November 30, 2004
IM Forum for 12/1: 3++
For our final IM Forum, we are pleased to have 3 mini-presentations, 30 minutes each:
Marientina Gotsis - "The Everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach to the thesis show and life before and after INSIDE_OUT"
Kellee Santiago - “Interactive Theatre: Participation, Choice, and Implications”
Justin Hall - “Compulsive Oversharing”
PLUS - dinner at 6pm
PLUS - end of the semester after party at the Figueroa!
As usual Wednesday eve, Dec 1, in the USC Zemeckis Center, Room 201
Cranium
Yet another article from last Sunday's NYTimes magazine special issue on "The Thoroughly Designed Childhood":
Most classic board games are all about winning and losing. When you play Monopoly or Risk or Sorry! there is always someone crowing in triumph while others quietly sulk in defeat. But Tait, 40, founded Cranium in 1998 with the opposite idea: to produce games ''where everyone has a chance to shine,'' a phrase he repeats like a mantra in every conversation. Tait designs games that no single player can dominate; at some point, every player will be the hero. ''And then they have that moment of glow, that moment of shine, that moment where everyone celebrates them,'' he says, speaking practically in the cadence of a preacher. That makes the games particularly appealing to young children, who can be unhinged by the sting of losing. And for parents, it means that playtime is unlikely to end in tantrums. You can win a Cranium game, but no one really cares. It is, as one Cranium designer delicately puts it, ''a softer win.''
Complete article here:
The New York Times > Magazine > Phenomenon: The Play's the Thing
Nature Ears
Weird. And if we put two of these together...?
HEAR, HEAR
By amplifying sounds, the Brunton Nature Ear II ($280; brunton.com) does for bird watchers' ears what binoculars do for their eyes. The device concentrates on frequencies commonly associated with birdcalls, thus minimizing other sounds.
The New York Times > Technology > Circuits > Recreation: Making the Outdoors a Bit Greater
Toward a Literacy of Cooperation
New Stanford class open to the public and also available in realtime via webvideo (thanks Howard):
Toward a Literacy of Cooperation: Jan 5-Mar 16 at Stanford
http://shl.stanford.edu/hum202.html
Darwin had a blind spot. It wasn't that he didn't see the role of cooperation in evolution. He just didn't see how important it is. So for two centuries -- a time during which the world passed from an agrarian landscape into a global post-industrial culture of unprecedented scale and complexity --science, society, public policy and commerce have attended almost exclusively to the role of competition. The stories people tell themselves about what is possible, the mythical narratives that organizations and societies depend upon, have been variations of "survival of the fittest." The role of cooperation has been largely unmapped.
Now is the time to finally build this map, not because we're feeling altruistic, but because scientists are beginning to see how cooperation actually works in biology, sociology, mathematics, psychology, economics, computer science and political science. And in the last two decades, we've seen a variety of new challenges to business models that stress competition over customers, resources, and ideas. Companies in emerging high-tech industries learned that working with competitors could build markets and help avoid costly standards wars. The open source movement showed that world-class software could be built without corporate oversight or market incentives. Google and Amazon built fortunes by drawing on, even improving, the Internet by facilitating and building on the collective actions of millions of web publishers and reviewers. Thousands of volunteers have created over one million pages of the free encyclopedia Wikipedia in over 100 languages. Collective knowledge-gathering, sharing economies, social software, prediction markets numerous experiments in technology-assisted cooperation are taking place.
In this lecture series we want to begin to put these pieces of the puzzle together to build a practical map of cooperative strategy, starting with the basic social dilemma that has forever defined the tension between self-interest and social institutions. Social dilemmas arise when you or I act rationally... in our own self-interest...but our individual rational acts add up to a situation in which everyone is worse off. That is, our choices add up to less, not more.
Readings will include Peter Kollock, Elinor Ostrom, Steven Weber, Garrett Hardin, David Reed, Bernardo Huberman, Howard Rheingold, and many others. The class will begin with a first hand game experience. A wiki and a blog will continue discussion and group learning online between classes, and enable participation by others off-campus or on the other side of the world. Guest lecturers include Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia), Peter Kollock, Bernardo Huberman, Ross Mayfield (social software entrepreneur and one of the authors of "Emergent Democracy,") Howard Rheingold, Zack Rosen (creator of Deanspace and civicspace.org), and others.
Classes will be held WEDNESDAYS 4:15 pm to 5:45 pm Wallenberg Hall (Bldg 160), Room 127. Lecture video will be streamed in real time and available on archives. The first class will be Monday, January 5. The syllabus and information about online participation will be available at http://shl.stanford.edu/hum202.html by the last week in December.
We're hoping that this course will be the start of an interdisciplinary learning network, focused on issues of cooperation and collective action in science, public policy, business, and everyday life.
November 29, 2004
comment code
can/could anyone post some links or code for fixing the 8 day+ issue with not being able to comment on certain people's blogs?
November 28, 2004
Babes in a Grown-up Toyland
some excerpts from a thought provoking ny times article:
...As toys change, has play itself fundamentally changed? For that matter, does the early attachment to grown-up toys in some way shorten in the imaginative world of childhood, with its pretend tea parties and make-believe cops and robbers?Young children who have active imaginary lives tend to be adept reasoning about unknown situations and taking on another's perspective, studies suggest. "I think there are deep continuities between the functioning of the imagination in early childhood and its functioning later," Dr. Paul L. Harris, a psychologist at Harvard and author of "The Work of the Imagination," wrote in an e-mail.
There is little doubt that electronic gadgets engage the mind in different ways than dolls and Legos. Building blocks come to life only with the aid of imagination, while computer games direct and provide their own action. They also bleed into one another, with Donkey Kong skills feeding Mortal Kombat chops feeding Halo, until parent and child are playing on the same screens, competing at games or, later on, designing Web pages or publishing online diaries....
