as seen on tv

fictional job opportunities abound for mobile research in cbs made for tv disaster/plague movie 'locusts'.

scott, can you check into this?

Nintendo Revolution Going.... Stereoscopic?

According to a Gamespot rumor column, famed animation creator Brooke Burgess mentioned that there's a strong possibility that the main focus of Nintendo's next generation console system, code-named "Revolution", will be the stereoscopic projection of games. According to the article, Brooke has a long-standing warm relationship with Nintendo and he overheard Robert Rodriguez, director of Sin City, say that he and his fellow stereoscopic enthusiasts James Cameron and Peter Jackson "had become 'aware of a game machine beating them to the mainstream 3D market.'" There's more to this story including very specific information as to how Nintendo (if the rumor is true) has implemented the stereoscopy for the new console. Read all about it here.

zml timelapse -- now in anaglyph

it all started with a simple dream. that dream, thanks to the contributions of kurt macdonald and perry hoberman, is now something oh so much more than I ever anticipated.

2 days in the zml, timelapse in anaglyph.

( preview size is 16 megs, email me if you want the "real thing")

interlude

two short pieces of very visual music for your enjoyment
4flies
7dots

Interesting digital art article in LA Times...

Art on the move. Computers have become integral to expression. Change and energy are tools. In this kinetic landscape, artists, museums and collectors all scramble to adjust.

Naimark is mentioned. Full article here.

nokia converges a little further

Nokia N91
- 4 GB HD: multimedia playback
- 2 Megapixel camera
- FM radio
- Record: Line In, Radio, Voice

Boston Cyberarts Festival

two very different takes on the 2005 Boston Cyberarts Festival:

my favorite snippets:

From the NYTimes: "Interactive art is irritating... machines make no bones about their own flaw, but are unbending about yours... is every piece of interactive art designed to make you feel like a fascist, a dupe, a cult member or someone cornered by a pervert at a party? No, of course not... Scott Snibbe's 'Shadow Play,' a four-part installation of video projections linked to camera sensors... Hooray! Here's a machine that is not your enemy or your superior... Alas, some cyberworks combine all the annoyances of interactive art (prurience, ritual, ungraciousness and moral superiority) to produce a mega-annoyance: total frustration. Case in point: John Klima's 'Trains'... "

From Wired: "The Cyberarts Festival's 70 exhibitions combine computer technology with dance, poetry, music and digital images... 'The living world -- us -- is becoming embedded in the software of the virtual world,'... Many of the artists contributing to the Cyberarts Festival are exploring the new media literacy, in which stories are told and received in a nonlinear fashion... Corporations such as Intel, which has an employee participating in a Cyberarts Festival panel discussion next week, are eager to see the uses that artists come up with for mobile phones and other devices with location-tracking capabilities... 'Everyone is a broadcaster of information and self-expression,'... 'We have access to more information than ever, we are self-confident and we have the tools to create.'

IM Forum 4/27/05: The Interactive Media Division Blog's Greatest Hits LIVE!

Location: USC Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts, Room 201
3131 South Figueroa Blvd
Los Angeles CA 90089-7756
Time: 6:00pm-8pm, 4/27/2005

For the final meeting of this year's CTIN511 seminar, all students, faculty and staff are invited to:

• browse through the last two years of the the division blog
  
• pick out your favorite posts and/or comments
  
• come prepared to perform them LIVE at this week's 511 seminar.

Present the material any way you want: read it, set it to music and sing it, dramatize it, process it, present it in or out of context, with or without visuals, laugh track, commentary, etc. Have fun, go wild.

Each presentation five minutes or under please.

EA@USC Lecture Series - April 27

The final EA@USC Lecture event is happening Wednesday 4/27.

Here are full details:

Where
USC Davidson Conference Center - 3415 S. Figueroa

When
Wednesday April 27, 1-6 pm

1 pm Are Videogames the New Rock & Roll?
Steve Schnur

2 pm Studio Process: How to deliver the Game 'on time' and 'on quality'
Arcadia Kim

3 pm Great Games are All About Great People
Rusty Rueff

4 pm Making a video game out of a movie classic. Story of the Godfather.
David De Martini

5 pm Maxis Mixer for CTIN 489

Congratulations, Will!

