Showings must be strictly limited to six people per session, so we ask that you get back to us at this email address — cayley at shadoof dot net –with your first and second choice of a preferred session. These spaces will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis and we apologize in advance if we are unable to accommodate you.

Wednesday, May 14
- Session 1: 6:30-7:10
- Session 2: 7:10-7:50
- Session 3: 7:50-8:30

Thursday, May 15
- Session 1: 6:30-7:10
- Session 2: 7:10-7:50
- Session 3: 7:50-8:30

Friday, May 16
- Session 1: 6:30-7:10
- Session 2: 7:10-7:50
- Session 3: 7:50-8:30

By Monday, May 12, there will be a program with some details of the pieces to be shown accessible on the Writing Digital Media website: http://writingdigitalmedia.org

Please also visit the CCV website: http://www.ccv.brown.edu/

With thanks to Prof. Jan Hesthaven (CCV Director), Prof. Clyde Briant (Vice President of Research), Sharon King, Sam Fulcomer, everyone else associated with CCV and the Cave, and special thanks to CCV’s John Huffman.

[…] To begin the present discussion, I re-purpose the term “telepathic communication” as a rhetorical tool. By telepathic communication I mean the current and future set of personal mobile communications devices, services and infrastructure – from simple mobile phones to immersive, shared augmented reality.7 As one of the leading legitimate scientific investigators of psychic phenomena described it:

We venture to introduce the words Telesthesia and Telepathy to cover all cases of impression received at a distance without the normal operation of the recognised sense organs. These general terms may, we think, be found of permanent service.

“Of permanent service”, indeed. The adoption of this term is intended to focus our attention on the cognitive and sensory nature of mobile communications over the purely functional, social aspects. That is, by employing this term, I seek to emphasize the nature of mobile communications as an extension of the self, rather than exclusively a media for social communication…” — Thinking in Telepathic Cities [PDF] by Anthony Townsend.

The advances in computer entertainment, multi-player /online gaming, technology-enabled art, culture and performance have created new forms of entertainment that attract, immerse and absorb their participants. The phenomenal success of such a “culture” to initiate a mass audience in patterns and practices of its own consumption has supported the evolution of an enormously powerful mass entertainment, digital art and performance industry extending deeply into every aspect of our lives, leading further to major societal and business contacting changes.

The International Conference on Digital Interactive Media in Entertainment and Arts (DIMEA), in cooperation with ACM, is the premier forum for the presentation of societal, business and technological advances and research results in cross-disciplinary areas related with digital interactive media in entertainment, art and creative technologies. This conference is dedicated to build common ground between research, design and development, learning and collaboration in its myriad digital media forms: one of its many objectives is the exploration of ‘play & learn’, demonstrating new arenas and applications for digital gaming and incorporating leading edge technologies, designs and models in our changing views about what is involved in gaming.

DIMEA 2008 is jointly organized by Athens Information Technology (AIT), ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Human Interaction (ACM SIGCHI, Singapore Chapter) and the Society for Excellence and Innovation in Interactive Experience Design (InExDe).

DIMEA 2008 will bring together academics, technologists, artists, designers, and industry representatives to address and advance the leading edge of new digital and interactive media.

Who should attend:

Academics, Animators, Artists, Designers, Developers, Educators, Engineers, Game Designers, Industry Professionals, Media Industry, Video Producers, Directors, Writers, Performers, Photographers, Videographers, Researchers, Students. Anyone who wants to be inspired to adopt advanced ways in industry, society, business, research and teaching, expand their knowledge on a wide variety of topics within the field of digital media, network with cross-disciplinary experts from digital media professionals to academic experts, and evolve with this ever-changing field!

DIMEA 2008 is one of the few conferences that combines full technical papers as well as artwork / game / demo submissions, to accommodate, after evaluation and selection, both technical oral sessions as well as artwork / game / demo exhibition sessions. For each one of the two tracks of the conference further information is separately provided below.

