Anne Balsamo

Speaker: Simon Penny, Professor of Arts and Engineering, UCI

Time: Wednesday, February 10, 6-8 pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Designing Embodied Interaction: Aesthetic, Technical and Theoretical Issues

Please join us for a talk by Professor Simon Penny, who is an artist, engineer, and designer of mixed reality installations. For more than two decades, Penny has pursued the simultaneous development of Interactive Artworks and the design and construction of technologies for Embodied Interaction, utilising Machine Vision and Robotics technologies. This work involves fundamental technical R+D directed by a radically Interdisciplinary negotiation of Artistic goals and sensibilities with Engineering realities, informed by emerging Cognitive Science research and a Phenomenological critique. The talk will take video documentation of three major works (Petit Mal, 1993-5, Traces, 1997-9, and Fugitive II, 2000-2004) as starting points for the discussion.

Posted by Anne Balsamo at 2:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Speaker: Professor Milind Tambe

Time: Wednesday, February 3, 6-8 pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Multiagent systems: Lessons learned from putting theory into practice

Milind Tambe
Teamcore research group
http://teamcore.usc.edu/tambe
http://teamcore.usc.edu

How do we build multiagent systems? Today, within the agents and multiagent systems community, we see four main approaches: logic-based belief-desire-intention (BDI), decision- theory and its incarnation in distributed markov decision problems (distributed MDPs or POMDPs), distributed constraint optimization (DCOPs) and finally, auctions or game-theoretic approaches. I will begin my presentation by providing some historical context of the field of agents and multiagent systems and an overview of these approaches.

In general, while there is exciting progress in this research, we still lack sufficient testing of our theories in complex multiagent domains, to evaluate their promised strengths and uncover unanticipated limitations. In this context, I will outline lessons learned in the Teamcore group's recent efforts to transition theory into practice. I will focus in particular on research based on game-theory for randomizing plans for security applications and to avoid predictability that may be exploited by an opponent. Our algorithms are at the heart of ARMOR, a software scheduler that randomizes police checkpoints and canine patrols, deployed at the Los Angeles International Airport since August 2007. Our algorithms are also in use by the Federal Air Marshal Service for scheduling air marshals on limited sectors of international flights; and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is evaluating these algorithms for maintaining airport security at Pittsburgh and LAX airports towards possible large-scale deployments. I will also briefly discuss our research on DCOPs and their application to mobile sensor nets, and outline some recent research thrusts including multiagent-based evacuation simulation.

Posted by Anne Balsamo at 12:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Speaker: Neil Leach, USC, School of Architecture

Time: Wednesday, January 27, 6-8 pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Please join us for a presentation by Professor Neil Leach titled: "Swarm Urbanism."

In his book, Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Cities and Software, Steven Johnson presents the city as a manifestation of emergence. The city operates as a dynamic, adaptive system, based on interactions with neighbours, informational feedback loops, pattern recognition and indirect control. "Like any emergent system’, notes Johnson, ‘the city is a pattern in time." Moreover, like any other population composed of a large number of smaller discrete elements, such as colonies of ants, flocks of birds, networks of neurons or even the global economy, it displays a bottom-up collective intelligence that is more sophisticated than the behavior of its parts. In short, the city operates through a form of "swarm intelligence. . . . Importantly, Johnson extends the principle of emergence to the operations of certain software programmes. If cities and software programmes display a similar emergent logic, how might we make use of digital technologies to model a city?"

For some years now we have been using digital technologies to design buildings, from the use of standard drafting packages to more experimental use of generative design tools and parametric modeling. But how can we use digital technologies to design urbanism? This lecture explores the logic of ‘swarm intelligence’. This is the theory that multi-agent systems of various kinds - from flocks of birds and shoals of fish to neural networks, software programmes and even cities themselves - all begin to display similar forms of behaviour. How then can we use software programmes to generate urban design proposals according to the logic of ‘swarm intelligence’?

Posted by Anne Balsamo at 10:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Speaker: Mark Allen, Machine Project

Time: Wednesday, January 20, 6-8 pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Mark Allen is an artist, educator and curator based in Los Angeles. He
is the founder and executive director of Machine Project, a non-profit performance and installation space investigating art, technology,
natural history, science, music, literature, and food. Machine
presents events, workshops, and site-specific installations using
hands-on engagement to make rarefied knowledge accessible. Beyond
their storefront space, Machine Project operates as a loose
confederacy of artists producing shows at locations ranging from the
Santa Monica beach to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Posted by Anne Balsamo at 10:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Speaker: Jesper Juul, New York Game Center

Time: Wednesday, January 13, 6-8 pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

The Rise of Casual Games

It seems like only yesterday that video games were considered the province of males between 12 and 35. Yet with the launch of the Nintendo Wii, with the proliferation of casual games in browsers, with music games and cell phone games, video games seem to have broken out of their cultural niche. In this talk I will present a short history of the rise of casual games, and discuss its implications for game developers, player, and for the future of video games.
 

