Counting Sheep: New Zealand Merino Wool in an Internet of Things Dr. Anne Galloway, Victoria University of Wellington

Presented by Digital Cultures Program (Arts) and Centre for Social Robotics (ACFR)

Date: Friday 27 August 2010

Time: 11am

Place: ACFR Seminar Area, The Rose Street Building J04

Abstract. Pervasive computing brings together wireless, networked and context-aware technologies, including Global Positioning System (GPS), environmental sensors and Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID), to embed computational capacities in the objects and environments that surround us. The "Internet of Things" is a related vision for future computing that proposes a shift from a network of interconnected computers to a network of interconnected objects. By virtue of their status as highly regulated and globally traded commodities, livestock animals and animal products have long been tracked and are primed to be amongst the first non-humans in such a network.

Map: http://www.acfr.usyd.edu.au/pdfs/ACFRdirections.pdf

RSVP: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=132181536824132

Specifically, RFID-enabled livestock traceability programmes are increasingly being mandated by governments and agricultural industries worldwide to better support management of disease outbreaks and maintain access to high-value export markets. In these technologically determinist traceability scenarios, animals are largely envisioned as manageable and saleable information and farmers are more often positioned as technicians and data collectors than as animal caregivers.

This project investigates the role that cultural studies and design can play in presenting both producers and consumers with alternate visions for the future of human-animal relations. Through a juxtaposition of technological livestock management programmes and non-technological wool industry products and services, this presentation will critically question the social and cultural implications of emergent technologies and existing traceability efforts. Particular attention will be given to articulating research practices and stakeholder relations that can significantly engage relevant issues and avoid the pitfalls of both dystopian and utopian futurism.

Bio. Anne recently relocated from Canada (a.k.a. The Great White North) to take up a position as Senior Lecturer in Design Research at the School of Design, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Drawing on a background in sociology and anthropology, her research focusses on emergent technologies in their visual, discursive, material and practical manifestations. Anne really likes animals and technology, and you can learn more about her and the world’s best cat™ on the web at plsj.org or on twitter @annegalloway.

Records from Fibreculture Internet forum Dec 16, 2009

This post is a record of a fibreculture forum Freedom and control in the Australian Broadband Network on December 16, 2009 at the University of Sydney. The content is extracted from the fibreculture.ning.com site, which goes offline on August 3, 2010, when Ning becomes a paid service.

---

About fibreculture
Fibreculture was established as an email list in 2000, We organised several events in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane between 2001-2004. More recently, the Fibreculture journal has become an active and well respected critical new media studies journal.

Convenors:
Chris Chesher Digital Cultures, University of Sydney,
Kate Crawford and Kath Albury, Journalism and Media Research, UNSW,
Geert Lovink, Institute for Network Cultures, Amsterdam

---

Background
Just before the forum, Senator Conroy announced the introduction of mandatory internet filtering in Australia. Internet filtering Live Pilot report was released (December 15 2009)

Fibreculture Roundtable Draft Program
Freedom and Control in the Australian Broadband Internet

December 16, 2009
Rogers Room, Woolley Building
Science Road, University of Sydney

---

Detailed outline of roundtable presentations

10.00am Arrive

10:30am Introductions (intro.mp3 4.9MB)

Everyone attending introduces themselves and their interest in the roundtable theme.

11.00am Histories of Regulatory Policies Around New Media

Peter Chen (session1.mp3 8.9MB)
Department of Government and International Relations
University of Sydney

The political history of the internet content regulation debate in Australia.

This talk focuses on some of the factors that shape the development of the current filtering proposal, where it comes from and why it looks the way it does. In doing so it will attempt to show the political logic behind the current system.

