June 30, 2005
Games & Theme Park Attractions
"Disneyland's rides have long been inspired by the movies. Now that the video game industry has surpassed Hollywood, games are becoming just as influential. Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters, which opened May 5 as part of the park's kickoff to an ongoing 50th anniversary celebration, is, at its core, a video game transposed to the physical world. Riding in slow-moving "space cruisers," participants use laser pistols to hit various targets along their route and rack up points.
Based on the popular "Toy Story" character Buzz Lightyear, Astro Blasters takes place in an imaginary space environment. Lightyear's goal - and yours - is to defeat the evil Emperor Zurg and reclaim the little green beings that double as the galaxy's power source.
During the all-ages ride, er, game, you do that by aiming a plastic gun at various DayGlo characters that pop up, spin around and taunt you with their targets. At the end of the ride, look down at the screen on your space ship to see if you managed to hit any. Look up, and a television monitor tells you exactly how few that really was - the monitor lists the top 10 scores of the day. People who haven't even stepped foot inside Disneyland can play Astro Blasters online as well, and their actions affect the point values on targets inside the ride in real time.
That's a new concept for theme parks, and it's one that simply wasn't possible 10 years ago."
June 30th, 2005 - LA Times Article: "Faster, Higher, and Smarter"
June 27, 2005
RES Screening JUNE '05
RES LA - JUNE SCREENING:
Tuesday, June 28, 8:00 PM
Egyptian Theatre
6712 Hollywood Blvd.
Hollywood, CA
INFO
IMD students/faculty will meet @ the Pig & Whistle (next door) @ 7:00 PM
June 24, 2005
Tamagotchi on mobiles
link to article.
Who would have guessed it? Tamagotchis are back, in a big way. Manufacturer Bandai certainly owes some of the brand's revival to the "old is new" mentality that invariably brings back most fads, but when a BREW mobile version is released later this summer, it could help propel the quintessential virtual pet to the stratospheric heights it reached in 1996.
mobile 360
the company Panoman has created some cool auto-panorama generating software for cameraphones. You just start the app, turn around in a circle, and the program stitches together a panorama for you. Simple, but cool.
June 23, 2005
Page One LA Times article on Mobile Teens
A relatively light Column 1 article in the LA Times today about mobile use by teens. Abbe Don of HP Labs gets a choice quote as she is currently working on a "tweens" project.
SAN FRANCISCO - In a not-at-all unusual month, Will Wu spent more than 10,000 minutes on his mobile phone - an average of 5 1/2 hours a day.
Sometimes he talked, sometimes he listened. But most of the time, the 15-year-old just dialed up a friend and left the phone on. Connected only by wireless headsets, Will and his pal spent entire days - together, but apart - shopping, snacking, doing homework and even nodding off to sleep.
Read online or just pick up today's physical manifestation.
Wired NextFest 2005 - Synthecology
Our division's INIT LAB (Immersive Narrative & Interactive Technologies Lab) is remotely participating in Synthecology. Come visit our lab-in-progress in Lucas G152B (next to vault) for a networked vr experience. We're under construction but we will be running Friday (1-4pm PST), Saturday (9-11am PST), Sunday (1-4pm PST). There is also a Flash web interface that allows you to contribute audio and look at a simplified top view of the environment in real-time so you can track down the USC avatar!
Chicago - Applied Interactives announces Synthecology, a tele-immersive collaborative project with a new architecture for virtual reality sound immersion to create a garden of sonic experimentation for visitors to explore and cultivate.
Synthecology will debut at WIRED's NEXTFEST2005 in Chicago, June 24-26, 2005. During the festival, you will be able to visit the physical installation and/or connect to the virtual installation and contribute content to the project. You can experience Synthecology by visiting the Future of Communication Pavillion at the Navy Pier Conference Center, June 24-26, 2005, 9am-6pm. You can contribute content in the form of audio to the installation by visiting the project website, at www.appliedinteractives.com/synthecology
Synthecology is being created as a collaboration of Applied Interactives and students and faculty from the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Columbia College Chicago and (art)n.
