I’ve finally acquired site hosting. In the future, please visit the newly-improved website for all content, including this blog.

I’m currently in the process of importing the content from my old portfolio site to the new digs, expect this to be complete by the end of the month.

Namaste.

I’m posting it here, because I feel it’s important to document it on this blog. Obviously, it’s going to change a lot over the coming years, so documenting it is important and useful.

CURRENTS features course projects from students enrolled in Terence Hannum’s course Installation, Curation and Exhibition of New Media. Work will include interactive art, network based art that is shared across internet, social media and mobile platforms, obsolete media, and feature students innovative approaches for the curation and exhibition of new media.

My project, #colorwall, was developed using Processing and the Twitter API. The application displays a solid color on a wall in the gallery. Guests can change the color using Twitter. Anyone with a Twitter account can send a Tweet consisting of the hashtag: #colorwall, and a color value in hexadecimal format. Within seconds, the color changes.

From the wall label:

The emergence of digital media, and in particular online social media, has spurred a redefinition of physical space and how we interact with it. Curiously, digital media has created a situation where people can influence and act upon a physical space- and thus, by extension, the people within that space- without being in the space themselves. This piece explores that idea by opening up some of the aesthetic traits of a space- namely, the color of a part of a wall- to input from users of an online social media service. The ability for participants to use Twitter to cause change to a physical environment raises questions about agency and the true nature of physical space.

Due to technical difficulties, I will not be able to configure a live stream showing the exhibit. I am, however, working on a further iteration of this project, which will most definitely feature a live video feed.

CURRENTS opens tonight a 6pm and runs through January 28th. The exhibit is being held in the Interactive Arts + Media Project Rm. at Columbia College Chicago- 916 S. Wabash, Rm. 110. The exhibit is free and open to the public.

I recently applied for, and was accepted in, the new Interactive Arts and Media Bachelor’s of Fine Arts degree program here at IAM Columbia. That means that Fall 2009 is my last semester as a Game Design major. This was a difficult decision to make, but I think it was absolutely the right one. And I want to talk a little bit about why.

First, I should qualify this by saying that I do want to work with games- indeed, I’m involved in two small projects at present (more details on at least one should be coming in early 2010). But I’ve come to the conclusion that formal education in game development can only take you so far- some would even argue it’s even counter-intuitive, though I would disagree.

I think that the big payoff for Game Design programs is that it connects you with colleagues who share your relative skill level, enthusiasm, and interests, while also connecting you with faculty and other mentors who both nurture and challenge. The reason why this is the single most important benefit is that it provides the context, supportive environment, and motivation to get out there and make games. The Game Design program at IAM does that, and much more. But over time, I’ve found my interests sharply diverging from that of my colleagues.  Through coursework and personal reflection, I’ve determined what my priorities are as a maker of games.

• Exploring the often-murky path of experimental gameplay while keeping the barrier-of-entry low.
• Developing new game interfaces- software UI, hardware, the real world, and more.
• Revisiting environmental, site-specific gameplay- an idea that’s been largely dormant since the decline of video arcades, VR venues, laser tag, BattleTech pods, etc.
• Games as exploration of weighty emotional themes, such as sadness, loss, etc.
• Games as a vehicle for social justice.
• Contributing to the development of a vibrant, sustainable independent game developer community on par with that of independent filmmaking.

I’ve come to the realization that my interests and priorities simply don’t match up with that of my colleagues enough to build and develop working partnerships. With a few exceptions, most of my fellow students have their sights set on landing jobs in the commercial game industry- they want to make the next Call of Duty, or World of Warcraft, or Bioshock. And rightfully so- the commercial game industry is immensely successful, and offers the best opportunities to do what many Game Design students want to do, which is get paid to make video games. But that’s not a priority for me. My priorities aren’t better or worse than that of my fellow students- just different. Unfortunately, this disconnect can make working with other students on game projects prohibitively difficult.

At the same time, I’ve been brainstorming projects to build, and most of the ideas I’ve come up with have fallen outside games. In particular, I’ve been wanting to work with responsive environments; gestural, haptic, and motion-based user interfaces; virtual and augmented reality; and generative art. By the time summer rolled around, and I found myself pitching my idea for an immersive,  interactive music visualizer to one of my professors and mentors, I realized that games really weren’t the only thing I wanted to do with myself- perhaps not even the main thing.

