Course

Time: Wednesday, December 5, 6-9pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC),
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Featuring Fall Semester Class Projects from :
CTIN 484/489 Intermediate Game Design Workshop
CTIN 401 Interface Design for Games
CTIN 464 Games Studies Seminar (Machinima!)
CTIN 488 Game Design Workshop
CTIN 482 Designing Online Multiplayer Game Environments
CTIN 491 Advanced Game Projects (3)
-------BREAK-------
CTIN 532 Interactive Experience and World Design
CTIN 534 Experiments in Interactivity I (1st Years)
CTIN 534 Experiments in Interactivity I (2nd Years)
CTIN 541 Design for Interactive Media
CTIN 590 Directed Research Projects

Plus bonus presentation on research by:
IMD Immersive group

and more....

Food and Drink will be provided.

Speaker: Joan Wood
Time: Wednesday, November 28, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Title: "Hands-On: Three Decades in the Pixel Business - The only thing you can count on with a career in new media is that you will never stop learning."

A few topics up for discussion:

. Unfinished Business
Spending years working on a game that does not get
finished/published/distributed/played is heartbreakingly common. Some very
talented folks have a string of these experiences, which can be damaging to
creative inspiration as well as a career. Are there warning signs early on
for which projects will make it to completion and which will be abandoned
along the way? Is there a way to evaluate the concept, the development team,
and the business environment to maximize the chances of being involved in a
project that goes all the way to completion?

. Bleeding Edge Development
Partnering with technology companies to help get needed features built into
next gen products and in turn providing demonstration elements for their
marketing machines means that what you create can influence hardware, API,
and software tool design. The thrill of pioneering new landscapes is matched
by the risk of being first to a market that does not yet exist. Is leading
edge development right for you? Where is the "sweet spot" for integrating
new technology with your content?

. Unique Voices
Traditional gaming culture can be quite narrow-focused. The game development
environment - insular, isolated, and prone to sleep-deprivation-induced
paranoia - can be even more so. Because of this vulnerability (and the
natural tendency to believe one's own press releases), it is vitally
important to have non-traditional, "outsider" voices in the mix. How can you
make your voice heard when you are THE minority on a development team?



Joan's bio after the jump -->

Speaker: Erik Loyer
Time: Wednesday, November 14, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Title: "Seeking eloquence in interactive space"

From Chris Crawford to Richard Nixon, Ella Fitzgerald to James Joyce, a look at the practice of eloquence and its relationship to interactive design.

Erik Loyer, Creative Director for Vectors: Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular and founder of the design studio Song New Creative, is a designer and media artist whose work explores the ways in which digital interactivity enables human eloquence. His award-winning, internationally-exhibited works include The Lair of the Marrow Monkey, one of the first websites to be added to the permanent collection of a major art museum, Chroma, a web serial about the racial politics of virtual reality, and Public Secrets, an interactive documentary on the California prison system created in collaboration with artist Sharon Daniel. Loyer’s commercial portfolio includes Clio and One Show Gold Award-winning work for Vodafone, as well as projects for Sony, BMW, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and NASA. He is an alumnus of new media pioneers Inscape and The Voyager Company, and founded the information architecture division of Razorfish in Los Angeles.

(image caption: “Field-Works” ongoing project, by Masaki Fujihata)

Speaker: Michael Naimark, USC Interactive Media Division
Time: Wednesday, October 31, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Title: Representing Earth

Representing Earth, actual places at actual moments, presents a unique challenge. Unlike fantasy places like Second Life and video games, Earth has a “ground truth” frame of reference, indexed by latitude, longitude, altitude, and time. Hence all potential Earth models cross correlate with each other into a singular Earth model.

Recently several new Earth model applications have appeared. Some are more photo-realistic (Google Street View, Microsoft PhotoSynth, EveryScape), some are more interactive (Google Earth, Microsoft Live Search, Yahoo Maps), but, regardless of the hype, none are really “like being there.” The arts community, which instinctively understands that artifacts can be good things, has produced several alternative Earth models (e.g., Art+Com, Shaw, Fujihata).

We’ll take a critical look at these applications and examples, discuss a framework for conceptualizing (and feeling comfortable with) these new forms of representation, and speculate about their future.

We’ll also introduce a new IMD project, in collaboration with ICT and supported by a research award from Google, called "Viewfinder". Viewfinder is designed as a fast, lean project to seamlessly “Flickrize” Google Earth.