In summary:
1. The issue has a long genesis, and it is a result of a successive of media scares about new media in Australia and failures by different governments over the last 20 years to systematically adjust content regulation / censorship given technology change;
2. The reasons for this ad hoc development are varied, but largely relate to the tendency for policy to be framed in terms of crisis events (e.g. that a lot of the players don't engage with the policy until, like now, there's a very public dispute underway, but also the entrenched power of commercial interests (see pt 5) encourages governments to use "crisis" to force change), the development of policy prior to experiential understanding, concerns with the moral acceptability of content aimed at a large and undefined "middle ground" of Australians, and - importantly - limitations on government action due to federalism and industry development issues;
3. The current regulatory system is not the result of a key group of religious organisations who dominate this topic politically, but they are active and remain engaged in the debate over time and need to be considered by governments because of this;
4. The current regulatory system is not the result of systematic planning, but tends to conform to a given set of policy instruments designed to de-emphasise censorship as political (partisan) and cast it as administrative in character;
5. Industry has tended to be the most significant non-government actor, and is responsible for moderating regulation proposals in the late 1990s and limiting incremental change 2000-6;
6. While the policy debates and proposals appear largely unchanged from the late 1990s, the industrial environment has changed significantly, making the political character of the debate more complex, with a wider range of commercial interests less opposed to filtering systems than were mobilised in the late 1990s, and;
7. The current government has defined the existing regulatory system as broken, and thus is committed to change in some form.

Jason Wilson (session2.mp3 - 3 7.9MB)
School of Social Sciences, Media and Communication
University of Wollongong

This paper will offer a history ‐ encompassing the period from the late 1980s to the mid 1990s ‐ where the classification regime for videogames was developed in Australia. It will consider the role of ‘media panic’, a convergence of censorious political programmes, the acquiescence of the games industry, the lack of player representation, and importantly, the absence of media and cultural studies scholars, just as the infamous ‘policy moment’ was unfolding. It will consider the lessons it has for current considerations around Internet policy ‐ the contest around emerging cultural capital and technological literacies, the desire for states to implement symbolic regulation, and the key role for media and cultural studies in intervening in the regulatory process.

12.00pm LUNCH (Buy food at Manning)

1.00pm Kate Crawford and Kath Albury (session3.mp3)
Centre for Journalism and Media Research, UNSW
'In conversation' about mobile phones, regulation and sexual citizenship.

The practice of young people ‘sexting’ – sending sexually suggestive texts and images via mobile phone – has been the source of considerable public and legal concern. A recent study concluded that one in five teenagers have sent nude images of themselves via mobiles and online. But while sexting is increasingly common, key contradictions are emerging in the surrounding regulatory frameworks. Although people between 16-18 years old are legally permitted to consent to sexual activity, it is deemed ‘child pornography’ if recorded. Australian Classification Guidelines do ”not permit any depictions of non-adult persons, including those aged 16 or 17, nor of adult persons who look like they are under 18 years”. Sexually active 16 and 17 year olds are thus excluded from all legitimate visual representation. What does this mean for the concept of sexual citizenship? Is the regulation of mobiles creating new criminal categories for self-representation?

This 'in conversation' will consider the ways in which teenagers are actively using mobile technologies as part of developing their own sexual identities, despite these activities being criminalised. We will also draw on recent findings from fieldwork around Australia about how young people are using mobiles.


2.00 Chair: Anne Dunn (session4.mp3 - 11.1MB)
Acting Dean, Faculty of Arts
University of Sydney

Lobbying strategies and research agendas around broadband and new media practices and policies

2.30pm BREAK


3.00pm Geert Lovink (session5.mp3)
Institute of Network Cultures
Institute of Interactive Media
Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences

Towards a Theory of National Webs
Some remarks and examples by Geert Lovink

The shift of global internet culture away from the West, combined with a general decline (or normalization) of the role of global English, are two on a list of many factors that contribute to the rise of so-called national webs. With the democratization of the Internet provokes the growing interference of federal legislation. The deep penetration of internet in society comes with a cost: the rise of control of privacy and content by both national and international agencies and corporations such as Google. Within language-defined national borders, defined by the national IP address range, new internet cultures arise that are by and large unaware of what's happening elsewhere. Is the global Web a new subversive agenda to escape and resist the national control mechanisms?