For this special event, the virtual environment of Synthecology will be networked from Navy Pier in Chicago to the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the Advanced Visualization Laboratory (AVL) at Indiana University, the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts (CRCA) at the University of California at San Diego and the Virtual Reality Studio, Department of Media Study, University of Buffalo and the Immersive Narrative and Interactive Technologies Lab (INIT LAB) of the Interactive Media Division at the School of Cinema-Television at the University of Southern California.
future of mms
really nice article on thefeature.com interviewing John Poisson, head of Sony's mobile media research and design group in Tokyo about MMS technology, what it's limitations are, and where to go in the future.
MMS has several problems. Cameraphones are kind of like home exercise equipment: the ad make it look like a cameraphone will be fun, easy to use, improve your life and make you smile more. But when you get home and try it, you realize it's a pain in the ass. So you don't really use it. We think it's the software. The MMS interface on most phones is user-hostile. It can take 40 clicks to do what you want to do. There isn't really that ability to take a picture and share it with someone intuitively like you can when sending a text message. And the ability to add music or a little icon to a picture is not aligned with people's simple desire. There's also very little feedback that what you sent was received. It's simply a send mechanism and not a communication mechanism. That ignores the very nature of what this mobile device is.
MTV/Viacom buys NeoPets
I actually didn't find out about this Tuesday, 160 million dollar deal until I saw the usual suspects blogging about it yesterday. Little rants and raves come from guys like a venture capitalist (here) and blogs that copy said VC's entire blog entry (everywhere else.)
June 22, 2005
The Onion, June 22, 2056
This week's edition of The Onion is from the future. Not only is it (predictably) very, very funny, but it's probably as good a guess as any as to where we're headed.
June 21, 2005
Phone as ping pong paddle
Pong Redux Cell-phone games usually rely on keystrokes to control the action, but Finnish researchers have developed a program called SymBall that could turn the whole phone into the controller. The software analyzes in real time images captured by a camera phone; from that information, it works out how the phone is being moved and the game responds accordingly. The demonstration application, which works on phones running the Symbian 60 operating system, is virtual Ping-Pong. The player wields the phone like a paddle to hit a virtual ball displayed on the phone's screen. Two users can play each other if their phones are connected wirelessly via Bluetooth, to the amusement of onlookers who can't see the ball, table, paddles, or net. Charles Woodward heads the multimedia team at VTT, Finland's national technology research center, that developed the technology. Woodward says the patented interaction method has attracted the interest of a game firm, and a more accurate version is in development.
Will also found some similar mobile interface projects here including the cool fishing game above.
Evolving Stories and Worldbuilding
Some interesting comments on writing (and rewriting) stories through a storyworld:
We all know that in the digital age, the news media are growing more fluid every day. If a print newspaper or magazine makes an error, they run a correction the next day or the next month -- but if a blogger makes an error, he or she can fix it immediately. The continual rebirth of the Star Wars films suggests that art is moving in the same direction. As the popular films, TV shows, and other narratives that function as cultural reference points for billions of people go digital, they are becoming far more than static artifacts -- they're living stories that can evolve in the telling and re-telling. It's almost reminiscent of the way oral epics like the Iliad evolved as they were transmitted from bard to bard. Add elements like fanfic and transmedia storytelling and you may get something even more potent: a society that continually creates and recreates its narratives in multiple media, with multiple storylines and multiple authors.Which version of each Star Wars movie is the "real" one? It doesn't matter anymore. What matters is how the version you're watching at any given moment fits into the grander mythos that Lucas is still spinning.