A workshop on the Viewfinder project will take place next Monday 5 November 1-5pm in the ZML. Team members from both IMD and ICT will be there.

Image from rikomatic.com

Speakers: Peggy Weil & Nonny de la Peña
Time: Wednesday, October 24, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Title: "Heinous Corpus in the Multiverse"

Exposing practices and conditions in Guantanamo Prison by integrating
documentary footage and coordinated events in an installation in
Second Life, an online environment. We are providing a virtual,
accessible version of Guantanamo, in contrast to the real, but
inaccessible U.S. prison camp.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/IML/182/211/123

Bios:
Nonny de la Peña, writer, documentary filmmaker and journalist, has
consistently produced work across a variety of media probing
constitutional, social and human rights issues. Her journalistic work
has appeared in Newsweek, The New York Times, Time Magazine, Texas
Monthly, Premiere Magazine, Buzz Magazine and La Familia de Hoy. Her
most recent film, Unconstitutional, focused on civil liberties issues
post 9/11 including Guantánamo Bay. De la Peña's films have
appeared in worldwide theatrical release, broadcast on Sundance
Channel, BBC, CourtTV, and Al Jazeera, and have been shown at dozens
of film festivals including the Toronto Film Festival, South by
Southwest, Melbourne Film Festival and the Edinburgh Festival. She is
currently developing Gone Gitmo, a virtual installation of Guantanamo
Prison in Second Life.

Peggy Weil, Visiting Assistant Professor of Interactive Media at USC
School of Cinematic Arts, is a digital media artist and designer
focusing on interactive design as immersive experience for perceptual
and civic engagement. She's produced interactive projects for The
Voyager Company, Broderbund, Electronic Arts, Von Holtzbrinck and
Ravensberger Interactive, and was awarded the MILIA D'OR in Cannes in
1998. She was creative producer/designer for USC's Institute for
Creative Technology E.L.E.C.T. project, a role playing game to train
officers in bi-laterial negotiation skills. She acted as producer/ designer
for The Redistricting Game, a USC Annenberg Center sponsored project
to increase voter awareness about redistricting, and is currently developing
Gone Gitmo, a virtual installation of Guantanamo
Prison in Second Life.

Speakers: 3rd Year MFA students (and IMD Faculty)
Time: Wednesday, October 17, 6-8pm
Location: IMD Thesis studio @ 555 w. 23rd Street (at Figueroa)

This week's CTIN 511 seminar will be held at the IMD's Student Thesis Studio Spaces located at 555 W. 23rd Street starting at 6pm. The 555 class will be presenting prototype sketches which physically embody, test and communicate a subset of their project's technical and experiential goals. This is the first year we are having a 'Sneak-Peek' - you can read more about each project on the IMD wiki under Proposals & Committees.

Speakers: Dennis Wixon & August de los Reyes, Microsoft Game Studios
Time: Wednesday, October 10, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Title: “Making Emotions Work for You – Revolutionizing the way Emotions are understood and Measured for Product Design. "
How can you know if that a design works? Do users see the design the way you intended it? Can user research and design partner to make to provide useful answers? We say Yes and we can “prove” it. We present a brief overview of the current approaches to product design. We introduce a classic but innovative theory of human emotion that has simple and practical implications for both design and research. We show how this approach is reflected in many consumer products. We take this framework and show how it was used to guide the research work on the most successful game in history. The aim is to change the way you think about creating an engaging design, user research, and human emotion.

BIOS:
Dennis Wixon directs research at Microsoft Games studios which is recognized as a leader in applied methodology. Previously, Dennis was usability manager in the Software Usability Engineering group at Digital Equipment Corporation, where methods such as usability engineering and contextual inquiry were developed. He co-edited a book Field Methods Case Book for Software Design with Prof. Judy Ramey of the University of Washington. Dennis holds a PhD. in social psychology from Clark University.

August de los Reyes researches emotional design as a degree candidate in the Advanced Studies Program at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Also a PhD candidate in the Technical University of Delft’s Industrial Design Engineering initiative on Emotion and Design, August will be a visiting fellow at the University of Oxford beginning this fall.

This work was recently featured in Wired and is critical to our industry. Don't miss this talk!