Around the same time, IAM announced the new BFA degree program, and were taking applications. I missed the deadline to start in Fall 2009, but they held another round to start in Spring 2010. I hemmed and hawed over it for a while, at one point convincing myself I just didn’t have the time (staying in undergrad an extra semester or two is, for a variety of reasons, not a viable option for me). But then I talked with some of my professors, who not only assuaged my concerns (Niki Nolin, the Associate Chair and coordinator for the new degree program, outlined a plan to let me complete the program and still graduate on time), but soundly convinced me that it was the best plan for my artistic and professional development.

With only 10 days before the deadline, I pushed my midterm-wracked coursework to the background and built a (rough, very rough) portfolio website showcasing some of my work to date. Thankfully, it was enough to get me in.

So what are my goals moving forward?

• Finish “Let The Music Move You,” my interactive music visualization.
• Explore light painting and long-exposure photography.
• Expand and deepen my web development skillset.
• Do some work in video remixing.
• Make progress on the XNA project I’m working on with Zach Breman.
• Graduate (obviously).
• Have one of my pieces shown in an off-campus gallery in the next year.
• Develop my portfolio further to have a substantive body of work to show in a year when I start applying to graduate school.

Overall, I’m really excited for the direction things are going. Now I just need to hunker down and get some work done.

Eschatology/APOCALYPSE will be an exhibition dealing with the issues of technology and the end of time. Often depicted in video games, science fiction and popular culture the fantasy of the end of the world arises either as a direct cause of technology, aided by technology or uses advances to depict these prophecies to us on a more direct level.

The exhibit will feature an installation piece I worked on with Laura Thompson called “Faces of Death.”

Humans have always struggled to come to grips with their own mortality. Many works of art and literature have been produced throughout history depicting our desire to challenge death’s inevitability- and the tragic outcomes that follow.  The apocalypse is a magnification of this struggle, as it represents not only the death of our mortal incarnations, but our families, our legacy, and the very world we call home. It’s a Total Death, and a condition all the more trying to confront. This piece encourages people to face that fear. Our project, written in Processing 1.0.5, parses live video from a webcam and renders it to the screen. The image is altered to make guests standing in front of the camera appear ghastly and corpse-like. The intention is to bring guests face to face- literally- with their own mortality.

Eschatology/APOCALYPSE runs Thursday, October 27th, until Monday, November 30th.  The exhibit opening is this Thursday from 4pm-7pm at The Project Rm.- 916 S. Wabash, Room 111. For more information, email me.

This is one of the big problems we face in rhetoric and critical analysis. Communication always requires some degree of abstraction. The word that represents your name is ultimately a abstraction of the name itself. And the name, itself, is a highly abstracted representation of the thing it references- i.e. you. The difficulty, it seems, lies in trying to maintain a balance between how much needs to be abstracted to communicate versus what gets lost in the abstraction.

Play is a pointed example of this meta-communicative tension. A game, or a play-experience, is just a stylized abstraction of another activity. Tag is an abstraction of hunting. RPG’s are an abstraction of social interaction. Call of Duty is an abstraction of modern warfare. But they’re not the things themselves. It’s a signification. An abstraction.

A game.

So:

* How ‘meta’ can you take this before it gets ridiculously postmodern? Can you do a game about games?

* Robots and 3D models of humans can be seen as abstractions of humans. They also suffer from the uncanny valley. Can a similar phenomenon apply to abstractions or simulations of non-human objects?

Game walkthroughs are also abstractions. Really, they’re abstractions of abstractions- like a rough sketch of a map of a place.  They usually read like, “be sure to only go through the middle door once you’re in this room.” It implies a certain degree of knowledge coming in, and a presumed awareness of space and context. In rhetoric, the author will usually try to illustrate some points and background information to frame the argument. Now, you might say that walkthroughs don’t make arguments- they just provide advice for beating a game. However, there are examples of walkthroughs making arguments and advocating a point-of-view. They can be highly critical of the game it’s depicting. And though the degree of sophistication can vary, we still have some form of critical analysis of a work- which itself is an abstraction. This is mediated by at least two levels of abstraction between the critic and the work. So, abstractions of abstractions, which are then abstracted. Then put down in words- which itself is a collection of abstractions.

It’s okay. My head hurts too.