Tech Coast - George Lucas: The New Bard
And a previous post by Henry Jenkins:
Many of our best authors, from William Faulkner to J.R.R. Tolkien, understood their art in terms of world-creation and developed rich environments which could, indeed, support a variety of different characters. For most of human history, it would be taken for granted that a great story would take many different forms, enshrined in stain glass windows or tapestries, told through printed words or sung by bards and poets, or enacted by traveling performers. Sequels aren't inherently bad-remember that Huckleberry Finn was a sequel to Tom Sawyer. But Twain understood what modern storytellers seem to have forgotten-a compelling sequel offers consumers a new perspective on the characters, rather than just more of the same.
June 17, 2005
mobile iTunes hack
so, if anyone today is just really desperate to hear that one song on their iTunes playlist, but happen to be without iPod, and don't care that the song will be heavily compressed, should load up this program on their machine before leaving the house.
Basically, you text message a particular song title to your pop email account, which then sends that request to iTunes via applescript. The script then opens Skype and gives your cell phone a ring, playing the requested song after you answer.
I have no idea if this works halfway well, or exactly how it would be that useful, but I enjoy seeing these kind of "solutions."
June 15, 2005
More mobisodes
A Singapore television station is making its romantic drama series, PS I Luv U, available in three-minute episodes on 3G mobile handsets. The mobile show will launch throughout Asia, but already handset makers are trying to develop video-ready programming that can be aired on wireless networks, according to this Reuters article.
From Technology Review Blogs:
Brad King: Emerging Technology and Culture - The 4-Gig Handset Hard Drive and Asian Television
June 14, 2005
LA Times "Wikitorials"
Nice to see the LA TIMES trying out some new approaches to journalism:
This week, the newspaper, will introduce an online feature called "wikitorials," as a way for readers to engage in an online dialogue with the paper. The model is based on "Wikipedia," the Web's free-content encyclopedia that is edited by online contributors."We'll have some editorials where you can go online and edit an editorial to your satisfaction," Mr. Martinez said. "We are going to do that with selected editorials initially. We don't know how this is going to turn out. It's all about finding new ways to allow readers to interact with us in the age of the Web."
Mr. Kinsley said that he was just trying something new with the wikitorials.
"It may be a complete mess but it's going to be interesting to try," he said. "Wikitorials may be one of those things that within six months will be standard. It's the ultimate in reader participation."
Upheaval on Los Angeles Times Editorial Pages - New York Times
June 13, 2005
ISEA2006: "Commuity Domain" CFP
ISEA2006 Symposium
ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge
CALL FOR PROPOSALS FOR COMMISSIONED WORKS
THEME: COMMUNITY DOMAIN
http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/
http://isea2006.sjsu.edu./calls.html
http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/communitydomain1/
This is an invitation by the ISEA2006 Symposium and ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge to groups and individuals to submit proposals for interactive artworks and projects reflecting on the thematic of "Community Domain". Up to three commissions will be awarded, and the results will be shown at the ISEA2006 Symposium and ZeroOne San Jose Festival.
ABOUT THE ISEA2006 SYMPOSIUM AND ZEROONE SAN JOSE FESTIVAL
The 2006 edition of the internationally renowned ISEA Symposium will be held August 5-13, 2006, in San Jose, California.
The Inter-Society for Electronic Arts (ISEA) is an international non-profit organization fostering interdisciplinary academic discourse and exchange among culturally diverse organizations and individuals working with art, science and emerging technologies. Prior host cities include Helsinki, Paris, Sydney, Montreal, Chicago, Manchester and Nagoya.
ZeroOne San Jose is a milestone festival to be held biennially that makes accessible the work of the most innovative contemporary artists in the world. In 2006 it will be held in conjunction with the ISEA2006 Symposium.
See http://isea2006.sjsu.edu for more information about the Festival and Symposium.
ABOUT THE COMMUNITY DOMAIN CALL
Over the next year leading up to August 2006, individuals or groups will be commissioned to work with various San Jose communities combining technologies such as GPS, mobile communications or digital imagery to map their experiences and to tell their stories. These experiences and stories will become part of the fabric of the festival. In this way, the Festival becomes not only a glimpse of the possibilities of art and technology, but using some of those same innovative technologies, it is a celebration of the diversity found in San Jose and a platform for community members to
participate.
