Scott Fisher

Speaker: Douglas Greenberg, Executive Director, USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education
Time: Wednesday, November 1, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

The Shoah Foundation was founded by Steven Spielberg in 1994 after Schindler's List, to collect video interviews of Holocaust survivors. The Foundation has to-date collected over 50,000 eyewitness testimonies in 57 countries in 32 languages, making it the largest video archive in the world. Last year the Archive and Foundation Institute was relocated to USC.

Incredibly, the Archive in its current state is catalogued and becoming accessible online. Executive Director Doug Greenberg will give us a tour and discuss the opportunities and challenges of this very ambitious endeavor.

Shoah Foundation Website: www.usc.edu//vhi
Wikipedia Profile for Professor Greenberg.

Posted by Scott Fisher at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Speaker: Rebecca Allen
Time: Wednesday, October 25, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

"Very early on, when the computer still seemed such a foreign thing, I had an interest in inserting human presence into the computer — human motion, human behavior — so that the computer would have a human face and form." This statement sums up the long and prolific career of Rebecca Allen, a visionary artist who has been pushing the limits of artistic creativity by tirelessly exploring the unknown territories of new audiovisual technology. During a career that already spans three decades, Allen has tried her hand on a wide variety of forms: 3-D computer graphics and animation, music videos, logos for TV, video games, large-scale performance works, artificial life systems, multisensory interfaces interactive installations, virtual reality and mixed reality.

Website and bio: http://rebeccaallen.com/v1/bio/

Posted by Scott Fisher at 5:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Speakers:Yuta Nakayama and Steven Zhou
Time: Wednesday, October 18, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

The Interactive Media Divsion has two Visiting Scholars for the 2006-07 year: Yuta Nakayama from Keio University at Shonan Fujisawa Japan, and Steven Zhou from National University of Singapore. In tonight's forum, they will present their past and current research projects.

Bios:
Yuta Nakayama is a Visiting Scholar at USC IMD during 2006-07. He is a media artist working in the areas of mobile and environmental media. Examples of his unique resarch projects include:
- 3D MUSCLE, a 3D moblog system created by two camera phones arranged in a line. It can shoot stereoscopic pictures everywhere and send those pictures wirelessly to its weblog at anytime. The purpose of this project is to recreate stereoscopic picture of 19th century with 21st-century mobile communication technology that captures the perspective and depth we perceive in real life.
- Iwani-Shimiiru-Seminokoe, a project collaboration with Architect Kengo Kuma to design physical and virtually annotated space where a visitors’ voice is soaked into the place through the use of QR code stickers.

Steve Zhou ZhiYing is a Visiting Scholar at USC IMD during 2006-07. He has been working on research covering computer vision, mixed reality, multi-modal human-computer interaction, and wearable computers. He is currently a lecturer at the National University of Singapore where he leads a team of over 10 researchers and students. Steven is also the founder and director of MXR Corporation Pte Ltd, a NUS spin-off MNC which commercializes his patented inventions.

Posted by Scott Fisher at 3:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mobile TV Content Strategy and Photo Sharing

Mobile Monday LA

What: October 2006 Mobile Monday
When: October 16, 2006, 6:30-9:00pm
Where: USC Annenberg Center, INFO & RSVP , MAP
Who: Anyone interested in mobility
Cost: Free!

HyeRyoung Ok, USC
"Mapping Mobile Screen Culture in Korea:
On contents and programming strategy of Mobile TV "
HyeRyoung Ok a Ph.D. candidate in the Critical Studies division of School of Cinema-Television at University of Southern California, and a fellow at Annenberg Center of Communication. Her main research interest is in mobile screen culture and multimedia contents service on mobile devices in Korea as well as in US.

Mizuko (Mimi) Ito, USC
"Mobile Photo Sharing"
Mizuko (Mimi) Ito is a cultural anthropologist of technology use, focusing on children and youth’s changing relationships to media and communications. She has been conducting ongoing research on kids’ technoculture in Japan and the US, and is co-editor of, Personal, Portable, Pedestrian: Mobile Phones in Japanese Life. She is a Research Scientist at the Annenberg Center for Communication and a Visiting Associate Professor at Keio University in Japan. http://www.itofisher.com/mito

Posted by Scott Fisher at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

Title: "Digital Narrative Spaces: how the BBC (and other broadcasters) are looking at videogames and virtual worlds."

