Modest Mouse (who also curate), Lou Reed, Flaming Lips, The Walkmen and many more.... @ the Queen Mary in Long Beach: All Tomorrow's Parties/Pacifica/04
Digital Street Game
Digital Street Game is a mobile game set on the streets of New York and conceived by two graduates of NYU's ITP program -- it is an internet-enhanced street game in which players stage and document small interventions or "stunts" on the street corners of New York in order to claim turf on a virtual map of the city. So once players have gone to the street corner, performed the stunt, and taken some pictures, they upload them to the website to claim their turf. The photos of the stunt are the proof that a player is the official new owner of that corner.
USC Game Design Community
Inspired by independent and alternative games culture, the Institute for Multimedia Literacy at the Annenberg Center for Communication and the Interactive Media Division at the USC School of Cinema-Television are jointly forming the USC Game Design Community, a grassroots, student-governed organization that is dedicated to bringing likeminded students and faculty together to discuss game design history, explore the fundamental characteristics of play culture, and collectively create connections between games and other disciplines.
Monthly meetings will alternate between the IML and Interactive Media Division, and will include salon events, directed dialogues and a call for participation. Through these interactions, the IML and the Interactive Media Division hope to raise social consciousness and empower students to design play experiences that cultivate new freedoms of expression in the 21st Century.
In addition to bringing together talented students, faculty and staff from across the campus, this initial meeting will also unveil the details of the USC Game Innovation Lab Research Grant. The $20,000 award is issued in the fall, spring and summer semesters through the Electronic Arts Game Innovation Lab in the School of Cinema-Television's Interactive Media Division. It will be granted each semester, starting this spring, to multiple student design teams based on project submissions for innovative games. Winning teams will also receive a team office and equipment in the EA Game Innovation Lab for one semester; access to the lab’s usability testing facility; and support from a faculty advisor/executive producer.
The first meeting will take place Friday, Oct 22nd. For more information, visit our website!
October 13, 2004
Catch Bob
The CatchBob! mobile game by Nicolas Nova and Fabien Girardin investigates how people benefits from knowing others' whereabouts when working on a joint activity.
Running on a mobile device, the collaborative hunt features groups of three persons who have to find and circle a virtual object on a campus.
CatchBob! aim is to test how a location awareness tool modifies the group interactions and communications, the way they perform a joint task as well as how they rely on this spatial information to coordinate.
October 12, 2004
IM Forum Speaker for 10/13/04: Chris Swain
This week's speaker will be Chris Swain, Visting Assistant Professor, Interactive Media Division, USC School of Cinema-Television and Co-Director of the EA Game Innovation Lab.
Also following, a presentation by the IGF team on their "Dyadin" game prototype.
Title: Game Play Innovation
Location: USC Zemeckis Center, Room 201
Time: 6:30pm-9pm, 9/22/04
RESFEST 2004 Los Angeles
Egyptian Theatre • 6712 Hollywood Blvd.
Wednesday, October 13 - Sunday, October 17
The eighth annual RESFEST kicks off on Wednesday October 13th. Come enjoy five jam-packed days with over a hundred of the year's most inventive and inspiring short films, music videos and animation. This year's lineup is the biggest yet, featuring Shynola Rarities, the festival premiere of Thomas Campbell's Sprout, a Jonathan Glazer Retrospective, Warp Vision a collection of 15 years of groundbreaking videos from Warp Records, Studio Tours and nighttime events featuring live music performances from Midnight Movies and Hifana.
October 10, 2004
Internship Opportunity
The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences is seeking interns for this and next semester.
In case you haven't heard of it, the Academy puts on the DICE conference every year which includes the Interactive Achievement Awards. The DICE conference is attended by top executives and designers in the game industry.
USC students have been interning at the Academy for the past few years and say it provided them great contacts for work in the game industry.
The president, Joseph Olin, is a USC alum. If you are interested in e-mail Joseph at joseph@interactive.org. For more about the Academy see http://www.interactive.org.