A wide range of cultural contexts, media, art disciplines and venues are feasible within the definition of "Community Domain". See
http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/thematic.html#community for more about the theme.
San Jose has a very diverse and hybrid population, and we are particularly interested in projects that traverse different communities.
Three commissions will be offered for projects related to the Community Domain theme: one at a level of $25,000 and two at the level of $5,000.
Proposals may be submitted by individuals or groups: professional artistic credentials and advanced forms of technology are not required. The proposal narrative should be no more than three pages in length and should cover five topics:
Description of the project: What are the characteristics of the project? In what ways will the project connect to the theme of Community Domain?
Audience: In what fashion will an audience be engaged in this project? In what ways will the project seek to engage audience members of varying cultural backgrounds?
Technology: What types of technology will be incorporated into the project?
Personnel: Please identify the key individuals/groups involved in this project, and their qualifications.
Budget: Please provide a brief explanation of how funds will be used to support this project.
Special Considerations:
Projects will be welcome in a variety of traditional or new forms of art, media and physical environments. For example, projects in formal theater or exhibition settings or informal community or outdoor settings will be appropriate. All art forms are welcome including literary, performing,visual, media and multidisciplinary. Appropriate forms of technology include, but are not limited to, mobile communications, Worldwide Web, recorded audio or video, film, robotics and digital imagery.
Projects involving teams and collaboration are encouraged.
All projects should incorporate an element of "shared space" that will be accessible to persons of varied backgrounds.
Preference will be given to projects involving artists and other personnel having significant familiarity with the communities and cultures of San Jose and Silicon Valley.
TIMELINE
Proposals must be submitted by August 1, 2005. Proposals will only be
accepted online at http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/submissions . All proposals will be reviewed by a panel of distinguished authorities on culture, art,technology, and community. Final awards will be announced by September 1, 2005. All awards are subject to ZeroOne San Jose's fundraising efforts.
INQUIRIES
Questions regarding this call for proposals can be addressed to
communitydomain@yproductions.com
PLEASE NOTE
There will be a subsequent call, beginning September 1, 2005, for existing projects related to the Community Domain theme that do not, necessarily,focus on San Jose / Silicon Valley.
http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/
http://isea2006.sjsu.edu./calls.html
http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/communitydomain1/
June 12, 2005
ToonTime with THE RZA
In case you haven't noticed, THE RZA is slowly taking over the world. A founding member of the Wu-Tang Clan, he sent shock waves through the hip hop community with his production work on the band's debut album Enter the Wu-Tang (36th Chamber). Since then, he has recorded and produced countless albums, he's scored films, he's acted in movies, and recently he published his first book. (He's even faced the daunting world of film festivals, serving as our Artist in Residence this year.) But now, THE RZA faces his greatest challenge... CARTOONS.
While some of the strangest, coolest cartoons you've ever seen screen behind him, THE RZA will layer together a soundtrack live, demonstrating his gift for using music to complement the action on screen and evoke moods with a few notes. From the earliest Wu-Tang albums to his soundtracks for Jim Jarmusch and Quentin Tarantino, THE RZA's distinctive style - all spare beats and minimal samples - has always resulted in lean, yet forceful soundscapes. THE RZA is a nimble MC, and the interplay between the live tracks he will be laying down and the cartoon mayhem unspooling on screen will be electrifying - a once-in-a-lifetime hip hop battle where the animated and the Wu will collide.
