Scott Fisher

Time: Wednesday, April 30, 6-9pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC),
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Featuring Spring Semester Class Projects from :
- CTIN 485L Advanced Game Development - Brinson
- CTIN 544 Experiments in Interactivity (Hoberman)
- CTIN 463 Anatomy of a Game (Hight)
- CTIN 405 Design and Technology for Mobile (Bleecker)
- CTIN 406 Sound Design for Games ­(Diamante)
- CTIN 488 Game Design Workshop (Swain/Arey/Diamante)
- CTIN 484/489 Intermediate Game Design (Brinson & Fullerton)
- CTIN 491 Advanced Game Project ( Swain)
- CTIN 492 Experimental Game Topics (Bleecker)
- CTIN 544 Experiments in Interactivity( Production 1) (Kratky)
- CTIN 542 Interactive Experience Design (Bolas)
- CTIN 590 Directed Research - Fisher

and more....

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

***SCHEDULE below*****

Continue reading "IMD Forum for 4/30/08: IMD Project Presentations" »

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Speakers: Mk Haley, Jill Smolin, and Josh Grow, SIGGRAPH 2008 committee members
Time: Wednesday, April 9, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

This week the CTAN 522 John C Hench Animation & Digital Arts Seminar combines forces with the CTIN 511 Interactive Media Seminar. Our visiting speakers will be three of the committee members for SIGGRAPH 2008 here in LA: Mk Haley, Jill Smolin, and Josh Grow. Jill represents the Animation Festival, Josh represents the Student Volunteer Program, and Mk represents the Interactive Installations. They will talk about the SIGGRAPH conference itself, as well as provide some examples of student submitted work, and a discussion related to how to best submit your work for consideration.

ACM SIGGRAPH's mission is to promote the generation and dissemination of information on computer graphics and interactive techniques and to foster a membership community whose core values help them to catalyze the innovation and application of computer graphics and interactive techniques. Some highlights of the annual conference are its Animation Theater and Electronic Theater presentations, where recently created CG films are played, and an installation of Emerging Technologies that showcases recent work from the crossroads of science, art, and technology and celebrates the best in creativity and innovation from the past year. Dozens of research papers are presented each year, and SIGGRAPH is widely considered the most prestigious forum for the publication of computer graphics research. In addition to the papers, there are numerous panels of industry experts set up to discuss a wide variety of topics, from computer graphics to machine interactivity to education. This year, the conference is also co-located with the 3rd annual Sandbox Videogame Symposium.

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Speakers: Jonathan Strietzel and John Snoddy, Big Stage Entertainment
Time: Wednesday, April 2, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Big Stage is a media company whose breakthrough technology allows users to easily create and integrate a life-like 3-D avatar of themselves into everything from famous movie scenes, TV shows and video games, to music videos, short video clips, virtual worlds, still images, user-generated content, instant messages, e-mails, social networks and more – instantly. All Big Stage content can then be shared across social networks,mobile phones, and more.

The privately held, Pasadena, Calif.-based company was founded by three tech entrepreneurs who shared a vision for a new media paradigm in which users themselves inhabited the very content which they consumed, and in which the digital fidelity of 3-D animated people -- created and controlled by average consumers -- would soon render virtual performances almost indistinguishable from original performances captured in high-resolution media.

Big Stage’s life-like avatar creation system stems from advanced stereo reconstruction technology funded by multiple government grants, including the CIA, as part of a nineyear cumulative research project at USC. Company Co-Founder Jonathan Strietzel first saw the potential for this technology while meeting with the project’s chief scientist, Doug Fidaleo, Ph.D., at USC. He then assembled Co-Founders Jon Kraft and Jon Snoddy, who each brought unique skills and perspectives to the table, and were able to craft a powerful business vision, secure funding, obtain the core technology license from USC, and hire Fidaleo to officially help bring their vision to life.

Building on the USC research, Chief Technology Officer Snoddy, Chief Scientist Fidaleo and their team were able to take the quality and accuracy of complex, expensive 3-D scanning technology previously only available to production houses and animation companies and offer it to any consumer with a digital camera through a free, fun and easy to use Internet-based platform, for wide-spread entertainment immersion.