4.00pm CLOSE

_____


Fibreculture Forum
Interactive Entertainment Conference
2pm December 19th 2009
Building K17 meeting room at CSE UNSW Kensington

Fibreculture Forum: What's behind the regulation of interactive entertainment?

The fibreculture forum will focus on the cultural and institutional processes driving government regulation of interactive entertainment platforms. From games classification to the proposed internet clean feed, changes in government policy, legislation and regulation have been driven by different actors, agendas and framings. What has been the role of key lobby groups, political parties, bureaucracies, industry groups and University players in forming digital media policy? How can those involved in interactive entertainment industries be most effectively involved in the achieving fair and balanced regulatory regimes?

Blog Posts

Long talk on filtering, November 30 UoW

As I mentioned at the roundtable, here's a far longer version of my talk about the background to filtering in Australia, from the workshop held at the University of Woolongong on 30 November 2009.

This is before the release of the current policy and consultation document.

http://www.vimeo.com/8088468

Posted by Peter John Chen on December 17, 2009 at 9:19pm

Managing contempt in (or of) the online world

News from the land of the Long White Server.

Does control of the Internet fall under the jurisdiction of the courts (in any country)? Talk back radio can come atcha from outside the national radio spectrum, and offshore Internet backchat can talk back to authority with impunity. The loss of boundaries (between private and public, and between the nation state and the global fog of the Internet) is upsetting state control mechanisms.

In New Zealand, the enforcement of suppression orders (say, naming an underage offender) is a current issue. In August 2008, a judge made headlines for "banning news websites from naming two men charged with murder while allowing newspapers, radio stations and TV networks to reveal who they are". http://bit.ly/76KZFz

On 16 Nov. 2009, the Law Commission released a report, “Suppressing Names and Evidence,” that includes a recommendation that ISPs and content hosts who know about a breach of suppression but do not block access to the content should face criminal sanctions. http://bit.ly/72dNvA

Earlier this month (Dec. 2009) InternetNZ hosted a seminar on this topic. http://bit.ly/3voATz

Attempts to hold water in a seive continue.

markmcguire.net

New Media Research and Policy

Among the goals of this week's roundtable is to discuss the most effective forms of research and lobbying to contribute to the best public policies in new media.

This topic is particularly timely, with the anticipated release of the outcomes of the Federal Government's internet filtering trial, and the release this week of the Public Consultation on the R18+ Classification for Computer Games. The papers from Peter Chen and Jason Wilson will provide salient histories of the previous patterns of new media regulatory policy as crisis management. Anne Dunn will chair a session on research and lobbying in new media policy.

One possible outcome of this event would be to form a working party on either of these issues, to work on a response to government.

Posted by Chris Chesher on December 14, 2009 at 3:40pm

Seminar: Digital Cultures, March 20 2009, University of Sydney

Department of Gender and Cultural Studies, University of Sydney.

This seminar will feature presentations from Chris Chesher, Kathy Cleland and John Tonkin.

Friday, 20 March, 2pm.
Kevin Lee Room, Level 6 Lobby 14, Main Quadrangle, University of Sydney.
(Take the lift near MacLaurin Hall stairway to Level 6 and the Kevin Lee Room is to your left).

The seminar will followed by drinks at Manning Bar. All very welcome!

Chris Chesher
This short paper will use the example of the productiveness of critical comparisons between network theories from a number of disciplines to illustrate what digital cultures might be. The contrasting (possibly even incompatible) approaches of social network analysis, Network Society and actor network theory offer different insights into social networking applications.

Chris Chesher is director of the Digital Cultures program at the University of Sydney. His research focuses consistently on digital mediations of cultural practices, but across a range of cases and themes. Recent work has revisited Innis's theorisation of the materiality of media in the light of digitality; examined the rhythms of mobile media uses before and during a U2 concert; and explored the processes of learning to share language with machines.

Kathy Cleland
This talk will explore human-technology interaction by looking at some of the different ways new media arts are using digital media technologies to create new forms of interactie engagement between artworks and audiences.