"We've been worried about the presumed innocence of children being destroyed by too much exposure to media for a hundred years, and this is another iteration of the same phenomenon," said Dr. Peter Stearns, a historian and the provost of George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. "I do worry that we have an idealized view of a past childhood that hasn't been true for a long time, and perhaps was never true."
any comments by the faculty parents? such a complicated issue. i feel like there obviously needs to be some sort of a balance, but how do you make a decision of what to expose them to, and what to shelter them from, and when? what is going to enhance or confine creative development? not too mention the effects of violence in games...
continue reading for full article...or read online with a free subscription.
Babes in a Grown-up Toyland (NY Times)
By BENEDICT CAREY
Published: November 28, 2004
WHATEVER happened to toys? Real toys, like dolls and model airplanes? A recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that half of all 4- to 6-year-olds have played video games, a quarter of them regularly. Game makers are aggressively marketing to children as young as 3, while researchers report what parents already know: that children as young as 8 and 9 are asking for adult toys, like cellphones and iPods, rather than stuffed animals or toy trucks.
The trend has squeezed both makers and sellers of traditional toys, from the electric train company Lionel to retailers like Toys "R" Us and F. A. O. Schwarz. "I have seen 1-year-olds wanting to play with their parents' cellphones," said Irma Zandl of the Zandl Group, a youth-marketing research company. And they know the difference, she said, between a real and a fake one.
Which raises a question: As toys change, has play itself fundamentally changed? For that matter, does the early attachment to grown-up toys in some way shorten in the imaginative world of childhood, with its pretend tea parties and make-believe cops and robbers?
"The span in which children play with certain kinds of toys certainly has shrunk," said Dr. Gary Cross, a historian at Pennsylvania State University and author of "The Cute and the Cool," an analysis of children's consumer culture. "It used to be that 14-year-old girls could still play with dolls, and 14-year-old boys would still get Erector Sets as gifts."
Young children who have active imaginary lives tend to be adept reasoning about unknown situations and taking on another's perspective, studies suggest. "I think there are deep continuities between the functioning of the imagination in early childhood and its functioning later," Dr. Paul L. Harris, a psychologist at Harvard and author of "The Work of the Imagination," wrote in an e-mail.
There is little doubt that electronic gadgets engage the mind in different ways than dolls and Legos. Building blocks come to life only with the aid of imagination, while computer games direct and provide their own action. They also bleed into one another, with Donkey Kong skills feeding Mortal Kombat chops feeding Halo, until parent and child are playing on the same screens, competing at games or, later on, designing Web pages or publishing online diaries.
The increasing use of electronic toys troubles Dr. Jerome L. Singer, a professor emeritus of psychology at Yale. "One thing we know is that kids in preschool years need to be in touch with the real world," he said. "No matter how brilliant they are, they're not going to learn to walk, to move, to interact with others unless their hands or feet have a direct role in such activity. Plopping kids in front of a TV or computer cuts away a whole aspect of that development."
At the same time, psychologists say that childhood has always been a long rehearsal for adulthood, and in this context wired play is both adaptive, and natural, behavior.
"This is such a deep-seated part of human nature that changes in technology would be very unlikely to stunt it," Dr. Alison Gopnik, a psychologist and author of "The Scientist in the Crib," wrote in an e-mail. "Instead, children in a technological world will explore technology and use technological means for their pretend play. Babies already 'pretend' to work on computers, and older children who once may have listened to or told mythical stories, and later in history read books, may do similar things with a computer game like Myst. That makes sense, given that children will end up as adults in a world in which technology and electronics play an increasingly important role."
Some psychologists say that young imaginations, even of preschoolers, are surprisingly good at appropriating electronic imagery. Images from games and shows may linger, but they often mingle with dreams, blend with other fantasies the child has, and are reshaped and recast in a running, magical movie whose script psychologists cannot always predict or interpret.
For example, in a 2001 survey of 1,800 children aged 5 to 12, British researchers found that more than 45 percent had an imaginary companion at some point in their lives, a much higher rate than the authors expected. Imaginary friends, believed by some researchers to foster the development of empathy and sociability, typically are not based on toys, and have more social dimension than would be provided by a game character, a recent analysis found.
It is not even clear how closely the children playing with adult gadgets or games follow their guidelines or intended story lines, researchers say. "A lot of people put down action figures and video games, but kids are acting out their scripts when playing these things, and that ability is going to survive," Professor Cross said.
One piece of childhood that may not endure, as succeeding generations become more plugged in, is the adult notion that children can live for long in their own fantasy world, guarded and preserved by parents.
This idea of a protected childhood is itself an adult invention, a product of the latter part of the 19th century, when Europe's growing middle classes began to shelter children from adult work. A distinct child literature developed soon after: J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan first appeared in 1902; Frances Hodgson Burnett's classic, "The Secret Garden," was published in 1911.
But the protected space of childhood slowly eroded, as children were increasingly exposed to the consumer market - through comic books, then radio, then television. In the accelerating rush toward more wired play, it is not so much childhood that is under threat, some say, as society's idealized and perhaps sentimentalized view of it.
In fact, the move away from reading "The Secret Garden" in a quiet corner, and toward the public extravaganza of Harry Potter - the books, the movies, the action figures and video game - has been going on for a long time.
"We've been worried about the presumed innocence of children being destroyed by too much exposure to media for a hundred years, and this is another iteration of the same phenomenon," said Dr. Peter Stearns, a historian and the provost of George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. "I do worry that we have an idealized view of a past childhood that hasn't been true for a long time, and perhaps was never true."
Cingular Wireless Film Festival
http://rucingular.com/screeningroom/default.asp
15 seconds or less.
prize: motorola V551 + $5,000.
some rules:
- Contest starts at 12:00:01 a.m. ET on November 15, 2004 and ends at 11:59:59 p.m. ET on January 31, 2005.
- The videos can be about anything and fit within any genre, such as action or comedy and will be judged based on creativity, expression and entertainment value.
- You may enter as many times as you wish during the entry period, but only one entry per person can be selected as a winner. (See details in Rule 4 below.)
- Entries will be disqualified if they contain any inappropriate material or language, including profanity.
And for the most awesomist, craptastic rules of them all!
- Open to legal U.S. residents between 18 and 24 years of age who are film students at time of entry.
