a looking-glass book

'top five, dead or alive'

ok, fine. i quoted nas a my header. sue me. the rest of the post is relevant to the title. keep reading.

i was in hollywood/highland with will this afternoon in a bookstore selling arts books. old art, photo, film, script books...he thumbed through architecture, while i looked at spines of art books. i commented on how i would love to hear the people and items that have influenced all of us. whether its film, books, people, art...whatever. what are the (top 5) creative works in the world that have influence you and your work? (5 is standard, more or less is fine. just going for meaningful and managable.) reply in the comments please.

while we are at it

i hate talking to the air.

more gps fun

mobiles hail london cabs

'geo url'

geourl icbm adress server

GeoURL is a location-to-URL reverse directory. This will allow you to find URLs by their proximity to a given location. Find your neighbor's blog, perhaps, or the web page of the restaurants near you.

michael mateas

scott pointed these (1) links (2) out to me at the beginning of the semester. then classes happened. i hadnt forgotten, but with the semester winding down, i have begun thinking about next year.

i feel like i have been slightly skitzo in the stuff i have looked at this semester.

it all comes down to the same thing i was feeling at vcu - i care about relationships. not necessarily romantic ones (though usually thats my focus), but how two people relate and deal with each other.

sadly, facade isnt available for download yet (fall 2003). it looks like something right up my alley - in fact, witnessing a couple's relationship crumble at party sounds right. the fact that this is touted with: "This work is unlike hypertext narrative or “interactive fiction” to date in that the computer characters actively perform the story without waiting for you to click on a link or enter a command." so it one-ups my work for michelle this semester (though that isnt saying a ton).

but where he is trying to code this interaction, i am interested in it being immersive, perhaps with actors. same concepts, but why reinvent the wheel? we are speaking of stories that could take place in real life. why not use the tools we have gained over the last thousands of years and instead focus our efforts in technology to ways to enhance the story. as opposed to reinventing it?

but im not turning my nose up at this work - i certainly think there is a huge place for ai's that can pass the turing test (this from the guy who about a year ago madly wanted to build a bot for aim). so im not opposed, just wondering if thats the best place to look and work right now to make exciting interactive narratives.

back to thinking and reading.

digital game based learning

i know most of us read slashdot on a regular basis, but this is so revelvant to our program and some of the work people have done recently (kurt, im looking at you specifically), that i couldnt not post this one.

digital game based learning

semantic networks

i know tatsu has been looking into semantic networks (see: his presentation for kinder) and i know i have mentioned 'the brain' more than once.

i havent had it installed here at home, so its time. i have been thinking about the relationships that this type of graphing affords (see: previous post about frienster and buddyzoo). where tatsu is interested in speech and objects, im more interested in social relationships. connections, tastes, locations...im interested in the people side of this mapping. he has found a java based web version of this type of thing, which is exciting.

but anyway, here is a link to a page with several non-networked versions of this type of thing. im downling the brain and installing...i cant speak about the others (yet). but my mind is still churning on this.

(and tatsu, we must speak about this soon.)

a reply to ashley's statements

i am replying to ashley's piece, located here. (havent mastered the talkback portion, perhaps it could help me in an instance like this. but i bet not.)
----

while i don't disagree with everything you state here, i think you make a lot of assumptions and overlook a lot of facts.

"I want to look at how little presence in women and other minorities could perpetuate this aggressive behavior and/or negative attitudes and beliefs."

there is absolutely nothing in what you say about how not including genders or races in games could lead to aggressive behavior or negative attitudes. in fact, everything you state is about how the way they _are_ included causes issues.

you make this mistake several times and i think there is a huge distinction between the two.

in a society with so many kids who come from households where their sole parent or both parents are working out the house, computer use should decrease isolation (and by decreasing isolation, increase interpersonal communication/relationships, decreasing depression and aggressive attitudes)

the prevalence of game play in the lives of men and women may not be equal. suggesting that game play reduces interpersonal interactions may not be entirely erroneous. however, girls, especially those of adolescent age (the age when depression rates climb for females and remain steady for males) depend more on validation through interpersonal relationships to bolster their self esteem. if female teens and young adults could learn to integrate more rewarding and distracting activities such as game play into their daily lives, there might be incredible benefits, such as reduced depression through alternate coping means (distraction--video games, rather than ruminative coping).