Audiences are fragmenting, behaviours are changing. For the broadcaster, this has implications in how to reach ever more elusive consumers. For the storyteller, these digital environments are offering up new narrative experiences and opportunities. When the two finally come together, what will the results look like, that we can predict now?

Bio and weblog here.
Wikipedia profile here.

Posted by Scott Fisher at 6:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Chinese architect Qingyun Ma was named as USC's new Dean of Architecture. Here's a comment he made to the LA Times today:

Ma, speaking by telephone from London, said he hopes "to construct an interdisciplinary program so that architects get training in landscape architecture, environmental issues" as well as art and "virtual reality."

Very encouraging - let's ask him to visit the world building class for starters...
USC names architecture dean with 'global' view - Los Angeles Times

Posted by Scott Fisher at 7:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

IMD faculty and friend at the Groundbreaking event yesterday for USC's School of Cinematic Arts.
(Photo by Alan Baker)

Posted by Scott Fisher at 5:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Here's the CTIN 511 speaker schedule for the rest of the semester.

[ First year Grads, please choose one of the remaining speakers to do a wikipedia page and introduction (if you haven't done one yet), and post your choice in the comments section below. The page is due on Monday morning before the presentation so it can be included in the announcement. ]

CTIN 511/Fall 2006
COURSE SCHEDULE

Week 1 (8/23) IMD Summer Update
Week 2 (8/30) danah boyd, Annenberg Center and UC Berkeley
Week 3 (9/6) Kevin McCoy
[Profilers: Mike Rossmasler & Andre Clark]
Week 4 (9/13) IMD Thesis Project Presentations
Week 5 (9/20) Michael Hawley
[Profilers: Diana Hughes & Al Yang ]
Week 6 (9/27) Simon Penny, UC Irvine
[Profilers: Jack McMahan & Maya Churi]
Week 7 (10/4) Jordan Weisman, USC IMD & 42 Entertainment
Week 8 (10/11) Alice Taylor, BBC
Week 9 (10/18) Steven Zhou, Yuta Nakayama , USC IMD
[Profiler: tbd
Week 10 (10/25) Rebecca Allen, UCLA Design | Media Arts
[Profiler: Andrea Rodriguez]
Week 11 (11/1) Douglas Greenberg, USC Shoah Foundation
[Profiler: RJ Layton]
Week 12 (11/8) Luke Moloney, Pandora Benevolent Society
[Profiler: Ethan Kennerly]
Week 13 (11/15) Eduardo Sciammarella, Protohaus
[Profiler: Jamie Antonisse]
Week 14 (11/22) Thanksgiving Vacation – no class
Week 15 (11/29) IMD Final Project presentations

Posted by Scott Fisher at 3:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

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

Title: "Making things up for fun and profit"

Jordan Weisman has been a prolific game designer for over 20 years, creating role-playing, board, interactive site-based, and computer games that have won more than 50 design and marketing awards. He is currently Adjunct Professor of Interactive Media in USC's School of Cinematic Arts and co-teaches CTIN 558 Business of Interactive Media with Professor Mark Bolas.

Jordan is Chief Creative Executive of 4orty2wo Entertainment, and invented ARGs after having been inducted into the Gaming Hall of Fame for games such as MechWarrior, MageKnight, Crimson Skies, and Shadowrun. Before founding 4orty2wo in 2002, Jordan served as Creative Director of Microsoft's entertainment division, providing creative leadership for the company's PC and video game portfolio (including the development of the Xbox). Jordan is also the founder/co-founder of FASA Corp., Virtual World Entertainment (makers of BattleTech), FASA Interactive, and WizKids, LLC.

Wikipedia Profile here and full bio after the jump.

BACKCHANNEL LOG here.

