Tag Archives: Events/Presentations

Topic:               IMD Project Showcase
Time:               Wednesday, May 1, 6-9pm
Location:        USC’s Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC), Room 122 [ZML]

Featuring Spring Semester Class Projects from :
- CTIN 405 Design and Technology for Mobile Experiences (Essen)
- CTIN 484/489 Intermediate Game Design (Brinson/Lemarchand/Essen)
- CTIN 492 Experimental Game Topics (Lemarchand)
- CTIN 499 Special Topics: Games for Animation (Brinson)
- CTIN 501 Interactive Cinema (Kratky)
- CTIN 544 Experiments in Interactivity II (Kontopolous)

- CTIN 590 Directed Research

and more….

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

Speakers:        Sean Stewart & Maureen McHugh
Time:               Wednesday, April 24, 6-8pm
Location:       USC’s Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC), Room 122

Maureen McHugh’s first novel, China Mountain Zhang (1992), won the Tiptree Award, and was acclaimed for its nuanced and sensitive portrayal of diverse characters in a Chinese-dominated future world. Her subsequent novels include Half The Day is Night (1994), Mission Child (1998), and Nekropolis. Her writing is emotionally powerful and politically engaged; she has become one of the most prominent authors of her generation. Her short fiction includes “The Lincoln Train,” which won both Hugo and Locus Awards. Her stories have been collected in Mothers and Other Monsters (2005) and After the Apocalypse (2011). Publishers Weekly named After the Apocalypse as one of its ten best books of 2011 (in any genre). In recent years she has worked on a number of alternate reality games (ARGs), including Year Zero and I Love Bees, and is a partner at ARG company No Mimes Media.

Sean Stewart is one of the most influential digital storytellers in the world.  As the lead writer on projects such as The Beast for Steven Spielberg’s A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, Halo 2’s I Love Bees and Nine Inch Nails’ Year Zero, he co-created the Alternate Reality Game (ARG) genre, and was instrumental in exploring what “web-native” story can be.   As a Founder and Head Writer at Fourth Wall Studios, he helped develop the Rides.TV platform; Fourth Wall’s first show, Dirty Work, won a Primetime Emmy for Online Programming. Stewart is also an accomplished sci-fi and fantasy writer, winning numerous honors, including the World Fantasy Award for his novel Galveston.  His two careers came together with the New York Times and internationally best-selling Cathy’s Book transmedia novels, now published in more than twenty countries around the world.

Speaker:        Marientina Gotsis
Time:              Wednesday, April 17, 6-8pm
Location:     USC’s Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC), Room 122
Title :             “Taking No For An Answer: The Art of Trying”

This short intro to grant writing will introduce you to thinking and planning about funding opportunities that can help fund your project, training and post-graduation career with an MFA degree. Conventional and unconventional funding sources will be covered, with the goal of demystifying the initial process of searching, trying and learning from rejection.

Marientina has a broad background in arts, design and engineering with special interest in medicine, public health and health behavior. She and her team have developed several innovative applications using games for health behavior change in topics such as child development, wellness, obesity, nutrition, exercise, autism, PTSD, rehabilitation, and eye disease. Gotsis has developed partnerships and projects with funding by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Norlien Foundation, National Institutes of Health (NIH), US Department of Defense-TATRC, US Department of Education-NIDRR and the Shafallah Center for Children with Special Needs. Formerly the Media Lab Manager for the Interactive Media Division, Gotsis managed technology infrastructure and contributed to several research projects funded by Electronic Arts, Intel, Microsoft and Nokia. She has taught at USC (School of Cinematic Arts, School of Social Work, Roski School of Fine Arts), Northeastern Illinois University, Columbia College Chicago and Harold Washington College, and she has consulted for small businesses and not-for-profits. Gotsis has 18 years of experience as a designer and technologist. She received a BFA in photography/film/electronic media and an MFA in electronic visualization from the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Also, there will also be a special Pecha Kucha Session to close the evening.

Speaker:      Sara Thacher
Time:            Wednesday, April 10, 6-8pm
Location:     USC’s Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC), Room 122

Sara Thacher is a transmedia producer and experience designer.  She makes adventures that often meander between the physical and the digital. Some of her projects land squarely in the commercial realms of entertainment or marketing, while others are closer to stand-alone artworks. Most sit somewhere in-between. She also does consulting on transmedia projects and  experience design problems and has worked with a variety of clients including:  No Mimes Media, Meet Gatsby, Noise, Xenophile Media, The Go Game, Ken Eklund, Thomas Dolby, ZER01.

Sara also served as the Senior Producer and Experience Designer at Nonchalance, a hybrid arts consultancy in San Francisco with an expertise in Situational Design. There she produced experiences that challenge their audiences to become participants and engage with their environment in new ways. She co-ordinates work across every medium, from audio environments and sensor activated installations to faux BBS websites and augmented reality video, to create immersive experiences that interact and merge with their surroundings.

Before arriving on the Nonchalance team, Sara literally walked a mile in the shoes of sixteen different strangers (she gave them back afterwards) and took surrogate vacations for other people who wanted to travel, but were not able to do so. Along the way, she became a proficient glassblower and earned an MFA in Social Practice (although not at the same place). In the course of the last decade she has created and managed numerous socially engaged projects in the public sphere throughout the United States and Canada.