[thanks to rachael for the previos two paragraphs full of thoughts on the subject. they were too good to go unmentioned.]

furthermore, you point out yourself how females tend towards puzzle games over action games. then is it any wonder that there are fewer leading female characters in action games? you say you gave up on games when you were a teen, playing super mario brothers. this fact seems to tie into your statistic about teen girl players. you played then, so is it really so tough to believe that girls that age continue to play video games?

these companies know their audiences, they know who are buying their games. and to assume they are going to make games with equal representation when their audience is skewed to one demographic is naive. i think 16% is a pretty good number considering. it also makes me wonder exactly what gets counted in that - there are plenty of animal characters (crash, spyro, all the newer ps2 characters whose names escape me at the moment). sports games traditionally do not include women characters (much like real life). these facts are going to drive that percentage down.

women were portrayed as bystanders 50% of the time? then 50% of the time they werent. come on, thats an absurd statistic.

more likely to scream? again silly.

and wearing less clothes? of course they are wearing less clothes. if you are selling a game to a 15 year old boy, what is he going to want to see? half naked women. thats a given. is there a reason maxim does so well? and is this a bad thing? i would argue no. you might argue that it creates unfair standards in the minds of the viewers which can lead to self-esteem issues in women. but if you use that argument, let's turn it around as well. the heroes in games, mostly male, are certainly not built like i am. they are much bigger and stronger than i could ever hope to be. it works both way.

look at fighting games. they contain a variety of characters of both genders (and some other fanciful beings usually) that cover a wide spectrum of body types and attitudes.

I wont try and defend your statistics about minorities, but I would like to ask how many other video game characters are hurt in games. I know for a fact that female African-american characters are not the only ones who get attacked or hurt in games and showing a statistic like that out of any sort of context is unfair.

from your genderspace post:
“Having said that, I often wonder how many gamers are avid porno-watchers. I wonder this because the women in both pornograhic films as well as games have the same look. Just look at the pictures of the women that the author posts within her article - all are beautiful, big-breasted, smiling and posed perfectly for the male pornographic gaze.

I can't say that if game companies started paying attention to this sad reality, thus creating believable female characters, that I would be any more inclined to play games. The truth is that I lost interest in gaming years ago ... sometime shortly after Mario Bros. for the Super Nintendo. While it's hard to determine exactly why I lost interest, I feel confident in saying that, like most women, games simply don't appeal to us like they do to men. This is decently obvious given the unfeminine goals of games: shooting people, raping prostitutes, racing cars, making tons of money, conquering the world, etc. Personally, it all seems like a waste of my brain power to sit in front of a TV, push buttons, and get upset, for no meaningful reason.”

1. I can think of absolutely NO game which has you raping prostitutes or anyone else. I believe you are referencing GTA3, which allows you pick up prostitutes and then later, if you wish, beat them up. the game lets you attack anyone though. to eliminate this ability for one character would be jarring. the game never actually encourages you or asks you to attack or even pick up these women. how is this different from real life?

2. see my previous comments about women in games and how they are portrayed. society has determined a basic level of surface-level beauty. this is reflected in pornography, video games, movies, the media in general. it is something we are all aware of and videogames on a whole does not stand out as any worse then these other mediums.

3. the end of this quote, you mistake the medium for the content. that’s a mistake. just because you don’t want to ‘conqueror the world’ doesn’t mean that someone else doesn’t. and it especially doesn’t mean that the media itself is at fault or flawed. it means that there hasn’t been content you appreciate yet. that’s like saying ‘i don’t like paintings because I don’t like pollack.’ its ill-informed.

“This research team found that between 90 and 95 percent of test participants showed an unconscious bias against blacks. We can only assume that those beliefs are the same with respect to gender, age, people with disabilities, etc.”
no we cant. there is no evidence that this unconscious bias comes from video games. youre extrapolating data and making assumptions which are a little tough to swallow. “the test participants discriminate against anyone who is different then they are.” i don’t buy it.

you seem to get extremely worked up about how women are being oppressed. id really like to see you also tackle the other half of this equation and see how women can and are empowered by games and how many of the facts you consider as negative, could, in fact be taken as positives as well.

marc davis @ ucla

his talk brought up a lot of interesting points for me.

at first, i was excited by the idea of a better and easier toolset to use to create videos. this soon soured as i realized he was looking to mass produce video for the masses.

i will agree that everyone has the right to create video, just as everyone has the right to create poems or paintings or writings.

does this mean that everyone has the right to have said work published and available for comsumption? does the idea of having 500,000 channels or millions of videos created a day worry anoyone else? i cant keep up with the world now. what happens when we have too much data? when every single person thinks their life story is all important?

i am not trying to sound elitest. i am concerned of oversaturation of media. too much and not enough of it being quality. kurt and i spoke at length in the parking lot. how do we ensure quality work? (example: virtually no high school english class covers material post-1970. im sure there are a variety of reasons for this, but i fail to believe that one of them isnt that there is a huge glut of work out there since 1970. how do we determine what is good when even the most popular books are outsold on a regular basis by a single issue of a magazine?)