Kathy Cleland lectures in the Digital Cultures program at the University of Sydney and is a freelance curator specialising in new media art.

John Tonkin
This short paper will present a number of artwork, and discuss the interdisciplinary nature of their production.

John Tonkin is an Associate Lecturer in the Digital Cultures Program at the University of Sydney. He has been making digital media art projects since 1985. In 1999-2000 he received a fellowship from the Australia Council's New Media Arts Board. Tonkin's works have often involved building frameworks / tools / toys within which the artwork is formed through the accumulated interactions of its users. His recent projects have used real-time 3d animation, visualisation and data-mapping technologies. These include Strange Weather (2005), a visualisation tool for making sense of life, and time and motion study (2006). Many of his artworks have explored science as a cultural form. These projects have often used humour as a means to engage with complex ideas.

RSVP/Apologies to Fiona Allon (fiona.allon@usyd.edu.au)

trying a Mac utility called GrandPerspective, because I have to get one

trying out a free Mac disk utility called GrandDesign

Our Nic gave up marriage with Tom Cruise for a Sunday Roast... I mean Rose: (Remember http://ping.fm/jYdY7 ?)

posted the first post to Blogger since 2005 ('Grand Theft Empathy'): http://ping.fm/ZNS68

Grand theft empathy

After playing Grand Theft Auto IV over a few weeks now, I feel mean, stressed and empty. The initial sense of awe at the detailed gritty realism (and extraordinary visual richness) of Liberty City has receded, leaving me gradually to descend into an uncanny valley of grim, money-grubbing and compromised characters. I really don't like myself as Niko Bellick.

The inhabitants of Liberty City live in that uncanny valley where the people are almost life-like, but that almostness makes their presence cold and cadaverous. The uncanny valley was famously founded by roboticist Masahiro Mori, who observed that increasingly realistic robots (and simulations) reach a point where more realism suddenly creates negative affect in those relating to it. The valley is a dip towards the right of a graph that plots degree of realism along the horizontal plane, and familiarity on the vertical. You don't feel for the almost real. This sensation certainly also applies to video games, as an article in Slate observes in 2004.

The earlier GTA characters like Tommy Vercetti (Vice City) and CJ (San Andreas) also lived in complex crime worlds where life was cheap, but their cartoonish aesthetic (imposed partly by the limitations of last generation consoles) made their antisocial deeds more of a caricature. The mise-en-scenes of faux-1980s Miami beach / Scarface (VC) and black American crime movies (SA) referenced popular culture more than 'real' life.

This time the designers have dropped these postmodern affectations and returned to a dirty realism (closer to the first 3D GTA game, GTAIII). Even the comical figure of Niko's cousin Roman is too believable in his deluded enthusiastic celebration of what, against all evidence, he sees as a land of opportunity. And yet, he is one of few sympathetic characters in a world in which everyone is compromised, self-obsessed and at least slightly insane.

The very realism of the gameplay is alienating. The gunplay is more brutal and unforgiving than earlier games. Most graphical is the way my avatar dies. In earlier games, the camera floats off above the body, as if ascending to heaven. At the point of death in GTA IV the world shudders and blurs, the scene turns to high contrast black and white, and almost all control is lost, except for a momentary capacity to glance around at the world as your character's perception fades. Often Niko's limp body is literally thrown around with rag-doll physics. Sometimes the character who has just fired the fatal shot makes a sarcastic remark as the life drains from your avatar's corpse.

The unattractive character flaws in the game are most true of my own avatar, Niko. His relentless opportunism and venal amorality in accepting missions from anyone — to steal, murder and pillage — reinforces a sense that I am actually becoming this cold and uncanny cyborg. I hate myself.



(image from http://images.wikia.com/gtawiki/images/1/1a/Gta4-niko-bellic1.jpg)

CEBIT 2005

I popped in the CeBIT in Darling Harbour (24th-26th May 2005) for a quick look around... four hours later I completed the circuit, and there will still things I didn't get to see. This is the biggest CEBIT yet, and you really feel it.