Speakers:     IMD Second Year MFAs
Time:             Wednesday, April 3, 6-8pm
Location:     USC’s Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC), Room 122

Please join us for a special event this Wednesday April 3 at 6:00-8:00PM in the ZML when the second year MFA students will be presenting their experiments, prototypes and previews of next year’s IMD Thesis projects. This will be a dynamic, hands-on opportunity to experience and critique a variety of interactive experiences at a crucial moment in their development. Don’t miss this preview of things to come!

Speakers: Tim LeTourneau, Erin Reynolds, & Joe Unger
Time:             Wednesday, March 13, 6-8pm
Location:     USC’s Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC), Room 122

Tim LeTourneau, Chief Creative Officer
A 20 year veteran of Electronic Arts, Tim spent 13 years at Maxis. He worked as a producer on SimCity 3000 and the original version of The Sims. He then produced several of The Sims expansion packs, The Sims 2, and created MySims, eventually becoming GM of The Sims Studio. He joined Zynga in early 2011, and after launching FarmVille 2 was elevated to the CCO role to further the role of design at Zynga.

Erin Reynolds, Designer
Erin Reynolds is currently a Game Designer on the Poker Team at Zynga. She graduated from USC with a BA in Fine Arts in 2006 and, recently, from USC again with an MFA in Interactive Media in 2012. Having diverse experience in working on games for the past 10 years (publishing, development, academic, indie, and now social and mobile) she is passionate about and confident in the potential games have to empower, educate, and inspire players of all kinds and make the world a better, more playful place.

Joe Unger, Sr Game Designer
Joe Unger is a recent addition to the Zynga Design team and is currently leading Coasterville. With 15 years of experience he has worked across the scope of game development. Beginning as a writer on Pen & Paper RPGs and board games, Unger has developed games and design teams across PC, Console, Social and Mobile. Most recently he has lead the teams behind Sony’s Sorcery and 2K’s Borderlands 2 DLC: Mr. Torgue’s Campaign of Carnage

Speaker:      Peter Marx
Time:            Wednesday, March 6, 6-8pm
Location:    USC’s Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC), Room 122

Speaker:     Brent Bushnell,  Two Bit Circus and Anti-AgingGames.com
Time:           Wednesday, January 30, 6-8pm
Location:    USC’s Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC), Room 122

Brent Bushnell is an engineer and entrepreneur. He has extensive software engineering and systems experience including deep knowledge of web application authoring, scaling, and maintenance. He has held executive positions with entertainment & technology startups for the past 10 years, co-founding Syyn Labs, uWink and Tapcode. Brent attended the University of California, Los Angeles for Computer Science and serves as a technical advisor to three companies.

Two Bit Circus is a unique hybrid of intellectuals, creatives and performers. We like to get our hands dirty. By combining engineering, fabrication, and construction, we leap beyond the digital screen and into the real world, creating physical marvels fueled by technology and perfected by craftsmanship. As natural story-tellers, we use ideation, programming, and design to establish strong creative and technical foundations for every project.

Anti-AgingGames.com features fun and easy memory, focus, and relaxation games designed by Nolan Bushnell, the Founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese, and a team of expert neurobehavioral scientists. Anti-AgingGames.com is the only brain stimulation game site optimized for cognitively healthy people over 35 years of age and includes tips that teach how to potentially reduce the risk of early memory loss through lifestyle changes. These tips were distilled from over 17,000 medical studies.

Speaker:    Daniel Suarez, Author
Time:          Wednesday, November 28, 6-8pm
Location:   USC’s Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC), Room 122 (ZML)

Daniel Suarez is an American information technology consultant turned author. He initially published under the pseudonym Leinad Zeraus.  His career as an author began with a pair of techno-thriller novels.  The first one, Daemon, originally was self-published under his own company Verdugo Press in late 2006. It was later picked up by the major publishing house Dutton and re-released on January 8, 2009. His follow-up book Freedom^TM was released on January 7, 2010. The Wall Street Journal interviewed him in an article titled:  ” When Computers Rule the World: Daniel Suarez’s tech thriller novel “Daemon” imagines a society taken over by computer programs” and also recently reported that Walter F. Parkes, who produced the 1983 film WarGames, has optioned the film rights to Daemon with Paramount Pictures.  Suarez’s third novel,  Kill Decision,  which deals with autonomous drones and next-gen, anonymous warfare” was released on July 19, 2012.

Speaker: DANNY YOUNT & AHMET AHMET,  Prologue Films
Time:          Wednesday, November 7, 6-8pm
Location:   USC’s Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC), Room 122 (ZML)

Danny Yount is a main title designer / director for film and television. He has earned many notable industry awards, as well as 2 Emmy wins and one nomination. At Prologue Films he has designed and directed many recognizable feature film main titles like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang – which IFC has rated as one of the 50 best title sequences of all time, Iron Man, which was featured in Creativity magazine’s Top 5, Tron Legacy, Sherlock Holmes and graphic visual effects sequences for Ironman 2.

Ahmet Ahmet, a Director at Prologue and Prologue Pictures, earned his Bachelor of Arts Degree in Art from Staffordshire Univerisyt, England. After graduation, he worked as a Designer and Art Director for BBC Television London and worked as a Creative Director at Framestore London. He joined Prologue last year, coming over from Imaginary Forces, and immediatley jumped into desinging and directing the main titles and many film segments for the critically acclaimed “M:14″ starring Tom Cruise.  Most recently he has worked on VFX for Prometheus.