- All videos submitted, and all concepts or ideas contained or embodied therein, become the sole property of Sponsor and will not be acknowledged or returned
that aside, yeah, if someone here isn't entering this, umm, yeeah....someone should enter (even though many of us have exited the coveted 18-24 demographic! damn it!)
November 26, 2004
Holo-dek game sphere
The Holo-Dek gaming center in Hampton displays a series of innovations for video game addicts.
One of them is a room with a 13-foot screen, lit by a powerful projector, which is in turn controlled by an Alienware computer, a machine built just for gaming. When projected at this size, video game unfolds at human scale. An opposing soldier appears about six feet tall, and railings and fences come up about waist-high.
"Basically, this is a video gaming theater... like a movie theater for gaming. Everybody gets a state of the art PC and at least a six-foot screen," says Mike Fortier, co-founder of Helo-Deck.
Another of the company's gaming creations is a 20-foot-diameter globe screen with a robot at its center. When finished, the interior will be wholly lit with the game of your choice, 360 immersive degrees of tropical island or race track or deep space, and the robotic seat at the center will simulate acceleration, or the oscillation of driving over gravel, or the continuous spin-out of a car that has lost traction.
November 24, 2004
CTIN 499-Inventing Extreme Dataspace
New class for Spring 2005 co-taught by Mark Bolas from the Interactive Media Division and Jacki Morie from ICT with a host of visiting luminaries. Scholarships and RA appoinments available.
For more information see class blog here.
November 23, 2004
"Visual Google"
This was developed by Hartmut Neven, a researcher here at USC's ISI lab in Marina Del Rey - we should propose some content and user studies??:
Neven has applied for a patent to cover the use of image-recognition software on mobile phones and has started cutting deals with various companies. Vodafone Japan and NTT DoCoMo offer wireless video-messaging services powered by Neven Vision technology. Vodafone's MovieMask, launched in July, recognizes your changing expressions as you look into the camera and adds the appropriate special effects, like tears or sparkles. DoCoMo introduced a similar service called Face Stamp in November. Neven Vision expects at least three European cell phone carriers to make the technology a standard feature next year.Meanwhile, the company is developing a security application that would use biometrics - facial features, skin texture, and iris pattern - to authenticate purchases made via cell phone.
And this fall, after two years of development, the company is rolling out its most ambitious service, what Neven describes as a "visual Google." The company has tweaked its facial analysis algorithms to identify anything from a Coke can to the Mona Lisa, barcodes to kanji. By linking this object-recognition software to a database of images, Neven aims to build a search platform for phonecam users. Don't know what something is? Snap a pic and the service sends back a match within 10 seconds.
The technology will debut next year in ads that offer, say, $1 million to the millionth person to submit an image of a can of Coke. Travel guides are next: Snap a picture of the Pantheon to learn its history, or click a road sign you need translated from German to English. "The system hyperlinks the visual world," Neven says. "Eventually every building and object will be in the database."
Comments Registration
Can't comment on my blog or others easily because (presumably) we don't have code on our individual blog comment windows that says to register or login to Typekey? This is really annoying (is there an echo?) and I hope can be resolved quickly by informing your users of the procedures AHEAD of time.
JFK game upsets many...
News clipping:
"As I watch the limo creep down Dealey Plaza, I put my finger on the trigger and peer down my rifle's telescope. I can see my target in the cross hairs. It's Nov. 22, 1963. I'm trying to kill the president.
The game I'm playing, JFK Reloaded, was released today by the Scottish company Traffic, on the 41st anniversary of the Kennedy assassination. Not surprisingly, it provoked a backlash before anyone ever played it. "It's despicable. There's really no further comment," said a spokesman for Ted Kennedy."
Sure it is distasteful but at least it is a portrayal of something that happened. Perhaps it is useful to put your mind in the psychology of a killer. Can we censor everything we don't like? My what a boring blog that would make...
Should I also be upset that Alexander the Great is portrayed as bisexual? (the greeks of course are suing). Or that Troy-the-movie was loosely based on thousands of lines of famous literature that Troy-the-movie screenwriters never read?
When it is real, we don't like it. When it isn't real we don't like it either. Do you prefer fiction with a pinch of truth or truth with a pinch of fiction?
November 22, 2004
Clueless
Hi. Please explain again how to log in to comment (step-by-step). If our Movable-Type logins don't work, then which one is it?
Thanks!
Comment Spam and the IMD Blog
Sorry for the recent trouble commenting on the weblog! Let me explain what happened -
We use Movable Type to manage the student/class/department weblogs. It's great software because it let's us give dozens of people access to edit and publish dozens of weblogs. And, for each entry on each of those weblogs, people have the ability to leave comments.
Movable Type versions before 3 were based on a trusted model of web annotation - anyone could type in a URL, email address and name, and leave their remarks on one of the articles. This brought a fascinating range of commentary to humble little weblogs. A number of folks saw an opportunity here, and they began running scripts to post unsolicited commercial advertisements on weblogs. By adding links to their sites selling Viagra, Cialis, Teen Sex, Texas Holdem, Diet Pills, whatever, they were driving up their pageranks in Google. (Pfizer, for one says they're not happy about Viagra spam). The more incoming links to a page, the higher it comes up in a search result. (Some folks think Google could fix that).
So by going to a wide range of weblogs, and posting links to their sites, these spammers were hoping that their free-rx-canada-pharmacy-400 site would come up on top. I imagine summer camps in Eastern Europe where hundreds of kids are being trained to write scripts, fill out comment forms and infiltrate the free and open web with make-money-fast-from-home schemes. Maybe they're giving these people a direct share of the profits? Either way, sites like this one, with hundreds of pages on dozens of blogs extending over years into the archives became huge targets. We were a giant sponge, soaking up all this muddy crud.
Like most folks running old installations of Movable Type, we installed MT-Blacklist, a program that allowed us to catch and filter out words like "viagra" and "erection" and "sluts." But each week there seems to be a new name for another erectile disfunction drug. And the spammers perform creative domain registration: block a URL like "how-to-play-hold-em-poker-4-you.info" and two days later they're using "free-texas-hold-em-poker-best-winning-chances.info." With a blog like this one, touching on gameplay, we can't exactly blacklist the word "poker."
