Course

Very related to our CTIN 511 discussions on "technologies of perception":

"Released in the early '80s, Lawrence Weschler's Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees offered deep insight into the work of California-bred light-and-space guru Robert Irwin. Weschler's seminal work was recently expanded, incorporating Irwin's more recent projects — the design for New York's Dia:Beacon and the Getty's Central Gardens. In this afternoon talk at the Getty, the old friends once again chew the fat, discussing perception and the observer's role in art. After the talk, stroll through Irwin's "living art" piece, and take in the view."

– Jane McCarthy

Nameless Science
Curated by Henk Slager

December 10, 2008 - January 31, 2009
@ apexart
291 Churchstreet, New York, NY

Opening reception:
Wednesday, December 10, 6-8 pm

With projects by Ricardo Basbaum (Brazil), Jan Kaila (Finland), Irene Kopelman (The Netherlands), Matts Leiderstam (Sweden), Ronan McCrea (Ireland), Sarah Pierce (UK/USA), and Morten Torgersrud (Norway).

Related Symposium: December 12
@The Cooper Union
(Wollman Auditorium),
51 Astor Place, New York, NY

The debate on artistic research emerging worldwide in the field of visual art for some five years now tends to focus on what artistic research could be or should be. As a consequence of that debate, artistic research as a yet undefined sanctuary for creative experiment and knowledge production is prone to the danger of being absorbed by an intellectually crippling academic discourse on how the specificity of research-based art as a novel modus operandi could be defined and framed. That tendency is comparable to what happened in the 1990s with the initially so radically formulated anti-disciplinary cultural studies. Such academic debate that ultimately seems to be focused particularly on institutional and managerial results–and is, moreover, connected in Europe time and again with the so-called Bologna rules, i.e. the introduction of a bachelor, master, and PhD structure in art education–provides very little insight in the specific qualities of the artistic research process as such. Therefore, it is more than urgent to approach research practices from the perspective of the artistic profession implying entirely different and also more intrinsic views.

In that context, the project Nameless Science aims at expanding the artistic research debate while showing the concrete outcome of seven best artistic research practices in PhD projects. These actual projects will demonstrate that the form of research taking place through the practice of visual art is, in fact, much more dynamic than is common within the traditional academic bastions still characterized by distinct and clear fields and disciplines. (read more)

On the use of ARGs as an educational tool.

When Worlds Collide: An Augmented Reality Check

by Matt Villano



Researchers are ramping up traditional MUVEs, developing games that require students to uncover solutions in spaces where the real mingles with the virtual.

NOAH PATEL REMEMBERS the first time aliens descended on his math class at Thomas A. Edison Middle School in Brighton, MA.

The extraterrestrial buggers showed up unannounced, and Patel's students had to figure out why. Armed with handheld computers, teams of determined students set out to the school's football field to meet the intruders face-to-face. The computers, preprogrammed with specific GPS coordinates, revealed various clues via text, video, and audio as students wandered over particular spots on the field. Over the course of an hour, the students pieced together viable theories on why the Green Meanies were there.

"We were provided with a 'CIA' briefing talking about the suspicious landing that had taken place," Patel says. "We told the students they were going to be a part of very important research with Harvard and MIT, and that there were only a handful of kids worldwide who would have this opportunity."

read more >>
http://www.thejournal.com/articles/22020

the news is a bit old but interesting...

Google Lively vs. Second Life: pros and cons?

Google Shutting Down Virtual World "Lively"




read more >> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10103412-52.html

ARGs as an educational tool.

When Worlds Collide: An Augmented Reality Check

by Matt Villano

Researchers are ramping up traditional MUVEs, developing games that require students to uncover solutions in spaces where the real mingles with the virtual.

NOAH PATEL REMEMBERS the first time aliens descended on his math class at Thomas A. Edison Middle School in Brighton, MA.

The extraterrestrial buggers showed up unannounced, and Patel's students had to figure out why. Armed with handheld computers, teams of determined students set out to the school's football field to meet the intruders face-to-face. The computers, preprogrammed with specific GPS coordinates, revealed various clues via text, video, and audio as students wandered over particular spots on the field. Over the course of an hour, the students pieced together viable theories on why the Green Meanies were there.

