By Borys Kit and Jay A. Fernandez
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/film/news/e3i1751753614c1db77744a34deae6cb78b
June 6, 2008, 09:19 PM
Leonardo DiCaprio has more fake IDs than Fletch.

The ubiquitous actor-producer has just become attached to star in "Atari," a pitch that writers Brian Hecker and Craig Sherman sold to Paramount on Friday about the godfather of the video game industry, Nolan Bushnell. DiCaprio's Appian Way shingle is producing the biopic, which the filmmakers hope will play with elements from "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" and "Tucker."

Bushnell was an engineering student, puzzle-lover and game enthusiast (chess, Go, early computer games) who went from fixing broken pinball machines to launching Atari Corp., a video game manufacturer, in the early '70s. Its first product was a little game called Pong that transfixed kids in suburban rec rooms across the country and led to hundreds of millions of dollars worth of video game sales. Within a few years, he sold the company to Warner Communications for $28 million.

"Viewfinder: How to Seamlessly 'Flickrize' Google Earth"
progress report and video went online today.

March 1 — May 11, 2008
Williamson Gallery, Art Center College of Design, Pasadena
Opening reception: Friday, March 14, 6 to 10pm (coincides with ArtNight Pasadena)

Bernie's work, the surprise hit of the 2007 Ars Electronica Festival, ranks #1 on Google searches for interactive wood machines. -M

San Francisco artist Bernie Lubell makes interactive installations that focus on the intersection of science and the arts — but which at the same time are adamantly low-tech. His incredibly complex machine environments are made of wood, use no computers or video or motors and are entirely human-powered.

The use of wood and ancient technologies to examine 21st century issues adds a disarming historical perspective to Lubell's enterprise. The pieces are witty, friendly and personal even as they tackle serious issues such as the nature of consciousness or the origins of life.

More here.

When the IMD Class of 2007 was in its second year, the students made a group project for the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach called Fishualization. The idea was to have visitors and fish "collaborate" on making visuals. A camera caught the fish swimming while visitors interacted with menu options using DDR-style foot switches. The resulting imagery was projected next to the fish tank. Fishualization was installed during the Aquarium's Ocean Tech Day and was a hit, particularly with young visitors.

Class of 2007 grad Doo-Yul (Doox) Park, the principle designer of the Fishualization software, will be installing "Fishualization 2008" for this year's Ocean Tech Day, Saturday March 8, tomorrow. We're all pleased and proud that Doox has continued with this innovative and lively experience. Check it out!

registered photo overlaid on 3D model of USC campus by Perry Hoberman, summer 2006

November 5 - Viewfinder (a new project in collaboration with ICT and a research award from Google)
Instructor: Professor Michael Naimark, with the Viewfinder team and a special guest from Google

Viewfinder is an easy-to-use way for a community of users to find the pose of their photographs with respect to Google Earth as well as to neighboring photographs. These photos can be then viewed as perfectly aligned overlays in front of Google Earth and can be used to help make better, faster models in Google SketchUp. Our approach is to combine state-of-the-art computer vision algorithms with a little bit of human help. We're specifying that pose finding in Viewfinder can be done by ten year olds. Our plan is to build a first-pass version in the next four months. Some background can be found here.

This workshop is working session to specify technology, design, schedule and milestone. We welcome student participation. Limited to 6 students. Please email me to sign up.

Monday November 5, 1:00-5:00pm, ZML

"The Nintendo Wii is many things—a motion-sensing video-game console, a retail success story, possibly even a cultural touchstone. What it isn’t, despite its players’ controller-waving antics and media hype about gamers finally getting off the couch, is an exercise machine. Until now. The Wii Fit, a soon-to-be-released suite of games that uses a $70 weight- and balance-sensing Balance Board, does everything from analyzing posture to revealing how bad you actually are at yoga. It turns fitness into a game, instead of a chore." - Popular Mechanics

See also the Nintendo video here. Hoola hoops is awesome.

3D will win over 2D, if only because it compresses the massive redundancy of so many images which look so much alike, but not the day after tomorrow. There's plenty of room for creative hybrids. But for now, brace yourself for a lot of hype pitting one approach against the other.

Today Google is launching a new feature on Google Maps called Street View, by far the best of the MS/A9 style "moviemaps." Several cities are mapped so far, including NY and SF. Particularly nice are the graphic overlays, the dissolves from view to view (simulating forward/backward motion) and the cinematic "pans" when going through intersections (doable since everything was filmed panoramically).

Street View is integrated into Google Maps as a stand-alone feature and is entirely 2D, made up of thousands of panoramic 2D photos. Dimensionalizing 2D into 3D to seamlessly integrate into Google Earth presents several challenges.