So even with MT-Blacklist we were totally inundated. Dozens of spams a day, across these various weblogs. Scott asked me to look into stemming that tide. He suggested turning off comments after a certain time period - so that one month, or two months later, a script would turn comments off. This is a good idea when you have thousands of posts that might not be touched on. But with Google being the English-speaking web-world brain, you want to keep comments turned on for at least a few months, because it takes a little while for the page to be indexed and distributed out to other searchers online. When is a topic dead?
Rather than trying to pin down the right ratio of time between spam and insightful comments, and artificially limiting the period of discourse, I proposed that we move to an authentication system. SixApart, the company that makes Movable Type, realized they had a massive problem on their hands with hard-working spammers. They created a user registration system for comments: TypeKey. TypeKey is a free user authentic registration system for Movable Type weblogs; it uses the same login information as TypePad, the paid weblog hosting service (which is unfortunately not the same login students and faculty have here on the IMD site). TypeKey does allow you to login once, and keep that name and password saved on your computer so you can comment on any site using that kind of authentication.
Besides helping out on the IMD blog, I perform tech support for Game Girl Advance, a site with thousands of comments on hundreds of entries. There was an unstoppable flow of spam there too, and like this site, we turned on MT-Blacklist and comment approval. But what a pain in the butt! Every day I had to spend twenty minutes or a half an hour weeding out fifty spam comments to approve a single useful comment. Humph - I could have spent that time actually writing posts.
So I moved Game Girl Advance to comment authorization through TypeKey. Now, whenever there's a new comment, it was written by someone with an identity, something of a virtual stake in their presentation of self and their chosen remarks. I wonder how long it will take the spammers to crack TypeKey? And I wonder what is lost by preventing anonymous insights.
My hope for the IMD weblog is to see the maintenance time go down. I don't want a dozen people each spending 10-30 minutes a day chasing flies. When people have a new comment on their site, I want that to be a source of joy, because people expect it will be informed, invested commentary. It's definitely an experiment - the first TypeKey setup here was slightly broken (I mis-pasted a TypeKey code into the configuration). It required some upgrades to the templates here. Now it seems to be up and running - I hope it works for the group.
November 21, 2004
Registration for comment posting
Who has a clue? I can't post a thing.
How does this happen without notification?
November 18, 2004
Cooperative Games Experiment
The USC Game Design Community will be hosting its second event, The Cooperative Play Experiment, inspired by The New Games Movement. The event will consist of four hours of unadulterated fun. After feeding our spirits, will we feed our bellies during a late lunch/early dinner feast. T-shirts will be granted to all participants, because once you have learned the games, you qualify to be a referee in the future!
Also taking place at the event will be the USC Game Design Community first elections for officers!
When: Fri, Nov 19 12pm-4pm
Where: Annenberg IML
Electronic Perception Design Contest
Canesta Announces Electronic Perception Design Contest
San Jose, CA; November 11, 2004 -- Canesta has announced a design contest for the best applications of Canesta's revolutionary, low-cost "Electronic Perception Technology." The two-phase contest has been created to spur development of applications in a broad range of markets--from automotive to security and facial recognition, gesture control, human computer interaction, entertainment, and many others.
The CanestaVision Contest, which is open to all eligible applicants 18 years and older, features a $10,000 first prize, a $5,000 second prize, summer internships for two promising student entries, and awards of ten $7,500 development kits that each include a Canesta 3-D sensor module. The winners in each phase will be those that simultaneously demonstrate novel applications of electronic perception technology, high market potential, a substantive advance in computer or "machine" vision, and the ability of the application to address an important or "real" need.
Details are available at www.canesta.com/contest.
The contest will feature an idea phase, and an implementation phase, each with its own prizes. During the idea phase, contestants will be asked to submit application ideas in the form of brief written descriptions and drawings. From the submitted proposals, due on or before December 6, 2004, the judges will select 10 proposal winners, each of whom will be awarded a Canesta DP200 Electronic Perception Development Kit. This development kit (EP DevKit) has a $7,500 list price and contains the CanestaVision 3-D electronic perception sensor chip--with a USB interface, and application program interface (API) software. The kits may be used by the winners to translate their proposals or other application ideas to working prototypes. Winners of the first phase of the contest will be notified by January 12, 2005.
The second phase of the contest--the implementation phase--will begin on January 12, 2005 and close June 10, 2005. Contestants in the implementation phase will submit to Canesta a working prototype built using the EP DevKit. From the submitted prototypes, judges will select a first place winner and a second place winner. Additionally, the top two student entries will be chosen. The first place winner will receive a cash prize of $10,000, with the second place winner receiving $5,000. Two paid summer internships will be granted to promising student entries at Canesta's headquarters in San Jose, California, during 2005. In addition, the winning entries will be displayed during SIGGRAPH 2005. All submitted proposals and prototype applications will become public domain.
Interested individuals should note that it is not necessary to participate in or be a winner in the idea phase to enter the second phase contest for cash prizes or internships. It is only required to submit a working prototype by June 10, 2005 that incorporates the CanestaVision sensor in some type of electronic vision application. Contestants who wish to begin application development immediately, or who fail to win one of 10 Development Kit awards in the proposal phase, can purchase their own EP DevKits from Canesta immediately. Academic institutions may receive special pricing.
November 17, 2004
Human Pacman
A group of Singapore-based researchers are taking Pacman out of the arcade hall of fame and setting him loose on the streets.
The virtual reality gaming system allows players to become the insatiable cookie-munching hero of the classic computer game or one of his ghostly nemeses, simply by donning a backpack and a pair of goggles.
But instead of becoming a yellow blob trapped in a low-resolution two-dimensional maze, "Human Pacman" can roam freely through real environments.