For your mention on engadget!

"Combining elements of alternate reality gaming, podcasting and geocaching, location33 is a game that requires players to wander the streets of Culver City, California, looking for musical clues that will allow them to piece together a sci-fi story involving a robot that wants to put out a record for Sony Music. The developer, Will Carter, put the game together as a thesis for his degree in Interactive Media at the USC School of cinema and TV. We’re not sure whether he’s angling for a job with Sony, or added the label for a greater degree of verisimilitude. Regardless, if you’re one of those rare individuals who actually walks in L.A., now you have something interesting to do while you wander."

Brian Eno & Danny Hillis @Skirball Tonight

AN EVENING WITH BRIAN ENO AND DANNY HILLIS: THINKING AFTER EINSTEIN
Monday, April 25, 8:00 p.m.
$30 General, $25 Members, $20 Students
Advance tickets: (866) 468-3399 or TicketWeb Logo (service charges apply)
Listen in on a conversation between two of the most innovative thinkers of our times. Legendary musician, producer, and visual artist Brian Eno sits down with scientist and technical wizard Danny Hillis to discuss their inventive careers and explore the theme of creativity. Both Eno and Hillis are board members of the Long Now Foundation, an organization that aims to promote "slower/better" thinking.
More info here.

Public Art Project @ The Trojanvision Kiosk

presented by the Second Years as part of CTIN 542, Interactive Design & Production

Mobile Media Lab - Projects Presentation - Friday April 29th 2PM ZML

The Mobile Media Lab, a lab run by the Interactive Media Division and the Annenberg Center, is hosting a projects presentation afternoon and general open house. We'll be presenting many of the projects we've developed over the last couple of years and some new ones recently introduced to the lab.

All are welcome.
We'll be convening on Friday April 29th at 2PM in the presentation-friendly Zemeckis Media Lab on the second floor of the Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts:

Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts
3131 South Figueroa Blvd
Los Angeles CA 90089-7756

We'll be presenting some locative media projects, mobile blogging applications, augmented reality apps, spatial annotation apps, some hopped-up media mobiles that you'd only ever possibly find in Los Angeles.

WLAN hopping in Athens and more!

Map of Athens' peer to peer wlan networks. I plan to full explore this map in the summer and let you know how it went! (That and my WLAN laptop card as a backup)

I could practically walk around or drive around and wlan hop. There are quite enough operational nodes (green), even in the country side.

Wireless democracy from the land of democracy.

Look what I dug up...

I found this logo I made for the division a while back. Just thought I'd post it. Kinda effective dontcha tink?

Professor Hoberman a "biped"

well, Professor Hoberman made it into Xeni Jardin's best photos of bipeds from the SRL show... just goes to show what a healthy obsession with Stereo Imagery can get you!

I know this pic was posted earlier, but what with it being linked of boingboing, I figured I'd put it up again...

Stereo Club of Southern California April Meeting

Thursday April 21st @ 7:30pm

48th PSA Traveling Exhibition and Abe Perlstein's Morro Bay show! More Details

SCSC invites you to attend our next exhibition of projected 3D photography. Come see real three dimensional photography being done by some of Southern California's best stereo photographers.

711 South Plymouth Boulevard, near Crenshaw and Wilshire, in the downtown area of Los Angeles (Directions).

Happy Anniversary!

Moore's Law on chips marks 40th

Moore's Law, the guiding principle that has driven the computer chip industry, celebrates its 40th birthday this week.

The "law" was adopted after Intel co-founder Gordon Moore wrote in a 1965 article that the number of transistors on a chip would double every 24 months.

Dr Moore said that the next 40 years could be "mind-boggling" and that he wished he could be around to see it.

"I re-read my 1965 article a year or so ago, and I frankly was surprised to see in it that I had predicted home computers as one of these uses for low-cost electronics, but had no idea what it would look like," he told the BBC News website.

He had forgotten about it until a young engineer came to him with the idea to build a home computer, while he was chief at Intel.