Technical Conference Track: The following, non exclusive, topics are called for:

Entertainment, Art and Technology - Location-based and Pervasive Gaming, Mobile Entertainment, Digital Games in Practice, Computer Entertainment Research, Open-Source Gaming Engines, Implications for Multimedia and Web Design, Artistic Games, Commercial Games, Edutainment, Educational/Serious Games, Interactive Games, Games as Pedagogy, Analysis of Games, e-Performance (e-Opera,e-Theatre, e-Concert, …), Virtual Exhibitions and Museums

New Media Emerging Technologies - Personal Broadcasting (Podcasting and Vlogging), Novel Applications for Mobile Phones, Social and Interactive Computing Applications, Collaborative Spaces/Environments, Innovative Applications of Technology in the Arts, Mixed Reality and Enhanced Visualization, Context-aware Environments and Devices, Immersive Learning Experiences, Communication Technologies and Systems for Digital Media, Advanced Authoring and Composition of Media, Advanced Interaction, Targeted/Personalized Media, Adaptable Media and AI

Code Art - Algorithmic Art, Software Art, Net Art, Installation Art, Tangible Computing, Sonic Art

Digital Visual and Auditory Media - Digital Photography, Digital Imaging as Art, Advances in 3D Modelling, Digital Printing, Non-Photorealistic Rendering, Digital Sound and Music, Digital Music Synthesis and Composition, Graphics and Animations, Digital Comics

Moving Media - Digital Video, Distance Collaboration/Performance, Computer Animation, Interactive Movies

Culture of New Media - Network Culture, Philosophy of New Media, Digital Identity

Interactive Stories - Digital Narrative, Digital Asset Management, Semantic Web Technologies, Interactive Television and Cinema, Game Design and Storytelling

Full Paper Submissions: Prospective authors are invited to submit full technical papers of not more than 8 pages, including tables, figures and references at the conference online paper submission system. Prospective authors should adhere to the conference full paper submission guidelines. Full Papers should present original research related to the above mentioned scientific areas, not published elsewhere. Please refer to the conference Web site for detailed submission guidelines. Full papers will be peer-reviewed by at least three reviewers from the International Technical Program Committee in a single-blind process, judging on their relevance, novelty and technical quality.

Art Work / Game / Demo Exhibition Conference Track: DIMEA 2008, with the participation of the MEDIATERRA FESTIVAL, aims to offer the opportunity to artists, independent creators, multimedia authors, programmers and theorists to exhibit their digital interactive rich-media works in art and entertainment, and at the same time to create a forum of communication, discussion and collaboration on advances in the already deployed practices.

We cordially invite artists, creators, designers, game developers, generally practitioners working with digital interactive media to submit their original contributions to the DIMEA2008 Artworks / Games / Demos exhibition track, in the context of the following five DIMEA 2008 subject art-related areas:

Entertainment, Education, Art and Technology: Location-based and Pervasive Gaming, Mobile Entertainment, Digital Games in Practice, Computer Entertainment Research, Open-Source Gaming Engines, Implications for Multimedia and Web Design, Artistic Games, Edutainment, Educational/Serious Games, Interactive Games, Games as Pedagogy, e-Performance (e-Opera, e-Theatre, e-Concert, …), Virtual Exhibitions and Museums

New Media Emerging Technologies - Personal Broadcasting (Podcasting and Vlogging), Novel Applications for Mobile Phones, Social and Interactive Computing Applications, Collaborative Spaces/Environments, Innovative Applications of Technology in the Arts, Virtual and Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality and Enhanced Visualization, Context-aware Environments and Devices, Immersive Learning Experiences, Communication Technologies and Systems for Digital Media, Advanced Authoring and Composition of Media, Advanced Interaction, Targeted/Personalized Media, Adaptable Media and AI, Semantic Web Technologies, Digital Identity

Code Art - Algorithmic Art, Software Art, Net Art, Installation Art, Tangible Computing, Sonic Art, Artificial Entities

Digital Visual and Moving Media - Computer Animation, Interactive Movies, Advances in 3D Modeling, Semantic-based Approaches, Real-time 3D

Interactive Media - Digital Narrative, Interactive Television and Cinema, Interactive Drama, Interactive Storytelling

Socrates: What a lucky morning this is turning out to be! I was looking for one virtue and have found a whole swarm of them. — Plato, Meno

In September 2007, the Australia Council for the Arts announced the recipients of its $20,000 artists residency in the 3-D online virtual world of Second Life. Dodds, Nash, and Clemens were awarded the grant to develop an inter-disciplinary artwork which explores the possibilities of literary, music / sound art and real-time 3-D arts practices within the virtual world. The artwork is a simultaneous installation in Second Life and in a real world gallery, where gallery visitors can be directly involved in its creation via a computer interface.