"We were provided with a 'CIA' briefing talking about the suspicious landing that had taken place," Patel says. "We told the students they were going to be a part of very important research with Harvard and MIT, and that there were only a handful of kids worldwide who would have this opportunity."

read more >> http://www.thejournal.com/articles/22020

"RMB City" is a project in Second Life created by the 30 year old Beijing artist Cao Fei in March of 2008. Exploring the boundaries between virtual and physical worlds "RMB City" is a wry exploration of the correllation between the boom in Beijing's global real estate market and the parallel international growth of the Chinese contemporary art market. When exhibited in a gallery, the show is set up to look like a real-world real estate office for this virtual city. According to a review in the NYTimes this Second Life version of Beijing ''resembles the retro-futuristic metropolis of the Jetsons crossed with a modern-day Beijing. A smokestack belches flames, a statue of Chairman Mao salutes visitors, and a giant panda balloon floats overhead."

URL: http://rmbcity.com/

Documentation of "RMB City": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MhfATPZA0g

About Cao Fei: www.caofei.com

My blogging intention for this week is to close seminar with an open-ended fest of interactive topics that we may or may not have touched upon in class.



In the case of this article, Lev Manovich has also been Andreas Kratky's collaborator on a project called "Soft Cinema", which explores the concept of database narrative and the merging of software and cinema in general.

Lev Manovich - Database as a Genre of New Media

The Database Logic

After the novel, and subsequently cinema privileged narrative as the key form of cultural expression of the modern age, the computer age introduces its correlate - database. Many new media objects do not tell stories; they don't have beginning or end; in fact, they don't have any development, thematically, formally or otherwise which would organize their elements into a sequence. Instead, they are collections of individual items, where every item has the same significance as any other.

Why does new media favor database form over others? Can we explain its popularity by analyzing the specificity of the digital medium and of computer programming? What is the relationship between database and another form, which has traditionally dominated human culture - narrative?

read more >>http://vv.arts.ucla.edu/AI_Society/manovich.html

Time: Wednesday, December 3, 6-9pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC),
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Featuring Fall 08 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
-------BREAK-------
CTIN 532 Interactive Experience and World Design
CTIN 482 Designing Online Multiplayer Game Environments
CTIN 491 Advanced Game Projects
CTIN 534 Experiments in Interactivity I
CTIN 541 Design for Interactive Media

Plus bonus research presentations by IMD/ICT Immersive group, the new prototype for Participation Nation, and more....

Food and Drink will be provided starting at 5:45.

***SCHEDULE below*****

T-RACES: Testbed for the Redlining of Archives of California Exclusionary Spaces

The University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI), in collaboration with the School of Information and Library Science (SILS) at UNC Chapel Hill, will preserve, analyze, and make publicly accessible online documents relating to the practice of redlining neighborhoods in the 1930s and 1940s in eight California cities (redlining refers to the practice of flagging minority neighborhoods as undesirable for home loans.)

Redlining is a practice that started in the 1930s when the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB) asked Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) to create "residential security maps" to indicate the level of security for real-estate investments in different cities. These maps used color coding to indicate which areas were more or less desirable based on the demographics of that area. Neighborhoods that were "A" grade and considered most desirable had a Caucasian population. Those areas that were red were considered the least desirable for development because they had "subversive racial elements" (non-whites).

The T-RACES project is an online archive using GoogleMap and GoogleEarth to organize its informational interface around the notion of the neighborhood. It makes visible the relationship between data and segregation by making visible the racial lines drawn on our geographic space and opens up possibilities for collaborative scholarly work in digital humanities.

This project will go live in a couple of weeks and be available through Vectors Online Journal.

http://salt.diceresearch.org/T-RACES/demo/#

http://www.vectorsjournal.org/

Shilpa Phadke, Shilpa Ranade & Sameera Khan (India)
Collaborating with: University Scholars Programme Cyberart Studio

This was an interesting interactive piece featured at ISEA 2008 in Singapore. It explores questions of female subjectivity and public space in Mumbai.

Like Singapore, Mumbai is reputed to be one of the safest cities in the world for women, and yet through extensive research the artists have observed that this does not translate to an equal claim to public space. The act of loitering, 'hanging around' on the streets, for example, is still very much seen as an occupation exclusively for men. Women who appear to ‘purposelessly’ inhabit public space are looked upon with deep suspicion. Loitering is certainly not the act of a respectable woman. This artwork aims to question some of the underlying assumptions about public space and gender in both Singapore and Mumbai. The installation ironically gestures to the impossibility of loitering for women. It will be complemented by time-lapse video footage that explores the gendered inhabitation of public spaces in the two cities. Through the idea of loitering, the artwork asks questions about pleasure, risk, and citizenship.