Every year in exhibitions you tend to get a different emerging technology that has prominence. This year's offerings manifested the emergence of broadband Internet, with technologies like Voice over IP and video conferencing having a big presence on the exhibition floor.

I had a play with the demo of a desktop interface developed at the Smart Internet CRC (at Sydney Uni) which used pens to drag around images, resize them, duplicate, flip, 'write' on the back, attach audio and throw into a 'black hole'.

The NICTA stand showed some of the work going on there (not particularly compelling yet -- and still far too narrowly driven by traditional ICT research paradigms). They did give me a demo of a scheduling application that I thought we could use at Sydney Uni! The new version (ERS-7M2) of Sony's AIBO is a bit sleeker than the old model -- more a working dog, and less a lapdog. It seemed pretty responsive and lively in the demo.

Another cool demo was a commercial product called KEEpad that allows a lecturer to invite those attending to respond to questions using an infrared remote control. The questions are presented on regular PowerPoint slides, with an extra plug-in. The system registers each remote's entry, and immediately tallies the votes and displays the results, as well as saving these results to an Excel file. The most recent version doesn't run on a Mac; and I'm not sure how well it would be suited to Humanities teaching, but it represents a different mode of interaction that gives the audience some limited capacity to give immediate feedback in a lecture setting. It could even be a good platform to allows students to create experiments for interaction.

Interactive television presentation

This week's Technocultures class featured a talk from Justin Hewelt, who manages the Broadband Bananas website, and works as a consultant. Interactive TV seems to be reaching a threshold point.

The most compelling applications he showed used IPTV set-top boxes, the standard that seems closest to delivering video-on-demand. It runs over IP and ADSL to the home, but is not the Internet as much as a custom TV service. It is somewhere between broadcast/satellite/cable interactive TV (that sometimes have back-channels over phone lines, for example) and Windows Media Centre.

He also pointed to an excellent resource called Enhanced TV cookbook, which features detailed documentation of different standards for enhanced TV.

The lesson from his talk for consumer advocates is that (surprise! surprise!) interactive TV developers are looking to strategies to maximise their returns. It's worth contesting these standards as they emerge, and before they become entrenched.

Notes from Film and Games seminar,
Australian Film, Television and Radio School.
MAY 22, 2004.

10am INTRODUCTION
Film School needs
-eg Battlestar Galactica: watch new episodes and play games on XBox

• Mark Pesce
- computer games & blockbusters emerged at same time
- sibling rivalry betw game & film

David Giles
• write for the driver not the passenger
- came from film - moved to qames : Infrogrames, atari
- 100 million PS2s
- $2m per day on games (same as mpvie)
- big games must sell world wide (6 languages +)
- $3-4m up to $10
- teams of 30 (up to 60)
- Atari - Transformers 70 people

Roles:
- Producer is like film producer and director
- Programmers (don't speak)
- Artists (3D artists; fine arts background) -
eg Space Race: animations had to be thrown out - couldn't run on engine
- Designer (writer) - keeper of the truth on project (avoid diversions)
• Why do people play games
- interactivity: why wrestle with game after work & enjoy it?
- can be absorbed for days

• Flow theory - Csikszentmihalyi
- playfulness; distorted sense of time; focussed attention
- games match between challenge & skills

Narrative in games?
- often thin
- game play is why people play
• what games use narrative?
- Adventure game (is dead?) - narrative + character deuelopment
eg Shenmue 2 ambitious immersive adventure = boring ('Do you need Chinese people?')
- Sybebia 2 -
• Role playing game
- believable fantasy (Starwars knights of the old republic)
- depth in detail & character
- Final Fantasy 10;
- (tribute clip)

• Survival Horror
- often take control over camera to maintain suspense
- (Silent Hill 4)
- sex & death
- seek images to disturb players