Bio:
Jordan Weisman has been a prolific game designer for over 20 years, creating role-playing, board, interactive site-based, and computer games that have won more than 50 design and marketing awards. In 1994 he was elected to the Academy of Adventure Gaming Hall of Fame, and in 2003 Weisman was the recipient of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for the Pacific Northwest Region.

Weisman is a serial entrepreneur, having founded four companies. The first was FASA Corporation in 1980, where he designed such games as BattleTech/MechWarrior and Shadowrun. Weisman and his partners built FASA up and used it to fund Virtual World Entertainment which was founded 1987. VWE created the world’s first publicly available virtual reality immersive networked game in the form of dedicated entertainment centers, opening the first BattleTech Center in Chicago in 1990. After opening two centers in Japan in 1991, the majority of the company was acquired by Tim Disney and other Disney family members. Together they opened 30 VR entertainment centers around the world over the next four years.

FASA Interactive was founded in 1995 to take the role-playing company’s intellectual property catalog to the home PC environment. MechWarrior developed under license by Activision was already one of the top selling PC games of all time with 14 million copies of the series sold. After developing Mech Commander FASA Interactive was acquired by Microsoft in 1999. The entire development team moved to Washington and Weisman took the role of Creative Director for the entire Microsoft Entertainment Group. In that role he oversaw both the PC portfolio and the launch portfolio for the Xbox.

While at Microsoft he conceived of what is now called Alternate Reality Games, and led the team in the creation of the first such experience called The Beast for Steven Spielberg’s film Artificial Intelligence (AI).

After serving as the Microsoft Games Creative Director, Weisman founded Wizkids in 2000 to create the category of Collectible Miniature Games, which blends the benefits of a trading card game with the visual impact of tiny action figures. With titles such as Mage Knight, MechWarrior, and HeroClix the company has sold hundreds of millions of figures. Wizkids was acquired by Topps Inc. in 2003.

Weisman is currently Chief Creative Officer of 42 Entertainment, which is the leader of the rapidly growing field of interactive immersive story telling (or ARG), and has created such experiences as I LOVE BEES for Microsoft’s Halo II, and dozens of others.

Posted by Scott Fisher at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Netflix Offers $1 Million Prize for Improved Recommendation System | Digital Media Wire

Los Gatos, Calif. - Online DVD rental service Netflix on Monday launched a contest that will award $1 million to whomever can make its personalized movie recommendations 10% more accurate. The company offers a library of 65,000 DVD titles to its more than 5 million members, and provides movie recommendations to subscribers based on their past preferences. "Recommendation systems covering a wide variety of categories will play an increasingly significant commercial role in the future," said Netflix CEO Reed Hastings. "Right now, we're driving the Model T version of what is possible. We want to build a Ferrari and establishing the Netflix Prize is a first step." The company made available 100 million anonymous movie ratings submitted by its subscribers for use in the contest. If no one is able to achieve a 10% improvement in accuracy over the current Netflix recommendation system this year, the company said it will award $50,000 to whoever comes closest annually until someone wins the grand prize.
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/061002/sfm014.html?.v=70
http://www.netflixprize.com

Posted by Scott Fisher at 6:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Image by Web River Media

From Digital Media Wire and the New York Times:

"The Onyx Project" Interactive Short Film Launches on DVD
New York - Screenwriter and director Larry Atlas ("Sleepless in Seattle") on Monday released a short film on interactive DVD that lets users explore the film's 400 scenes in a nonlinear format, The New York Times reported. "The Onyx Project," which stars Academy Award nominee David Strathairn and tells the story of a U.S. Army Special Forces officer on a rogue mission in Afghanistan. The DVD features proprietary software called Nav that brings up fresh links for viewers while the film is playing, which can lead in different directions based on viewer choices. Atlas and Smith said "The Onyx Project," which is available on DVD for $23.95, cost less than $200,000 to make -- including the costs of developing the Nav software. The filmmakers said that Nav could be used in the future to create documentaries or educational films with scores of embedded links.

Posted by Scott Fisher at 6:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)