The system was designed by a team led by Dr. Adrian Cheok of the Mixed Reality Lab at the National University of Singapore, using ubiquitous computing technology.
more here
November 16, 2004
TIME/SPACE, GRAVITY, AND LIGHT
Opening: Wednesday, November 17, 5:00-7:30pm
November 17, 2004 - February 27, 2005
Milken Gallery @ the Skirball Center
Albert Einstein used the objective logic of mathematics to revolutionize the way we view nature's physical properties. The exhibition Time/Space, Gravity, and Light - which complements the Einstein exhibition - presents ways in which artists use science and technology to evoke a subjective, emotional response from the same physical phenomena. It features three award-winning contemporary art works:
Listening Post by Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin displays online chat rooms to demonstrate how information moves at the speed of light between remote points on our planet, allowing for instantaneous communication.
Protrude, Flow by Sachiko Kodama and Minako Takeno renders visible unseen forces of magnetic attraction, evoking behavior that seems to defy gravity. For the piece, the artists created a sleek fluid that responds to the pull of magnetic attraction and to the sounds in the gallery.
The Ambiguous Icons series by Jim Campbell shows us how much we rely on past perceptions when we piece together what seems to be recognizable imagery from an absolute minimum of information. Campbell's installation is made up of a handful of blinking LEDs and primitive-seeming screens.
$8 General, $6 Students and Seniors (free with admission to Einstein).
November 15, 2004
IM Forum Speaker for 11/17/04: Michael Naimark
This week's speaker will be Michael Naimark, Visting Associate Professor, Interactive Media Division, USC School of Cinema-Television.
Title: "Globalism and Interactive Media"
Location: USC Zemeckis Center, Room 201
Time: 6:30pm-9pm, 11/17/04
This presentation explores how interactive media facilitates global connectedness and speculates about its aesthetic and cultural impact as interactive media technologies continue to evolve. Lots of examples will be shown, loosely organized around multimedia community “sweeps,” pop-geography publications, map hacking, global databases, and (duh) placed-based immersion.
A rough (but dated) explanation is here.
Cooperative Play Ref Training w/Bernie Dekoven
Last Friday, Bernie Dekoven came to train our referees for the upcoming USC Game Design Community's Cooperative Play Experiment. Bernie Dekoven, author of "The Well Played Game" and "Junkyard Sports" was a part of The New Games Movements of the 70's, from which we have taken our inspiration for our play experiment.
Bernie first allowed us to pick his brain on everything from concepts of play to prototyping to edu-tainment. He then showed us some of his favorite games inspired by The New Games Movement, including Prui, The Lap Game, and Rock-Paper-Scissors Tag (pictured above, and a group favorite).
Everyone had a blast and we all look forward to sharing our knowledge with everyone at this upcoming Friday's event. Thank you so much to Bernie DeKoven for sharing his wisdom with us. I encourage all participants to comment with your thoughts on the day!
November 14, 2004
Mobile SCOUT
Mobile SCOUT
A Mobile Phone and Web Public Art Project by Julian Bleecker, Scott Paterson and Marina Zurkow
Are you in a concrete jungle or swamped by tourists? Who's around you, what do you see? A deer, a dump or a daydream? Saintly acts or sinful facts? Mobile SCOUT is a public art project that collects audio narratives of your local surroundings, personal rituals and public sightings. Using your mobile phone, you leave a voice message of your observations with the Mobile SCOUT Ranger, our automated quirky naturalist. Turn your observations into a brief message about the flora (landscapes), fauna (characters) or behaviors (events) that populate your surroundings. Call the Mobile SCOUT Ranger - 1 (877) 564-3060 - he will guide you through the experience. When you call you'll:
Further instructions for operating Mobile SCOUT are available at our online brochure at http://www.mobilescout.org/brochure.htm. Mobile SCOUT defines place as being made of social habitats, not geography. Your recordings are organized into an audio/visual field guide according to the kind of space you occupy, be it play, work, nature, culture, public, private, branded or free speech. See the field guide and listen to recordings left by others by visiting the web site www.mobilescout.org. Mobile SCOUT was commissioned by "The Database Imaginary", an exhibition at the Walter Phillips Gallery at The Banff Center, and curated by Sarah Cook, Steve Dietz and Anthony Kiendl. Mobile SCOUT was produced with support from BeVocal for voice application hosting http://www.bevocal.com. |
November 13, 2004
Bigger Brother Graphic
Take a look at the graphic...
NY Times Article: Pentagon Envisioning a Costly Internet for War by Tim Weiner
The Pentagon is building its own Internet, the military's world wide web for the wars of the future.
"Possibly the single most transforming thing in our force,'' Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said, "will not be a weapons system, but a set of interconnections."
November 12, 2004
Virtual Economies Get Real
EverQuest geeks have been pawning virtual weapons for real cash on eBay for years. Now the big boys are finally getting into the game. Kazuo Hirai, president of Sony's U.S. video game division, has says that his company will begin selling downloadable game items for Playstation 2 players. These so-called "mini-transactions," as Hirai described them, could range from lethal swords to pimped-out rides. This new spin on personalization is expected to debut with the upcoming racing mega-title, Gran Turismo 4. "In the past, it has always been about the performance of the cars," he says, "but now it's as much about the human element."
Technology Review: MIT's Magazine of Innovation
Christian Moeller @ DMA EDA
BEING IN BETWEEN: DESIGN | MEDIA ARTS FACULTY
November 15th, 12 noon -- 2pm
11000 Kinross Avenue (Kinross North Building - EDA Room)
All lectures are free. Refreshments will be provided.
Bridging art and architecture, Christian Moeller's work is informed by emergent digital media and how these media have transformed the landscapes of experience across multiple scales. By harnessing sound, light, weather conditions, motions, and human emotions, Moeller creates spaces that are responsive and manipulable. Exhibitions: two land-art installations in the historic Schloss Eggenberg Park, Graz, Austria; Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery, Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, California; National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts; and the Science Museum, London. Publications: "A Time and Place," a monograph on Christian Moeller's work from 1991 to 2003.
If you are not able to join us physically, log on to the live stream
The diverse backgrounds and expertise of the D|MA senate faculty reflect the direction and philosophy of the department. This unique group of media artists, designers and theorists all make connections between design but then branch off into art and science, architecture, sculpture, performance, technological innovations, sensors and robotics, information spaces, database aesthetics, fashion and technology.