Which begs:

* If you incorporate walkthrough-esque gameplay guidance into the work itself (i.e. really detailed tutorials), is it then part of the work itself (and thus no longer an abstraction of it)?

* Is critical analysis an appropriate device to use in a walkthrough?

On the other hand, you have games where game state management is handled by humans. This is most common with tabletop and live-action roleplaying games. The game state is handled by a Game Master, Dungeon Master, Storyteller, or one of similar peerage, and occasionally assistants. Unlike computer games, where few things happen in the game that the software doesn’t know about, the GM is beholden to the other players for collecting and parsing the information he/she needs to manage the game state. This is a little easier in tabletop roleplaying, since everyone’s seated around a table and everyone can see and hear each other. With LARPs, it’s a little more tricky. The players move around in a big space, ranging from an apartment to an open loft space (which is where I used to run White Wolf LARPs) to a wooded area. It’s physically impossible for a GM, or even a team of GMs with assistants, to keep track of everything that goes on. Invariably, there will be some game information that the GM, as manager of the game state, won’t have available. As might be expected, savvy LARP players use this to their advantage. (Compare to the earlier observation on computer games and their advantages.)

This isn’t a bad thing. It’s just another permutation to be aware of when tuning for balance (yes, one more thing game designers need to worry about). Meanwhile, we’re presented with opportunities to explore gameplay where the presumably-omniscient game state manager doesn’t know everything that’s going on. Imagine a game where the players know everything and the game itself knows nothing. A cooperative gaming experience where, instead of players starting at a disadvantage and working together to change the game state to something more agreeable to them, the players start with the upper hand and work together to press the advantage while the game frantically tries to forge its own path to victory.

A game where you already have the princess, locked in your tower. You just need to keep her there.

One of the things we learn in my Fiction Writing courses is that output trumps quality. Not to say that solid turn-of-phrase is useless- but simply that you shouldn’t let the fear of not getting something perfect stop you from getting something posted at all.

One or two paragraph posts are okay. I understand this now.

So expect more- and, hopefully, more consumable- posts to come.

As academic and professional disciplines, Game Design and Economics have shared something in common for quite a while. In economics, a transaction between two parties is predicated on what I’ve come to label “The WIIFM Rule.” WIIFM, of course, being an acronym for “What’s In It For Me.” It’s in the forethought of both parties, and, if both aren’t satisfactorily answered, the transaction doesn’t go through. Ludology follows a similar path- at every decision a player makes, from buying the game in the first place, to opening that door, to taking on that side-quest, the player first asks “What’s In It For Me.” It’s the job of the game designer to have an answer at the ready.

Tied into this is the idea of invested meaning. We want to buy something because we’ve attached value to it. We want to run this instance because the potential outcome holds value to us. We determine that one thing is worth more to us than a resource we currently hold- in market economics, it’s money; and in games and virtual worlds, it’s time.

Either system works because people opt-in. The economy grinds on because we do determine things are valuable and worth having and worth giving up something else. Games and virtual worlds are successful because the experiences they offer are well worth the invested time. We choose- enthusiastically, even- to invest some part of our personal satisfaction on these artificial constructs.

As an aside, this reminds me- in a partly ironic, partly frightening way- of The Matrix Trilogy. The Redpills- the people who refused to accept the programming- constituted only 1% of the total population. The other 99% knew, even if only subconsciously, that the Matrix wasn’t real. And they chose to plug in anyway. If you keep this in mind when you consider the rate at which VW’s are growing- in number, in GDP for the world they describe, in complex social behavior that emerges- one can’t help but give pause.

Questions:

1. Like VWs, Social Networking sites are drawing more and more of our time-capital. Facebook may not have the same kind of immersive first-person-view interface that a game or a VW has, but it’s still rather successful in not only capturing users’ time, but capitalizing on it to. Would Facebook, Myspace, Livejournal, et al be even more successful if they became Virtual Worlds unto themselves?

2. With VW’s, MMO’s, etc. so obviously The Next Big Thing, what of “retro” games that are still unplugged? Does the burgeoning secondary market for old and retro games need to be restructured in order to compete? Or is the quality of being unplugged providing enough value to stay viable?

My laptop died about a month ago (blown motherboard). It coincided nicely with my department moving to new facilities, thus leaving me without a backup plan and, thus, no meaningful net access for the better part of a month. I’m not quite sure how I survived.

Regardless, I’m back online now, and meaningful content in forthcoming.