BACKCHANNEL LOG from PRESENTATION: Download file

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Speaker: Anne Bray, LA Freewaves
Time: Wednesday, March 26, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

HollyWould?
LA Freewaves Executive Director Anne Bray will present a preview of this year's festival and several related projects and opportunities for media art, activism and public media culture. This year's Freewaves festival is titled HollyWould and will be distributed across every screen on Hollywood Boulevard. Since 1989, LA Freewaves has been presenting biennial festivals of film, video and new media art, under the direction of Anne Bray, who founded the concept of LA Freewaves and has administered the festival for two decades. http://www.freewaves.org/

Anne has been working in the field of media arts since the mid 1970s as an administrator, artist and art teacher. As the Freewaves Executive Director, she has continued to see the organization through the technological, social and aesthetic changes of the 1990s to the present, exploring innovative venues, curatorial models and distribution strategies ranging from traditional screenings to online distribution to public art venues. In addition to presenting on LA Freewaves, Anne teaches in the IML's Honors in Multimedia Scholarship program and the public art program at Claremont Graduate University.

***Special Bonus Presentation: Proceeding Ann's talk, first year IMD MFA student, Taiyoung RYU will give an encore presentation of his GDC '08 talk on "Game Design based on Micro-transactions in Online Games". ***

Posted by Scott Fisher at 4:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Presenters: 2nd Year MFA students in CTIN 542, 544, 548
Time: Wednesday, March 12, 6pm-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC),
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Title: "Flying Off The Handle - CTIN 542, 544, 548 Second Year MFA Combined One-Week Interactive Design Project, Spring 2008"

Instructors/Jurors: Mark Bolas, Perry Hoberman, Michael Naimark, Peggy Weil

Project Description:
"In the center of the table in front of you is a pile of handles, knobs and pulls. These objects, specifically shaped for the human hand, can be attached to other objects or surfaces, allowing them to be pushed, pulled, grabbed, closed, opened, turned, twisted, switched, lifted, shifted, operated, poured, tossed, etc. Handles can be attached to either movable and immobile objects. Handles can have both symbolic and/or practical functions - a handle is a kind of affordance. Affordances provide clues to how an object can or should be used (clues that can be useful, but also misleading). Your assignment is to conceive of, design, and produce an interactive experience in which the operation of one or more of these handles by a human user is a central component. This experience should be one or more of the following: surprising, shocking, bewildering, addictive, amazing, exquisite, subtle, provocative."

Posted by Scott Fisher at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Speaker: Richard Lemarchand, Game Designer, Naughty Dog
Time: Wednesday, March 5, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Title: "Audacious Feats of Daring: An Expanded Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune Post-Mortem"

Brace yourself for a rollicking ride as Naughty Dog game designer Richard Lemarchand leads a collaborative presentation deconstructing the successes and pitfalls of his studio’s first PlayStation 3 release, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. A contemporary reinvention of classic pulp adventure, the game was released at the end of 2007 to wide critical acclaim, public w00ts and the massive salez0rs.

In an Easter egg and bonus content-laden reprise of his GDC 2008 talk, Lemarchand covers the open, meritocratic, intensively collaborative way that Naughty Dog works, the iterative, play-test oriented development methodology that the studio subscribes to, and the technological, design and production challenges that the project faced.

Subjects ripe for discussion in this uniquely interjectional seminar format include interactivity design as exploration, managing large, talented teams through creative chaos, player attention as it relates to immersion, flow and variably scheduled activities, interactive storytelling techniques and emotion in games, wide-linear versus open-world gameplay, and gaming as mass entertainment, literature and fine art. The takeaway promises to be both practically applicable for game developers and stimulating for thinkers about interactive media.

Bio: Richard Lemarchand has made story-based character-action games the main focus of his design career, and has worked with some of the industry’s best and brightest in the field along the way. He spends his days building games with his metaphorical sleeves rolled up, advocating for the player and helping keep the development team on track. His credits include the Gex and Soul Reaver series of games, Jak 3 and Jak X: Combat Racing, and he was most recently the Lead Game Designer for Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. He’s a contributor to Game Developer Magazine, and a frequent visitor to USC.