Lectures by Victoria Vesna, Casey Reas, Vasa Mihich, Jennifer Steinkamp, Rebeca Méndez, Robert Israel, Christian Moeller, Erkki Huhtamo, Katherine Hayles, and Mark Hansen.
BIOGRAPHY FOR CHRISTIAN MOELLER:
Dipl. Ing (Diploma of Engineering), Frankfurt am Main Polytechnical University. A pioneer in the design of interactive architectural installations. He studied architecture at the College of Applied Sciences in Frankfurt and was a Scholarship holder under Gustav Peichel at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. He headed the ARCHIMEDIA research institute at the College of Design in Linz, Austria and was Professor at the College of Design in Karlsruhe, Germany before he moved to Los Angeles in 2001.
Bridging art and architecture, his work is informed by emergent digital media and how these media have transformed the landscapes of experience across multiple scales. By harnessing sound, light, weather conditions, motions, and human emotions, Moeller creates spaces that are responsive and manipulable. Exhibitions: two land-art installations in the historic Schloss Eggenberg Park, Graz, Austria; Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery, Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, California; National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts; and the Science Museum, London. Publications: "A Time and Place," a monograph on Christian Moeller's work from 1991 to 2003.
DORKBOTSOCAL 5 - 20-November-2004
From: Garnet Hertz
To: dorkbotsocal-announce@dorkbot.org
DORKBOTSOCAL 5 - 20-November-2004
Telic : Ruest / Schoenerwissen/OfCD / Schlegel / Sauter
[ S P E C S ]
*** NOVEMBER 20th 2004 - 8pm (Saturday)
*** Telic
*** 975 Chung King Road, Los Angeles, CA 90012
*** map
[ O V E R V I E W ]
This is going to be an excellent event - and it's not just because I say that every time. Casey Reas has organized a cool mix of tactical media, GPS, text visualization, connecting expressive environments, and projections on to the cityscapes of Los Angeles. Investigate the links below: you'll be thoroughly impressed. As a bonus, it's hosted at Telic on Chung King Road in the heart of Chinatown: come on out, tell all your friends, and be there. You won't want to miss this.
[ P R E S E N T E R S ]
// -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Annina Ruest
http://www.t-t-trackers.net/
TRACK-THE-TRACKERS is a network installation consisting with mobile components. The project makes use of existing personal technologies in conjunction with GPS infrastructure to provide participants with an audible (not a visual) experience of the proliferation of video surveillance in the urban public sphere. The mobile unit, a bag containing a laptop, GPS-receiver, earphones, and a generic mouse is taken on a walk through the city. The sound in the headphones changes whenever the participant enters the vicinity of a surveillance camera. This effect is not automatic but created by other participants who are adding new locations to the existing database. The technology is documented with the intention of inspiring others to build similar psychogeographic systems.
Annina Ruest is a Swiss media artist currently based in San Diego. Most of her artistic activity so far has taken place within the field of software art. As part of the group LAN she co-authored the project tracenoizer.org - Disinformation on Demand. She is also the author of SuperVillainizer - Conspiracy Client (supervillainizer.ch), TRACK-THE-TRACKERS--- (t-t-trackers.net) and most recently BUSH BOT 0.4 (bushbot.ath.cx). She graduated in 2003 from the Department of New Media, Zürich School of Art and Design (www.snm-hgkz.ch) and is now a graduate student at the Department of Visual Arts at UC San Diego (visarts.ucsd.edu).
// -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Schoenerwissen/OfCD
http://www.sw.ofcd.com
Schoenerwissen/OfCD presents their approach of by outlining principles and methods they used for recent projects - situating the work with respect to other related design strategies. They will focus on their last project txtkit - A Visual Text Mining Tool.
Schoenerwissen/OfCD continues its design research on information architectures, interfaces and visual languages currently at UC Santa Barbara. In developing new digital tools SW/OfCD provides spatial and temporal contexts serving as frameworks for exploration and dynamic decision making. Their project Minitasking - a visual gnutella client has been recognized by an Award of Distinction of the Prix Ars Electronica in 2002 and received the transmediale Software Award in 2003. Their latest project txtkit - visual text mining tool was supported by the Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMB+F) and Länder Ministries for Education or Science and Culture. In 2004 txtkit has been awarded an Honorary Mention at Net Vision category of Prix Ars Electronica.
// -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andreas Schlegel
http://www.sojamo.de/
TEMP is a software based network environment for any software capable of tcp or udp socket communication. TEMP is made for people utilizing computers and similar devices as a tool for their expression. Where most software is developed for specific processes, TEMP interconnects these environments, and enables collaborations between artists, scientists, or researchers from different disciplines without insisting on one particular software environment. Time shouldn't be spent on solving technical issues but rather on finding communication models to explore the possibilities of interactions and interconnections amongst nature, people, and devices.
Andreas Schlegel is a computational designer interested in collecting data, sensing spaces, exploring communication processes in the fields of networks. He received a diploma in communications design from Merz Akademie Stuttgart, Germany, and an MS in Media Arts and technology from the University of California, Santa Barabra. He currently lives and works in Berlin, Germany.
// -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Daniel Sauter
http://daniel-sauter.com/
LIGHT ATTACK is a media artwork, as well as a social experiment, which takes place the urban sphere of Los Angeles. While driving through the city, an animated virtual character is projected onto the cityscape of L.A. exploring three places "to go" and three places "not to go", according to the popular Lonely Planet travel guide. Light Attack elaborates the concept of the "moving moving" image in the stereotyped neighborhoods of Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Downtown, Watts, and Compton. The virtual character, projected from a moving vehicle onto the city facades, reacts to the architectural context, and interacts with passers-by while "walking" through the city. The character's actions are condensed in a gallery installation, reflecting projection as an emergent ubiquitous medium. The piece raises questions about property and privacy. How public is public space? How projection, as a medium, changing the environment in which we live?