on top of this, how do we create a great set of tools which will allow videos to be made easier and more quickly without creating pre-packed mass appeal crap? is it possible?

video hasnt skyrocketed yet because of the equipment and complications involved to make a high quality piece. it take a lot of people, a lot of time and a decent chunk of change still. what is the incentive to allowing it to evolve into a solitary artform that can be done for virtually no budget?

when you have that much media being create, who will watch it? how can we approach video (or any time based media) so that it can be absorbed in fragments. looking a photo might only take me 30 seconds, but to watch a video, odds are it will take much longer. the closest solution to this puzzle piece i have seen is viola's pieces at the getty. you could look, leave and come back and see the difference. in 'reinventing' how we view video do we need to throw away narrative to be able to get a similar enjoyment out of it (similar to traditional studio art)?

many many thoughts (including a statement i find slightly absurd: 'we should teach video/video editing to everyone in school' [there are so many other things i consider more important; it seems egotistical to assume video as one of the most important things a person could learn...i think logic skills and storytelling on a more generic level would be much more useful than straight filmic communication.])

words my ears are not allowed to hear

• emergence
• database
• arbitrary
• random
• ai
• bluetooth

if you can use any of these words correctly, i welcome hearing them. but if i have to hear them use incorrectly once more, my ears will literally bleed.

social ideas

the concept of networks, of strange connections and neural nodes. a friend of mine convinced me to sign up on friendster. now many people have already chided me for doing this, for its passe-ness, for its general boringness.

all of this is true. but.

the social nodes are interesting to me. how many connections i can get and how far away (virtually and physically) i can go. i have found people linked to me by only 2 or 3 dregrees from all over the united states.

does it matter? not really.

but the idea of being a certain amount of steps away from someone else, the idea of this interconnectivity and the ideas that type of user-filled network could be used for are all very interesteding to me.

yes, other sites have done this. yes, its tired. but its the new kid on the block. im interested in seeing how we can push this model.

(another place to look is buddyzoo.)

mobile narrative(s)

mike presented a semi-narrative mobile game in class the other day. it could be good i think, as long as he doesnt overextend his goals for the piece.

but it spurred me into thought, mainly because i have been silent on the churnings i have been having about mobile narratives.

theres a piece in 'wired' this month about a mobile walking tour going on in la soon. according to will, scoot is involved. either i missed the email or haven't heard 'officially'.

im interested, not just in it, but in the idea of telling stories which depend on your location. not just a walking tour, not a simply a smaller majestic. but a way to imerse oneself in a story that requires movement in the real world without having to rebuilt it to get immersion.

building off even that thought, it would be nice to have some actors/actresses involved in the process, allowing even more cross-over from the 'real' world to the world on the phone screen.

then i just have to figure out how to rig up sms messaging to be triggered by location (easy, im sure) and then having automated phone calls, etc happen (harder).

the juices keep flowing. but now i have to finish a certain screenplay for kinder. then i can start seriously thinking about this.

foxtrot again

its aslmost sad i can relate so well on so many levels to this. back to hacking away at javascript, windows apis and winamp...

'trip through your wires'

my text based game for michelle went into beta (finally) as of today. it lives over on madeofglass at this address. check it out, offer feedback and report bugs as you can. any feedback is welcome, though i am really looking to simply tighten up the code/gameplay/bugs rather than introduce new elements or mechanisms at this point.

viola at the getty

went with mike and will and john (my roommate) to take pictures for block and check out this exhibit. as viola is one of the pioneers of video art and the fact that he is still producing and supporting himself as an artist 25 years later is impressive in itself.
the show topped that though.
the passions series uses a special (dv) camera shotting at 300 frames a second. this allows him to capture an amazing amount of data in a short timeframe, which he then slows down (i am assuming to 24/30 frames a sec) and projects on plasma screens off of dvds.
i have seen a fair amount of video art coming out of the kinetic program at vcu, where the video half (as opposed to the animation half) was very focused on experiemental video art (animation focused on experimental animation, surprise surprise).
these pieces were better than almost anything i have previously seen.

they were strong conceptually, drawing from renaissance religious paintings. but even more than that...there was a video we watched before going through the exhibit. it had interviews with viola discussing his work.
so much of it was trying to capture that space inbetween seconds, in between time. the idea of understanding a person.

and that, in a nutshell, relates to so much of my own personal work. the idea of relationships, of people, of moments. and he captured so much of that so well, i was awestruck.