Posted by Scott Fisher at 9:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Speakers: Patrick Goddi & Kurt MacDonald, HP Labs
Time: Wednesday, February 27, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Title: "Mediascapes make fun of GPS"

This talk covers the current state of HP Labs' mscape platform, a software toolkit for building, playing and sharing discreet location-based games and rich media experiences for handheld GPS devices. Each "mediascape" can be opened in the editor so that everyone can see how it's built. The non-commercial beta version of the software is freely available for download and use. And mscapers.com is a community-driven, sharing website where many examples of games, tours and other experimental locative media can be downloaded.

Patrick Goddi is a senior researcher at HP Labs in Palo Alto.
Kurt MacDonald is an independent designer and USC Interactive Media alum.

BACKCHANNEL LOG: Download file

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Speaker: Rob Legato
Time: Wednesday, February 20, 6:30 - 8:30 PM
Location: Lucas Building, Room 108

Meet Academy Award-winning visual effects artist Rob Legato as he shares his perspective on the VFX industry and art form. Legato has been the driving VFX force behind some of Hollywood’s biggest films, including The Departed, Aviator, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Cast Away, Armageddon, Titanic and Apollo 13. In 1997, he received an Oscar for Best Visual Effects for Titanic. Legato most recently created the Virtual Cinematography System that will be used on the upcoming James Cameron films Avatar and Battle Angel, as well as the new Steven Spielberg/Peter Jackson film Tintin.

Doors open to all at 6:20p.m. on a first-come, first-served basis. (Priority seating for all Animation & Digital Arts and Interactive Media division students who arrive prior to 6:15.)

Posted by Scott Fisher at 10:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Speaker: John Knoll, Industrial Light & Magic
Time: Wednesday, February 13, 6:30 - 8:30 PM
Location: Lucas Building, Room 108

Join visual effects master John Knoll for an in-person presentation of his Oscar-nominated work in The Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End!

Knoll is an Academy Award-winning, visual effects supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM). He is known for his innovative CG work on The Pirates of the Caribbean series, Star Wars Episodes I, II, III, Mission: Impossible and The Abyss. Knoll, a USC alumnus, and his brother Thomas are the original creators of Photoshop software.

(Priority seating for all Animation & Digital Arts and Interactive Media division students who arrive prior to 6:15.)

Posted by Scott Fisher at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

Title: "Device Art: Latest Trend in Media Art and Technology from Japan"

Why does Japanese media art tend to be playful? Why are artists so design-conscious, sometimes even designing gadgets themselves? Where does the Japanese "love for technology" come from and how is it reflected in media art? Questioning borders between art, design, technology, or even entertainment, is a worldwide phenomenon today. Such tendency has been most visible and widely accepted in Japan. Analyzing this phenomenon brings a new aspect in the role of media art in our society. This lecture will introduce the concept "Device Art," providing ample examples from Maywa Denki and other artists working within this realm. It will also analyze this Japanese trend within what's currently happening worldwide in art and design.

Bio: Machiko Kusahara is a media scholar and curator. She has published internationally in the field of art, technology, culture and history, including essays on Japanese games and mobile phone culture. With her background both in art, science and technology, she has been teaching computer graphics, multimedia and media study since 1985. She taught at UCLA in 2002-03, and is currently a professor at Waseda University, Tokyo. Kusahara holds a Ph. D. in engineering from University of Tokyo. Her recent research studies the correlation between digital media and traditional culture.

Posted by Scott Fisher at 3:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Speaker: Eddo Stern
Time: Wednesday, January 30, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Eddo Stern works on the disputed borderlands between fantasy and reality, exploring the uneasy and otherwise unconscious connections between physical existence and electronic simulation. His work explores new modes of narrative and documentary, experimental computer game design, fantasies of technology and history, and cross-cultural representation in computer games, film, and online media. He works in various media including computer software, hardware and game design, kinetic sculpture, performance, and film and video production. His short machinima films include "Sheik Attack", "Vietnam Romance", ”Landlord Vigilante” and "Deathstar". He is the founder of the now retired cooperative C-level where he co-produced the physical computer gaming projects "Waco Resurrection", "Tekken Torture Tournament", "Cockfight Arena”, and the internet meme conference "C-level Memefest" He is currently developing the sensory deprivation game “Darkgame" recently featured at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Online at http://www.eddostern.com

For this seminar, Eddo will talk about "Empirical game design , extra-diegetic Machinima", and his new sensory deprivation game Darkgame.