October 09, 2004
USC Game Researchers seek assistance
Two people within USC have contacted me recently looking for assistance from our community with game-related research.
The first is an opportunity to provide game design services (and be paid by the hour) on an Annenberg research project. Here is more info from the researcher/PhD candidate, Wei Peng:
"We want to conduct a study on the impact of competition and narrative on the learning outcome of educational computer games. We need to develop a storyline for a biology game which intends to reinforce the lecture materials of a introductory biology class for freshman. The background of the game is that in 2020, metalloman needs to produce human organs. We also wants to incorporate faked online competition to test the effect of competition on learning. Because of our limited resource, the storyline/narrative and competition can only be presented through pop-up text message. Therefore, we really need to get a professional game designer rather than a layman to think of a compelling storyline and 'believable' faked online competition results."
Wei can be reached at wpeng@usc.edu.
The second is a request to fill out a Video Game Usage survey for a project by USC student, Ethan Levy. The survey is available at http://www.resisoft.com/resisoft/ethan/. Ethan can be reached at ethanlev@usc.edu.
Psychedelic picnic
This screening of rare hand-picked abstract experimental films in the back cemetery of the Paramount studios among the ghosts of the stars will be quite surreal. A lot of experimental filmmakers will be attending. Bring a blanket and a picnic.
PSYCHEDELIC PICNIC
A Benefit for Film Preservation
Saturday, October 9th
NEW TIME: GATES AT 6:00PM FILMS AT SUNDOWN
Hollywood Forever Cemetery
6000 Santa Monica Boulevard at Gower
No reservation necessary.
$10 Admission Tickets available at gate.
As a courtesy to fellow moviegoers:
NO TALL CHAIRS ON THE FIELD, NO DOGS
Please join us for this special night of visual music, a program of mind-expanding work by 1960s West Coast experimental film artists. Hand picked by Cinespias David Hollander, these abstract animated films are profound, beautiful and inescapably psychedelic.
Among these rarely screened jewels is James Whitneys "Lapis," created entirely with intricate hand-drawn dot patterns intended to activate the psychic forces of the mind, as well as Scott Bartletts "OFFON," a psychedelic metamorphosis of film and video. Also included is "Cycles" by legendary Bay area filmmakers Jordan Belson and Stephen Beck, as well as hypnotic works by Don Fox, Adam Beckett, Pat O'Neill, and Jean Painleve.
Bring cocktails, blankets and picnic dinner for this rare screening beneath the stars.
Proceeds to benefit the preservation of visual music films
DJ John Wyatt spins a psychedelic set before and after the screening.
USC Games Summit comes on Oct 20-21
The USC Games Summit is a Games@USC initiative 2-day conference focusing on the wide variety interdiciplinary campus-wide games research at USC.
===============================================================
USC Games Summit: Shaping the Future
Provisional Program
Join top researchers and educators October 20-21 to discover the wealth of video game and simulation research and curriculum occurring at the University of Southern California. Representatives from wide range of schools and research groups at USC are coming together to exchange ideas and information on a diversity of video game and simulation topics ranging from curriculum, to cognitive and ehavioral research, to cutting edge hardware and software R&D. Culminating the summit is a roundtable event that brings together industry and academia to brainstorm how the two can work together to develop and advance the state-of-the-art in video games and simulations.
For registration:
http://gamessummit.org/
Lev Manovich @ UCLA DMA
"Introduction to Info-Aesthetics"
Monday October 11, 2004
6-8 pm in the EDA
11000 Kinross Avenue
Free to public
http://www.eda.ucla.edu/main/index.php
Lev Manovich is an Associate Professor in the Visual Arts Department, University of California San Diego where he teaches courses in new media art and theory. He is the author of The Language of New Media (The MIT Press, 2001), Tekstura: Russian Essays on Visual Culture (Chicago University Press, 1993) as well as many articles. His awards include a Mellon Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship). Currently he is working on a five year project Soft Cinema http://www.softcinema.net which was supported by ZKM, BALTIC, and CAL-IT(2).
