Fall Electives in Interactive Media

Here are three new and exciting classes that you should consider taking as electives this semester!

CTIN 499 Database Cinema with Andreas Kratky
Computer-based technologies have extended the ways we think about narrative and conceive art works. The attempt to engage the viewer into an active exchange and the drive towards open and associative structures has roots in cinema and many other fields of cultural production which are developed to a new stage with interactive media.

CTIN 499 Location-Based Mobile Media: Maps, Games & Stories with Julian Bleecker
A new mode of interaction is emerging. A “mash-up” of geographic information system databases, electronic cartography, wireless networks, global positioning sensors, widespread adoption of net-worked mobile devices anticipate a profound change in interactive computing. Current research on the topics of ubiquitous and pervasive computational and networked systems has begun to reveal exciting ways in which humans, their location in space, and the objects surrounding them will interact in ways that go beyond the traditional paradigms of sitting in front of a computer, or even “thumbing” a keypad on a mobile device.

Through readings, discussion and presentations of prior art related to the topic, students will design and developa project that addresses the opportunites presented by locative, mobile and pervasive media concepts.

CTAN 502a Stereoscopic Animation and Virtual Reality with Perry Hobrman (actually listed under Animation Department)

This course is an intensive hands-on initiation into stereoscopic 3D imagemaking, exploring the aesthetic, conceptual and technical issues involved in the design and production of 3D images, animations, and experiences. Stereoscopic (3D) vision is both a basic (and often overlooked) feature of our perceptual experience, as well as a spectacular media technology that can push our view of the image from a mode of exterior contemplation to a sense of total immersion. It is also a key component of virtual reality.

I3D 2006 - Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games

I3D 2006 - Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games

March 14 - 17, 2006
Electronic Arts Campus
Redwood Shores, CA

http://www.siggraph.org/conferences/i3d/

I3D is the leading-edge conference for real-time 3D computer graphics
and techniques that combine 3D computer graphics with human
interaction. The conference continues to focus on the hottest research
in 3D game technology, interactive visualization and visual depiction,
interactive modeling, user-assisted techniques, and applications. Its
early fall deadline provides the perfect outlet for your summer work!

NEW in 2006
===========

- We are adding a doctoral research seminar for selected PhD students
to discuss their ongoing research with each other and a panel of
experienced I3D researchers.

Submission deadlines (11:59 pm EST):
====================================

Paper abstracts: September 20, 2005
Paper submissions: September 27, 2005
Doctoral seminar submissions: February 4, 2005
Poster and demo submissions: February 4, 2005

I3D 2006 - Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games

March 14 - 17, 2006
Electronic Arts Campus
Redwood Shores, CA

http://www.siggraph.org/conferences/i3d/

I3D is the leading-edge conference for real-time 3D computer graphics
and techniques that combine 3D computer graphics with human
interaction. The conference continues to focus on the hottest research
in 3D game technology, interactive visualization and visual depiction,
interactive modeling, user-assisted techniques, and applications. Its
early fall deadline provides the perfect outlet for your summer work!

NEW in 2006
===========

- We are adding a doctoral research seminar for selected PhD students
to discuss their ongoing research with each other and a panel of
experienced I3D researchers.

Submission deadlines (11:59 pm EST):
====================================

Paper abstracts: September 20, 2005
Paper submissions: September 27, 2005
Doctoral seminar submissions: February 4, 2005
Poster and demo submissions: February 4, 2005

Conference Papers

We solicit papers that present original research related to all
techniques that combine 3D computer graphics with human interaction,
explicitly including (but not limited to) research that has
applicability for 3D games. Original papers are limited to 8 pages,
including all figures. The submission of a video to accompany the
paper is allowed. Details regarding electronic submission will be
available on the web page. Accepted papers will be published in an
archival-quality proceedings distributed by ACM.

Doctoral Seminar **NEW**

The Doctoral Seminar will provide the opportunity for doctoral
students working in areas relevant to I3D to present and discuss their
research in an informal setting. Each accepted doctoral student will
give a short presentation to other doctoral seminar participants and
a panel of experts in the field. Ample time will be provided for
interactive discussions of the work and future directions. Accepted
doctoral seminar participants will also be given the opportunity to
present a poster of their work to the larger I3D audience. Preference
will be given to students who already have a dissertation proposal.
Submission will be in the form of a two page extended abstract, to be
evaluated based on originality, quality of research, and potential
impact on interactive graphics.

