"The inherent interactivity of videogames, I believe, makes moral messages more effective, because it’s unto the player in the end to initiate it. Reading a book or interpreting a movie doesn’t quite compare to enacting something yourself, even if it is in a virtual manner."
Read more: http://dispatches.cheatcc.com/597#ixzz2nOYjgX9v
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives"
Friday 13 December 2013
Sunday 27 October 2013
the rise of Compassionate Gaming?
This new Scientist article caught my eye; it examines a few recent games (namely the Arma2 Mod DayZ) which reintroduce compassion or at least morali decision making into FPS games:
"In one video, for example, two players try to decide whether or not to shoot a third approaching in the distance. "Please turn around, please turn around," one of them says. But the third player keeps approaching, they shoot, and then they talk through their guilt. "I didn't want to shoot them." "Me either! But you know what happens when we don't shoot first."
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24325-buttonmasher-the-rise-of-consequences-in-video-games.html#.Um2RWnB7J8E
Other games such as Fable from Lionhead studios and Star Wars: The Old Republic allow gamers to make choices which will develop the character in 'good' or 'evil' directions, but this is one of only a handful of Multiplayer games which force users to question the morality of killing.
"In one video, for example, two players try to decide whether or not to shoot a third approaching in the distance. "Please turn around, please turn around," one of them says. But the third player keeps approaching, they shoot, and then they talk through their guilt. "I didn't want to shoot them." "Me either! But you know what happens when we don't shoot first."
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24325-buttonmasher-the-rise-of-consequences-in-video-games.html#.Um2RWnB7J8E
Other games such as Fable from Lionhead studios and Star Wars: The Old Republic allow gamers to make choices which will develop the character in 'good' or 'evil' directions, but this is one of only a handful of Multiplayer games which force users to question the morality of killing.
Wednesday 27 March 2013
Alter Ego: 7 Ages of Woman/Man
This 1986 branching expert system was marketed as a game, and is a precursor to The Sims and other non-violent sociological games. I investigated it after reading about it in my history of computer games (citation needed) and saw especially that it purported to contain material from "Dr" Tim Leary.
it's a multichoice questionnaire which takes you through infancy,m childhood, adolescence etc, asking you how you would behave in certain situations - future situations are dictated by previous choices, thus allowing for statistics to be drawn up which in turn decide whether certain attempts (to chat up boys for an e.g.) are successful or not.
Despite being only text and radio buttons, the situations and responses are entertaining, penetrating and amusing, a sort of grown up Leisure Suit Larry.
you can play an online version here: http://www.playalterego.com/alterego
there's an interview with one of the contributors here: http://www.gnomeslair.com/2007/03/few-gnomish-questions-dr-peter-favaro.html
it's a multichoice questionnaire which takes you through infancy,m childhood, adolescence etc, asking you how you would behave in certain situations - future situations are dictated by previous choices, thus allowing for statistics to be drawn up which in turn decide whether certain attempts (to chat up boys for an e.g.) are successful or not.
Despite being only text and radio buttons, the situations and responses are entertaining, penetrating and amusing, a sort of grown up Leisure Suit Larry.
you can play an online version here: http://www.playalterego.com/alterego
there's an interview with one of the contributors here: http://www.gnomeslair.com/2007/03/few-gnomish-questions-dr-peter-favaro.html
Friday 15 March 2013
ANT COLONY SIMULATOR
Watching Planet Ant on the BBC. Have already emailed Andy Hart - will contact Bristol Uni's Ant Lab. Renergised an old idea of mine, inspired by living with Ants, both in India as an 11 year old
(when we were at Dharwad University accommodation visiting family friends working there. I was chased around the 70s open plan living room, and seriously frightened, by a pair of angry hornets , one of whom I later found on the floor next to my bed when I awoke the next day. A trail of ants were slowly dissecting it, and had laid its body parts out like a dismantled toy aeroplane, and I was fascinated by the way they had done this, how they organised themselves, and how I felt that they were my protectors, having clearly fought and killed my tormentor of the previous day)
...and when I've lived in Turkey, Thailand and Vietnam more recently, and realised how destructive they can be, both to crops, and to bags of sugar unwisely left on kitchen surfaces! Oh the flying termites in rainy season!