IMD Media Sharing
I have a huge appetite for media, and, I imagine, most of my fellow students and faculty members do too! DVDs, games - for research, for stimulation, for play, for reference. I have a large library myself, but I've had my breath taken away by some of my peers, and the media relics they collect.
Individually, we may have ancient Nintendo 64 cartridges that preceeded modern masterpieces, books that give inside information on Flash programming, and DVDs of obscure Malaysian films where gameplayers pass into virtual realms. But how do we get access to all we might have between us?
Media Chest is a free web site that allows folks to list their individual media collections, and coordinate searching and loaning DVDs, CDs, games and books between friends. Here's some examples: some of my DVDs, some of my games.
I've been encouraging people in the Interactive Media Division to join, so we can have an online library. If you need to get a copy of a certain film, someone might have it and they can bring it to school on short notice! Even better for obscure games - I hope the Media Chest database can keep up with the esoterica we might seek to share between us.
[If you visit Media Chest, let me know - my user name is Justino - I've got a USC IMD group there and I can invite you in].
October 08, 2004
Monday Lunchtime Lecture Series
October 11
BEING IN BETWEEN: DESIGN | MEDIA ARTS FACULTY
Casey Reas - Assistant Professor
Noon to 2 p.m. in the EDA, room 104 Kinross
11000 Kinross Avenue, Westwood
All lectures are free. Refreshments will be provided.
If you are not able to join us physically, log on to the live stream.
http://www.eda.ucla.edu/main/index.php
October 07, 2004
A message from Randall Packer: Do You Still Own Your Reality?
Message from the Secretary of the US Department of Art & Technology:
The Republicans are heightening the attack, ramping up their spin
strategies to reinforce disinformation in order to fool the country
into re-election.
Straight out of the playbook from Orwell's 1984...
They continue to retool their highly refined doublespeak tactics to
maintain a stranglehold on the reality of unsuspecting Americans.
Have the Republicans co-opted your reality?
According to columnist Tina Brown in the Washington Post discussing
the VP debate:
"Cheney found a more primitive way to bluff with a bad hand... In a
culture of blatherers, Cheney intimidates with his silences, his
stingers, and above all his awesome capacity to stare down the
evidence and assert that black is white."
Despite the fact that this week, the administration's own Paul
Bremer, Don Rumsfeld, and the weapons investigator Charles Duelfer
have all declared the reason's for going to war were deeply flawed,
as well as the so called follow-up plan, Bush and Cheney not only
stand their ground, they tighten their tenuous grip on a fictional
narrative designed to disguise their true ambition to control the
oil-rich middle east.
The real issue in this election though, is America going to wake up
to the dream (or nightmare) it finds itself in? Can we lift the veil
on the disinformation pouring out of the White House. Can we take
command of our own reality?
Or has America's reality been permanently hijacked by the Republicans
and their media propaganda machine?
Randall M. Packer
Secretary, US Department of Art & Technology
October 06, 2004
LAATHC Sunday 7pm
The Los Angeles Art and Technology Hacker Club
coming at you : c-level this Sunday October 10th 2004, 7pm.
Schedule:
1) Casual chatting while waiting for stragglers
2) Meeting announcements + planning.
3) Kate Rich is radioengineer with the Bureau of Inverse Technology (BIT). She will be talking about her current experiments in Outsider trading - trafficking goods along social and data networks - with a view to rendering diverse currents in globalisation, international relations & network mobility from the extreme-local point of view of the feral trade product.
http://bureauit.org
sparror.cubecinema.com/feraltrade/statement.html
4) Free form mingling and problem solving for those who brought stuff, working or non.
5) After we finish there is a talk across the street with the Tactical Magic guys.