Posters and Demos

The posters program offers a unique opportunity to showcase innovative
techniques in games and other commercial products, work in progress,
student projects, or non-traditional research. We encourage (but do not require) posters that can be presented with an accompanying live
demo. A posters "fast forward" session will give each presenter the
chance to give a brief description of their poster prior to the poster
sessions. Poster sessions will provide a casual setting to allow
presenters to show their work and have one-on-one dialogue with
attendees and also to control the pace and level of the presentations.

Submissions will be reviewed by a panel of experts in the field.
Review criteria include contribution of the work to the game,
graphics, and HCI communities, validity of the results, originality of
the work, and clarity of presentation. A poster proposal consists of a
one page extended abstract in ASCII text or PDF format. The authors
are also encouraged to submit a preliminary PDF or Powerpoint version
of the poster.

Haptic Touch Screen

From a recent blog post in Technology Review: Prototypes

Touch screens greet tourists at museums, shoppers at checkouts, and even drivers on dashboards. In spite of the name "touch," though, they don't feel like much--just flat, boring glass or plastic.

But press a virtual button on a screen from San Jose, CA's Immersion, and you'll feel the same satisfying clack you'd feel pushing a key on a keyboard. The device works by tricking your sense of touch. Precise motors vibrate the top layer of the display. The vibration varies depending on which graphic you touch--a car's thermostat, say, or its radio tuner--creating a distinct sensation for each. An on-screen visual response and an audible click or buzz add to an illusion that overrides your perception of the display's hard surface. Immersion is currently licensing the technology and shipping demonstration models to automakers, display manufacturers, and other companies.

Paul Winchell Dies @ 82

"Paul Winchell, the voice of Tigger in "Winnie the Pooh" features for more than three decades and a versatile ventriloquist who became a fixture in early children's television along with his dummies Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff, has died. He was 82.

Although he was a legendary ventriloquist and built a career attracting legions of followers of that dwindling art, Winchell's most durable legacy may be his rich voice as Tigger and other animated characters on television and in motion pictures."

Link to full article on Paul Mitchell dot Com

Personal, Portable, Pedestrian: Mobile Phones in Japanese Life

Great new book on mobile phone use in Japan by USC's (and Keio's) very own Dr. Mimi Ito with colleagues Daisuke Okabe and Misa Matsuda:

The book ... is out from MIT Press and available on amazon.com. Click here for a pdf of a draft of the introduction.

The book is an edited collection of social and cultural studies of keitai (mobile phone) and pager use over the past decade or so in Japan. We included our own research as well as research by a variety of mostly Japanese scholars whose work we translated from Japanese.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Editor’s Notes on Translation

Introduction: Portable, Personal, Pedestrian
Mizuko Ito

I
The Social and Cultural Construction of Technological Systems

Discourses of Keitai in Japan
Misa Matsuda

Youth Culture and the Shaping of Japanese Mobile Media:
Personalization and Keitai Internet as Multimedia
Tomoyuki Okada

A Decade in the Development
of Mobile Communications in Japan (1993-2002)
Kenji Kohiyama

II
Cultures and Imaginaries

The Third Stage Paradigm: Territory Machines from the Girls' Pager Revolution to Mobile Aesthetics
Kenichi Fujimoto

Japanese Youth and the Imagining of Keitai
Haruhiro Kato

III
Social Networks and Relationships

Mobile Communication and Selective Sociality
Misa Matsuda

The Mobile-izing Japanese:
Connecting to the Internet by PC and Webphone in Yamanashi
Kakuko Miyata, Jeffrey Boase, Barry Wellman and Ken’ichi Ikeda

Accelerating Reflexivity 300
Ichiyo Habuchi

Keitai and the Intimate Stranger 341
Hidenori Tomita

IV
Practice and Place

Keitai in Public Transportation 381
Daisuke Okabe and Mizuko Ito

Gendered Usage of Keitai in Domestic Contexts
Shingo Dobashi

Visualization of the Work Space of Service Engineers
by Keitai Technology and Its Designs
Rieko Tamaru and Naoki Ueno

Technosocial Situations:
Emergent Structurings of Mobile Email Use
Mizuko Ito and Daisuke Okabe

V
Emergent Developments

Keitai Usage Among Today’s
Japanese Elementary and Junior High School Students:
Research of the Views and Reality of Parents, Children, and Schools Yukiko Miyaki

Uses and Possibilities of the Keitai Camera
Fumitoshi Kato, Ryuhei Uemoto, Daisuke Okabe and Mizuko Ito

It's offical: Video Games Kill :D

Death via mouse and dancing pixels; sounds cruel and unusual to me...
check out the Rueters Wire

Sounds like a Game geek tragedy; I wonder what game he was playing?