BACKCHANNEL LOG HERE: Download file

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Speaker: Flavia Sparacino, Founding Principal, Sensing Places
Time: Wednesday, January 16, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Talk Title: "Interactive Media Environments & Architectural Machines"

Contemporary digital information has led us to question the traditional
meaning of presence, matter, and the human body. When confronted with
virtual landscapes on the internet such as Second Life, architecture
potentially takes on a new process of redefining itself through the
exploration of new identities and new venues. Flavia Sparacino, a former
researcher at MIT's Media Lab, believes we are witnessing the birth
of a new architectural science, combining the research of exquisite
organic forms with increasingly complex functions and communications, all
tied into areas of sustainability. She will identify current areas of her
particular research and professional work which, she argues, call for
defining new professional roles, design methodologies, and educational
directions. She will present numerous examples that her company, Sensing
Places, is developing; media-enhanced responsive environments which
incorporate tactile and visually-immersive display technology,
architecture, and filmmaking.

Bio:
Flavia Sparacino, Ph.D., is a technology inventor, experience designer,
and fellow of MIT. She is the founder and director of Sensing Places,
a company based in Santa Monica, California, dedicated to creating
cutting-edge interactive architecture. She has designed
responsive media environments for museums, corporate headquarters,
retail stores, theaters, theme parks, airports and cities around the
world. Her emphasis has been on natural computational interfaces that,
through advanced computer vision algorithms and electronic sensors,
allow people to freely interact with physical objects, digital video
displays, graphics, and light. Her installations have been displayed
in MOMA, SFMOMA, and La Scala Opera Theater in Milan, and have been
featured in numerous newspapers, magazines, such as The New York Times,
the Boston, The Wall Street Journal, and television documentaries
aired on the Discovery Channel, Japan's NHK, and
Italy's RAI. A nominated Knight of the Republic of Italy, she holds
six academic degrees, a Ph.D. from MIT, and works as a technology
consultant for large architecture studios and museums around the world.

For more information on Flavia Sparacino, please visit:
http://www.sensingplaces.com
and also review some of her publications here.

BACKCHANNEL LOG from presentation: Download file

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Speaker: Anthony Borquez
Time: Wednesday, January 16, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Anthony Borquez is the Vice President for Online and Mobile Business Development at Konami Digital Entertainment. His responsibilities include: identifying new business opportunities across multiple platforms, content strategy, technology innovation, social communities, and digital distribution. He is currently developing a strategy to leverage Konami’s back catalog of products, as well as new IP, for the online market. Additionally, Anthony’s team is evaluating digital distribution models enabling consumers to purchase online and mobile content from a variety of digital platforms.

Anthony has also been teaching at the University of Southern California since 1994. He has designed nine video game courses and currently teaches Video Game Production to Engineering, Cinema, and Business students. In 2003, he started an annual high school summer program in Video Game Design that attracts students nationwide. Anthony received his Undergraduate, Masters, and Doctoral Degrees all from the University of Southern California.

Tonight's presentation will focus on new Konami projects such as DDR - flash version, game widgets across web 2.0 sites, the impact of in-game advertising and HUD design, the convergence of mobile/PC/XBLA/Wiiware for future titles. We will also discuss the design and development of 'fear mechanics' for games in the survival horror genre (Silent Hill, Resident Evil, etc.) for a possible collaborative project.

Backchannel Log from presentations: Download file

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Time: Wednesday, December 5, 6-9pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC),
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Featuring Fall 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
CTIN 482 Designing Online Multiplayer Game Environments
CTIN 491 Advanced Game Projects (3)
-------BREAK-------
CTIN 532 Interactive Experience and World Design
CTIN 534 Experiments in Interactivity I (1st Years)
CTIN 534 Experiments in Interactivity I (2nd Years)
CTIN 541 Design for Interactive Media
CTIN 590 Directed Research Projects

Plus bonus presentation on research by:
IMD Immersive group

and more....

Food and Drink will be provided.