I frankly didn't expect it to be at all precise. But in fact it turned out to be much more precise than it had any good reason for being, and a colleagues dubbed it 'Moore's Law'

"I said 'gee that's fine but what would you use it for?'.

"The only application he could think of for it was the housewife putting her recipes on it, and I didn't think that was going to be a powerful enough application."

Read the BBC News article.

Intro to Processing at Machine Project

Introduction to Processing - Machine Project

April 24, May 1, 8, 15
Sundays from 4-7pm.
*Instructor Name:* Krister Olsson

Course Description:* Processing is a programming language and
environment built for the media arts and design communities. It is
created to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual
context and to serve as a software sketchbook. It is used by students,
artists, designers, architects, and researchers for learning,
prototyping, and production. More information on Processing can be found
at www.processing.org

What you'll need: *computer (laptops are nice). Windows or OSX. Let us know if you don't have a laptop, we have a couple extra at the gallery for student use.

*Registration Fee:* $250
*

Introduction to Processing - Machine Project

April 24, May 1, 8, 15
Sundays from 4-7pm.
*Instructor Name:* Krister Olsson

Course Description:* Processing is a programming language and
environment built for the media arts and design communities. It is
created to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual
context and to serve as a software sketchbook. It is used by students,
artists, designers, architects, and researchers for learning,
prototyping, and production. More information on Processing can be found
at www.processing.org

What you'll need: *computer (laptops are nice). Windows or OSX. Let us know if you don't have a laptop, we have a couple extra at the gallery for student use.

*Registration Fee:* $250
*
*Week 1: Introduction*

The Processing Environment
Drawing to the Screen
Variables
Arithmetic
Conditional Statements

*Week 2: Interactivity I*

Mouse and Keyboard Input
Control Blocks (for, while, etc.)
Functions
Arrays and Objects

*Week 3: Interactivity II*

Event-driven Programs
Image Processing (Accessing the Pixel Buffer)
Basic 3D

*Week 4: Advanced Topics*

Threads
Processing and the Web
Accessing Java APIs (e.g., Sound)

ICT tour, Wednesday April 20

The ICT tour for 1st year grads will be from 1:30 to about 5pm tomorrow afternoon, 4/21. Please be at the ICT before 1:30 so we can get registered and start promptly. This is in Marina Del Rey on the Westside and will take approximately 30 minutes from campus. Directions are on the ICT website here

Cinematheque108 - An Evening with Michael Snow

The Canadian Filmaker who made La Region Centrale and many other very influential experimental films will be on campus this weekend:

April 24, 2005 (7:00pm - 9:00pm)
Cinematheque108 - An Evening with Michael Snow

Filmforum presents Michael Snow in person at USC, at 7:00pm on Sunday, April 24th, in Norris Theatre. The event is co-sponsored by the USC School of Cinema-Television and Cinematheque108.

The following three films by Michael Snow will be screened: Wavelength (1966-1967, 16mm, color/sound, 45min) Standard Time (1967, 16mm, color/sound, 8 min.) So Is This (1982, 16mm, b&w/silent, 45min.) Michael Snow will be present to answer questions after the screenings.

IM Forum Speaker on 4/20/05 - Naomi Spellman

Interpretive Site Specific Media: Considering the experience of places, the interpretation of places, and the reframing of places through digital tools and media.

Location: USC Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts, Room 201
3131 South Figueroa Blvd
Los Angeles CA 90089-7756
Time: 6:00pm-8pm, 4/20/2005