Berners-Lee on the read/write web

In August 1991, Sir Tim Berners-Lee created the first website. Fourteen years on, he tells BBC Newsnight's Mark Lawson how blogging is closer to his original idea about a read/write web.

From BBCNews

Mobile games News

A few links from the Fierce Developer Weekly Wireless Developer Report:

According to a survey conducted by mobile games company I-Play, only one-in-20 mobile phone customers has downloaded a game onto their handset. One-third of respondents were unsure if their phone could even play games and 18 percent wanted to download games, but weren't sure how. Read the article for more statistics.

Square Enix Mobile Q&A
[my favorite game of all time Dragon Quest, or as I knew it on the NES Dragon Warrior]

Sony Ericsson has announced the W550, the newest in its line of Walkman phones. It is a "spinner," or swivel phone, with a 1.8" display, 256MB of memory, a slick 1.3-MP camera, and stereo speakers. In an unusual move, Sony Ericsson is launching the device in the US first before bringing it to other markets. Blog

more...

The W550 also offers an authentic games console experience. Games can be played with the screen positioned horizontally and buttons on the left and right of the screen being used for two-handed control. Gamers can enjoy this experience through the pre-installed 3D versions of WormsForts: Under Siege 3D developed by THQ Wireless, Extreme Air Snowboarding developed by Digital Chocolate and a new multiplayer version of Midway’s Gauntlet, developed under license by TKO Software. If users prefer, horizontal-mode games can also be played in portrait mode or an L-Shaped mode using the keyboard. The W550 also supports multi-player peer-2-peer gaming over Bluetooth.

Eyebeam Circuit and R&D Residencies

Eyebeam

Eyebeam has developed Circuit in response to the need for emerging artists, particularly those exiting graduate-level programs (ie artists who have not shown their work in a professional setting or outside of university) to exhibit work and receive professional critique and exposure to networks within the art and technology community. This three-day intensive program offers a particular group of artists working and experimenting with new tools and practices, the opportunity to:

- meet fellow artists working with similar media;
- have the experience of exhibiting work at an art and technology center in New York City
- receive critique from peers and professional curators, gallerists, artists, academics, writers, theorists, etc.
- publicly present work during a public event at Eyebeam to gain feedback from peers, professionals and the public

Call For Fellows
Eyebeam R&D seeks inaugural fellows to work on creative technology projects in the Eyebeam Open Lab. The fellowship is a unique opportunity to participate in a new kind of research environment and contribute to the public domain.

The Open Lab is dedicated to public domain R&D. We are seeking artists, hackers, designers and engineers to come to Eyebeam for a year to develop pioneering work. The ideal fellow has experience creating innovative creative technology projects, a love of collaborative development, and a desire to distribute his or her work as widely as possible.

Participation in the R&D Fellows program includes:

One year fellowship
4 days/week commitment
$30,000 annual stipend + health benefits

One Man Star Wars

Ok. I'm sick of it too; maybe it's just the SWgeek in me but this looks friggin halarious! A one man stage play of Star Wars, staring Charles Ross.
Check out the video Clip
OneManStarWars: the site

Sadly it looks like the closest we'll get to it here in LALA land is seeing him perform his one man LOTR @ the One Ring Celebration in Pasedena on January 20th.

Housing Maps

OK; old news maybe.

Cooler than cool; coworkers @ Saatchi hooked me up with this link. The marriage of Google and Craigslist; great stuff.

www.housingmaps.com

NY Times Magazine on Machinima

NY Times Magazine - The Xbox Auteurs (requires free subscripton)

Although the substance of the article may be old-news for we cutting-edgers, it's a fun read, maybe an insight or two, and definitely some sort of indicator of things to come.

Then one day he realized that the videos he was making were essentially computer-animated movies, almost like miniature emulations of ''Finding Nemo'' or ''The Incredibles.'' He was using the game to function like a personal Pixar studio. He wondered: Could he use it to create an actual movie or TV series?