Posted by Scott Fisher at 8:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Speaker: Joan Wood
Time: Wednesday, November 28, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Title: "Hands-On: Three Decades in the Pixel Business - The only thing you can count on with a career in new media is that you will never stop learning."

A few topics up for discussion:

. Unfinished Business
Spending years working on a game that does not get
finished/published/distributed/played is heartbreakingly common. Some very
talented folks have a string of these experiences, which can be damaging to
creative inspiration as well as a career. Are there warning signs early on
for which projects will make it to completion and which will be abandoned
along the way? Is there a way to evaluate the concept, the development team,
and the business environment to maximize the chances of being involved in a
project that goes all the way to completion?

. Bleeding Edge Development
Partnering with technology companies to help get needed features built into
next gen products and in turn providing demonstration elements for their
marketing machines means that what you create can influence hardware, API,
and software tool design. The thrill of pioneering new landscapes is matched
by the risk of being first to a market that does not yet exist. Is leading
edge development right for you? Where is the "sweet spot" for integrating
new technology with your content?

. Unique Voices
Traditional gaming culture can be quite narrow-focused. The game development
environment - insular, isolated, and prone to sleep-deprivation-induced
paranoia - can be even more so. Because of this vulnerability (and the
natural tendency to believe one's own press releases), it is vitally
important to have non-traditional, "outsider" voices in the mix. How can you
make your voice heard when you are THE minority on a development team?

Joan's bio after the jump -->

Continue reading "IMD Forum for 11/28/07: Joan Wood" »

Posted by Scott Fisher at 6:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Speaker: Erik Loyer
Time: Wednesday, November 14, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Title: "Seeking eloquence in interactive space"

From Chris Crawford to Richard Nixon, Ella Fitzgerald to James Joyce, a look at the practice of eloquence and its relationship to interactive design.

Erik Loyer, Creative Director for Vectors: Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular and founder of the design studio Song New Creative, is a designer and media artist whose work explores the ways in which digital interactivity enables human eloquence. His award-winning, internationally-exhibited works include The Lair of the Marrow Monkey, one of the first websites to be added to the permanent collection of a major art museum, Chroma, a web serial about the racial politics of virtual reality, and Public Secrets, an interactive documentary on the California prison system created in collaboration with artist Sharon Daniel. Loyer’s commercial portfolio includes Clio and One Show Gold Award-winning work for Vodafone, as well as projects for Sony, BMW, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and NASA. He is an alumnus of new media pioneers Inscape and The Voyager Company, and founded the information architecture division of Razorfish in Los Angeles.

Posted by Scott Fisher at 1:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

(image caption: “Field-Works” ongoing project, by Masaki Fujihata)

Speaker: Michael Naimark, USC Interactive Media Division
Time: Wednesday, October 31, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Title: Representing Earth

Representing Earth, actual places at actual moments, presents a unique challenge. Unlike fantasy places like Second Life and video games, Earth has a “ground truth” frame of reference, indexed by latitude, longitude, altitude, and time. Hence all potential Earth models cross correlate with each other into a singular Earth model.

Recently several new Earth model applications have appeared. Some are more photo-realistic (Google Street View, Microsoft PhotoSynth, EveryScape), some are more interactive (Google Earth, Microsoft Live Search, Yahoo Maps), but, regardless of the hype, none are really “like being there.” The arts community, which instinctively understands that artifacts can be good things, has produced several alternative Earth models (e.g., Art+Com, Shaw, Fujihata).

We’ll take a critical look at these applications and examples, discuss a framework for conceptualizing (and feeling comfortable with) these new forms of representation, and speculate about their future.

We’ll also introduce a new IMD project, in collaboration with ICT and supported by a research award from Google, called "Viewfinder". Viewfinder is designed as a fast, lean project to seamlessly “Flickrize” Google Earth.

A workshop on the Viewfinder project will take place next Monday 5 November 1-5pm in the ZML. Team members from both IMD and ICT will be there.