i certainly think it can continue to be pushed forward. but what a great point to come in on.

how can we push it? can we add sound? (the pieces were silent, as the sound would have droned because of the speed issues.) for viola, the question was 'what is passion and how can i show it?' for me, the question is 'what is identity and how does it impact others through time?'

it was interesting to note his production decisions - framing, color, depth cues, composition, lighting.

it made me want to make more video art, to continue to push myself and not let myself get too absorbed here at usc in production of 'traditional' ways of doing things. this was an issue when i decided to attend usc. i need to bring my art history books back in may and make sure i stay grounded to the experiemental art side of things too.

theres so much to say, after you have seen a great museum show. just do yourself the huge favor of going to see this show before it closes on april 27. please.

you know you're a nerd when...

'thesis sentence'

pleasurable narrative derives from specificity and consistancy.

winamp

inspired by slashdot today, i came home and set up a web ui for my winamp player. then i turned around and published it to madeofglass (check that left menu listing). thats right, now you can control what i listen to in the sanctity of my own bedroom. i think its pretty rad, though when people start blasting metal (or lee perry) at me at 4am, i might decide its not as cool.

push/pull

the project i used as my creative work on my usc app is one titled 'push/pull'. it lives over at madeofglass.com, a blog-style site that is a weird little entity (more on it some other time).

'push/pull' goes back to what i was beginning to explain the other day: using the medium itself to leverage the interaction.

when you play a game, the user has 'modes' (for lack of a better term) which allow things that a user of a movie (commonly known as the viewer, i suppose) does not have. the user of a computer piece again has a different set of modes.

(when i say modes, i dont just mean 'functions' or 'abilities', i also mean expectations and goals.)

being able to think outside of what is traditionally known as a narrative is important to me. we (a people) understand what makes a traditional narrative satisfying. but what happens when we begin to introduce 4th and 5th dimensions into it? and how can we push into new ideas in these realms (the 4th dimension being time; the 5th being 'multiple realities/outcomes' [the 5th dimension might be something else, thats just my way of thinking about it for ease of use]).

so back to 'push/pull'. i wanted something that used a little server side programming to tell a story from three points of view all at once. i have never seen something like this done before or even talked about. the project itself is less than stellar...i have thought about converting it to flash and i know exactly how it would behave and appear. but i haven't gotten around to it. the hurdles with the piece (fitting text into micro-portions of images) i think have left the user experience somewhat unfulfilling.

but i wanted to share a project that i don't think many of you have seen and i think is extremely relevant to my work and the program...

frustrated thoughts

(written inebtween classes today, on the patio at lucas. ~1:45pm)

i'm frustrated by media. by art. by interactiveness. the shifts in thinking allowed by the net are not going to happen again in regards to games on phones or platformers. the model is feel almost complete already. the advances now are how we program the stories not the stories themselves.

(end pre-written diatribe)

i think i get frustrated when i want to create the end all-be all and can't. when the things i do aren't going to change the world, i feel like im not living up to my potential.

whine whine.

so pity-party aside, where does that leave my stories? i need to concentrate on them, not on how they might change the face of civilzation forever.

in my haste to post, im filling this blog with crap. that sucks.

first thoughts

i came into the program extremely interested in 'narrative across media'...it said this on my app and that desire hasn't really changed. what has changed is the way i think i will go about dealing with. i really wanted to concentrate on multiple mediums and dynamic stories. this too, has remained constant. but now i am looking towards mobile media and networked solutions integrating with theater, film, the written word, art...there are so many opportunities.

much of the talks (esp last semester) centered on world building vs narrative. but while there must be a balance between the two to achieve a compelling user experience, i dont believe that they are truly opposite ends of a spectrum.

with a little creative thought, many elements can be woven between the two element which allow a flexible story to be told. this massaging could occur between the two elements or perhaps in the actual media used. computers offer so much flexibility - in presentation, computation and organization...

this all sounds so vague. ill try again later.

design

well, this has a semi-new look now. i'm not even close to being done on it, but i wanted to start playing with the templates. this should suffice for another couple of days, until i get back to tweaking it. the issue right now is more of figuring out how i need my (currently nonexistant) data to be filtered and stored. thatll go a long way to help me figure out what the ui is all about. i guess i have been spoiled by madeofglass - i have had the opportunity to build it up gradually for the last 3 years. i don't have that luxury here. i don't have logs to consult for usabilty testing. on the other hand, i don't have 10 other people using this blog. i can do whatever i want here, for once. hence, the absurd design. for now.

first post

just witnessed on my roommate's away message on aim:
Auto response from [censored]: FACT: Mike Brinker isn't here.