Naomi Spellman is a transmedia artist and educator. Exhibited work includes networked art, video, computer-based interactive works, and graphic prints. Her work has been exhibited nationally and abroad. Venues have included Futuresonic <04>, the LA Freewaves Festival, the Art in Motion Festival, ASCII Digital 2000, The Harvard Map Collection, and the DART IV Symposium on Digital Arts and Culture. She has lectured on her work and on the use of locative media for interpretative content at the Joint Ventures Conference for the Stewardship of America's National Parks (Los Angeles, 2003), at the YLEM Forum at the Exploratorium (San Francisco, 2004), and will be a featured artist at the second annual Floating Points speaker series at Emerson College in March 2005. (http://institute.emerson.edu/floatingpoints/). Naomi also has over 20 years experience in commercial work, including art direction, graphic design, photography, illustration, and internet content development. Naomi teaches in the Interdisciplinary Computing Arts Program at University of California, San Diego and in the Design and Media Arts Program at the Orange Coast Community College in Costa Mesa. She was a Visiting Artist at The Evergreen State College in Washington in 2003, and has taught in the Design|Media Arts program at the University of California Los Angeles and at Parsons School of Design in New York. This past summer Jeff and Naomi were the Digital Research Unit Artists in Residence at the Media Center in Huddersfield, UK, where they developed the interpretive engine, which was shown at Spectropolis: Mobile Media, Art and the City a three-day event in Lower Manhattan in October 2004.

Loose Minds in a Box

Friday: 8:00pm, Saturday: 8:00pm, Sunday: 5:00pm (CST)
Electronic Visualization Laboratory
842 W. Taylor
Rm. 2068

The performance can be viewed on the Access Grid at the new ArtGrid virtual venue in the Theater and through QuickTime.

Loose Minds in a Box is a collaborative work that explores the basic concept of the "box". The box is a metaphor for the physical, social, political or psychological constraints that we and/or others place upon us. The box also represents a sense of place in the realm of the virtual as well as in our sub-conscience. With the aid of performance artists, electro-acoustic musicians/composers, virtual reality and motion capture artists/technologists and others, we look at many of the numerous representations the "box" encompasses. In Utah, Another Language's Artistic Director, Beth Miklavcic, will perform in a closet, investigating how our personalities are bounded by the clothes we wear. Sculptor, Eric Brown, will slowly construct an enclosure around himself depicting how we encase ourselves in a social fortress. It either protects us from unwanted human contact or keeps us from interacting with the outside world.

read more

Bluetooth rifle

The BlueSniper rifle, developed by USC student John Hering, was featured on NPR's "All Things Considered." The rifle remotely hacks wireless devices that use Bluetooth technology. Hering, who founded the wireless security think tank Flexilis, said the rifle is only used to determine security holes, and not to obtain personal information.

GPS and Satellite Imagery Projects - Part of Boston Cyberarts Festival 2005

From April 22 until May 8, the Boston Cyberarts festival expresses the connection between the region's arts community and its high-tech industry. Amongst lots of other cool things are the projects making interesting use of GPS and Satellite Imagery. The Boston Globe has some interesting coverage today.
(Small plug: I will be speaking along with a bunch of others at at a Boston Cyberarts event at Emerson College as part of the speaker series Floating Points 2: Networked Art in Public Spaces.)

2nd Year Thesis Proposal Presentations

Presentation Schedule

Thursday April 21st at ZML
12:00 Erin Dinehart - a multi-dimensional narrative
12:30 Julie Dillon - interactive narrative for broadcast
1:00 Andrew Sacher - interactive (parody) performance
1:30 Ashley York - immersive documentary

Thursday April 28th at ZML
12:00 Michael Steffen - adapting the screenplay for interactive narrative
12:30 Brad Newman - cooperative play
1:00 Susana Ruiz - strife, dilemma and simulation
1:30 Jenova Chen - dynamic game-play adjusting system
2:00 Kellee Santiago - body-based interfaces

(edited to add subject descriptions)

MTVU Summer Fellowships

This is from the MTV website. (Thanks to Scott Gillies for passing it along...)

mtvU is proud to announce the search for our first two mtvU Fellows.

The Digital Media Fellow, who will help create music/programming content for MTV's online music group and the Online Gaming Fellow, who will work in our online games group in the areas of design, production, marketing, and strategy/research.

Click here for details.

DUX2005

AIGA, ACM SIGGRAPH and SIGCHI Announces DUX2005 will be held November
3-5, 2005, in San Francisco, California

(San Francisco, CA - March 15, 2005) AIGA, ACM SIGGRAPH and SIGCHI today
announce the 2nd international DUX conference, "Designing for User
Experiences", will take place 3-5 November, in San Francisco, CA at the
beautiful Fort Mason Center.