Posted by Scott Fisher at 4:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Image from rikomatic.com

Speakers: Peggy Weil & Nonny de la Peña
Time: Wednesday, October 24, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Title: "Heinous Corpus in the Multiverse"

Exposing practices and conditions in Guantanamo Prison by integrating
documentary footage and coordinated events in an installation in
Second Life, an online environment. We are providing a virtual,
accessible version of Guantanamo, in contrast to the real, but
inaccessible U.S. prison camp.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/IML/182/211/123

Bios:
Nonny de la Peña, writer, documentary filmmaker and journalist, has
consistently produced work across a variety of media probing
constitutional, social and human rights issues. Her journalistic work
has appeared in Newsweek, The New York Times, Time Magazine, Texas
Monthly, Premiere Magazine, Buzz Magazine and La Familia de Hoy. Her
most recent film, Unconstitutional, focused on civil liberties issues
post 9/11 including Guantánamo Bay. De la Peña's films have
appeared in worldwide theatrical release, broadcast on Sundance
Channel, BBC, CourtTV, and Al Jazeera, and have been shown at dozens
of film festivals including the Toronto Film Festival, South by
Southwest, Melbourne Film Festival and the Edinburgh Festival. She is
currently developing Gone Gitmo, a virtual installation of Guantanamo
Prison in Second Life.

Peggy Weil, Visiting Assistant Professor of Interactive Media at USC
School of Cinematic Arts, is a digital media artist and designer
focusing on interactive design as immersive experience for perceptual
and civic engagement. She's produced interactive projects for The
Voyager Company, Broderbund, Electronic Arts, Von Holtzbrinck and
Ravensberger Interactive, and was awarded the MILIA D'OR in Cannes in
1998. She was creative producer/designer for USC's Institute for
Creative Technology E.L.E.C.T. project, a role playing game to train
officers in bi-laterial negotiation skills. She acted as producer/ designer
for The Redistricting Game, a USC Annenberg Center sponsored project
to increase voter awareness about redistricting, and is currently developing
Gone Gitmo, a virtual installation of Guantanamo
Prison in Second Life.

Posted by Scott Fisher at 6:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Speakers: 3rd Year MFA students (and IMD Faculty)
Time: Wednesday, October 17, 6-8pm
Location: IMD Thesis studio @ 555 w. 23rd Street (at Figueroa)

This week's CTIN 511 seminar will be held at the IMD's Student Thesis Studio Spaces located at 555 W. 23rd Street starting at 6pm. The 555 class will be presenting prototype sketches which physically embody, test and communicate a subset of their project's technical and experiential goals. This is the first year we are having a 'Sneak-Peek' - you can read more about each project on the IMD wiki under Proposals & Committees.

Posted by Scott Fisher at 9:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Speakers: Dennis Wixon & August de los Reyes, Microsoft Game Studios
Time: Wednesday, October 10, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Title: “Making Emotions Work for You – Revolutionizing the way Emotions are understood and Measured for Product Design. "
How can you know if that a design works? Do users see the design the way you intended it? Can user research and design partner to make to provide useful answers? We say Yes and we can “prove” it. We present a brief overview of the current approaches to product design. We introduce a classic but innovative theory of human emotion that has simple and practical implications for both design and research. We show how this approach is reflected in many consumer products. We take this framework and show how it was used to guide the research work on the most successful game in history. The aim is to change the way you think about creating an engaging design, user research, and human emotion.

BIOS:
Dennis Wixon directs research at Microsoft Games studios which is recognized as a leader in applied methodology. Previously, Dennis was usability manager in the Software Usability Engineering group at Digital Equipment Corporation, where methods such as usability engineering and contextual inquiry were developed. He co-edited a book Field Methods Case Book for Software Design with Prof. Judy Ramey of the University of Washington. Dennis holds a PhD. in social psychology from Clark University.

August de los Reyes researches emotional design as a degree candidate in the Advanced Studies Program at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Also a PhD candidate in the Technical University of Delft’s Industrial Design Engineering initiative on Emotion and Design, August will be a visiting fellow at the University of Oxford beginning this fall.

This work was recently featured in Wired and is critical to our industry. Don't miss this talk!

Posted by Scott Fisher at 1:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Speakers: Greg Downing, Perry Hoberman, Dr. Judith Hirsch
Time: Wednesday, September 26, 6:30-9:00pm
Location: USC School of Cinematic Arts, George Lucas Building, Room 108.