Speaker: Lenny Lipton, Chief Technology Officer, Real D
Time: 6pm to 8pm
Location: Clarity Theatre, 100 N. Crescent Drive, Beverly Hills.
(at the corner of Wilshire Blvd between Doheny Drive and Beverly Drive)
MAP

NOTE: This week's seminar is being held off campus, at Real D's state-of-the-art stereoscopic projection theatre. Please allow ample time to get there (given rush-hour traffic). Carpooling is encouraged. Parking is available in the building's underground garage; just tell the attendant that you're there for a presentation in the Clarity Theatre.

Lenny Lipton founded StereoGraphics Corporation in 1980, and created the electronic stereoscopic display industry. He is the most prolific inventor in the field and has been granted thirty patents in the area of stereoscopic displays. In 1996 he received an award from the Smithsonian for this invention of CrystalEyes®, the first practical electronic stereoscopic product for computer graphics and video applications.

Speakers: Greg Downing, Perry Hoberman, Dr. Judith Hirsch
Time: Wednesday, September 26, 6:30-9:00pm
Location: USC School of Cinematic Arts, George Lucas Building, Room 108.

Title: " Visual Effects, Stereoscopy, and Perception".

This week the CTAN 522 John C Hench Animation & Digital Arts Seminar combines forces with the CTIN 511 Interactive Media Seminar. The objective of this forum is for scientists, artists and industry experts to discuss their research and ideas as it relates or intersects with animation and digital art. This evenings' experts will discuss visual perception and is application to stereoscopic and panoramic imaging. Students from the Division of Animation and Digital Arts have developed a web log with background information on the topics and speakers - please contribute your comments.


*******PLEASE NOTE DIFFERENT LOCATION AND START TIME!!*******

Speaker: Dale Herigstad, Chief Creative Officer, Schematic
Time: Wednesday, September 19, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Title: Space and Time in Digital Media Interface

Abstract: Dale will present a number of projects from Schematic from the viewpoint of how interaction is influenced by notions of spatial context and time. Topics will include: layered media, invasive media, rich media, and connected media. Recent work presented will include Broadband TV applications, new experiences on game boxes with EA Sports, enhanced viewing experiences on HDDVD, and advanced thinking in new content-finders for Television. New gestural work will also be presented from work with Microsoft Surface, and an environmental media project with Accenture installed in airports. Dale will also present ways in which working in this new digital space has altered the creative processes at the company.

Dale's Bio: Download file

Speaker: Flint Dille, Writer, Designer, Producer, Bureau of Film & Games
Time: Wednesday, September 12, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

After receiving an MFA from USC’s Cinema Writing Program, Flint established himself as an animation writer and producer on programs such as Transformers and G.I. Joe. During the course, Flint wrote the Tiny Toon Movie and the feature-film American Tail II: Fieval Goes West for Steven Spielberg. Last year, Flint and John Platten sold BACKWATER to Dimension as a film. It was shot in Fall of 2005 as Venom. Flint was also the creative director of TSR-LA and worked on numerous DUNGEONS & DRAGONS projects along with the award winning board games LINE IN THE SAND and XXVc: BATTLE FOR THE FUTURE. All of Bureau of Film & Games' original projects are developed as franchises that can move seamlessly in to other media, including original soundtracks, graphic novel serializations, and feature film/TV possibilities. Flint will talk about his long and successful career working in movies and games, ongoing insurgency, and moving between media.

IMDB bio is here
and Moby games credits here.
Video interview of Flint talking about "Transformers: The Game".

Speakers: IMD 3rd Year MFA Students
Time: Wednesday, September 5, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

This forum will focus on the thesis projects required for completion of the IMD MFA program. First we'll review a short documentary of the "Are you Here" installation showcasing projects by the class of 2007. Then, current 3rd Year students in the IMD MFA degree program will each present the projects that they will be working on this year.

IMD Research Open House
Presenters: IMD faculty and staff
Time: Wednesday, August 29, 6-9pm
Location: IMD CoDesign Lab, Digital Collaboratory Annex, USC School of Cinematic Arts
2823 Flower street (Main entrance at 509 29th st.)

The program for this Open House and 511 session will showcase a wide variety of research developed by the Interactive Media Division and their various collaborations. It will include brief presentations by IMD faculty and Staff members in the context of their research demonstrations; the objective is to introduce IMD faculty, their research interests, and potential opportunities for student participation.

Projects will include: TiltSim, Wide FOV Head Mounted Display, Concave Surround Optics, Wii Games, "MobZombies", "The Night Journey", "Condemned to Repeat, "Trusted Makes", "Cloud", The Redistricting Game, "There's Nothing to See Here", Stereo 3D Projection, and more!