The Los Angeles Art and Technology Hacker Club is an open group formed for people interested in doing cool things with electronics. All levels of experience are welcome to attend and participate. The group meets some sunday early every month, at c-level, in Chinatown Los Angeles. To sign up for the discussion and announcement list, visit http://www.c-level.cc/classes/hackerclub.html
Cultivating Pasadena: From Roses to Redevelopment
The first in a series of exhibitions entitled Urban Traces: Rephotographing Southern California, 'Cultivating Pasadena' combines 50 archival and contemporary rephotographed images with an interactive database installation. Visitors may perform cross-dissolves with the photographs and search supplementary material including interviews, period films and contemporary videos to create visual and contextual links between past and present. Co-produced by The Labyrinth Project at the University of Southern California's Annenberg Center, the Automobile Club of Southern California, and the PMCA.
Opening reception:
Friday, Oct 8, 2004 * 7:00 - 9:00 pm
Wine, Hors d'oeuvres and Live Jazz
Pasadena Museum of California Art
490 East Union Street
Pasadena, CA 91101
626-568-3665
www.pmcaonline.org
awesomeness on the election front
not sure how many of you watched the veep debate last night, but apparently some funny "internet" based fun went down as a result of the part where DICK cheney told viewers to check the facts of an edwards response (which actually turned out to be true...) at factcheck.com
One problem with Cheney's rebuttal: He misspoke. He meant to say "factcheck.org," rather than ".com." According to the Wall Street Journal, the company that owns factcheck.com, Name Administration Inc., took advantage of Cheney's error to redirect traffic to a page titled, "Why we must not re-elect President Bush: a personal message from George Soros."*
October 05, 2004
DORKBOTSOCAL
people doing strange things with electricity
NEXT MEETING
DORKBOTSOCAL4 - 9-October-2004 - Flash Film Works: Draves / Goodwin / Schoelerman
[ S P E C S ]
*** OCTOBER 9th 2004 - 8pm (Saturday)
*** FLASH FILM WORKS
*** 743 Seward Ave., Hollywood, CA 90038
*** Phone Number: 323-468-8855
*** http://www.flashfilmworks.com
[ O V E R V I E W ]
This - I think - will be one of the most exciting DORKBOTSOCALS yet: we're meeting at Flash Film Works in Hollywood, a motion picture special effects house. Dan Novy, a dorkbotter and FFW employee, will give us a quick tour of the facilities. The first presenter will be Spot Draves (down from San Fransisco) who will be presenting his acclaimed "Electric Sheep". Next, Doug Goodwin from CalArts will present "Reactive System"; last but not least, we'll catch Ryan Schoelerman, fresh from performing his "Autonomous Radiobodies" system on the streets of Los Angeles.
Bring all your friends and beer: prepare to see some great work in an interesting venue.
IM Forum for 10/6/04: Advanced Interactive Project Briefs
This week Mike Brinker, Will Carter, Todd Furmanski, Kurt MacDonald, Tripp
Millican and Stephanie Weinstein will be describing their Advanced
Interactive Projects, followed by a break-out session which will allow for one on one demonstrations and discussions for all who can attend.
Happy Birthday Todd
Happy Birthday Todd! You think you can sneak your birthday by us, but it will not happen. Thank you to the mysterious "dante" for revealing this date.
Send Todd a birthday greeting in the comments here.
October 04, 2004
Interactive Storytelling for PBS's POV
Just found out about this, the deadline is, oops, Oct. 8th...but let me know if you might be interested in submitting a project...and it could possibly be extended by a week.
* Call for Entries: P.O.V.'s Borders -- Submit by October 8th *
What is a border? How much is real, and how much is in your mind?
P.O.V.'s Borders is a showcase for interactive storytelling. This Webby
award-winning site, PBS's first on-going Web-only series, explores the
borders in our lives with new themed installments launched annually. Each
episode asks visitors to consider an aspect of their everyday lives in ways
that challenge their preconceptions, and expand their own "borders" of
understanding.
P.O.V.'s Borders announces a Call for Entries for its next episode.
Scheduled to launch in early 2005, the episode investigates the idea of the
American identity.
