iMedia

IdeaFestival RSVP video series: "The Interactive Life"

[Cross-posted from the IdeaFestival blog] "The Interactive Life" is the first of many planned RSVP episodes, each of which will bring a diverse group of people together around a common topic. Subsequent videos may be found by clicking RSVP in the category cloud or by using the hyperlink on the left side of the blog.

Watch as our guests discuss how digital media changes our shared experiences.

And if you would like to know more about the participants and the artists, institutions and devices mentioned, links are provided below. Open them in a separate window - right click for most people - while you’re listening to learn more. We welcome your feedback in the comments.

Participants

• Wes Keltner, President, TAO Agency, Lexington, Kentucky
• Alice Grey-Stites, Founder, artwithoutwalls
• Arnold Garson, Publisher, Courier –Journal, Louisville, Kentucky
• Thom Gillespie, director of Interactive Communications Graduate Program, Quinnipiac University, Hamden, Connecticut

Artist Websites, News

• Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Pulse Park, New York City
• Bankski, Graffiti Artis
• Swoon, Graffiti Artist
• Dreaming Wall in Milan, by Antonio Scarponi
• Digital and collaborative art from Cory Arcangel
• Program for Interactive/online art for the New Museum in New York
• Mark Napier, interactive artist
• Brian Nepp, interactive artist
• Festival of New Media Art in San Jose

Interactivity in Academia

• Carnegie Mellon University Entertainment Technology Center
• Columbia University
• Yale University
• Berkeley Institute for the Future
• University of Illinois and Mosaic
• Free online classes from MIT
• New York University School of Medicine on iTunes
• Interactive Art at UC Berkley

Digital Applications, Communities

• Wii Spray
• iGoggles for the iPod
• Online notebooking, Springpad
• Creative Commons
• Jane Marsching and the Artic Listening Post
• iTunes mini-store
• Virtual world/Gaming as cooperatives

Interactivity, Media

• Newsgaming
• Hulu
• McTime advertisement
• Jellyvision Labs
• Arnold Garson interview on The Future of funding journalism Interview on NPR, WFPL-FM

Also in the conversation

• Mad Men
• Lee Todd President of the University of Kentucky

Serious games manufacture great experiences

In this brief iMedia Kentucky interview, game designer Jane McGonigal describes the explosion of opportunities in games designed and carried out in real life, not on-screen.

Like smokestacks of another age, such games signal the 21st production of another valuable resource, good experiences. Experience design is valuable to schools, manufacturing, health care, tourism and travel or any industry, really, where happy clients and customers are needed.

Collaborating via games can also help develop new scenarios and contribute in general to the knowing enterprise. And, finally, software derived from good game design, as she points out, is used in businesses to improve teamwork.

Jane McGonigal recently spoke a the 2008 IdeaFestival in Louisville, where she described alternate reality games as "happiness engines".

Screen sifting

[Cross posted from the IdeaFestival] While I want an ever larger screen on which to plot my everyday work, this video from the MIT Media LabCAST is a very suggestive take on what many fragmented yet coordinated screens might accomplish. The demonstration strikes me as a visual analog of the Internet itself, presenting countless possibilities, each of which can be called and potentially controlled - or sifted - by the user. In addition to the purely visual element, the technology opens up the possibility of incorporating touch as well, an idea the lab has prototyped in a separate LabCAST.

So if the medium is the message, how might widespread deployment of this technology change us?

Wikipedia: media, haptics

BusinessWeek: World of Warcraft trains innovators

[Cross posted from the IdeaFestival] As it turns out World of Warcraft may be training a new generation of business leaders. Businessweek gets it on multiplayer games:

What we know today is becoming less valuable as we struggle with the challenge of innovating faster and learning faster to operate more effectively in these challenging times.

Mention learning to senior executives, and they tend to default immediately to training programs. Here's the problem: Training programs are effective only at transferring what we already know to others. How do we create powerful platforms jointly to innovate and develop new knowledge that no one had before?

The authors cited other ways in which the gaming battlefield institutionalizes innovative behavior, for example, by making quick experimentation possible, progressively raising the achievement bar, offering "clear and rich" assessment metrics and, most importantly, creating an environment that rewards "new dispositions" that change the game.

Fun with Disasters

Most people will agree that the job of any government is to protect the life and property of its citizens. Linking to this Wired piece, Bruce Sterling asks: Can a game put the fun in disaster preparedness?

"Culturesmithing:" Your world, better

[Cross-posted from the IdeaFestival web log] Game designer and futurist Jane McGonigal, who spoke meaningfully about games as "happiness engines" and the need to create, rather than predict the future during her presentation at the IdeaFestival in September, lists some of her favorite ideas for saving the world in the alternative reality game Superstruct, currently underway.

Celebratory taxonomy? Culturesmithing?

Here's an old idea that may have new relevance: fasting.

Wikipedia: alternative reality games, game theory

Teens, games and civic life

Pew reports that teens playing games with a social component such as commenting on bulletin boards or web sites tend to be more socially engaged outside the game environment. From executive summary of the report, which may be read in its entirety here:

To date, most video game research has focused on how games impact academic and social outcomes (particularly aggression). There has also been some exploration of the relationship between games and civic outcomes, but as of yet there has been no large-scale quantitative research. This survey provides the first nationally representative study of teen video game play and of teen video gaming and equipment they are using, the social context of their play, and the role of parents and parental monitoring. Though arguments have been made about the civic potential of video gaming, this is the first large-scale study to examine the relationship between specific gaming experiences and teens’ civic activities and commitments. 

While we're on this subject, it's also worth pointing out that social engagement need not be a by-product of gaming, but its central feature. Some massively multiplayer "serious games" are designed to help visualize possible futures as a way of suggesting alternative, more positive, outcomes. iMedia Kentucky recently reported on one of the pioneers of this kind of gaming, Jane McGonigal.

Wayne