Color Music: LaserPiano

laserpiano.com is a site that sells a LaserPiano for color music performances. The site has good links to information about colour music, its history and synesthesia. I remain a bit mystified as to exactly how the LaserPiano works and what you get. The LaserPiano makes explicit how color music has become entertainment – from light shows to music to planetariums that coreograph visual productions to music.
Continue reading Color Music: LaserPiano

ITU of Copenhagen: Building

In an entry before on the Academical Village I speculated about hybrid campuses that have both virtue and physique (virtual and physical extension). Now I want to put this another way: How can the intersection of art and technology be expressed in a campus or building? I am interested in examples of buildings designed to house art and technology programs, research and development. Are there ways the design of space can facilitate the desired interactions and exhibit the intersection of art and digital technology? What would Jefferson design?

Two campuses come to mind as example, IT University of Copenhagen – The ÿrestad Building is being purpose built to house a new university around IT that includes Aarseth’s Game Studies unit. If you look at the animations you can see features like the use of glass, large atrium, and projections that suggest an architectural implementation of the values of the new university (which are direction-finding, forthcoming, and accountable.) Openness and transparency is probably a better word than “forthcoming” – I suspect something was lost in translation.
The second, and older, example is the MIT Media Lab: Wiesner Building that was designed by I.M. Pei in 1985. MIT is now added a new building next to it, see the Plan #54. Just as interesting is the Gehry Stata Center for CSAIL (Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab).
Continue reading ITU of Copenhagen: Building

Raph Koster

Raph’s Website contains a wealth of essays, links and other goodies by one of the designers of Ultima Online. There is a thorough timeline and lots of stuff on designing MMGs.
Raph was one of the thinkers on games Espen Aarseth recommended.

Robyn Miller and Interactivity

Wired 7.10: Mystery Man is about Robyn Miller’s new venture, Green Tea, a film not a game. It seems he is tired of the limits of game design.
"I’m interested in pushing interactive further to accomplish one of two things: to find ways to affect people in an interactive world, or to convince myself that an interactive medium is not suitable for affecting people."
His reflections on the differences to creators between game and film design will be interesting to read.

Espen Aarseth: (What) Can the Humanities Contribute to Game Research?

Espen Aarseth gave the closing plenary at the Gothenberg ALLC/ACH 2004. His talk was a masterful tour through the field of computer games research leading to thoughts on what the humanities have to offer. Espen reminded us that he used to go to the ACH/ALLC but didn’t find it appropriate to his interests.
What follows are some notes from his talk.
Continue reading Espen Aarseth: (What) Can the Humanities Contribute to Game Research?

Newsmap: Google News Visualizer

Newsmap is an effective visualizer of Google News stories that creates treemaps based on the volume of stories for each topic. The interface allows you to compare different national news sets and to show/hide different types of news (world, nation, business…). What’s more, it actually works visually and for looking at the information.
Continue reading Newsmap: Google News Visualizer

Child Porn and the Internet

The issue of how we can block porn on the Internet, especially child porn, is heating up here in Canada as the programmer, Briere, who kidnapped and killed a 12 year old girl, Holly, confessed that, "I don’t know how it is for other people, but for myself, I would say that, yes, viewing the material does motivate you to do other things … the more I saw it, the more I longed for it in my heart.". (See CJAD 800 : News.) Conservative leader Steven Harper has now made it an election issue accusing Martin of being soft on child porn.
Like the question of whether violent games encourage violent action, we are seeing a debate about the relationship between pornography and abuse. See, for example, Rosie Dimanno’s response in the Toronto Star, TheStar.com – The abomination of Briere’s excuses.
The difficulty is in how to respond, and respond we must if there is evidence that child porn encourages violence against children. If one legislates representations then there is the risk that artistic representations with nude children will be deemed pornography. The alternative is to legislate intent, but how do you tell intent? Can one look at systems of production and distribution to distinguish art from porn? Is it any less porn if displayed in an art gallery?
Continue reading Child Porn and the Internet