[Image: left to right: Adam Nash (aka Adam Ramona), Christopher Dodds (aka Mashup Islander), and Justin Clemens (aka S1 Gausman)]

BabelSwarm, a metaphor for the Tower of Babel, uses voice recognition software that converts the spoken word of real and virtual world participants into 3-D letterform images in an evolving tower of words. The letterforms generate relationships with each other through a combination of visual and sonic manifestations, fragments of narrative, environmental / user awareness capabilities and through interaction with existing data generated within Second Life itself such as the virtual winds, sunrises and sunsets. According to Justin Clemens, Second Life is an already burgeoning platform for today’s art. ‘Every era has a form that exemplifies it: in Shakespeare’s time, it was the theatre; today, it’s Second Life. It’s a question of trying to meet the new challenges of a new time - and the new spaces that it generates, ”Second Life epitomises the innovations of contemporary technology and culture: an entirely virtual world that has entirely real effects,” Justin said.

According to artist Christopher Dodds, Second Life is a step in the right direction for Australia contemporary arts practice. “It is encouraging to see the Australia Council recognising virtual worlds as legitimate environments for artistic practice, and while we thought our idea was solid, we knew the grant would receive a lot of attention and some pretty spectacular applications,” Christopher said.

Read more here [PDF] and here.

To gain access to Babelswarm you need to register an avatar name, download the Second Life application software, and then log-in to see the virtual world. This can be done in three easy steps:
1. Go to http://secondlife.com/ and follow the “Get Started” link. This will allow you to register an avatar name, download the application and then log into Second Life.
2. New users go to an instructional island where they can learn to walk, fly talk etc.
3. When ready, click on (or paste into a web browser) the following link: http://slurl.com/secondlife/ACVA/119/180/295/ Follow the instructions and your avatar will arrive in the Babelswarm foyer.

Read Bettina Tizzy’s interview with Adam Nash here.

Armed with cameras, we are making our way through a three-dimensional space. The landscape before our eyes is scarred by war-demolished buildings, armed men, tanks and artillery, piles of rubble, the wounded and the maimed. This arrangement of photographs and news pictures from different zones and theaters of war depicts a universe filled with mute violence. The audio reproduces the sound of a world in which to breathe is to suffer. Special effects? Hardly. We, the visitors, feel as though our presence could disturb this chaotic equilibrium, but it is precisely our intervention that stirs up the pain. We are taking pictures; and here, photography is a weapon of erasure. More >>

Némo 2008 - Le festival incontournable de tous les Amateurs d’expérimentations audiovisuelles et de nouvelles images, en partenariat avec Le Cube, centre de création numérique (Issy-les-Moulineaux), le festival Elektra (Montréal) et le magazine Repérages. Entrée libre :: April 10 - 20, 2008.

A panel discussion and virtual performance event, From Cinema to Machinima will explore the many ways in which the digital medium has reconfigured, even transformed, the moving image and thereby redefined concepts of cinema. Whether through software processes or interaction by the viewer, image sequences have become discrete units that can be remixed in new constellations; indeed, once digital interactivity became connected to databases, the possibility of assembling and reconfiguring media elements from a compilation of image sequences opened the way to a host of new cinematic forms.

These emerging cinematic forms include database cinema, interactive narrative or non-narrative films, and machinima — filmmaking within computer games or 3D virtual worlds, such as Second Life, in which characters and events can be controlled either by humans, scripts, or artificial intelligence.

The discussion will be followed by a short performance event in Second Life, which will be broadcast in the Lecture Hall. The panel and Q&A with the audience will be streamed live in Second Life.