Title: " Visual Effects, Stereoscopy, and Perception".

This week the CTAN 522 John C Hench Animation & Digital Arts Seminar combines forces with the CTIN 511 Interactive Media Seminar. The objective of this forum is for scientists, artists and industry experts to discuss their research and ideas as it relates or intersects with animation and digital art. This evenings' experts will discuss visual perception and is application to stereoscopic and panoramic imaging. Students from the Division of Animation and Digital Arts have developed a web log with background information on the topics and speakers - please contribute your comments.

*******PLEASE NOTE DIFFERENT LOCATION AND START TIME!!*******

Posted by Scott Fisher at 11:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Speaker: Dale Herigstad, Chief Creative Officer, Schematic
Time: Wednesday, September 19, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

Title: Space and Time in Digital Media Interface

Abstract: Dale will present a number of projects from Schematic from the viewpoint of how interaction is influenced by notions of spatial context and time. Topics will include: layered media, invasive media, rich media, and connected media. Recent work presented will include Broadband TV applications, new experiences on game boxes with EA Sports, enhanced viewing experiences on HDDVD, and advanced thinking in new content-finders for Television. New gestural work will also be presented from work with Microsoft Surface, and an environmental media project with Accenture installed in airports. Dale will also present ways in which working in this new digital space has altered the creative processes at the company.

Dale's Bio: Download file

Posted by Scott Fisher at 6:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Speaker: Flint Dille, Writer, Designer, Producer, Bureau of Film & Games
Time: Wednesday, September 12, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

After receiving an MFA from USC’s Cinema Writing Program, Flint established himself as an animation writer and producer on programs such as Transformers and G.I. Joe. During the course, Flint wrote the Tiny Toon Movie and the feature-film American Tail II: Fieval Goes West for Steven Spielberg. Last year, Flint and John Platten sold BACKWATER to Dimension as a film. It was shot in Fall of 2005 as Venom. Flint was also the creative director of TSR-LA and worked on numerous DUNGEONS & DRAGONS projects along with the award winning board games LINE IN THE SAND and XXVc: BATTLE FOR THE FUTURE. All of Bureau of Film & Games' original projects are developed as franchises that can move seamlessly in to other media, including original soundtracks, graphic novel serializations, and feature film/TV possibilities. Flint will talk about his long and successful career working in movies and games, ongoing insurgency, and moving between media.

IMDB bio is here
and Moby games credits here.
Video interview of Flint talking about "Transformers: The Game".

Posted by Scott Fisher at 8:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Speakers: IMD 3rd Year MFA Students
Time: Wednesday, September 5, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)

This forum will focus on the thesis projects required for completion of the IMD MFA program. First we'll review a short documentary of the "Are you Here" installation showcasing projects by the class of 2007. Then, current 3rd Year students in the IMD MFA degree program will each present the projects that they will be working on this year.

Posted by Scott Fisher at 9:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

IMD Research Open House
Presenters: IMD faculty and staff
Time: Wednesday, August 29, 6-9pm
Location: IMD CoDesign Lab, Digital Collaboratory Annex, USC School of Cinematic Arts
2823 Flower street (Main entrance at 509 29th st.)

The program for this Open House and 511 session will showcase a wide variety of research developed by the Interactive Media Division and their various collaborations. It will include brief presentations by IMD faculty and Staff members in the context of their research demonstrations; the objective is to introduce IMD faculty, their research interests, and potential opportunities for student participation.

Projects will include: TiltSim, Wide FOV Head Mounted Display, Concave Surround Optics, Wii Games, "MobZombies", "The Night Journey", "Condemned to Repeat, "Trusted Makes", "Cloud", The Redistricting Game, "There's Nothing to See Here", Stereo 3D Projection, and more!

Posted by Scott Fisher at 6:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

Featuring Spring Semester Class Projects from :
- CTIN 484/489 Intermediate Game Design (Brinson & Fullerton)
- CTIN 405 Design and Technology for Mobile (Bleecker)
- CTWR 410 Character Development and Storytelling for Games ( Bilson)
- 2006-07 Game Innovation Grant "Elysium Project"
- CTIN 488 Game Design Workshop (Swain/Arey)
- CTIN 491 Advanced Game Project ( Fullerton)
- CTIN 501 Database Cinema (Kratky)
- CTIN 542 Interactive Design and Production (Bolas)
& CTIN 544 Experiments in Interactivity (Hoberman)

and more....