Shilpa Phadke, Shilpa Ranade and Sameera Khan (India) have collaborated on a research project about women in public space, under the aegis of PUKAR, an inter-disciplinary urban research group based in Mumbai, India.

www.genderandspace.org

Discussion leader: Veronica Paredes
Time: Wednesday, November 19, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC),
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Discussion Title: "Technologies of Perception"
Tonight's seminar will focus on the toic of "Technologies of Perception" raised in the previous two seminar presentations by Jim Campbell and Perry Hoberman. Logs for the backchannel discussion can be reviewed on the respective talk announcements..

Readings for this discussion are:
1. Donald Hoffman, "Peeking Behind the Icons" from Visual Intelligence: How We Create What We See (1998).
2. George Lakoff interviewed by Iain A. Boal, "Body, Brain, and Communication" from Resisting the Virtual Life (1995).
3. Alva Noe, "Perspective in Content" from Action in Perception (2004).

Other recommended Readings are:
1. "Virtual Environments, Personal Simulators & Telepresence." by Fisher, Scott S. in Virtual Reality: Theory, Practice and Promise, S. Helsel and J.Roth, ed. , Meckler Publishing, 1991
2. "The Ultimate Display" by I E Sutherland (1965) Proceedings of IFIP Congress
3. "Amplified Smell" in The Inventions of Daedalus by David E. H. Jones (1982)

Speaker: Perry Hoberman, Associate Research Professor, Interactive Media Division
Time: Wednesday, November 12, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC),
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Bio: Perry Hoberman is an installation artist whose work has been exhibited widely throughout the United States and worldwide. He works with a variety of technologies, ranging from utterly obsolete to seasonably state-of-the-art. His installation "Timetable" was awarded the Grand Prix at the ICC Biennale '99 in Tokyo, and "Systems Maintenance" won a 1999 Prix Ars Electronica "Award of Distinction"."Unexpected Obstacles", a retrospective survey of his work, was exhibited during summer 1998 at the ZKM Mediamuseum in Karlsruhe, Germany, and before that at Gallery Otso in Espoo, Finland. Other recent works include "ZOMBIAC", exhibited at the Kiasma Museum in Helsinki, and "Workaholic", shown at the exhibition "Vision Ruhr" in Dortmund, Germany. His work has been featured in the "Future Cinema" exhibition at the ZKM Center for New Media in Karlsruhe. Hoberman has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards, and is both a 2002 Guggenheim Foundation Fellow and a 2002 Rockefeller Foundation Media Art Fellow. He is represented by Postmasters Gallery in New York.

BACKCHANNEL LOG from presentation: Download file

This is not new, but impressed me a lot since I read it through a blog. The main reason is the designer said he wanted to expend this work into the whole city. Treat the architectures of New York as the interface, allow people to interact with the little characters, or to tell their own stories through the interface.

From Villagypsy. Moving surface--Ariel Efron.

For my casually timed final post on innovation, I offer this:




Stick entered into Toy Hall of Fame - Boing Boing

"It's very open-ended, all-natural, the perfect price -- there aren't any rules or instructions for its use," said Christopher Bensch, the museum's curator of collections.

"This toy is so fantastic that it's not just for humans anymore. You can find otters, chimps and dogs -- especially dogs -- playing with it."

This is an interactive recipe table from Taiwan. It is part of their high quality life and smart home project. The idea is simple and direct while very useful.

There are projects attempt to enhance the relationships in family, especially, kids and other members. As far as I know a few software are trying to achieve this goal. Some others make use of objects in our daily-use, for example, table.

Several days ago I saw this picture with the title of "A playground under the table", and felt it is indeed a thoughtful idea for kids.

Mirror reflects honestly what are in front of it. By itself it is still and no surprise could be expected(except for the Magic Mirror). However, be they together, some interactivity could occur.

Audience is an installation that is consisted of 64 mirrors, conceived by rAndom International. The mirrors would chase someone they find interesting by turning their heads towards them and following them.

Audience from Chris O'Shea on Vimeo.