"We are pleased to announce the 2nd DUX conference as well as the
release of the Call for Participation," said the conference chairs,
Richard Anderson, Brian Blau, and John Zapolski. "We invite design
professionals from all disciplines to contribute studies of specific
cases, best practices, and research, so the community can benefit from
others' successes and insights." More information and the Call for
Participation can be found at the conference website,
http://www.dux2005.org

The DUX2005 program will focus on interaction design and visual
communication. Leading this effort are Program Chairs Clark Dodsworth,
Nancy Frishberg and Rakhi Rajani. Its focus reflects current trends in
innovative user experience designs in areas that include mobile device
interfaces, data visualization, design process, responsive environments,
public art installations and live performance interfaces, consumer
products and services, appliances, and game interaction. This broad
range of topic areas ensures relevant, fresh, and meaningful submissions
from the experience design community.

DUX2005 invites submissions in four categories: Design Case Studies,
Design Practice Studies, Design Research Studies, and (briefer) Design
Sketches. Studies report on implemented designs and the methods and
techniques people have used, specifying what worked, what did not work,
and why. Sketches report on works in progress. Both studies and sketches
will be presented in at the DUX2005 conference in an intimate theater
setting. Individual presentations will complement panel discussions,
group presentations and tutorials.

Information about submissions and the submission kit will be posted on
the web site on April 21, 2005. In late May we will post additional
information about the conference, registration and hotel availability.

The conference committee invites all interested parties to read more
about the conference and the Call for Participation at
http://www.dux2005.org

Magic Cubes

This was one of the more interesting projects I saw at SIGCHI this year. It's called Magic Cubes developed by researchers at the National University of Singapore and Osaka University. It's using video tracking - which as I understand it is a fairly well defined technical operation. But, the really cool part is the way its telling small stories that seem to appear from the magic cube. Each side of the magic cube is a different component of the story, represented by the illustration on that side. As you flip sides, you get a different part of the story that is played out as an animation on the computer screen. Here, just watch a short little video I shot.

Sims 2 University Movie Contest - meet Burnie Burns, win $5000

Announcing the Spring 2005 Sims 2 University Movie Making Contest

Here's the important stuff:
- Come to the contest kick-off Friday 4/15 at 6 pm, Lucas 201
- Meet Burnie Burns, creator of machinima hits The Strangerhood and Red vs. Blue, and learn his tricks
- Get a free copy of The Sims 2: University Expansion (if you agree to enter)
- Make a short movie using the Sims 2 Movie Making tool, deadline May 30
- Grand prize $5000 (or a one month gig at Maxis, your choice), runner up prizes to be announced.

All USC students eligible. Full details available at the kick-off event.

Check out Burnie's work here
Learn more about Burnie here

IMSC tour

The IMSC tour for 1st year grads will be from 10 to 12 tomorrow morning (4/13). Please be at the Powell Hall Lobby before 10 so we get registered and start promptly at 10. Campus map is here and Powell is marked as PHE - located at section B6.

IM Forum Speaker for 4/13/05: Bob Stein

IM Forum Speaker for 4/13/05: Bob Stein (in conversation with Michael Naimark, Peggy Weil, and Scott Fisher).

Title: Discursions
Location: USC Zemeckis Center, Room 201
Time: 6:00pm-8pm, 4/13/2005

From a recent post by Bob on Future of the Book:

"Some of the most important early work in interactive media took place at the Architecture Machine Group Laboratory at MIT (now the Media Lab). twenty years ago the lab made a videodisc, Discursions, containing videos of several key experiments. this early work at MIT was crucial in terms of fueling and defining my ideas about interactive media (see books unbound article).

Yesterday i met with a group of freshman in the interactive media honors program at the University of Southern California who signed up to work with the institute on presenting the Discursions material in some as-yet-to-be-decided form. the response was fantastic. (remember, these are young kids — none of whom were even born when Discursions was made). i know "awesome" is an overused word today, but that's a good description of what the students thought of what they saw. many of the experiments seemed as if they could have been done yesterday and they grasped the importance of making the work available to young people working in the field now. any fears i had that my interest in the Discursions material was merely an oppty. to walk down memory lane disappeared immediately.