Video games have not enjoyed good publicity lately. Hillary Clinton has been denouncing the violence in titles like Grand Theft Auto, which was yanked out of many stores last month amid news that players had unlocked sex scenes hidden inside. Yet when they're not bemoaning the virtual bloodshed, cultural pundits grudgingly admit that today's games have become impressively cinematic. It's not merely that the graphics are so good: the camera angles inside the games borrow literally from the visual language of film. When you're playing Halo and look up at the sun, you'll see a little ''lens flare,'' as if you were viewing the whole experience through the eyepiece of a 16-millimeter Arriflex.

Pikadon Day

view site

Pikadon is a grassroots project started in Japan to promote healing and collaboration in remembering World Pikadon Day. Pikadon is the japanese expression for bright lightning a.k.a. atomic bomb.

The Pikadon project is solliciting proposals for any scale collaborations with artists in remembrance of the atomic bomb explosion and in contemplation of where we are now in the world, so many years after the event.

The Economist on Video Games

This was in my mail box when I got home this afternoon. (Actually, on the floor cause my mail comes through the slot in the door.) Anyway, I haven't read it yet, but I couldn't resist blogging it. (Mea culpa - just imagine I were blogging about a new Apple computer mouse I may not have tried out.) For those new to The Economist, the reading literacy here is that the cover is usually a lead for either a one page "leader" editorial or a shortish special report. In this case, it's both.

Ramesh Raskar presentation this Friday

Ramesh Raskar from MERL (Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs) has kindly agreed to give a presentation for us, which will take place this Friday August 5th from 10am-12pm in the ZML. Everyone is invited.

Ramesh and his lab are doing some amazing work, and I highly encourage you to attend if you can possibly make it.

Spatial Augmented Reality
Ramesh Raskar
Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs (MERL), Cambridge, MA USA
http://www.merl.com/people/raskar/raskar.html

The goal of Augmented Reality (AR) is to insert computer-generated virtual
objects in the real world and the challenge is in creating an illusion of
consistency between the real and the virtual environments. Traditional AR
approaches involve head-mounted, eye-worn or hand-held displays. But we
can draw parallels between the displays techniques used for virtual
reality (VR) and AR, and speculate about the alternative approaches for
AR.

In this talk I will discuss new practical alternatives using spatially
augmented displays. The spatially augmented reality (SAR) approach
exploits video projectors, cameras, radio frequency tags such as RFID,
large optical elements, holograms and tracking technologies. The
underlying techniques in SAR overcome some of the annoyances of the
eye-worn AR in authoring, identification and image registration. I will
discuss enabling techniques and describe our experience with applications
in industrial maintanance, entertainment, art, education and various forms
of human computer interactions.

Bio

Ramesh Raskar joined MERL as a Research Scientist in 2000 after his
doctoral research at U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he
developed a framework for projector based displays. His work spans a range
of topics in computer vision and graphics including projective geometry,
non-photorealistic rendering and intelligent user interfaces. Current
projects include composite RFID (RFIG), multi-flash non-photorealistic
camera for depth edge detection, locale-aware mobile projectors, high
dynamic range video, image fusion for context enhancement and quadric
transfer methods for multi-projector curved screen displays.

Dr. Raskar received the TR100 Award, Technology Review's 100 Top Young
Innovators Under 35, 2004, Global Indus Technovator Award 2003, instituted
at MIT to recognize the top 20 Indian technology innovators on the globe,
Mitsubishi Electric Valuable Invention Award 2004 and Mitsubishi Electric
Information Technology R&D Award 2003. He is a member of the ACM and IEEE.

Mighty Mouse

Innovation in scrolling: $49
Slavish devotion to symmetry and simplicity at the expense of ergonomics and usability: priceless.

The Button That Wasn�t

Alas the fate of the one-button mouse in today�s multibutton world. Who has time for intuitive, elegant design when there is so much clicking to do? Thanks to a smooth top shell with touch-sensitive technology beneath, Mighty Mouse allows you to right click without a right button. Capacitive sensors under Mighty Mouse�s seamless top shell detect where your fingers are and predict your clicking intentions, so you don�t need two buttons � just two fingers. Click on the left side to use Mighty Mouse in its simplest, single-button form. Click on the right to access contextual menus within applications and edit, copy, label or download from your mouse. It�s simple sleight of hand.

My guess is that with the use of capacitance sensors you can't have one finger resting on one sensor and click with the other finger on the other sensor, but would have to have only one finger in contact with the shell to execute a click. fannnntastic.