Relevant History: Reflections on tinkering

This is an excellent blog post by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, discussing the nature, meaning, and importance of tinkering. In addition to its own great content, the article is bristling with tasty links.

Some favorite quotes from the article:

The fact that you're forbidden from opening a box, that some software companies insist that you're just renting their products, and that hardware makers intentionally cripple their devices, is a challenge to hackers and tinkerers.

The fundamental assumption that users can do cool, worthwhile, inspiring, innovative things is a huge driver. Tinkering is partly an answer to the traditional assumption that people who buy things are "consumers"-- passive, thoughtless, and reactive, people whose needs are not only served by companies, but are defined by them as well. When you tinker, you don't just take control of your stuff; you begin to take control of yourself.

Tinkering is a way of investing new meanings in things, or creating objects that mean something: by putting yourself into a device, or customizing it to better suit your needs, you're making that thing more meaningful.

Speaker: Jim Campbell
Date: Wednesday, November 5
Time and Locations:
5-6:30pm Visions & Voices Lecture @ USC Fisher Museum of Art, University Park Campus (MAP)
7-8pm Informal Q&A @ ZML (Optional but food and drink will be provided).

Originally trained as a mathematician and electrical engineer, Campbell started to make interactive work in video and with electronic components in the late 1980s. In his work in “Phantasmagoria,” Campbell explores the limits of legibility by employing electronic systems in which the image is converted to its basic elements, demonstrating that both eye and brain tend to supply the missing information.

A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with degrees in electrical engineering and mathematics, Campbell has virtually no formal training as an artist. His art apprenticeship consisted of repairing video equipment and, later, designing integrated circuits for video in Silicon Valley. But at a time when many artists who want to create technologically-based art seek a partner who knows the electronics and will leave the creativity to them, Campbell is a whole different thing — a technocrat who discovered early on that he has an artist’s soul.

Website: http://www.jimcampbell.tv/
Suggested Readings: "Delusions of Dialogue: Control and Choice in Interactive Art" and also here as pdf from Leonardo.
"Electronic Time: the Memory Machines of Jim Campbell." Afterimage, November/December 1997. by Marita Sturken.

Living Skins: Architecture as interface



An article by Peter Hall which surveys interactive architecture projects, from computer-controlled window lights to breathing walls.

In this presentation, Google CIO Douglas Merrill talks about various types of innovation, with Google-specific examples, as well was how innovation factors into an overall business plan.

He defines three categories of innovation: incremental innovations (small changes), incremental innovations with side-effects (small changes with huge impacts, such as the evolution of the opposable thumb), and transformational innovations (those which change the playing field completely). A bit long, but well worth watching.

Bill

Google has just completed phase 1 of their Project 10 to the 100th, "a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible." Idea submission has just ended (sorry!), but you can still vote for your favorite ideas starting January 27. Here's the gist: the general public submits their ideas, Google evaluates them for maximum public benefit, and then Google funds them ($10 million dedicated in total).

All of this is great, if you implicitly trust very large companies. Criticism after the jump...

Discussion leader: Kristy Kang
Time: Wednesday, October 29, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC),
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Discussion Title: "Paradigms of Innovation"
Tonight's seminar will focus on the various approaches to innovation raised in the previous two seminar presentations by Tracy Fullerton and Paul Yarin. Logs for the backchannel discussion can be reviewed on the respective talk announcements and IMD wiki.

Readings for this discussion are:
1. Clayton Christiansen, "The Innovator's Solution (intro)."
2. John Seely Brown, "Introduction: Rethinking Innovation in a Changing World."
3. John Seely Brown, "The Debriefing"

Other recommended Readings are:
1. "Innovation", WIkipedia.
2. "50 Greatest Game Innovations", Business Week, 11/5/07

BACKCHANNEL LOG: Download file

Speaker: Paul Yarin, Blackdust Design
Time: Wednesday, October 22, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC),
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Paul Yarin, founder of Blackdust Design, is a consultant in the fields of interactive media, product design, and technology research. Paul’s experience spans both research and industrial projects, many of which have been developed into real products. His focus is the rapid application of new technologies to challenging design problems. While a student in the MIT Media Lab’s Tangible Media Group, Paul developed embedded displays for visualizing patterns of use of physical objects and spaces. This effort made use of networked microcontrollers, radio-frequency identification, and rapid prototyping technologies. The research system, TouchCounters, was presented at the 1999 and 2000 CHI conferences. Before attending MIT, Paul earned a Master's in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University.

