Crazy Backyard Mushroom
I’m not fully sure when it began to grow, but it has now been a staple curiosity of the backyard ecosystem for several weeks now and has even spawned several unsucessful artistic forays. Behold something straight out of my imagining of Lewis Carroll’s imaginings.
Several folks from the Grady College at UGA pulled together a fantastic assortment of student work Thursday of this last week called “Gradyfest.” I went in with very little in the way of expectations, but I was simply blown away. Not only was I blown away, I found myself thoroughly enjoying the evening. What perhaps impressed me the most was just how indicative many of the Grady creations were so indicative of Fan/Remix Culture in ways that are simply indescribable. One creation in particular caught my eye and ear. I cannot for the life of me remember the title of it, though the production “company” “Level 84” certainly sticks in my head considering something about 8 and 4 sticks out at me from writing my dissertation, or perhaps it was playing a game released in 1985 in the United States on a little grey box. Continue reading »
Day 3 began with Pat Aufderheide of the Center for Social Media at American University delivering a keynote entitled, “Why the Digital Future is More Copyright Friendly than You Think.” The two words that she believes makes this difference are, “Fair Use.” It was an excellent talk, hoping to connect the worlds of digital media producers (the iDMAa crowd) with those of documentary film makers who have already united under the Center for Social Media in developing a set of best practices around Fair Use and Copyright.
Pat also mentioned that she is working with the ICA and communication scholars more generally in developing a set of Fair Use best practices for comm. scholarship. On November 11th, the SfSM will be releasing a set of best practices for Media Literacy Education.
What was perhaps most interesting about this panel was actually what was not said. The panel in many respects represented the (dis)connect between departments and disciplines surrounding (video)game development. One presenter seemed to even embody the kind of (inter)disciplinary divide. One panelist actually said they didn’t understand why they were even on this particular panel, though I thought it was abundantly clear why they were. The (dis)connect between code/engineering, design, and art, which are so prevalent in the videogame industry was perfectly represented between the presenters.
Day 2 started off with Ruben Steige of Millions of US talking about Social Experience Design. I think one of the key takeaway elements of this talk is that, “entertainment has always been social.” In part because of a second shift in how people interact with media Ruben spent the majority of his talk examining the role that game theory and game design has come to mean for all media. The interactive shift that the web represented five to ten years ago is now giving way for a second shift that is even more fundamental. That shift has to do with the shift toward social media.
iDMAa certainly started things off on the right foot. Though I gained membership in the organization when I joined the University of Georgia and the New Media Institute, I didn’t know much about the organization until Scott Shamp sent me his Podcast talking about last years events. It of course helped that the event was in historic downtown Savannah, GA this year at SCAD.
Moving into our new pad and hemoraging money. The closing went well, although the now separated couple across the table definitely made the experience tense. On the upside, since it was Halloween, there was a giant bowl of candy.
The new place is great, though we have been cleaning for nearly two days straight. The kitties are adjusting well, although the new washer and dryer will soon be invading their space.
More pictures soon.
Last night’s plenary session seemed to set the benchmark for talking about the state of the videogame industry more broadly, but also in the state of GA. In part, that is what has made the conference so far a particularly interesting one it demonstrates the kinds of intersections that occur between local activity and creative industries more broadly. But back to the Friday night plenary…
Andrea and I will be heading down to Atlanta tomorrow for SEIGE at the Marrietta Hyatt. It should be a great introduction for me (and those students of mine in NMIX 4200 who are planning to head down for the event) to the GA game development scene. What I’m hoping to find is a new fieldsite or three willing to accomodate me over the next few months (years). I’ll of course be hard pressed to find any studio as accomodating as Vicarious Visions was during my dissertation research, but I’ll try.