First person shooters with a story
- Halflife had more developed story than many other games
- Halflife 2 will extend it even further
- world recognises you
- eg Halo characters say 'You're much taller in real life!'
- designers need to play games
- camera is positioneh to enable the playeh to successfully engage in the gameplay
- Challenge / reward curve
• future of narrative'
- more immersive
- more varied emotional responses fror playeb
- different styles

• cheats are integral to life of games
- eg Sim Copter stripped characters on gay pride day



1130am JOHN BANKS

Games audiences as producers
Auran - 97 Dark Rain
- approached Auran for research
- invited to work creating community
- Trainz 4 now released
- mobilised network of train enthusiasts to produce artworks
- learnt 3D studio max
- fan community as coproducers
- 'Emerging ecologies of produltion' Tom O'Regan and Ben Goldsmith = renovatlon of productixn dynamics
- (note: )
(Participatory Design from Scandinavia)
- Participatory Culture (Jenkins: textual cultures)
- Jenkins: fan dynamics; active (fan fiction - eg. slash fiction rewrote Star Wars & sexuality: Lucasfilms discouraged this); amateur film-making -> peasants, not proprietors
- Constance Penley
- since 92:
- eg Trainz Pro Routes

• Jenkins (2002): 'interactive audiences? Collective intelligence of media fans:
1. New media tools
2. DIY production cultures
3. Economic trends favouring media convergence
Trainz: Gmax 3d tool included
• Jenkins has abandoned oppositional dynamic betw producers & consumers
• eg fan movies : digital amateur film-making
- eg Babylon 5 producers regularly interact with fans (study by Lancaster)
- O'Regan: Viewsers

• Lord of the rings: battle for middle earth
- Star wars galaxies online: invited fans into development; hot debate
- new WarCraft anticipated
- developers courting fans (elite fans 60hrs+ pw)
- Sims: Maxis released editing tools before game
- Auran forum Aug 2000 sought trains opinion leaders (Verne in Wales; competing with Microsoft)
- released in 2000;
- service pack 3 included fan content
- Trainz on the road: fans demo at conventions (a trainz avon thing)
- pikkarail
- Distributed Production Networks: networking enterprise
= outsourcing saves costs
- 'Globally Dispersed Disorganisations' - Scott Lasch
- p2p marketing
-

Question
- moral responsibility of producers to online community
- eg Microsoft MSTS2 train sim has been dropped; community disappointed
- moving lessons to mmorpg - 'Harangue' with Korea: seeding fan


1215PM BEN LENZO, PERCEPTION GAMES

Perception Games: StarGate SG1 Licence
- serial form (not discrete episodes)


Adapting media licenses to video games
- PC, PS2 & XBox
- licences + creates IP (vidso games, movies, TV, Books

- Aust Rugby League
- MGM owns StarGate
- licence for books as well as games
- broad game
(6-7 mill viewers 1st run; 65 countries; 49% female - not 'run & gun')
- Daniel Jackson characteo
- puzzle elements
= action / adventure
- bad guys with technology playing god
- dry humour

• Difficulties'
- not much shooting for FPS
- complex stories
- technology not quite adequate
- fan expectations
- facial animation & lip-syching (necessary details)

• Production:
- facial scans: apply shape & lighting

• Scripts
- Cutscenes-passive
- in-game comment (player controls movement; passive story: eg 'Carter: If we don't attack them they should heave us alone'
- In game comment

Limited Non-linearity
- end up at same points
- 'it doesn't matter what you give the player, but what you appear to give the player'
- Solid relationship with IP owner
- We concept and storyboard EVERYTHING!
- design is key

45 people over 20 mths
= shared understanding

• using Unreal engine for multiplatform


130pm MARK PESCE ON MACHINIMA

Game tech used by games
= Machine Cinema: Machinima'
- begins with Quake: a record feature
- trade in Quake movies
- mod architecture = virtual movie set
- eg Real Tournament 2003
- build entire set
or use game & perform scripts
- red vs blue
- www.escapefromwoomera.org

• production methodology:
- writing
- storyboards
- script breakdown
- design & modelling
- temp voice recohding
- principal photography (performances on network)
- post {edit, final voice)