Paul's ACM publications here.

BACKCHANNEL LOG: Download file

Wii Music is an upcoming music video game for the Wii that simulates playing musical instruments using the Wii Remote. The game is part of Nintendo's Wii Series, which includes Wii Sports, Wii Play , Wii Fit and Wii Chess. Wii Music was originally suggested as a launch title, but no new information regarding the game or a release date had been given, except for an unspecific 2008 release for Japan. Shigeru Miyamoto also re-confirmed in July 2007 that Wii Music would be released in 2008, preferring to currently focus on Super Mario Galaxy and Wii Fit instead of trying to develop all three games at once.

Several days after the TGS 2008, the result of the Japan Game Awards 2008 Future Division was finally released. How many of them have you ever heard of?
http://awards.cesa.or.jp/prize02.html

[Titel, Platform, Company]

Idol Master SP Perfect Sun/Wondering Star/Missing Moon, PSP, BANDAI・NAMCO
http://namco-ch.net/idolmaster_portal/index.php

Famitsu, the most influential game magazine in Japan, has an official scoring system for video games. Video games are graded in Famitsu by a panel of four video game reviewers. Each reviewer gives a score from one to ten (ten being best). The scores of the four reviewers are then added up with a possible score of forty.

Today, Famitsu has just released next week's new games scoring. With one of the historicly lowest scores of 12 (3 3 3 3), Pro Golfer Saru(プロゴルファー猿)has become a new member of the Kosuge family("Kusoge" is the Japanese-style abbr. for Kuso Game, which means "crap games").

REXplorer is a mobile, pervasive spell-casting game designed for tourists of Regensburg, Germany. The game creates player encounters with spirits (historical figures) that are associated with significant buildings in an urban setting. A novel mobile interaction mechanism of “casting a spell” (making a gesture by waving a mobile phone through the air) allows the player to awaken and communicate with a spirit to continue playing the game. The game is designed to inform visitors about history in a fun manner. The results of a formative evaluation are explored to inform the design of future serious pervasive games.

For further reading of this article:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/132757j14k9p5677/

The Tokyo Game Show 2008 (TGS 2008) just ended yesterday, and the Japan Game Awards 2008 “Games of the Year Division” Award Winners were chosen on October 10th. Below is the list of the award winners (http://awards.cesa.or.jp/english/press_081009n.html):

Games of the Year Division Award Winners
(Title, Platform, Company)

Awards
Wii Fit, Wii, Nintendo Co., Ltd.
MONSTER HUNTER PORTABLE 2nd G, PSP, CAPCOM CO., LTD.

Award for excellence
Wii Fit, Wii, Nintendo Co., Ltd.
Super Mario Galaxy, Wii, Nintendo Co., Ltd.
Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Wii, Nintendo Co., Ltd.
Devil May Cry® 4, PS3/Xbox360/PC, CAPCOM CO., LTD.
DRAGON QUEST IV The Chapters of the Chosen, DS, SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD.
Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time / Explorers of Darkness, DS, The Pokémon Company
Mario Party DS, DS, Nintendo Co.,Ltd.
MONSTER HUNTER PORTABLE 2nd G, PSP, CAPCOM CO., LTD.
RYU GA GOTOKU KENZAN!, PS3, SEGA Corporation
Professor Layton and the Devil’s Box（tentative title）, DS LEVEL-5 Inc.
WORLD SOCCER Winning Eleven 2008, PS2/PS3/Xbox360, Konami Digital Entertainment Co. Ltd.

Speaker: Tracy Fullerton, Associate Professor, Interactive Media Division and Director, EA Game Innovation Lab
Time: Wednesday, October 15, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC),
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)


Title: " The Ghost of Innovation Past"

Bio: Associate Professor of Interactive Media at USC and Director of the EA Game Innovation Lab. Tracy is co-author of Game Design Workshop, a design textbook now in use worldwide. She designed The Night Journey a unique game/art project with artist Bill Viola, and Liberty Under the Law, a collaboration with Activision and KCET funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. She was faculty advisor for the award-winning student games Cloud and flOw. Prior to joining USC, she was president and founder of the interactive television game developer, Spiderdance, Inc. Spiderdance’s games included NBC’s Weakest Link, MTV’s webRIOT, The WB’s No Boundaries, History Channel’s History IQ, Sony Game Show Network’s Inquizition and TBS’s Cyber Bond. Her work has received numerous industry honors including an Emmy nomination for interactive television and Time Magazine’s "Best of the Web."


