Stephen E. Dinehart's IMD Blog

After some hard working networking over the past year, I began my internship at WB Interactive Entertainment this week. It has been a blast. I’ve already learned so much, and am working on 5 titles due out first and second quarter of next year. I had a conversation with Jason Hall today, creator of Monolith, and head of the WBIE division, and I have to say I was deeply inspired. I love this job. If I were getting paid it would be a dream job. I can’t talk about most of what I do thanks to those handy Nondisclosure Agreements I signed, but I’m very excited. I feel like for the first time I get to see production of new media from a top down perspective. Frankly it gives me goose bumps!

I also am lucky enough to offer up an additional internship to the department. I was asked if I could find someone with and interest in MMORPGs to work on the Matrix Online series. If anyone is interested in the opportunity let me know!

I’ve been in the habit recently of taking my time to do some post-post-post (is that enough?) automatist surrealism on the asphalt outside my apartment. I find it so very relaxing and expressive. I love the temporary nature of it as well. Featured above is my nephew Danny Beeman drawing blue flames on a fire truck we created together last time I was home.

Here is the track I created for the 12 screen DIM presentation. It is in a Quicktime format. Please let me know what you think, 2nd years I’m looking at you!

Mind you if your audio monitors do not have much dynamic range, due to the nature of this composition you will not hear the complete dynamic range of the audio file, i.e. high and low freqs.
Therein I wouild ask you pass judgement after a listen on a good audio system!

Download DIM_presentation_audio file

***UPDATE***
I was up late remixing the composition here is a link to the file
Download DIM_presentation_audio2 file

I miss my dog.

I created the simplest example of interactivity I could think of. As we discussed in class three assumed states of interaction are 1) input 2) computation 3) output, this will usually continue in some sort of chaotic loop we call conversation. The core then to me is the interaction of intelligent agents, be they people or program. Programs can’t really match to what A.I. fanatics might imagine, while jumping forward in leaps and bounds, it still remains a long day off from nearing the complexity of the human mind. Computation on a human level is the so interesting and unpredictable. So I would create a system to amplify the cold nature of computer computation when compared to our own perceptual computation abilities (or disabilities).

Three players are given a set of six numbers. The players create an arbitrary turn order, and, beginning with player 1, list their first number, next round second, etc. When at any time they hear another player state a digit contained in their set, the must call aloud the number it is contained in, this action continues outside the list in order by the players of their numbers.

We tried this piece in class as well, while the level of aptitude of the players was low, I think the kind of organic chorus of numbers I wanted did come through if only for a moment. I imagine with time the players would, as with any system, get more skilled and be able to play within the system with greater aptitude.

Saturday, August 14, 2004, Madision, WI
Best of the Midwest Beer Festival

Pulletry is an interactive video poetry performance. The primary control being a series of strings with cut-up poetry attached to the end. The user is prompted to pull the strings and invoke the words written on the tag as they pull. An audio/video expression of the words will then play on the screen.

The user has the ability to remix and readapt the words, aural and visual to create their own stories, impressions. The end is open.

I did a basic version of this project using an M-Audio Ozone MIDI controller, my PowerBook G4, and Arkaos Carbon 2.2, and the projectors in the ZML. I have to say I was pleased with the results. Kellee read aloud my poetry as she remixed it, her remix and intonation lent to a new expression I could not create on my own. My favorite part was encouraging performance, and creating a system for it that you could get people to use. It breaks them out of their voyeuristic shells to become engaged with a sense of agency in the moment.

It takes me 1:30 to 2:00 hours each way to WB from my place. I take the Metro 204 Bus up Vermont to Wilshire, jump the redline to Hollywood/Vine, then catch the 163 Bus. Public transport is so diverse in color and creed I adore it and the people I encounter. Cool thing is it takes me just about right to the door of the WB Interactive Entertainment Offices. Sometimes while sitting at my desk I wonder how I got there, what fortune shined upon me?

WBIE is a great place, I’m lucky to be interning there. Everyday I’m there I absorb more information and everyone seems ready to share their knowledge. I learned a great deal today reviewing a first playable of an x-box title I’m working on. I had to review the A.I. systems, and provide feedback to the developer for changes to be implemented prior to an Alpha build. It is so compelling to apply the game theory, I learned in Tracy’s class last spring, to games in production.

I had a very exciting discussion this afternoon with the producer of Matrix games. I was interested to hear about his thoughts about the future of the game/cinema convergence. I’ve been thinking about this for a while, WBIE feeds my curiosity. I’m going to make the focus of my thesis, and my intern class paper, this game/cinema convergence. I want to create a single pipeline and production team for the development of a world and story that exist in both game and cinema. I will execute a playable/viewable POC this year with a smaller team aiming for a may deadline. In my final year I will create a more grand effort in the production of a short film/game as my thesis project.

Pulletry is a interactive visualwordsound (VWS) expression, that incorporates user performance and fragmented poetic remxing. An installation intended for gallery spaces, Pulletry is an immersive emergent poetic experience system. It provides the invested interacter with limited agency through selection and improvised performance.

It consists of cut of poetry hanging from stings in front of a concave screen with stereo speakers mounted on either side. The interacter is prompted to step up and begin to pull the stings, reading the poetry aloud as they go. As they pull both the concave screen, and a ceiling mounted projector aimed at the user, will light up with a audio/visual time-based expression. As the user selects and pulls the strings, releasing the VWS elements, the user remixes, remediates a VWS language of my own creation. They will lend new meaning to my expression system, creating their own VWS expressive performance.