Quahe; Unreal tournament; Far Chy; Halo
• Maya PLE (personal learning)
- Final Cut Pro

• Boulangerie Blues Roz Clayton-Vincent (Writing): love affair betw donuts
• Incarnation Elizabeth Foley = 3D film (aim to get real time rendering) using Renderware
• Game Over- produced
• 'Anna' +8



230pm JOSEPHINE STARRS ON INDY GAMES

Independent games
- & experimental
- GDC jams
- Borderland (94) French

- Natalie Bookchin: metapet

- Vanessa Sourwine
- Blast theory (mixed reality) Uncle Roy
(levelc.org??)
CLevel - waco resurrection
• david goresh hmd (his head); Tekken torture:
- reverse engineering
- 911 Survivor game (never shown publically)
- velvet strike: countermilitary graffiti for counterstrike
-

215PM KATHY MUELLER

Cross-media producing
- walking the line: games enthusiast; educator; film-maker
- 'Mother may ?' = listen & remember
- games as teaching
• Cutting room floor: lost subplots; fast train to end of fim
- neurolinguistic programming
- models for language
- Beam software (infogrames)

• Film can be inspired masterpiece
• Game = empowering, playground
- film= character; game = action strategy
• tested 'Dame was loaded': worked well as demo; dialogue interfereh with action

- Sam & Max hierarchy of response
- sweatshop & skunk-time

Niche: hero's journey; role play; female perspective

Galax-Arena
- seed funding
- balance betw story & action


• Pogo's Pledge
- manipulate mood
- challenge oppressive behaviour
- evaluate dialogue choices
- rule of 3: shift state

• Heidi & Hud
- 26 Webisodes
- cliff.hanger at end of each
- role-playing archetypical behaviour
- personalised emails
- cross-media:
- online drama consultant
- online chat

Brian Sutton Smith
Gamasutra
freeplay.net

- identify game elements
- volunteer as games tester (language of games; iwteractive experience; game time & space)
- Indie talent
- maintenance & online community

identify game action to choose platforms
• identify online community to support project (sponsors)
• collaborate with gaaers at game design stage (once storyline is outlined)

• outsource at development stage
• communicate with developers in storyboard visuals, not text docs

• Rob Nevin (?): online coroline / project gemma





JASON WILSON


Interfaces / intimacy

• technological cultural literacy
- cocreation?
- pleasure of gameplay
- gameplay involves long term commitment
& bodily actions
- controllers: intimacy where bodies contact technology

• TOUCH ME (Atari)
- need to know typical instances

• aesthetic possibilities

Lister & Dovey (2003)

Oliver Grau: fror illusion to immersion

Sean Cubbit: Prestondigitation

Nam June Paik's Participation TV (1963); Zen TV (1963)

Ralph Bayer: games machine

Magnavox Odyssey

1972: Pong (Computer space: port of space war 1971 not successful)
- Bushnell: I nseded something that any drunk in a bar can play

• with Atari's Pong home TV becomes monitor for 1st time
• Sharleen; Superlectron

• light gun; steering wheel;
• Atari 2600: joystick
- missile command trackball
- Atari's mind-link: headstrap interface
- Lightpen (vectrex)
• like MTV Music generator

Commodore 64 joystick
- 80s consoles
- SEGA controllers took less leverage
- siaple parameters
Playstation: more buttons
• handheld controllers haven't changed dramatically

• G Force: force feedback steering wheels & driving seats

• Simon (remember sequences)
• Dance games
www.dancegames.net

(beatmania: saved Konami's gaming division) = empowering public performance

• arcade instruments

• gun games as training for mass murderers
= restore order to urban spaces
• samurai sword interface

• race horse simulators

• Daytona: interfaces multiple bodies

- rocking horse

- many games use same interface as workspaces

• modifications to joysticks (eg wooden Commodore joystick)

• trance vibrator

Not much blogging going on yet. It's five o'clock in the morning and I think I've caught Cathy's insomnia.