We're planning to interview as many of the original researchers as possible, hoping that they can contextualize the work in terms of both its origin and its trajectory over the past twenty years".

BIO: Bob is Director of the Institute for Future of the Book, co-located at Columbia University and The University of Southern California. He was the founder of The Voyager Company. For 13 years he led the development of over 300 titles in 'The Criterion Collection', a series of definitive films on videodisc, and more than 75 CD ROM titles including the CD Companion to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, 'Who Built America', and the Voyager edition of 'Macbeth'. Previous to Voyager, Stein worked with Alan Kay in the Research Group at Atari on a variety of electronic publishing projects. Seven years ago, Stein started 'Night Kitchen' to develop authoring tools for the next generation of electronic publishing. That work will be continued at the Institute for the Future of the Book.

Experimental Colr Pickr

fun, interesting way to look at photos in a flickr group. seems this would be another nice interface for your thesis kurt.

Photo Retouching Revealed

Most of the photos we see in magazines are at least a little bit retouched. There are a few moments when the veil is pierced; when Britney appears on HDTV, or when BoingBoing posts links to a photoretoucher's portfolio. Visit Greg's Digital Retouching Portfolio, click and browse through a few of the photos, and see how much manipulation we consume. How does it feel? Dirty? Or just purifying?

Play Games, Get Smarter!

"Game for Learning"
Technology Review (04/07/05); Krotoski, Aleks

The incorporation of computer gaming into the classroom is being encouraged by efforts and studies indicating that games can engage students more personally in the learning process and significantly improve their creative thinking and test scores. A 2001 U.K. Home Office report concluded that regular players of computer and video games have a higher probability of academic success, university enrollment, and gainful employment, while a 1998 report found that children using interactive entertainment improved their reading and comprehension skills faster than those taught by traditional tutorial processes. Meanwhile, a 2004 study from the University of London's Institute for Education (IoE) argued that computer games can help develop critical thought and social skills, and could be employed as a text to analyze narrative structure and character development. Commercial video games are especially valued by teachers because they often have an epic scope and focus on real-time resource administration. Chew Magna Carta School students in Tim Rylands' class learn about creative writing through a modified version of the role-playing game "Myst," while Microsoft's historical real-time strategy game "Age of Empires" is valued as a tool for educating learners about the social and mechanical processes that nurtured the Bronze and Iron Ages. IoE report co-author David Buckingham cautions that teachers are still not very games-savvy, and should acquaint themselves fully with the subject before incorporating it into their curricula. He also noted at a recent seminar that "The evidence that this kind of learning will motivate all students is questionable." The public's negative feelings toward ultraviolent commercial games could also complicate the matter.

full article

FutureTech: 9th Annual IMSC Student Conference

FutureTech: 9th Annual IMSC Student Conference

This is an unique opportunity to network with the multimedia and gaming community in USC & L.A - and free! Don't miss it!...

Friday, April 8th, 10:30am-4pm
@ Gerontology Auditorium (GER)

Recently developed technologies give us new ways of experiencing virtual and augmented realities. This is probably the most exciting stage in research, where we are continually challenging and crossing the borders that define our world. IMSC, as NSF’s only Engineering Research Center designated for multimedia and Internet research, is at the forefront of these technologies with projects such as Remote Media Immersion, Augmented Virtual Environments, and Panoramic 360-degree video.

Student Research Presentations · Faculty Panel
Industry Speakers · Demos · Catered Networking Lunch

**This event is FREE to all USC students!**

Sign up now in RTH 110 or
imsc.usc.edu/scouncil/invite.html
*$10 deposit check required (will be returned at conference)

EXCITING UPDATES: Featuring speakers from the Institute for Creative Technologies, DreamWorks, Interactive Media, Electronic Arts, and GamePipe (USC's upcoming gaming laboratory!)

congratulations on excellent thesis presentations

Hacking the PSP

Much like the Gameboy Advance, PSP has attracted a vibrant community of homebrew software utility developers. The PSP has only been out 2 weeks, and already there is an IRC client, a non-commercial web browser, a TiVo video viewer, an ebook viewer, and a viewer for downloadable comics. This is all made possible by a loophole created through the use of a web browser that is integrated into the futuristic racing game Wipeout Pure. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of this CNN article can be summed by a quote from the editor of ps2hack.org asking for Sony to give amateur developers a platform to develop these utilities while keeping Sony's copyrights intact.