Wed, June 22 8:30 pm
The Ford Theatre
part of the 2005 Los Angeles Film Festival
June 10, 2005
Keitai City Competition
A new competition sponsored by NTT DoCoMo looking for ideas on how the mobile phone will transform urban environments:
Few tools have become as widely accepted in everyday life in recent years as cell phones. Keitai ("portable"), the shortened term for a cell phone, has come to mean much more than a portable communication terminal; the keitai has become an indispensable tool for constructing the infrastructure of everyday life; the term has taken on a greatly expanded significance to mean new lifestyle media.How is the city, our immediate environment, developing under these circumstances? In times of great change, the city, in keeping with, or in critical reaction to, that change, has also undergone changes of guise or structure. What sorts of conditions will the city generate in the future, as the keitai becomes an integral part of our lifestyle?
This spatial design competition seeks new proposals concerning the relationship between the urban environment and keitai in the near future. What sorts of conditions, forms and environments will the "keitai city" exhibit? Competition entrants are encouraged to propose images of the future of a "keitai society" unconstrained by preconceptions, or proposals for new spatial designs that make today's assumed worldview seem hackneyed.
1st DoCoMo International Architectural Design Competition 2005 - Top Page
"Finding Interactive Nemo"
A mentor/colleague of mine is now spearheading a whole new breed of interactive entertainment for Walt Disney Theme Parks. The recent successes with "Stitch's Photo Phone" @ Innoventions and "Turtle Talk with Crush" @ Disney's Living Seas Pavilion has given his projects new momentum. Both projects break new ground in Imagineering's "Living Creature" initiative and rate high in guest satisfaction. Without sacrificing intimate guest interaction, the throughput issues with "Stitche's Photo Phone" were solved in the more recent EPCOT attraction.
100-150 guests enter a small theater with a virtual fish tank showcased in an 8' x 16' screen. The 153-year old surfer dude turtle from "Finding Nemo" greets the visitors and makes conversation with specific audience members. This is done through a voice-activated real-time animation system developed by Imagineering. The 30-frame per second rendered image is breathtakingly real and seamlessly responsive. They are already working on a second generation of "Living Creatures" for other parks/venues.
Anyone interested in a field trip? Go to Epcot for more information.
June 09, 2005
Intelligent Agent
The latest issue of Intelligent Agent has two articles of interest — to me leastways. One on video game experience and the other on land art. Now, if I can only figure out the interface and actually read the articles..
Here, let me help cut through the interface mishegoss.
Here's the one titled The Narrowing Experience of "Experience" in Video Role-Playing Games, and here's the one titled After land art: database and the locative turn .
Mobile Monday
The Mobile Monday USA. mission is to cultivate and accelerate US mobile and telecom sectors through leadership, technology, government relations, research, education, mentoring, investment, recruitment, networking and promotion.
Seems like a great community discussion if you're in the bay area and into mobile.
June 06, 2005
Nintendo: Innovation is dying
Nintendo's Miyamoto: We're happy with the road we're taking - Jun. 3, 2005
"This might come as something of a shock to the gaming world, but Shigeru Miyamoto - the man who created Mario, Donkey Kong and Zelda - really doesn't feel like playing games these days."
"There's not a lot I want to play now," he told me recently. "A lot of the games out there are just too long. Of course, there are games, such as 'Halo' or 'Grand Theft Auto,' that are big and expansive. But if you're not interested in spending that time with them, you're not going to play."
What he misses, he said, are games you can pick up and play - something the company hopes to accomplish with its next generation home console, currently code-named "Revolution".
Collaborative Mapping for Everyone
First there was Google Maps, and that was cool.
Then there was Google Map hacking, and alpha geeks thought that was cool and, you know, made alpha geeky things.
Now, there's user friendly Google Map map making, and that's just plain awesome.
Location Based Services - Research Notes From The Field
Via Nicolas Nova at Pasta and Vinegar, which is loaded with cool stuff this morning.
This set of research notes from the Center for Research and Support of Training for great for two reasons. First, it presents some great and fascinating locative media projects. Second, it shows the work in great summary, meaning its completely accessible and legible. Neither too heady with the art-technology angle, nor too terse and technical as found in some scholarly presentations. Good mix.