Main game idea:
On individual machines (including smart phones and tablet devices) mimic the behaviour of ants in a colony, each device modelling the behaviour of one ant. One can take control of one's ant, or transmit identity through pheromone exchange with another user.
Game play would involve negotiating the landscape to find food sources, new colony sites when old areas exhausted or too small, dealing with Acts of God ( or Mod! ) such as flooding, cave ins, attacks by Praying Mantides and eventually inter colony raids.
Aim is to grow the colony to allow more users to join. Different ant types could be modelled, allowing users to take on different tasks. Rock, fire, leaf cutter, etc
It would be a much simplified visual environment, pheromone trails represented as slowly fading coloured lines - green for leaves, red for alert, blue for queen etc. possibly black or white screen, vector edges.
Inspiration
THEM! Communist terror! 1950s giant ant movie and 80s Amiga game...
The ant colony is a computer, used in terry Pratchet's disk World Series, which, along with Tron, inspired my aesthetic ideas.
Empire of the ants, novel by Belgian, read as a late teen.
Travelling Salesperson Problem - ACO ant colony optimisation used to find shortish routes
(when we were at Dharwad University accommodation visiting family friends working there. I was chased around the 70s open plan living room, and seriously frightened, by a pair of angry hornets , one of whom I later found on the floor next to my bed when I awoke the next day. A trail of ants were slowly dissecting it, and had laid its body parts out like a dismantled toy aeroplane, and I was fascinated by the way they had done this, how they organised themselves, and how I felt that they were my protectors, having clearly fought and killed my tormentor of the previous day)
...and when I've lived in Turkey, Thailand and Vietnam more recently, and realised how destructive they can be, both to crops, and to bags of sugar unwisely left on kitchen surfaces! Oh the flying termites in rainy season!
Main game idea:
On individual machines (including smart phones and tablet devices) mimic the behaviour of ants in a colony, each device modelling the behaviour of one ant. One can take control of one's ant, or transmit identity through pheromone exchange with another user.
Game play would involve negotiating the landscape to find food sources, new colony sites when old areas exhausted or too small, dealing with Acts of God ( or Mod! ) such as flooding, cave ins, attacks by Praying Mantides and eventually inter colony raids.
Aim is to grow the colony to allow more users to join. Different ant types could be modelled, allowing users to take on different tasks. Rock, fire, leaf cutter, etc
It would be a much simplified visual environment, pheromone trails represented as slowly fading coloured lines - green for leaves, red for alert, blue for queen etc. possibly black or white screen, vector edges.
Inspiration
THEM! Communist terror! 1950s giant ant movie and 80s Amiga game...
The ant colony is a computer, used in terry Pratchet's disk World Series, which, along with Tron, inspired my aesthetic ideas.
Empire of the ants, novel by Belgian, read as a late teen.
Travelling Salesperson Problem - ACO ant colony optimisation used to find shortish routes
Monday 11 February 2013
CoMeCo - Computer Mediated Communication
Subheaded "Social Interaction & the Internet" this is a course book for students of online sociology written by Crispin Thurlow, Laura Lengel and Alice Tomic*.
This book has loads of interesting insights into how people interact with each other via machines.
Companion website resources can be found here: http://faculty.washington.edu/thurlow/cmc/
And specifically a great list of resources online here http://faculty.washington.edu/thurlow/cmc/resources_intro.html
Boy I wish the iPad blogger ap made automatic links!
*she must have the email atomic@aiu.ac.uk or she's missed a serious trick!
This book has loads of interesting insights into how people interact with each other via machines.
Companion website resources can be found here: http://faculty.washington.edu/thurlow/cmc/
And specifically a great list of resources online here http://faculty.washington.edu/thurlow/cmc/resources_intro.html
Boy I wish the iPad blogger ap made automatic links!