IM Forum Speaker for 4/6/05: Bernie DeKoven

"Forever New - from New Games to Junkyard Sports"
Location: USC Zemeckis Center, Room 201
Time: 6:00pm-8pm, 3/30/2005

Brought to you in part by the USC Game Design Community

Bernie DeKoven, New Games pioneer, author of The Well-Played Game and, most recently, Junkyard Sports, will be leading a three-part seminar, exploring the underlying principles of open-ended games that have guided his work for the last 40 years.

Click on the extended entry to read more details about this workshop, beginning this Wednesday night with the 511 Seminar.

Wed April 6: 6-8pm, Zemeckis Center Interactive Media Lab, Room 201
Bernie will present an overview of his work and his exploration of games, from the theater to the classroom, and one-on-one competitions to large-scale, collaborative, community events.

Thurs April 7: 6-8pm, Zemeckis Center Interactive Media Lab, Room 201
Workshop on open-ended games - games that are played largely for the sheer fun of it. There will be some discussion about facilitation and design and their roles in maintaining a community that is created for the purpose of sharing fun.

Fri April 8: 11am - 3pm, Lawn outside the Annenberg Center Institute for Multimedia Literacy
Junkyard Sports Workshop. This final session will explore games that use equipment, like parachutes, an earth ball, and assorted junk. We will discuss the affordances of the different materials and their impact on the development of a social contract.

Sat April 23: 11am - 3pm, Lawn outside the Annenber IML
The USC Game Design Community sponsors another New Games Day, Experiment in Cooperative Play. We will take what Bernie has taught us and experiment in group play in the outdoors. (6' Ball and Giant Parachute included)

IM MFA Thesis Presentations

Final Thesis Presentations by the Interactive Media Division's First Graduating Class

Wednesday April 6
12:25pm - 4:00pm
Ron Howard Theater, USC Zemeckis Center

We are pleased to present our first final thesis presentations next week. The six graduates will each make a 20 minute formal presentation followed by 10 minutes of Q&A. We will begin promptly at 12:25 and end at 4:00pm.

12:25 - Introductions

12:30 - Tripp Millican - "iam: persistent video recording, publishing and sharing"

1:00 - Stephanie Weinstein - "Hypermedia Reveries: A Journey Through Space, Time and the Subconscious"

1:30 - 15 minute break

1:45 - Kurt MacDonald - "Performance Cinema: A dynamic live video performance of Los Angeles photography, composed and animated using cinema techniques and the visual components."

2:15 - Will Carter - "Location 33: Envisioning post-iPodalyptic mobile music"

2:45 - 15 minute break

3:00 - Todd Furmanski - "Here Be Dragons: A Study in Artificial Life, Virtual Architecture and Emergent Immersive Spaces"

3:30 - Mike Brinker - "Clownerstrike: No more clowning around!- The power of performance and physics as next generation game concepts"

The presentations are open to the USC community.

Power bars and bottled water will be served.

**********

Immersa-bolas

'Body talk' could control mobiles

Changing tracks on digital music players of the future while on the move could be done with the nod of the head. Building on previous work, researchers at the University of Glasgow have been developing "audio clouds" to control gadgets using movement and sound.

BBC NEWS | Technology | 'Body talk' could control mobiles

"Mobile Phones, Japanese Youth, and the Re-Placement of Social Contact"

"Mobile Phones, Japanese Youth, and
the Re-Placement of Social Contact"

DR. MIZUKO (MIMI) ITO
Mellon Teaching Fellow
Department of Anthropology
University of Southern California
(weblog)

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13, 2005
12:00 - 1 pm

ROOM:
GFS 223
Grace Ford Salvatori

Google Feature Incorporates Satellite Maps

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Online search engine leader Google has unveiled a new feature that will enable its users to zoom in on homes and businesses using satellite images, an advance that may raise privacy concerns as well as intensify the competitive pressures on its rivals.