Now, I understand sometimes you have to get arty and sometimes you have to get techy - depends on your audience. This is just a great example of finding a middle ground.
Paper, Plastic or..Playstation?
Via Nicolas Nova over to Pasta and Vinegar, I found this interesting power point from a talk given by Scott Kim at Stanford's People, Computers and Design Seminar on October 8, 2004 on adapting a game across a wide range of technologies.
“As a puzzle designer I work in a wide variety of electronic and nonelectronic media, ranging from paper and physical toys, to the web and mobile phones. Working in many media helps me keep a fresh perspective on the strengths and weakness of each medium. In this talk I will show how a game mutates when moved from medium to another, and discuss how to take advantage of the unique capabilities of each medium while being aware of its limitations.”
June 03, 2005
ACM MM Interactive Art Program
ACM Multimedia 2005 is the premier annual multimedia conference, covering all aspects of multimedia computing. The ACM MM Interactive Art Program seeks to bring together the arts and multimedia communities to create the stage to explore, discuss, and push the limits for the advancement of both multimedia technology through the arts, and the arts through multimedia technology.
The Interactive Art Program will consist of a conference track and an art exhibition. We invite artists working with digital media and researchers in technical areas to submit their original contributions to the following tracks:
· Conference track: we solicit papers describing interactive multimedia art works, tools, applications, and technical approaches for creative uses of multimedia content and technology. Emphasis will be given to novel works that use a rich variety of media and those that are interactive, particularly works that exploit non-conventional human-computer interfaces or sensors in new and emerging areas. We strongly encourage papers with a strong technical content written by artists.
· Multimedia art exhibition: "Presence/Absence."¯ We seek art works that use multimedia to explore issues of location, relocation and dislocation, particularly where multimedia technology overcomes or reinforces physical presence or separation. The emphasis for the exhibition is on interactive art works that realize powerful artistic concepts using multimedia content and technologies. See the exhibition statement.
Important Dates:
June 20, 2005 Long papers and art exhibition submission deadline.
June 20, 2005 Short papers submission deadline.
July 29, 2005 Notification of Acceptance of Full and Short papers.
August 22, 2005 Notification of Acceptance of Interactive Arts Exhibition.
August 29, 2005 Camera-ready papers due.
June 02, 2005
Scholarships anyone?
Welcome to the Intelligence Scholars Program, spy on your school, and classmates, attend CIA summer camps, and you could get up to 50k annually!
"Are you a high school senior planning to enroll in an accredited four- or five-year college program or a college sophomore interested in working for a dynamic agency? If so, the Central Intelligence Agency might have a special program and career position for you."
From the CIA student opps page
No worries there are graduate opps as well!
"The United States is at war. Thus, to put it simply, the existing divide between academe and the intelligence community has become a dangerous and very real detriment to our national security at home and abroad."
Read the BBC News article
Now we're all embedded
BBC soliciting news from anyone and everyone. Instant news, the second it happens, straight from your mobile to the world...or at least soon after.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/4599531.stm
Send us your comments using the form on the right hand side of the page. Make sure to give us your location and contact details, such as your email address or phone number. Send any accompanying pictures or video to yourpics@bbc.co.uk.
June 01, 2005
Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment
Anyone going? Seems like some really good power players are speaking, including Chris Crawford, Will Wright, and our very own Bing Gordon.
"There are so many reasons for the game industry, academia, and the commercial community to share knowledge," notes Ian Davis, Ph.D., CEO of Mad Doc Software and AIIDE Publicity Chair. "With the incredible growth of the game industry, many universities are starting to put a lot of resources into the study of game technology, and game developers will find that a lot of the hardest AI problems they’re starting to encounter have already been tackled by some of the brightest researchers. I think that the best games moving forward will do a great deal more with both established advanced AI techniques and cutting edge research."
June 1-3, 2005
Marina Del Rey, CA