*she must have the email atomic@aiu.ac.uk or she's missed a serious trick!
How to get a job in the Game industry
Chet Faliszek from Valve Software on how to give yourself a job in the games industry, at the Eurogamer Expo 2012 Developer Sessions.
Key points: just start - just go with what you have - limit the scope, make a realistic goal - start small
He mentions a game called 30 Flights of Loving: http://blendogames.com/thirtyflightsofloving/ which I'd love 2 play if I could figure out how to pay ;)
Friday 8 February 2013
Automatogenesis
I was looking up how to fix the Hexbug that my buddy Hugo gave me (it's going round in circles) when I wandered into the world of early robots (I was looking up the Greek for "someone who designs robots" - Automatodemiurge is the best I can do). Below are some of the Tales of Talos, a cross between Pinocchio and the Terminator!
The World’s First Robot: Talos
by Adrienne Mayor, Wonders & Marvels contributor
Uncanny mechanical humanoids, automatons, robots, and replicants, so popular in modern fiction and film, are usually thought to be inventions of the 17th century (Louis IV commissioned several mechanized figures). But the creation of artificial humans is a very ancient dream—or nightmare. Daedalus, the most ingenious inventor of Greek myth, was credited with making many marvelous mechanical wonders. His well-known experiment with man-made wings ended tragically with the death of his son Icarus., but Daedalus also created the first “living statues.” These realistic bronze sculptures appeared to be endowed with life as they moved their limbs, rolled their eyes, perspired, wept, and vocalized. Such animatronic statues were not just figments of the mythic imagination—they were actually constructed in classical antiquity.
Robots made to obey commands were also engineered by Hephaestus, the Greek god of invention and technology. Talos, the gigantic animated bronze warrior programmed to guard the island of Crete, was one of Hephaestus’s creations. Like Hollywood’s imaginary Robo-Cop or the Terminator, Talos was the ancient forerunner of autonomous cyborgs capable of deploying lethal force.
more here... http://www.wondersandmarvels.com/2012/03/the-worlds-first-robot-talos.html
This page contains a good timeline of Robots in History
there's also this Ancient Greek Programmable Robot with instructions! It's very similar to the hexbug, it can go forwards backwards and turn, depending on the winding of string round it's axles, and it uses gravity as an automotive power source. Here's a video from New Scientist about the same device:
Monday 28 January 2013
The Internet Before the Web: Preserving Early Networked Cultures
http://www.newmuseum.org/calendar/view/the-internet-before-the-web-preserving-early-networked-cultures
This Event at the New Museum in Nyork marks the first in a series of talks about the art / technology frontier entitled Rhizome: New Silent. It's not obvious if its got an online component, but it would seem doh not to. Btw, rhizome.org is a venerable resource for online artists.
I remember the Internet before graphics, the bbs and unix networks. 1993, The Word, university.
Event ;
my father took me to the Lab, logged me on to play "Adventure", read messages from scientists, told me how the first message on the proto-net was "who left the spanner in the Parking lot?" not realising that everyone in the global scientific community was picking it up.
He wants to tell his story, despite or because of his Parkinson's; of how he & his team helped liberate the Internet from oppressive corporate clutches, in the 80s when no-one except a handful of people realised its potential.
I'm going to do my best to include some of those stories on here, or in a conjoined blog, under the title "Tales from the Telecommunications Frontier" ( or something like that! )
This Event at the New Museum in Nyork marks the first in a series of talks about the art / technology frontier entitled Rhizome: New Silent. It's not obvious if its got an online component, but it would seem doh not to. Btw, rhizome.org is a venerable resource for online artists.
I remember the Internet before graphics, the bbs and unix networks. 1993, The Word, university.
Event ;
my father took me to the Lab, logged me on to play "Adventure", read messages from scientists, told me how the first message on the proto-net was "who left the spanner in the Parking lot?" not realising that everyone in the global scientific community was picking it up.
