Group items tagged

relevant to yesterday's class. "In a way, this act of dismissal could be construed as furthering the conversation, for how many questions it raises: Is it more harmful to analyze a work than it is to dismiss its critics? Is creating a public work an act of submission to critical analysis? When we make things, do they transfer out of our ownership? Where do we draw the line between creator and creation? We can (and will, I hope) pursue these threads, but at the root of all this is an attempt to cut off a branch of discussion."

What do you think will be the WAAAAAY OF THE FUUUUTUUURREEE: educational games or creating lesson plans around mainstream games (the better question may be, how these things will manifest)?

Schooling is already a game. Point systems, frequent feedback, rewards. The first step is to recognize that. Second step is to use technology to implement on smaller scales, by which I mean minute to minute instead of week to week or semester to semester(which we see here). Honestly it is done already in kindergarden with the stars on the board acting as a leaderboard. I am confused as to why that is abandoned after graduating to 3rd or 4th grade(we "grow out" of one of the best forms of motivation?!). Gamifying schools is a matter of refinement not overhaul. The question to me is what should be rewarded.

"the street is immersed in data..." see also reference to Adam Greenfield, author of EVERYWARE (one of the readings for the panel presentations).

A novel released in 1500 word segments each day through an iphone application. Part of the work can only be read if physically in the geolocation which coordinates with the text. These optional side stories, called "field reports", are tied back into the larger narrative. They are written in relation to the surroundings which they are placed, so the reader is getting visual cues by the setting. By Matthew Derby. He is also the senior interface designer for Harmonix. 

This is pretty cool! Another Emerson VMA student, Frank Horton, had a start up company that was attempting to do something similar to this idea.

Anita Sarkeesian talks about online misogyny in the video game community, and her experience with harassment because of her work. She is a media critic and the creator of Feminist Frequency, a video webseries that explores the representations of women in pop culture narratives. Most interesting is her actual project which can be found here. http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBBDFEC9F5893C4AF

An Argo, in an article we read, is a boat that was completely replaced: "Argo is an object with no other cause than its name, with no other identity than its form." I have been told that the human body is an Argo, that it replaces all its cells every 7 years, we are only structure, pattern. Current evidence says this is not true, some matter remains: "About the only pieces of the body that last a lifetime, on present evidence, seem to be the neurons of the cerebral cortex, the inner lens cells of the eye and perhaps the muscle cells of the heart."

Recently there's been chatter that Valve - the company behind the massively popular gaming service Steam - has been considering getting into the hardware business. Specifically, there have been rumors that the company has been toying with the idea of creating a proper set-top console which could potentially pose a threat to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

This is an interesting development. Console games have been the domain of the "Big Three" for years (XBox, Playstation, and Nintendo). Now, another player is threatening to break into the market. Steam is a digital distribution service with over 40 million active users. Users install the Steam software and then purchase and play various computer games through the Steam interface. When I was helping to develop an indie game a few years ago, it was considered a huge accomplishment to be listed on Steam. It boosted the game's exposure and user base significantly. It will be interesting to see if the console is released and how it fairs in the difficult-to-enter market.

I met this company out at CES in Vegas this past January. They have some really exciting and dynamic technology on the horizons and I think that this is the route gaming is going to go. It would be really interesting to discuss what we believe will happen to gaming when the content is able to catch up to the technology.

Hard science on the importance of play for human development. How are games and play different? What are the categories of play? Can video games give us the same result as play? Should we have a category of "video toys" separate from "video games"? If we move toward video game education we need to make sure play is a portion of that education.

I thought this was a great write up and relevant to our program as a whole. Fast Company's Co.Create is also a great outlet to keep up with Interactive in terms of it meeting art and commerce

Brandon - you are one of my favorite people - for so many reasons, this is one of them.

This blog post mentions the "method of loci" which is another name for the "Memory Palace" tradition that we are exploring. There's also a link to a TED talk about spatial processing in the brain.

Not only is this amazing news but Lauren Silberman is conducting research at MIT about how athletes playing games helps them perform better.

Full stream of the doc GET LAMP. It is part of the Google tech talk but after a couple minutes it just goes full screen and you can watch the whole movie. 

subtitle: "Interactive educational games that are collaborative and focus on 'social good' can boost girls' participation, experts say"

This is a good follow-up to our discussion last night regarding how schools are trying to incorporate gaming to make them more relevant/engaging... subtitle of article is "Interactive educational games that are collaborative and focus on 'social good' can boost girls' participation, experts say."

Henry Jenkins, the father of convergence culture, writes about visual linguistics of comics and graphic storytelling. Comics are a great gateway into Transmedia storytelling.

Mazzuchelli is one of my favorite artists in comics; not only because of Batman: Year One or Daredevil: Born Again (both amazing works), but also the City of Glass comic in the article. What's so powerful about this piece is how it talks about comics bringing the picture plane and language together, what McCloud in "Making Comics" refers to as "montage." Thank you!

An interactive documentary that tells its narrative through audio and segmented timed clips, while the main form is a navigable map of the Grizzly's habitat. You can follow the bear's path through its life physically, or venture off on your own narrative. Extremely powerful stuff.

This is airing now every Thursday morning. This episode is part two of the "Digital Lives" series.

thanks to Ivana for mentioning this in a blog comment. Powerful! Is this "art"? I would say YES!