Daniel Sauter is a media artist exploring interactive installations dealing with time and space relations, cultural implication of technologies and site-specific interventions. Currently Sauter is a lecturer at the Design | Media Arts department at UCLA. His works have been shown internationally including the Ars Electronica Festival 2004, O.K Center for Contemporary Art, Linz, Austria; Milia 02 in Cannes, France; International Video Festival in Bochum, Germany; 6. International Videofestival in Novi Sad, Serbia and Montenegro, FILE2002 in Sao Paulo, Brazil; telic gallery, Los Angeles; LACMALab, Los Angeles; westweek, Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles; Europrix Festival in Vienna, Austria; Leipzig Book Fair in Leipzig, Germany; werk, bauen + wohnen in Zagreb, Croatia, Europrix Award, Lisbon, Portugal. Diploma HfG/ZKM Karlsruhe, Germany; MFA Design | Media Arts, UCLA. Honorary Mention Prix Ars Electronica, Interactive Art, 2004; Winner Europrix Students' Award, 2001.
// -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ M O R E _ I N F O R M A T I O N ]
Telic
http://www.design.ucla.edu/telic/
http://www.design.ucla.edu/telic/images/map.gif
Directions
>From the 110 Freeway (traveling either north or south) take the Hill St. Chinatown exit. From downtown drive north on Hill St. to Chung King Road, a pedestrian only street parallel to and just west of Hill St. You can park on Hill St. Enter through the plaza at the pedestrian crossing halfway between College and Bernard Streets. There is also a parking lot at each end of Chung King Rd. Driving in from Hill St. (take the first driveway on the right after the 110 exit - $2.50/3 hours parking). The other parking structure is on Bernard Street between Hill St. and Broadway.
This event has been organized by Casey Reas: http://www.groupc.net/
If you would like to present at future dorkbotsocal events, please contact Garnet Hertz at dorkbotsocal at dorkbot dot org.
(( December's dorkbotsocal will likely happen in San Diego. ))
LOST?
If you're completely lost, you can always call Garnet at nine-four-nine-981-6438.
* PLEASE REDISTRIBUTE THIS ANNOUNCEMENT *
.......................................................................
.........dorkbot: people doing strange things with electricity..........
..........................http://dorkbot.org............................
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November 11, 2004
fcc rules!
ABC affiliates are so freaked by the FCC that some won't broadcast Saving Private Ryan. Spielberg and ABC won't allow the broadcast to be edited for content, or aired outside of primetime.
"Would the FCC conclude that the movie has sufficient social, artistic, literary, historical or other kinds of value that would protect us from breaking the law?" [ABC Affiliate in Des Moines, IA] WOI-TV President Raymond Cole said in a statement appearing on its Web site. "With the current FCC, we just don't know."Janice Wise, spokeswoman for the FCC's enforcement bureau, told Reuters it had received calls from broadcasters asking if the film would run afoul of the agency's indecency rules. Wise said the commission was barred from making a decision before the broadcast "because that would be censorship."
"If we get a complaint, we'll act on it," she said.
But at least one watchgroup group that has urged the FCC to levy harsher fines for questionable programming said the broadcast should go ahead.
The group, the Parents Television Council, said in a statement on its Web site that "context is everything."
via cnn
SMS Guerilla Projector
The SMS Guerilla Projector is a high powered, home made projection device that can be used to project SMS messages on to buildings, signs or any other surface. Made by Troika, the London based collective of designers and artists, it consists of a mobile phone, camera lens and slide projector.
via cool hunting
November 10, 2004
November 09, 2004
IM Forum Speaker for 11/10/04: Mark Bolas
This week's speaker will be Mark Bolas, Visting Associate Professor, Interactive Media Division, USC School of Cinema-Television. The presentation will consist of a quick and broad overview of projects and papers Mark has helped to create. Depending on how it goes, Mark is hoping to give an overview of topics, and then have the students decide on the direction of the presentation. Here is a rough outline to allow the students to get up to speed on the topics: View image
Title: "But I Don't Want to Pick a Title"
Location: USC Zemeckis Center, Room 201
Time: 6:30pm-9pm, 11/10/04
Related references:
- Fakespace Labs website
- The Engineering Reality of Virtual Reality 2005 (SPIE conference).
- Research at Keio SFC
- Virtual Brewery Adventure installation.
UCLA Live Presents MODERN PROMETHEUS LLC
Wed-Sat, Nov 17-20 at 8pm; Sun, Nov 21 at 7pm
MODERN PROMETHEUS LLC depicts the corporate launch of a new life form: Human Analogues, “built from the atom up”, and imagines the first attempt by a species to acquire control of its own evolution through artificial selection. The assembled spectators will witness the galvanic animation of vat grown tissue into Human Analogues, followed by programming of the newly activated Analogues, physical demonstrations of their general and specialized uses and surgical procedures to add anatomical accessories. The exhibition’s highlight takes place when one of the female Analogues, after artificial insemination, gives birth to a machine.
link
Red and Blue
Annenberg IML Salon:
“What did I do… to be so red and blue?”*:
a consideration of nationalism, multimedia technology, and the ’04 election.
Friday, November 12, at 2:30
in the Annenberg IML library
By way of Andrew Durkin, Postdoctoral Fellow at the IML: "Okay, the election is over. So what do we do now? Are we all still Americans? Do we secede? Why do the “red states” hate us? (Is it “for our freedom”?) And what does multimedia technology have to do with politics, anyway?
Suggested reading:
Siva Vaidhyanathan: “The Empire Strikes Back” (to be forwarded soon as an attached PDF). This is a chapter from Vaidhyanathan’s latest book, The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash Between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System. For more on Vaidhyanathan: www.sivacracy.net.
Smiley, Jane: “Why Americans Hate Democrats—a Dialogue”; available at http://slate.msn.com/id/2109218/#ContinueArticle
Anatol Lieven: “America Right or Wrong”; available at www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-3-77-2081.jsp
Frank Pastore: “Christian Conservatives Must Not Compromise”; available at http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-pastore5nov05,1,3170258.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
Daniel W. Drezner, Henry Farrell: “Web of Influence”; available at www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=2707&page=0
XTreme PowerPoint and Video Gong Show 11/12, 11/13
Mark Allen, proprietor of Machine Project in Silverlake, member of the c-level collective, and guest speaker at CTCS505 earlier this year, is hosting a video gong show event at the Echo Park Film Center (bring your own videos!), and a round of XTreme PowerPoint (huh? what?) this Friday and Saturday (11/12 + 11/13).