He wants to tell his story, despite or because of his Parkinson's; of how he & his team helped liberate the Internet from oppressive corporate clutches, in the 80s when no-one except a handful of people realised its potential.
I'm going to do my best to include some of those stories on here, or in a conjoined blog, under the title "Tales from the Telecommunications Frontier" ( or something like that! )
Sunday 27 January 2013
The Neon Bible - The Art of the Digital Age
This post is to record some thoughts about an incredible treasure trove of ideas inspirations I found by accident while visiting Kingston uni library.
It's called The Art of the Digital Age by Bruce Wands and every page is paved with gold
I am reminded of my first experience of a computer art installation at Manchester's Green Room Gallery. It was a captivating room edged by sensors which triggered different sounds as one crossed it; skipping, zigzagging & loping all produced different cacophonous noises.
I am fascinated by the possibilities that robotics, mechanism and natural participants raise.
There's so much in this book, but here's the Things / people to look at in further detail...
Korot & Reich - 3 tales
Rokeby
Lleo Midiverso
Klima Glasbead & Earth virtual data representation
Rain Anne ashford Dustharps
Arcangel Urbandale & I shot Andy Warhol game
Cuba, Dove, Sims
Muntadas This is not an advertisement & the file room, also on translation
Vesna Nano manipulating virtual molecules with ones shadow, cf also bodies incorporated
Mohr fractured cubes
Kak genesis translated bible passage into morse then DNA then grew bacteria containing the sequence.
Ruin
Weinbren's Frames allows viewers to turn actors into madmen
Noah Wardrip Fruin eat al Screen bombards user with sound word, can deflect with hand
Lesson Synthia reacts to stock market by dancing or sleeping
#1 Josh On They Rule www.theyrule.net allows users to connect business, politics
American views smithsonian lederman interfict
#0 Alexander Galloway Software Group Carnivore Pe
Simon Every Icon, Complexity
Levin Floccus & Yellowtail, Levin et al Scribble
.Legrady pockets full of memories, Walczak / Wattenberg's Apartment
#5 Ruiz's Bang Bang (you're not dead) resurrect the dead by shooting them! Cf also Stunt Dummies
Paley Textarc.org uses Alice to analyse word frequency
#2 Jodi untitled me, Carl efspace, my%desktop malfunctions subvert abstract
Goldberg Telegarden allows people to grow remote garden, plant seeds
Rate Artechno Group Serpentarium explores experience of being a snake with robotics
#3 Andy Deck Glyphiti, user generated art wall, online: andyland.net arts next on artcontext.net
Patrick lichty sprawl looking at urban landscape and our reaction to it.
Wortzel Eliza Redux Internet psychiatrist
Wisniewski Netomat software for automated Internet art
#4 Alexander Galloway, mark tribe, Wattenberg Starrynight represents reading habits on rhizome.org as constellations. Cf theyrule, textarc
More links etc from book's page ... Thamesandhudson.com/en/1/0500238170.mxs
Hmm the word Artbot appeared in the title; now I want to know more about what it is....
No time!
It's called The Art of the Digital Age by Bruce Wands and every page is paved with gold
I am reminded of my first experience of a computer art installation at Manchester's Green Room Gallery. It was a captivating room edged by sensors which triggered different sounds as one crossed it; skipping, zigzagging & loping all produced different cacophonous noises.
I am fascinated by the possibilities that robotics, mechanism and natural participants raise.
There's so much in this book, but here's the Things / people to look at in further detail...
Korot & Reich - 3 tales
Rokeby
Lleo Midiverso
Klima Glasbead & Earth virtual data representation
Rain Anne ashford Dustharps
Arcangel Urbandale & I shot Andy Warhol game
Cuba, Dove, Sims
Muntadas This is not an advertisement & the file room, also on translation
Vesna Nano manipulating virtual molecules with ones shadow, cf also bodies incorporated
Mohr fractured cubes
Kak genesis translated bible passage into morse then DNA then grew bacteria containing the sequence.