Food and Drink will be provided starting at 5:30.

*****Schedule Below******

Continue reading "IMD Forum for 4/25/07: IMD Project Presentations" »

Posted by Scott Fisher at 9:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Speaker: Danny Bilson
Title: "Screenwriting in Gamespace"
Time: Wednesday, April 18, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC),
Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML), Room 201

Danny Bilson is a writer, director, and producer in movies, television,
videogames, and comic books. With his writing partner Paul DeMeo, Danny
Bilson wrote the movie The Rocketeer (1991), the videogame James Bond 007:
Everything or Nothing (2003), the television series The Sentinel (1996) and
The Flash (1990), and recent issues of the comic book, The Flash. Bilson
also directed and produced The Sentinel and The Flash.

Bilson's scope has been characterized as transmedia. He has adapted comic
books into movies (The Rocketeer), comic books into television (The Flash),
and movies into videogames (James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing). Bilson
and DeMeo's writing has tended toward action and sci-fi genres, emphasizing
more than human heroes and their visceral adventures.

Wikipedia bio here.

Posted by Scott Fisher at 9:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Speakers: Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Jordan Mechner,Mark Marino, and Jeremy Douglass
Time: Wednesday, April 4, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC),
Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML), Room 201

Title: Second Person: An evening on writing and gameplay
Tonight, the IMD Forum will host one of the editors and several of the authors included in Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media , a new text from MIT Press, and follow-on to their excellent and often referenced previous volume, First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game.

Jeremy Douglass
Jeremy Douglass is a Ph.D. candidate in English Literature at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB profile). His research focuses on interactive fiction and reader response to textual new media. His research on poetry software, "Slidewords: Towards Livecomposing Animated Poetry" are forthcoming at Digital Arts and Culture 2007. Jeremy is a database and web developer for numerous projects, including the academic search engine Voice of the Shuttle, and writes for the new media blog http://writerresponsetheory.org.

In "Enlightening Interactive Fiction" Jeremy Douglass discusses the meaning of Andrew Plotkin's 'Shade' in terms of both surface signification and source code, continuing how the medium and its particular history shape the message of the individual work unfolding before the player.

Mark Marino
Mark C. Marino is a new media scholar and artist, studying chatbots, electronic literature, and games. His dissertation, I, Chatbot: The Gender and Race Performativity of Conversational Agents, integrates sociological research with critical theory. In addition to blogging for Writer Response Theory (http://writerresponsetheory.org), he is editor of Bunk Magazine (http://www.bunkmag.com). His latest analytical work launches “Critical Code Studies,” an approach to interpreting computer code. He is the author of several hypermedia works, including “a show of hands” and “12 Easy Lessons to Better Time Travel.” He currently teaches writing at the University of Southern California (link to faculty site: http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~mcmarino/).

Mark will present “12 Easy Lessons,” which is featured in Second Person.
[Also see Mark's post about this event on his WRT blog. ]

Jordan Mechner
Jordan Mechner is one of the world's best-known videogame creators. His games, including Karateka, Prince of Persia, The Last Express, and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, have sold millions of copies and received worldwide critical acclaim. He is also the director of two award-winning short films, Waiting for Dark and Chavez Ravine: A Los Angeles Story. Mechner received his BA from Yale University.

Jordan will talk about his Second Person contribution, which was about the writing and story and game design for Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.

Noah Wardrip-Fruin
Noah Wardrip-Fruin is a digital media writer, artist, and scholar. His writing/art has been presented by galleries, arts festivals, scientific conferences, DVD magazines, and the Whitney and Guggenheim museums. In addition to Second Person, he has edited First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game (2004, with Pat Harrigan) and The New Media Reader (2003, with Nick Montfort), both from MIT Press. He is an Assistant Professor of Communication at UCSD, a Vice President of the Electronic Literature Organization, and a blogger at http://grandtextauto.org.

Noah will talk about the overall Second Person project.

BACKCHANNEL LOG from Presentation: Download file