BACKCHANNEL LOG: Download file

There are some big events going on in the industry. Kotaku has a link to its articles for BlizzCon. Since Diablo and Starcraft are two of my favorite games, I'm wishing I had some tickets. I heard that some IMD'ers managed to grab some, and it would be interesting to hear their thoughts.

The other one is the Tokyo Game Show, again summed up by Kotaku. I know a few of our students will be showing their work there which is quite impressive.

Back at the University of Rochester I was fortunate enough to work with the synchronization group doing some research. It is quite a sharp and distinguished group. Professor Michael Scott, our fearless leader, is one of the creators of the first software lock implementations still used today. Here is a link to his acceptance speech for the Dijkstra Prize for that work.

The results of my research would eventually be included in a conference paper. Continue reading for more info a link to the paper.

SEE Toys are environmentally safe electronic toys that never need batteries. They're powered by a hand crank that generates light and sound. With nearly all the best-selling toys running on batteries or an electrical outlet, it's worth noting that SEE Toys are one of the only kid-powered electronic toys available.

SEE Toys

In case you haven't already checked out past IGF winner "Crayon Physics," you should.



The technology at the heart of this game is free and it is called "Box 2d." Unfortunately the presentation of this piece of software may prevent a lot IMD'ers from realizing the inherent fun in physics.

With all our talk about photo real rendering, and the uncanny valley we seem to have missed this bizzare manifestation of our cultural desires for "real fakes." Real Dolls and now, Real Babies are a growing phenomena. They are inanimate, but extremely life-like figures of grown women and babies that people buy to, essentially, take the place of a real person in their life. Men describe having very real emotional relationships to the dolls, and women describe experiencing the same emotional attachment to the babies.

The question we need to deal with is not how to creat "real" renderings of people and places for our entertainment media, but what happens when we do? Seemingly sane, normal people are leaving the tv on for the roomba, and let Pleo tug at their heartstrings, but what happens when these smart toys take on a human shape?

http://www.bbcamerica.com/content/245/index.jsp

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26970782/

Spykee is a toy spy robot built for surveillance. He wanders around recording photos and video to report back to its owner. Notice Spykee Miss, in pink, has different capabilities than the other Spykees.

http://www.spykee.org/

Discussion leader: Professor Anne Balsamo
Time: Wednesday, October 8, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC),
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Discussion Title: "Smart Toys, Things that Think, and Evocative Knowledge Objects"
Tonight's seminar will focus on the topic of things-that-think and things-that-help-us-think raised in the previous two seminar presentations by Steve Anderson and John Sosoka & Caleb Chung. Logs for the backchannel discussion can be reviewed on the respective talk announcements.

Readings for this discussion are:
1. The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman.
2. "Behold the Toys of Tomorrow", David Shenk in the Atlantic.

Other recommended Readings are:
1. When Things Start to Think by Neil Gershenfeld
2. " I, Pleo" , Interview with Caleb Chung in Maker
3."Boundary Objects, Please Rise! On the role of boundary objects in distributed collaboration and how to design for them." Ellen Christiansen
4. "The Role of Objects in Design Co-Operation: communication through Physical or Virtual Objects.", Claudia Eckert and Jean-Francois Boujut,
5. Shaping Things by Bruce Sterling (Spimes!)

While I was working on the LEGO project I came across the following company:

http://www.seriousplay.com/

"LEGO SERIOUS PLAY uses LEGO bricks and elements and a unique method where people are empowered to "think through their fingers"

Here was an interesting TV moment where the Pleo joins the ranks of Hollywood celeb and gets interviewed by Letterman and a Monster truck.

Gizmodo:http://gizmodo.com/5029130/letterman-mows-down-a-pleo-with-a-1000-rc-monster-truck

Speaker: John Sosoka, CTO, UGOBE
Time: Wednesday, October 1, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC),
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Title: "Lifeforms: exploring a new medium"
"Ugobe transforms the relationship humans have with technology by giving machines a soul. We are the first company to transform the relationship between humans and robots by blending emotions and personality with logic in machines... Our first product is Pleo, the robotic baby dinosaur."

