ludic-times-map

MAKING “LUDIC TIMES” VISIBLE VIA THIS PUBLICATION!

Since we didn’t have enough time to talk about ways of presenting stuff, I thought I’d compile a couple of presentations that I really liked and that can be found on the web:

Drew Endy’s talk about genetic programming at the 24th chaos communication congress December 2007.

A talk on data visualisation by Zachary Lieberman for the see-conference in Frankfurt in 2008.

Randy Pausch’s last lecture on how to achieve your childhood dreams at Carnegie Mellon, Sept. 2007.

All of these talks are quite a bit longer than 10 minutes, but you can see how everyone drives their point home (and it’s not just a technical presentation, but people have quite a lot to say) and how you’ll learn quite a bit about the subject and about the person behind the research.

If you have additions to this list, please let me know in the comments and I’d be happy to add them here.

Hope this helps.

This workshop challenges the participants to explore the boundaries of olfactory interface through the combination of art and gameplay.  

The sense of smell is powerful to us in daily life, though unconsciously. It is informative and affective. It warns us of danger and tells us the aroma of food. It also evokes our long lost memory in childhood. However, this powerful sensation is either underestimated or improperly used in the digital world. Could the sense of smell give us more possibilities to enhance the players’ experiences in the virtual environment? 

The participants will be challenged to create their own olfactory game scenarios. This workshop will introduce the background of olfactory gameplay and will discuss how smell is treated differently in various cultures. Then, the participants have to use their sense of smell to explore the scents in Singapore. At last, they will be guided to generate an interactive olfactory story by using various scents.  

# Preparation: Please bring THREE things with you, which can represent the scents of your home country/town. It can be anything, as long as it does not break the airport custom rules  

# Tip 1: Make sure that the scents of the three things will stay long enough until 26^th of July (the day of the workshop).  

# Tip 2: Be sure you do not get a cold before you come to the workshop. Otherwise, you will lose the fun of it.

Short presentations of the Art Camp participants (this is a possible structure – a subject to change):

Session 1

Kanno So / Japan

Andrej Boleslavsky / Slovak Republic

Pocket Gamelan: collaborative games as sound design

In this workshop presentation I will explore the nature of game interaction in various collaborative scenarios where the game outcome takes the form of interactive sound design. In such scenarios the focus is on game strategies — or processes that define interplay between groups of people – and the role of these processes in the production of sound.

Such games offer alternative rewards for players because there are no spectators, only participants who are collaborators rather than contestants. In order to illustrate this approach to game design, I will coordinate several group activities in this workshop culminating in a collaborative sound spectacle called “Mandala 7” which is created using 16 bluetooth-enabled mobile phones.

My approach owes much to sound works created by English composer Cornelius Cardew in the late 1960s for an ensemble of non-expert players known as the Scratch Orchestra. The Pocket Gamelan, a set of networked mobile instruments that I developed as music software for mobile phones, was also intended to be played by non-expert players. Playing the Pocket Gamelan involves new strategies for collaborative sound design using a technology that is easy to play, quick to learn and accessible to large numbers of people.

The workshop will be conducted on the premise that all participants are brainstorming on an entirely new “Angel” concept.  Workshop participants will sketch ideas together with Q during the session and open constructive critiquing will be encouraged.

During the session, the following character design production pipeline will be covered:  Referencing real life actor, Pre-production research work, Referencing Real Life Actor Types, Character Appeal, Animatable Design, Silhouette Archetype, Avoid Clichés, Getting Feedback.

Please note that this is a 1 hour practical workshop.  Some degree of drawing skills will be required of participants.  This is not a workshop on drawing techniques, but a workshop focusing on the creative process involved in getting the idea and transferring it on paper.

As such, this video is not really enjoyable as a work of art per se, it rather serves as a kind of documentary / conceptual / technical description of the interactive media piece it presents.

Nevertheless, it shows very well the Unreal 99 engine put to uses the makers of the game never thought of.

My powerpoint on the general topic of game engine modding vs nefarious artistic intentions.

Get it from my site.

Still more coming, I hope …

Games are systems just waiting to be understood and the process is always rewarding. Fun is in the learning, and the payoff is in our influence over the games created. The workshop will allow participants to have a better view of how a good casual game can be conceptualized.