Po talks on interactive media

Christopher Crawford is a computer game designer and a writer. His goal was to make computer games as an art form. He was interested in interactivity in the games he created. Interactivity for him is to create interaction between the player and the game. He wants games to express human experience and emotions. One of the games he created is balance of the planet a game that describes environmental issues. Another game is balance of power which is a strategy game of geopolitics during the cold war. The player role in the game is to be the president of one of the countries. “The goal is to improve the player's country's standing in the world relative to the other superpower.” Eastern front is a computer war game he created that represents the operations during war world II in 1941-1942. The player commands the german unit corps and he plays against the Russians who are commanded by the computer. 

After playing the game “Passage”, I think it’s interesting because you go through life and everything between the beginning and the end in five minutes. You get married if you want to of course, you get old and infirm and you die. I wouldn't say it’s a fun game necessarily because you're just “walking” your way through life but the concept is interesting. It’s different from commercial games because there is not various different ways to end the game, you just die and thats the end. There is different metaphors in the game and the most obvious one according to me is that life is short, we are all going to die at the end. Another metaphor is that if you choose to get married of course their are sacrifices you would have to do but theres a lot of bonuses that comes with it also. Its easier to make through life when you have someone by your side. So because of the message I think this game is worth playing. 

The game September 12th I liked it more than passage because I like action games. In the beginning it was cool but at some point I started to realized that Im not going to win if I just keep shooting. The point of this game is to make use realize that violence creates more violence, it doesn't solve anything and I believe that he message is clear enough. Its persuasive because you see all the damage you keep creating every time you shoot. 

Persuasive games is a  video game developer by Ian Bogost. The aim is to develop advergame with strong opinions. Procedural rhetoric are games that are process-intensive. It’s all about communicating an idea ,for example how life works and how it feels to experiment different situations in life. Some examples of persuasive games are passage, braid and the marriage. These games point out different questions and simulate experiments around those questions. 

Jonas Staal is a visual artists who does art works that combines art, democracy & propaganda. Some interesting works he did are: new world summit, art, property of politics I-IV & The Geert Wilders Work. 

New world summit is an artistic and political organization, it’s goal is to provide parliaments for stateless political organizations. This organization wants to explore how art can be an instrument in creating an alternative political space because according to Mr. Staal, politics are unable to really be democratic. 

Art, property of politics I-IV are exhibitions in which he explores the role of contemporary art in the political process. In each exhibitions, he showed works of art from the different parties (or chosen by). 

The Geert Wilders Works this is a project he realized anonymously after he was prosecuted for threatening politician Geert Wilders. The project was consisted of 21 memorial works that compromised a photo collage portrait by Wilders. Steal was arrested for this and it went to the court. 

In 1985 ArchMac took the name of MIT media lab.  It is an important lab because it did series of practical inventions in different fields (web). It also developed researchers in neurobiology, emotive computing, bionics, hyperinstruments,etc. One laptop per child is a research that came out of this media lab. The goal of the project one laptop per child is to create and distribute educational devices for the countries that are poor and still in development.  

  Artist: Tiffany Holmes

She is a new media artist who lives in Chicago. She promotes positive environment stewardship

through technology. She came up with the term eco-visualization (what she does) and it is about

combining art and technology to reduce energy consumption. She is also a teacher at the School

of the Art Institute of Chicago, in the department of art and technology studies. She does

interactive art projects that can be exposed in museums or art galleries. The projects are

interactive because the public has to participate in it. When someone touches the object of

presentations it responds to the touch. (Here I am talking about some specific works I saw per

example UBS 12 x 12: New Artists/New Work: Tiffany Holmes Apr 4 – 26, 2009).

  Outline:

Presentation of the artist (biography)

Presentation of two of her projects

-UBS 12x12: New artist/ New work

-Dark sky

Conclusion

  Research questions:

How did she come up with the idea to combine art and environment?

What is her inspiration for her projects?

Where did she study?

How is the projects good for the environment?

Are all her projects about art and environment only?

  Key words: Tiffany Holmes, new media, art and environment, art and technology.

  Bibliography: https://www.behance.net/tiffanyholmes

                       https://www.behance.net/tiffanyholmes

AI and Cybernetics are both cognitive systems, AI has an inside and outside while cybernetics is autonomous. Memory of these two are external to internal but the difference between the two is that AI map external objects to internal state and cybernetics map through an environment (external) back onto themselves (internal). Artificial intelligence resides in manipulation of info while cybernetics intelligence resides in observed conversations. The nervous system of AI stores information compared to the nervous system of cybernetics that reproduces adaptive relationships. These were a few of the similarities and differences between the two.

Alan Turing: He was a pioneering computer scientist and he is considered to be the father of artificial intelligence and computer science.  he designed the Ace, one of the first designers for a stored-program computer. He also helped develop the Manchester computers. He is an important figure in the birth of the field of computer science.

1994, Bronx, New York

Author: Douglas Davis

Place of birth: Washington D.C, 1933-2014

He is an artist who played an important role in contemporary art and he used interactive technology as a medium for art and communications.

This project is amazing because it includes text from 200,000 individuals around the world, in any language. The title of the project caught my eyes directly because I thought “wow well this seems interesting” and when I read more about the project I was suprised and kind of excited to see what it looks like. I started reading the sentence but I didnt get far because there’s no sense in it. There’s no organization and that’s disturbing. I think the purpose of the project was to create something interactive that rely any human around the globe. The intention was to create something that everybody can contribute to. It’s interactive because a message is related to a number of previous messages and there’s a relationship between them. Fun part is that we can still add our part in the sentence, the only rule is to never put a period.