Video Gong Show, &c.
1) Friday, this Friday Nov 12th 8pm, we're doing the video gong show at the Echo Park Film Center (right next to machine). Here's how it works - anyone is welcome to bring a video they've made. Everyone in the audience has a button hooked into a diabolical electronic gong ringing system. When disatisfaction reaches a fever pitch of 50%, the gong gongs and the video stops. Prizes will be bestowed for the video that survives the longest (most entertaining) and the shortest (most annoying). I did this in Houston this summer and it was very fun, although a video of people chugging beer stayed on for a disturbingly long time. Echo Park Film Center, 1200 North Alvarado Street. Bring a video.
2) Saturday, this Saturday Nov 13th 8pm, Kelly Sears has curated an evening of xtreme power point presentations. Starring Emily Cummins, Jeff Kwong, Kelly Sears. Topics may include Nordic death metal, underage drinking and who knows what else. All that Kelly touches turns to gold, and I assume this will follow that convention. Bring beer.
Bernie DeKoven, New Games author at Annenberg IML Friday 11/9/04, 10AM - 12:30PM
In preparation for the Cooperative Games Experiment on Friday November 19, Bernie DeKoven, author of the Well Played Game and Junkyard Sports will be speaking at the Annenberg IML this Friday. Bernie has graciously offered to give us some history on the New Games Movement and some advice on holding a New Games Tournament. Whether you plan on attending the Cooperative Games Experiment or not, this is a great opportunity to hear about the New Games Movement from one of its most articulate spokespeople.
Here are some links that Bernie sent along in preparation for the talk:
- here you'll find a clip of a game of "Panther Person Porcupine," and a game of "Roll Over" (a variation of "Numbers")
- http://www.deepfun.com/clips.htm
- you can find the game of "numbers" here = http://www.deepfun.com/numbers.html
- images of people pass, knots and the lap game:
http://www.deepfun.com/album.html
- a bit about the "Schmerltz" of New Games fame - http://www.deepfun.com/schmerltz.html
- group juggling - http://www.deepfun.com/juggle.htm
- dum dum da da - http://www.deepfun.com/dumdum.htm
- people to people - http://www.deepfun.com/dubious.htm#people
PLAN - Pervasive and Location Arts Network
From the locative [http://locative.x-i.net]list
PERVASIVE AND LOCATIVE ARTS NETWORK (PLAN)
A new international and interdisciplinary research network in pervasive media and locative media has been funded as part of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Culture & Creativity programme. The network will bring together practicing artists, technology developers and ethnographers with the aim of advancing interdisciplinary understanding and building consortia for future collaborative projects.
Focus
A new generation of pervasive technologies is enabling people to break away from traditional desktop PCs and games consoles and experience interactive media that are directly embedded into the world around them. And locative media, the combination of mobile devices with locative technologies, supports experiences and social interaction that respond to a participant's physical location and context. Together these convergent fields raise possibilities for new cultural experiences in areas as diverse as performance, installations, games, tourism, heritage, marketing and education.
Objectives
To support the formation of a new interdisciplinary research community to investigate how the convergent fields of pervasive media and locative media need to evolve in order to support future cultural and creative activities. To catalogue interdisciplinary collaborations, and to review the research agenda, methods, and community.
To identify the key research issues that need to be addressed.
To seed future projects by bringing artists, scientists and industry
together in a creative environment so that they can generate and
practically explore new ideas, and also to provide a forum for publicly demonstrating some of these.
To produce online and offline resources to support researchers, artists, industry and to promote public understanding of this emerging field, including a public website, an online document repository for members and a newsletter and DVD.
To lobby for additional funding for this area.
To link international networks.
Activity
The network will stage three major gatherings. Each gathering will have a distinct form and focus: an initial workshop to launch the network and assess the state of the art; a technology summer camp for artists and technologists, including hands-on prototyping sessions using the facilities at Nottingham's Mixed reality Laboratory; and a major public conference and participatory exhibition as a central component of the Futuresonic 2006 festival in Manchester; as well as a supporting web site and other resources.
JOINING THE NETWORK
The network is open to individuals, art companies and industry research
labs as well as institutions.
To join the Pervasive and Locative Arts Network (PLAN) please write to
stating the nature of your interest and why the network is of relevance to
the kind of area you are working in. An email is adequate. (Please contact
us for further details or a template letter.)
Please send to:
ben at open-plan dot org
November 06, 2004
KeyFrame
OOOPSSSS!!!! 7:00
FREE!!!
TONIGHT!!!!
7:00
USC Campus @ Norris Theatre
KEYFRAME
CNTV Division of Animation and Digital Arts Showcase
Featuring works from your fellow students!
(i.e. me; yes this is shameless self promotion)
I was there last year and there were great works, from traditional to experimental.
Hope to see you there!
November 05, 2004
Call for Papers: Ludologica Retro, Volume 1: Vintage Arcade (1971- 1984), edited by Ian Bogost & Matteo Bittanti
“Ludologica. Videogames d’Autore” is pleased to announce its Call for Papers for a book on classic video games that will be published in mid-2005.
Provisionally titled "Ludologica Retro, Volume 1: Vintage Arcade (1971 – 1984)", this interdisciplinary critical anthology will explore a range of topics regarding the aesthetic, cultural, and social significance of seminal vintage arcade games. The volume will be edited by Ian Bogost (Georgia Institute of Technology) and Matteo Bittanti (Libera Università di Lingue e Comunicazione, IULM).
The editors are looking for original contributions from a variety of fields, including game studies, new media studies, cultural studies, sociology, and anthropology. Papers are sought that take new and innovative approaches to examine classic games as texts, as cultural artifacts, and as social practices.
For more info & submission guidelines: www.ludologica.com.
November 04, 2004
'Brain' in a dish flies flight simulator'
A Florida scientist has developed a "brain" in a glass dish that is capable of flying a virtual fighter plane and could enhance medical understanding of neural disorders such as epilepsy.
Read the Article