An noteworthy feature, which may present additional challenges, is here:

UPDATE: Today Microsoft also announced an upgrade on its Live Search Maps of "photo-realistic 3-D imagery" of several cities including NY, "Superman" perspective not street level.

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE: Today, EveryScape Inc., a Massachusetts-based startup which has been working in stealth mode, also announced photo-based street level mapping, which includes user participation.

Part of the madness is because Where 2.0 began today. But as of noon various blogs are reporting some but not all 3 announcements. Crazy!

Check it out!

Info on the summer sessions can be found here.

Info on ITP can be found here.

Any questions, feel free to contact George Agudow.

Brief descriptions of the classes are here ------------>

Tuesday Feb 27 (Please note change from earlier schedule)

6:30pm - Noah Keating
The Lambent Reactive: An Audiovisual Environment for Kinesthetic Playforms

7:00pm - Herb Yang
Kingpin: A PvP (Player-vs-Player), MMO (massively multiplayer online) Mafia Strategy Game

7:30pm - Aaron Meyers
Torrent Raiders: An Arcade-style Video Game and Dynamic Network Visualization

8:00pm - Doo Yul Park
iVM: Interactive Visual Music

8:30pm - Yuechuan Ke
MultiCam Narrative: Interactivity and Cinematic Control

9:00pm - Erik Nelson
Sonorous: An Experiment in Interactive Audio as Real Time Strategy Game

The presentations will be 10 minutes each followed by 15 minutes of Q&A. 5 minute breaks between each.

Ron Howard Theater
Robert Zemeckis Center for the Digital Arts

More healthy snacks will be served.

All are welcome!

Tuesday Feb 20 (Big kudos for thesis paper drafts up!)

6:30pm - Jessica Rosenblatt
Fitting In: Somatic History Education Through Costume and Physical Computing

7:00pm - Vincent Diamante
Project AWOL: Control Surfaces and Visualization for Surround Creation

7:30pm - Mihai Peteu
CityTagz: Collaborative Urban Archive

8:00pm - Josh Green
Barfly: An Exploration into the Effects of Generative Gameplay Elements on Narrative

8:30pm - Justin Hall
Passively Multiplayer Online Games

Tuesday Feb 27 (Paper drafts will be posted next Tuesday)

6:30pm - Erik Nelson
Sonorous: An Experiment in Interactive Audio as Real Time Strategy Game

7:00pm - Herb Yang
Kingpin: A PvP (Player-vs-Player), MMO (massively multiplayer online) Mafia Strategy Game

7:30pm - Doo Yul Park
iVM: Interactive Visual Music

8:00pm - Aaron Meyers
Torrent Raiders: An Arcade-style Video Game and Dynamic Network Visualization

8:30pm - Yuechuan Ke
MultiCam Narrative: Interactivity and Cinematic Control

9:00pm - Noah Keating
The Lambent Reactive: An Audiovisual Environment for Kinesthetic Playforms

The presentations will be 10 minutes each followed by 15 minutes of Q&A. 5 minute breaks between each.

Ron Howard Theater
Robert Zemeckis Center for the Digital Arts

Healthy snacks will be served.

All are welcome!

British artist and architect Usman Haque makes responsive environments, interactive installations, digital interface devices and mass-participation performances. In 2004, he launched Sky Ear in London, a non-rigid carbon-fibre "cloud" embedded with one thousand LED-infused helium balloons, EMF sensors, and several dozen mobile phones. Last year, he launched an even more ambitious interactive megablob called Open Burble at the Singapore Biennale (above). He has created interior immersive installations, visualizations, and various experiments addressing interactivity.

Usman will present his work this Thursday, Feb 8, 3:00 - 4:00pm in the ZML.

Are are welcome.

From those clever folks at Google Earth:

How would your campus look in 3D? You show us.

This spring, you and your (presumably equally artistic) friends can honor your home turf and hone your 3D design skills by entering Google SketchUp's Build Your Campus in 3D Competition. Simply model your school's campus buildings in Google SketchUp, geo-reference them in Google Earth and submit them through this competition web site to earn lasting online glory and, for the winners, an all-expense-paid visit to Google.

(Fun fact: "Lasting online glory" is currently eligible for a GoogleMark while "all-expense-paid visit to Google" is not.)

Details here and a quite good "Best Practices" PDF here.

*This year’s course is themed around cinematography as a means for artistic expression, emotional engagement, gaming, and storytelling in interactive media. For our purposes, cinematography includes anything relating to cameras - both real and virtual. One particular advantage of concentrating on cinematography is that it connects interactive media to a rich vein in the history of cinema. (Another advantage is that, to our knowledge, this is the first course ever on cinematography and interactive media.)

Full syllabus is here.