Jesper Juul has been working with the development of video game theory since the late 1990's. He is a visiting arts professor at the NYU Game Center, but has previously worked at the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Lab at MIT and at the IT University of Copenhagen. His book Half-Real on video game theory was published by MIT press in 2005. His recently published book, A Casual Revolution, examines how puzzle games, music games, and the Nintendo Wii are bringing video games to a new audience. He maintains the blog The Ludologist on "game research and other important things".

Posted by Anne Balsamo at 3:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Happy New Year!

We have an inspiring list of speakers for the Spring 2010 IMD weekly Forum.

Time: Wednesdays, 6-8 pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

(NOTE: Location changes will be announced on a weekly basis)

Jan 13: Jesper Juul, New York University Game Center

Jan 20: Mark Allen, Los Angeles, Machine Project

Jan 27: TBD

Feb 3: Milind Tembe, USC, School of Engineering

Feb 10: Simon Penny, UC Irvine, ACE Program

Feb 17: Casey Reas, UCLA, DMA Program

Feb 24: Neil Leach, USC, Architecture

Mar 3: Norman Hollyn, USC, SCA

Mar 10: NO SEMINAR WEEK of GDC

Mar 17: Spring Break

Mar 24: Alan Gershenfeld, E-Line Ventures

Mar 31: IMD Student (1-Week) Projects

Apr 7: Henry Jenkins, USC, SCA and Annenberg

Apr 14: TBD

Apr 21: TBD

Apr 28: Final Student presentations

Posted by Anne Balsamo at 3:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Presentations by Students in IMD Classes

Time: Wednesday, December 2, 6-9 pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

NOTE: We will have food and drinks. The session will run until 9:00 pm.

Please join us for the annual IMD Winter Showcase featuring student projects from the following classes:

CTIN 464: Game Studies Seminar (Brinson)
CTIN 484/489: Intermediate Game Design Workshop (Brinson/Fullterton/Gibson)
CTIN 488: Game Design Workshop (Gibson)
CTIN 491a: Advanced Game Project (Swain)
CTIN 482: Designing On-line Multiplayer Game Environments (Kim/Huber)
CTIN 532: Interactive Experience and World Design (Anderson/Brinson)
CTIN 534: Experiments in Interactivity (Kratky)
CTIN 541: Design for Interactive Media (Fullerton)
CTIN 499: Immersive Moviemaking (Underkoffler/McDowell)

The Finale will present a sample of Student Independent Games!!

Posted by Anne Balsamo at 10:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Speaker: Tamiko Thiel, Artist

Time: Wednesday, November 18, 6-8 pm
Location: Goethe-Institut Los Angeles
5750 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 100
Los Angeles, CA 90036

NOTE: The off-campus location for this seminar. If you a an IMD student who needs a ride to the Goethe-Institut, contact Professor Anne Balsamo.

Tamiko Thiel will discuss the creation of Virtuelle Mauer/ReConstructing the Wall that she created with collaborator Teresa Reuter. This interactive 3D virtual reality art work investigates the impact of the Berlin Wall, which divided West and East Berlin during the Cold War from August 13, 1961 to November 9, 1989. A digital reconstruction of a segment of the dismantled Berlin Wall and its surrounding neighborhoods creates a place of rememberance that users can explore in order to to experience and reflect on this historical time.

To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall, the Goethe-Institut in Los Angeles is staging the installation from November 20-December 3, 2009.

Official Opening: Thursday November 19, 6-9pm
Exhibit: November 20 - December 3, 2009

Goethe-Institut Los Angeles
5750 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 100
Los Angeles, CA 90036, USA
http://www.goethe.de/ins/us/los/kue/en4872732v.htm

For images from this interactive 3D installation on the Berlin Wall see:
http://www.virtuelle-mauer-berlin.de/english/devFiles/screenshots.htm

Posted by Anne Balsamo at 9:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Speaker: Sha Xin Wei, Topological Media Lab, Concordia University

Time: Wednesday, November 11, 6-8 pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Professor Sha Xin Wei holds a Canadian Research Chair in Media Arts and Sciences; He is also an Associate Professor of Fine Arts and Computer Science At Concordia University in Montreal. The Topological Media Lab (TML) is a studio-laboratory for the study of gesture and materiality from computational and phenomenological perspectives. His talk will present examples of research/art projects that have been developed at the TML over the past decade. These projects include the TGarden responsive environment, Hubbub speech-sensitive urban surfaces, Membrane calligraphic video, and softwear gestural sound instruments.

Posted by Anne Balsamo at 3:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Speaker: Mark Bolas, Associate Professor, Interactive Media Division, SCA

Time: Wednesday, November 4, 6-8 pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Please join us at the IMD seminar this week for a presentation by IMD Professor Mark Bolas. He also serves as the director of Graphics Lab at USC's Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT). Professor Bolas' research explores perception, agency, and intelligence; he creates virtual environments that are designed to engage one’s perception and cognition to create a visceral memory of the experience. His work has been exhibited in many venues including six Emerging Technology exhibits at Siggraph. In 1988, Bolas co-founded Fakespace Inc. with Ian McDowall and Eric Lorimer to build instrumentation for research labs to explore virtual reality.

Posted by Anne Balsamo at 1:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)