For me it is a method of allowing my VWS expression to become a tool or toy, be it as it may, for the interacter to express themselves with fragments of my own VWS poem. Use of the system inherently demands performance, which to me is a great method of trying to get people to break out their shells, their self-imposed limited real world agency, and realize the infinite possibilities real-world applied agency.

LOL

Sitting here pirating wi-fi from a neighbor’s unsecured network, listening to the unsettled sounds of a nighttime complex, I wonder what this day has brought me.

This blog, this fucking blog, damn things' become my journal. Its few visitors filled with anonymous eyes, what do tell do they think? Where is the community I ask? Where are the artists? This thing is just as lost in the woods as all my previous sketchbooks.

Oh, a side note, I received a credit today, a special thanks really, for my work @ WBIE on an Xbox title to be released early in the first quarter of two thousand five. Blessed be the Game makers.

This Monday night I will be doing my best to play percussion for my singer, songwriter, guitar player friend, Geoff Geis. http://www.geoffgeis.com/
The show is free and is taking place in the Ground Zero Coffee house, located on USC campus behind Doheny library, nestled between the dorms. All are welcome.

Come one come all, see the interactive oddities and freaks, experience the extremes of interaction, at my interactive circus.
I just thought this up the last night. Wouldn’t it be great! Have a circus styled venue filled with interactive systems, showing simple and crude methods of mechanical interaction.

My ideal interactive experience?

1. Direct, clear, heart-filled communication with my fellow beings.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful! I’ve been conducting these experiments, if you will, every morning I make my best effort to say hello, good morning and the occasional whaz up, to everyone I encounter. Sad to say the responses I get are poor at best, a grumble, brief eye contact followed by a low hanging head, a crooked what-the-fuck (i.e. who the fuck are you) expression, and believe it or not about 15% of my unknowing testers actually respond with some kind surprised but nonetheless corrigible greeting.

Hmmmm… could I figure out some kind of system to provoke honest responses from these people? Could I change the world, or at least my own bubble, to be more genuine, polite and kind? What kind of interactive system would necessitate honesty?

People are so cold, and lost in thought, they could use some Zen training.

2. An immersive fantasy battle

When I was in the fourth grade I used to play an imaginary game that my friends and I dreamed up which blended D&D with Elf Quest, a series of comics by Richard and Wendi Penny. We would assume roles and them act them out.

On one occasion I remember so vividly running into battle against an army of troll, orc, and half-breeds. As I came up over the hill at the Highcrest Community center, I remember seeing the hordes of enemies rushing at my, now elven, friends and I. It was the ultimate experience of immersive imagination. If I could create an immersive game system that gave me those feelings again, I would be very happy.

3. Real world agency catalyst

If I could provide others and myself with a clear system for agency in the real world, it would be ideal. People for the most part are so bored, dead, walking cellular robots, mechanisms of their own routine, living life without joy. I do find myself breaking out of that existence from time to time, ever increasingly more so, to be in this amazing place, in my world and in my heart, a place of true living I can only describe as Zen.

It’s not the peace that my mediation studies brought me too, almost quite the opposite. It’s this explosion of self, allowing your being, your spirit, to be free; to garb hold of the god given agency provided to us in this world through these miraculous human bodies. I get to a point where I just say the hell with it, this place is so boring, why restrain myself? People can’t handle it, they get scared, they are so used to the socially placid self, projected by a good majority of society, that they don’t know what to do with honest expression. I want to change that.

How can I create a system that wakes people up to the rich variety of life that an attitude of exercised agency can provide?

Herb lit me up with his post on his lack of knowledge of GBA love. So I thought this a great opp to geek out. I picked up one of these little wonders last winter for Tracey Fullerton’s' class, Digital Game Studies Seminar. I reviewed everything from Onimusha Tactics to Max Payne, and I have to say this hand-held console rocks the pants off of some of the bleeding-edge platforms. First off it's portable, and not I-can-put-on-an-external-frame-BP-and-lug-it-to-a-friends-place portable, you can play it anytime anywhere and for up to 18 hours on one charge.

Nintendo really did it, I was never down with previous versions of the GB, but this one is a beaut. Is it the awesome 8-16 bit game quality, those hot MIDI tracks, or the 2.9-inch reflective TFT color LCD (which works even in SoCal daylight!)? I couldn’t tell you, but one thing’s for sure, I love this mobile media device!

P.S. Nintendo, how can you deny them? Remain loyal to your roots.

http://www.startmayhem.com/
http://www.gameboy-advance-sp.com/gameboy_advance_sp_tech_specs.htm

For those that missed our show, i.e. everyone, I’ve decided to upload some of the tracks that we, The New Mother-fuckers, recorded @ Ground Zero last week. Despite the hot signal distortion from the sound board, the tracks turned out like some true blue Rockn’Roll; check ‘em out via the links below:

1. Those Ancient Nightmares Download MP3

2. Girl Download MP3

3. Calliopese Download MP3

More Geoff Geis @ GeoffGeis.com

For purposes of moving forward with my artistic efforts, I need a new mobile Lifelog media gleaning device. I have been envisioning this particular device for a few months.

SCRIBE is an intelligent personal communications agent. Scribe can take notes, act as a sketch book w/ artist tools, in addition to recording audio and video on the fly, Scribe also offers editing tools for mobile post and upload of the finished digital media.

With Scribe, I believe I could realize the Lifelogging game system, that I have been equally been conjuring, described below:

DIGITAL VAGABOND (DV), is a real flesh and blood game that encourages play within the open system of life. The goal of the game is agency, and stories. The players are part of an online community of DV’s, who share their stories of real world agency, in the field, with Scribe and moblogging.