Bio: John Sosoka brings inspired ideas to life at UGOBE and heads the technological innovation at the company. Recently he co-founded and was CTO at Neurosmith. Under Sosoka's technical leadership, this educational technology toy company grew to $12M in sales and won almost every major toy industry award including the "Most Innovative Toy Of The Year" (TOTY). In 2003, Neurosmith was acquired by Small World Toys. Prior to Neurosmith, Sosoka held senior executive positions at Davidson & Associates, Emerson Technologies and the Technology Application Group.

BACKCHANNEL LOG: Download file

(Wordle by S.Anderson)

Speaker: Steve Anderson, Asst. Professor, Interactive Media Division; Director of iMAP
Time: Wednesday, September 24, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC),
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Title: "Evocative Knowledge Objects and The War Between Theory and Practice"

Abstract:
Coined by Rich Gold in his book "The Plenitude," the concept of evocative knowledge objects may be mobilized across a wildly diverse range of theoretical and practical pursuits. This presentation considers a range of "objects" -- a term that is also here broadly conceived to include such things as a virtual environment, a media database, an electronic journal and an experimental graduate program -- as tools to think with. How does our engagement -- dare I say immersion? -- in contemporary cultures of media and technology affect our most basic ways of thinking, knowing and being in the world?

Bio: http://iml.usc.edu/remix/anderson/

BACKCHANNEL LOG from Seminar: Download text file or Download HTML

CTIN 511 Schedule Fall 08

Here's an updated schedule for CTIN 511: Download file

This week, the IMD blog will be guest curated by Brandi Wilcox and Sean Plott. Thanks to Cynthia Nie and Emily Duff for last week's posts.

(Wordle by S.Anderson)

Discussion leader: Jen Stein with help from Nahil Sharkasi and Bill Graner
Time: Wednesday, September 17, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC),
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Discussion Title: "Define Immersion..."

Tonight's seminar will focus on concepts of immersion raised in the previous two seminar presentations by Mark Bolas and Scott Fisher. Logs for the backchannel discussion can be reviewed on the respective talk announcements.

These points of view will be discussed in relation to the "Immersive Fallacy" presented by Zimmerman and Salen in Rules of Play, (pp. 450-458). Please read this article

Other important readings:
- The Virtual Reality Experience, in Understanding Virtual Reality, pp. 381-398

- A Grounded Investigation of Game Immersion, Emily Brown and Paul Cairns University College London Interaction Centre (UCLIC)

- Player Immersion in the Computer Game Narrative, Hua Qin, Pei-Luen Patrick Rau1, and Gavriel Salvendy
(can be downloaded from on-campus network or vpn)

- Multisensory immersion as a modeling environment for learning complex scientific concepts, Dede, C., Salzman, M., Loftin, B., & Sprague, D.

BACKCHANNEL LOG from seminar: Download file

Video summary of discussion by Brandi Wilcox and Sean Plott:

Speaker: Scott Fisher, Interactive Media Division
Time: Wednesday, September 10, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC),
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Title: "Immersion, Context & Presence"

BACKCHANNEL LOG of seminar: Download file

This week, the IMD blog will be guest curated by Cynthia Nie and Emily Duff.
Thanks to Diane Tucker for her excellent posts and insights last week...keep'em coming.

Two former editors at Electronic Gaming Monthly have begun writing a blog about what happens behind the scenes in the game journalism: the techniques publishers use to get good previews and reviews, the punishments they inflict on those who attempt to stay free of their influence etc. Encouraging, in my view, is their opening the blog to voices representing the other side: PR/marketing people from big game companies articulating companies' points of view (eg: "ought we not do SOMEthing to defend good work against trashing by journalists too lazy to play more than 2 levels of a 20 level game?)

It's early days -- too early to know how interesting this blog will ultimately be; but these first signs of an effort to bring transparency to game journalism and to look at the manipulations by both sides are encouraging.

http://sorethumbsblog.com/

The following seems an interesting response to two trends: 1) some people's predictions that "funware" -- applications that add a game component to a quotidian, (non-game) exchange -- will hold increasing importance in many markets in the near future; and 2) the fact that exergaming (ddr, etc) often seems the game world's dominant contribution to the fight against obesity.