At home and abroad, people's concepts of what makes an American are
evolving. Through a set of three to four interactive features, P.O.V.'s
Borders: American Identities explores the myths and realities of being
American in the world today. How do Americans define themselves? How do
others see us?
The series will commission three to four original interactive features
exclusively designed for the American website, based on proposals received
by October 8, 2004.
Find out more & submit a proposal:
Slash of reality
Computer graphics lab creates the visual and the visceral...
Montreal Gazette (10/04/04); Bruemmer, Rene
Montreal is expanding as a center of academic and commercial activity in the area of computer graphics, a field that has exploded in recent years thanks to the increasing popularity and profitability of video games and computer-animated films. Over 700 people in Montreal are employed by video game makers Ubisoft and Electronic Arts, while students at the Universite de Montreal are developing new algorithms and software directed toward the more realistic and speedier rendition of computer-generated imagery. The school is often one of the select few to publish papers at ACM's SIGGRAPH, the leading forum for computer graphics research. Designers and academic programmers are pursuing the development of tools and methods that are published and adopted by the film or gaming industries, or are built upon by other researchers. Victor Ostromoukhov with the Universite's computer graphics lab notes that their work is released into the public domain, while professor Pierre Poulin explains that students and professors may be awarded private or government funding and fellowships. He also notes that students could secure a fruitful career in computer graphics based on the merits of their work. "Computer graphics is one of those rare fields where students are coveted," Poulin says. "Where computer science has been slowing down in the last few years, computer graphics is speeding up." Getting published is more complicated now thanks to the computer graphics boom, which has spawned fervent competition; this makes true innovation all the more prized, according to Poulin.
Received via ACM Tech News.
murmur
still trying not to completely link dump, but:
murmur is a of-the-canada project that is basically, without too blatantly referencing julian's project, Another Spatial Annotation Project. Murmur signs are affixed to certain locations around participating canadian cities (toronto, vancouver, and somewhere else...), and mobile telephony enabled people can dial a number and location code printed on the sign. They they get to hear an audio stream of people's recollections, etc., of that specific area. I guess what makes this project unique, and to me personally, potentially more interesting than some other location-annotation projects (except patholog of course), is that you can actually hear the voices of people making these annotations. I guess this could be bad if the person is completely boring, but I envision these really lively, almost scripted recollections, stories, etc., coming from the other end of the line.
that being said, I'm getting a little bored of these annotation projects, unless (like patholog, cough) they rely on a high turnover of this content, and place more emphasis on social connection. Personally, I find these projects pretty similar to the musuem model -- at this location, these things happened. Sure, this is interesting, to a degree, but it has zero "replayability" to me, and it basically doesn't seem like much fun, or something that I'd get really excited about doing (although I'd definitely like to try out...). I think the main thing about these annotations is that they need to be stories -- they need to be engaging or they won't hold anyone's interest. Sure, maybe I can find out about what Jack Ireland things about "the best irish pub in all of Los Angeles," and what maybe his favorite menu items are, but that's about it. Sure, that kind of stuff is a nice service, but I think we're at the point now with this "mobile media" stuff that we really need to start thinking about crafting unique experiences for people. I certainly think that murmur could be compelling, but it seems like it rests it's success on the storytelling capabilities of those who are annotating.
Sorry for the big block of text.
Film and Fragrance
USC Events Calendar - Film and Fragrance
Thu, October 7, 2004 at 4:00 pm
Admission: Free
Doheny Memorial Library (DML)
Intellectual Commons
University Park Campus
Scientist and entrepreneur Avery N. Gilbert reveals the science of odor perception - including the role of biology, psychology and culture - and the many ways in which scent has permeated through popular culture.
Pleasurable scents have played a significant role in society since the dawn of civilization - as an aid in religion and healing, as a spur to international trade in perfume ingredients and as a catalyst to the art of love. Popular culture and entertainment gave rise to Smell-o-Vision and Aroma-Rama. More recently, scents have been used to create a specific mood at special events, from holiday parties to concerts. Scent creation is also at the heart of today's multi-billion dollar fragrance industry.