Ruin
Weinbren's Frames allows viewers to turn actors into madmen
Noah Wardrip Fruin eat al Screen bombards user with sound word, can deflect with hand
Lesson Synthia reacts to stock market by dancing or sleeping
#1 Josh On They Rule www.theyrule.net allows users to connect business, politics
American views smithsonian lederman interfict
#0 Alexander Galloway Software Group Carnivore Pe
Simon Every Icon, Complexity
Levin Floccus & Yellowtail, Levin et al Scribble
.Legrady pockets full of memories, Walczak / Wattenberg's Apartment
#5 Ruiz's Bang Bang (you're not dead) resurrect the dead by shooting them! Cf also Stunt Dummies
Paley Textarc.org uses Alice to analyse word frequency
#2 Jodi untitled me, Carl efspace, my%desktop malfunctions subvert abstract
Goldberg Telegarden allows people to grow remote garden, plant seeds
Rate Artechno Group Serpentarium explores experience of being a snake with robotics
#3 Andy Deck Glyphiti, user generated art wall, online: andyland.net arts next on artcontext.net
Patrick lichty sprawl looking at urban landscape and our reaction to it.
Wortzel Eliza Redux Internet psychiatrist
Wisniewski Netomat software for automated Internet art
#4 Alexander Galloway, mark tribe, Wattenberg Starrynight represents reading habits on rhizome.org as constellations. Cf theyrule, textarc
More links etc from book's page ... Thamesandhudson.com/en/1/0500238170.mxs
Hmm the word Artbot appeared in the title; now I want to know more about what it is....
No time!
Tuesday 22 January 2013
The Shape of Posts to Come
A sneak peak at the posts I'll be putting up first - a backlog of ideas, & the reason I've created this blog.
1) Blast Theory - searching for the other Matt Adams!
2) The Night Journey courtesy of Rachel Gater
3) non violent danes!
4) innovative games list
5) 360 spherical view on the ipad
6) A rogue clone with ascii charcters
7) karma game
8) alex’s ted link
9) skyrim & stealing article
10) augmented reality, pattern recognition
11) a whole new mind
12 ) Art of the digital Age
13) CoMeCo - what is it?
1) Blast Theory - searching for the other Matt Adams!
2) The Night Journey courtesy of Rachel Gater
3) non violent danes!
4) innovative games list
5) 360 spherical view on the ipad
6) A rogue clone with ascii charcters
7) karma game
8) alex’s ted link
9) skyrim & stealing article
10) augmented reality, pattern recognition
11) a whole new mind
12 ) Art of the digital Age
13) CoMeCo - what is it?
The Wall of Wishes
Wallwisher is a nifty "corkboard" site which allows any1 2 add thoughts, links, pics etc
http://wallwisher.com/wall/the-techno-hippy
come along & pin something up :)
http://wallwisher.com/wall/the-techno-hippy
come along & pin something up :)
The Techno Hippy Manifesto
Why Techno Hippy?
5 reasons:
. to explore ways to bring people together using modern networks & technologies
: to examine our relationship with the natural world, our cities, our neighbourhoods
⋮ to understand our inner selves, navigate the realms of conscious & unconscious thought patterns, delve into the wellspring of the I
:: Be playful, creative, artistic - be as children, filled with wonder at the world
¦⋮ Oppose injustice & inequality; demonstrate a better way of being in the world through togetherness & sharing
The aim is to reinvigorate the aims of the original Hippy movement in the 60s & 70s
I am Electro!
5 reasons:
. to explore ways to bring people together using modern networks & technologies
: to examine our relationship with the natural world, our cities, our neighbourhoods
⋮ to understand our inner selves, navigate the realms of conscious & unconscious thought patterns, delve into the wellspring of the I
:: Be playful, creative, artistic - be as children, filled with wonder at the world
¦⋮ Oppose injustice & inequality; demonstrate a better way of being in the world through togetherness & sharing
The aim is to reinvigorate the aims of the original Hippy movement in the 60s & 70s
I am Electro!
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