A friend of mine recently slimmed down on Weight Watchers. She joined two months ago, and in just a couple of weeks, she'd shed 10 pounds. She'd been trying for a year to lose weight, but nothing worked -- until now.

Why did Weight Watchers work so well? For a really fascinating reason: because it isn't a normal diet. It's something more. Something fun.

It's an RPG.

The Weight Watchers program is designed precisely like a role-playing dungeon crawler. That's why people love it, stick to it and have success with it. And it points to the way that we could use game design to make life's drudgery more bearable.
http://www.wired.com/gaming/virtualworlds/commentary/games/2008/08/gamesfrontiers_0811

An event that might be of interest to some:

A Speech Recognition Sing-along

Lecture by Joe Tepperman
Performance by Mooey Moobau

8pm Friday September 5th, 2008

Everyone seems to hate automatic speech recognition. Either it keeps us from telling an actual person that we need our water turned back on, or it dials Mom when we’re trying to call Molly. It is no wonder most musicians and spoken-word poets have no idea about the huge potential for speech technology to be used in their work. Joe Tepperman will talk about some of the ways we can apply speech recognition, speech synthesis, and linguistic theories to music, followed by a performance by his alter ego, Mooey Moobau.

Free!

Machine Project

1200 D North Alvarado Street
Los Angeles, CA 90026
213-483-8761

http://machineproject.com/2008/08/23/sing-along

For those who bewail the narrow frame in which games (and what benefits/insights they might offer) are traditionally viewed, the following article about Spore -- from the Science section of the NYT -- might be of interest. In my view, most interesting is the reference to the dynamic, complex interchange in which gaming, math, and evolutionary biology/paleontology have been engaged for some time.

The article explains that some of "mathematicians' most important insights" -- insights that have been fundamental to transforming the study of evolution into a rigorous science -- "have come from treating evolution like a giant game". It also includes paleontologists' remarks about what beliefs (good and bad) about evolution that Spore players might absorb as a result of playing the game.

It reminds readers that, on Tuesday, 9 September, a documentary on Spore in which Will Wright and evolutionary biologists discuss both the game and the evolution of complex life, will be broadcast on the National Geographic Channel.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/02/science/02spor.html?pagewanted=1&em

Speaker: Mark Bolas, Assoc. Professor, Interactive Media Division & Director, Mixed Reality Lab, Institute for Creative Technologies.
Time: Wednesday, September 3, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC),
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Title: "Growing the Medium"
Abstract: Mark will discuss his work to create a design vocabulary for the multi-faceted medium called VR.

BACKCHANNEL LOG for class (partial): Download file

Video summary of presentation by Susana Ruiz and Jeff Watson:

REVISED 511 Student Pairing Assignments

511 Student Pairing Assignments

Week 2
Intro: Diab (2) + Bouchard (1)
Blog: Van Dyke (2) + Tucker (1)
Video: Ruiz (2) + Watson (1)

Week 3
Intro: Sharkasi (2) + Graner (1)
Blog: Nie (2) + Duff (1)
Video: Dallas (2) + Fenton (1)

Week 4
Intro: Stein (2)
Blog: Wilcox (2) + Plott (1)

Week 5
Intro: Paredes (2) + Ponce (1)
Blog: Jaycox (2) + Swensen (1)
Video: Cao (2) + Olsen (1)

Week 6
Intro: Kang (2) + Chen (1)
Blog: Dallas (2) + Yasuda (1)
Video: Van Dyke (2) + Duff (1)

Week 7
Intro: Anne
Blog: Sharkasi (2) + Silverman (1)

Week 8
Intro: Stein (2) + Taylor (1)
Blog: Paredes (2) + Chen (1)
Video: Ryu (2) + Swensen (1)

Week 9
Intro: Cao (2) + Fenton (1)
Blog: Diab (2) + Olsen (1)
Video: Nie (2) + Taylor (1)

Week 10
Intro: Kristy
Blog: Ryu (2) + Graner (1)

Week 11
Intro: Jaycox (2) + Tucker (1)
Blog: Cao (2) + Ponce (1)
Video: Wilcox (2) + Plott (1)

Week 12
Intro: Ryu (2) + Watson (1)
Blog: Stein (2) + Yasuda (1)
Video: Jaycox (2) + Silverman (1)

Week 13
Intro: Paredes (2)
Blog: Kang (2)

CTIN 511 Syllabus

CTIN 511 Schedule