Gilbert is the founder and president of Synesthetics, Inc., which has provided consulting and multisensory science for the development and marketing of consumer products since 1995. Clients include manufacturers of leading brands in the air care, personal care and fine fragrance markets.
Geek Out
While @ WBIE on Friday I was given an onslaught of month-old-mags. In this new
publication for gadget loving 20-35 year olds, SYNC, I spotted this wonderfully
pertinent spread called “Geek Out”.
Franz, pictured above is sporting some serious geek wear.
1. Gaming Gloves
“ Digiglove has padding on the forefinger and thumb to help reduce calluses, blisters and painful hands due to hand-arm vibration syndrome; and strategic venting prevents hand sweating that can lead to chafing and other long-term video game ailments.
14$ 800 851 6030”
2. LED Binary Watch
“…displays the time using numbers of the binary sequence (1,2,4,8,16,etc.)…”
3. Wearable Computer
“ QBIC Belt Integrated Computer from the Wearable Computing Lab of Switzerland. Play game, surf, input data via an eyeglasses-mounted diplay…
4. Wearable Lifelog Camera (o.k. so it actually sad “Spy Camera”)
“…Camwear Model 100 by DejaView is a die-sized video camera that clips onto a cap or lapel. It records and buffers the last 30 seconds of everything it sees…hit Record on the fanny pack and the last half a minute is caputured. $400; MyDejaView.com”
Camwear Model 100 by DejaView seems really cool, and relevant to some work going on in the division, I’m looking at you Tripp. Check out the site for more details.
October 03, 2004
Polar Express in IMAX 3D
The Polar Express: An IMAX 3D Experience is the first full-length feature ever converted into IMAX 3D. Experience the magic beginning November in select IMAX, IMAX Dome and IMAX 3D Theatres on screens up to eight stories tall with 12,000 watts of digital surround sound.
IMAX - Polar Express 3D
More about the stereo conversion here:
While the 35mm version in most theatres is restricted to the two-dimensional data, IMAX took the extra info and compiled it into their DMR process to produce probably the best 3D you've ever seen. Say goodbye to clunky liquid crystal glasses that give you a headache; the new 3D glasses are lightweight and filter the dual-projected left and right images into the proper eyes to sell the 3D effect to your brain. Murray tells us that a little tweaking had to be one here and there, like adding extra layers of steam and snowflakes to really take advantage of their 3D potential, before printing it on two giant 15/70mm reels of film. They also took the 2D limitation of the frame, whereby a character's figure may actually be cut out of the shot in a close-up, and used the extra data to construct the rest of their body in the third dimension. So now someone's head pops out of the picture rather than being lopped off.
October 01, 2004
EA Posts Record Sims 2 Sales
WSJ.com - Electronic Arts Posts Record Sims 2 Sales
Electronic Arts Posts Record Sims 2 Sales
September 28, 2004 1:15 p.m.
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. (AP)--Playing virtual God apparently has its appeal.
In what it called the biggest video game launch in the company's 22-year history, Electronic Arts Inc. (ERTS) says it sold more than a million copies of "The Sims 2" within the first 10 days of its release. The personal computer game, released on Sept. 14, lets players control virtual humans from birth until death, making myriad decisions ranging from romantic entanglements to personal hygiene. The sequel adds sharper three-dimensional graphics and other improvements over the original Sims game, released in 2000. Company spokesman Frank Gibeau said more than half the "Sims 2" sales came from Europe. Combined sales of the original Sims and its numerous expansion packs, meanwhile, have topped 41 million units. "The Sims franchise has become a cultural phenomenon and 'The Sims 2' is a game that changes the way we think about our industry," Gibeau said. EA, the world's largest video-game maker, put out an online version in 2002 but it suffered from disappointing sales and tepid reviews. Next up on the Sims roster is "The Urbz: Sims in the City." Expected in November, plyers must test the reputation of their Sims in an urban environment.