The satellite technology, which Google began offering late Monday at http://maps.google.com, is part of the package that the Mountain View-based company acquired when it bought digital map maker Keyhole Corp. for an undisclosed amount nearly six months ago.

link to article in the New York Times

Hybrid Vigor

The Beall Center for Art and Technology presents HYBRID VIGOR!
Erik Conrad / Sky Frostenson / Adrian Herbez / Garnet Hertz / Ryan Schoelerman / Margaret Watson / So Yamaoka
April 6 - 16, 2005 Opening Reception April 7th, 7-9pm

This year celebrates the first graduating class of the newly formed ACE (Arts Computation and Engineering) graduate program at University of California, Irvine. Students in this pioneering interdisciplinary program will curate and organize an "open lab" exhibition showcasing their work and experimentation in new media and interdisciplinary arts at UCI.

Contact / Information: (949)824-4339
Beall Center Hours: Tuesday - Wednesday 12-5; Thursday - Saturday 12-8
Hybrid Vigor
Beall Center for Art and Technology
Arts Computation and Engineering

Interesting experiment in storytelling...

Here's a paragraph from a Gamasutra article about a new coin-op title called "The Act".

The game is called The Act, a reference to its dramatic nature and the fact that the player "gets into the act." Here's how it works. Edgar, a window-washer several stories up on the outside of a hospital, sees Sylvia, a beautiful nurse, through a window he's cleaning. He starts to fantasize about meeting Sylvia in a Casablanca-style nightclub. After some introductory footage, the game becomes interactive. The object of the first level is to help Edgar to get Sylvia's attention and persuade her to dance with him in the nightclub. By turning the knob, you control how direct Edgar's approach is. Go too far, and Edgar will pounce on Sylvia, causing her to walk off in disgust. Be too timid, and Sylvia gets bored and leaves. Use a delicate touch, and she responds well. Since time keeps moving forward, it requires a good sense of control and timing - classic precision-oriented gameplay with a completely new objective.

Full article here

SRL PERFORMANCE: SATURDAY, APRIL 2 at 8:30 PM

SURVIVAL RESEARCH LABORATORIES
Organized by Susan Joyce

PERFORMANCE: SATURDAY, APRIL 2 at 8:30 PM

Dangerous Curve
1020 – E. 4th Place
Los Angeles, CA 90013
www.dangerourcurve.org
www.srl.org

Fringe Exhibitions is pleased to present a live performance by Survival Research Laboratories in the Los Angeles Downtown Arts District. Featuring the debut of the new Sneaky Soldiers, a remote controlled army of revolutionaries, a recent addition to the SRL machine family. Also appearing, some of the old favorites included in the show; screw machine, pitching machine, shock wave cannon, air launcher and several other machines along with the fabulous SRL crew from San Francisco.

Survival Research Laboratories was conceived and founded by Mark Pauline in 1978 as an organization of creative technicians dedicated to redirecting the techniques, tools, and tenets of industry, science, and the military away from their typical manifestations in practicality, product, or warfare. SRL has staged over 50 mechanized presentations in the United States, Europe, and Japan that consist of a unique set of ritualized interactions between machines, robots, and special effects devices, employed in developing themes of socio-political satire. Since its inception SRL has operated as a not for profit organization producing its own live mechanical performances.

SRL engages new vocabularies by integrating machines, theatrical sets and props, with dramatic, visual metaphors bringing to life, large-scale mechanical performances for audiences that rival other popular culture events. By taking things to extreme ends, SRL attempts to create new levels of sensory and emotional intensity. Using diverse disciplines such as performance, literature, and engineering, in concert with artistic expression, ideas are transformed into visceral experiences. Please visit the website at SRL dot org.

The new Sneaky Soldiers are available for sale!
Please contact fringexhibitions@aol.com.
818-414-9176