Henrik Bennetsen works as research director at the Stanford Humanities Lab. He’s also the head of the Lifesquared research project, which is building a 3D immersive archive of the art of Lynn Hershman Leeson inside the virtual world of Second Life. The work was recently shown at the Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal and is planned for exhibition at SFMOMA in 2008. In Fall 2006 he was a part of the Stanford course The Human and the Machine, which used Second Life as a teaching tool. Bennetsen holds a MSc in Media Technology and Games from the IT University of Copenhagen and a BSc in Medialogy from Aalborg University. He has a strong side interest in creative self-expression augmented by technology.

Char Davies is internationally recognized for pioneering artworks using the technologies of virtual reality. Originally a painter, she transitioned to digital media in the late 80s, becoming a founding director of the 3D software company Softimage. Her virtual environment Osmose (1995) is considered a landmark in the history of new media art. Davies has also published numerous essays on virtual space and in 2005 she completed a doctorate in philosophy (from CAiiA, University of Plymouth, UK). A monograph on her work Char Davies’ Immersive Virtual Art and the Essence of Spatiality came out in 2007. Davies’ practice has expanded from “virtual” to “actual” place. She is currently shaping another immersive environment, on 500 acres of land in Québec. Davies lives in San Francisco.

Scott Kildall is a crossdisciplinary artist working with video, installation, prints, sculpture, and performance. The core of his artwork is formed by material he gathers from the public realm. Through this method, he uncovers relationships between human memory and social media technology. He holds a BA in Political Philosophy from Brown University and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago through the Art & Technology Studies Department. He has exhibited internationally in galleries and museums in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Toronto, Helsinki, Ireland, Spain, and Romania. Scott is a founding member of Second Front — the first performance art group in Second Life. He currently resides in San Francisco.

Christiane Paul is the adjunct curator of New Media Arts at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the director of Intelligent Agent, a service organization dedicated to digital art. She has written extensively on new media arts and a revised version of her book Digital Art (2003) as well as the anthology New Media in the White Cube and Beyond will be published this year. She teaches as adjunct faculty in the MFA computer arts department at the School of Visual Arts in New York, the Digital and Media Department of the Rhode Island School of Design, SFAI, and UC Berkeley. She has curated a number of shows at the Whitney Museum, including the online exhibition CODeDOC (2002).

Howard Rheingold is the author of the acclaimed books Tools for Thought (1985), The Virtual Community (2000), and Smart Mobs (2003). He has been the editor of Whole Earth Review, and The Millennium Whole Earth Catalog, the founding executive editor of Hotwired, and founder of Electric Minds. Rheingold has taught classes on participatory and social media and virtual community at UC Berkeley and Stanford University and is a visiting professor at De Montfort University in the UK. His current projects include the Social Media Virtual Classroom, an online community for teachers and students; the Cooperation Project, aimed at building an interdisciplinary framework for understanding cooperation; and Participatory Media Literacy.

Scott Snibbe’s immersive interactive artworks have been installed in over 100 art museums, performance spaces, science museums, and public spaces worldwide. His awards include the Prix Ars Electronica and a Rockefeller Foundation New Media Fellowship. He is the founder of two companies: Snibbe Interactive, Inc. and Sona Research. In 2007 he was awarded a National Science Foundation Grant for research in Interactive Narrative. Snibbe holds a BA in Computer Science and Fine Art and an MA in Computer Science from Brown University. He studied experimental animation at the Rhode Island School of Design and has taught media art and experimental film at Brown University, SFAI, the California Institute of the Arts, the Rhode Island School of Design, and UC Berkeley.

Camille Utterback is an internationally acclaimed artist whose work explores the aesthetic and experiential possibilities of linking computational systems to human movement and gesture in layered and often humorous ways. Utterback’s extensive exhibition history includes more than fifty shows on four continents. Awards include a Transmediale International Media Art Festival Award and a Rockefeller Foundation New Media Fellowship. Recent projects include a large-scale interactive projection on the San Jose City Hall commissioned by ZeroOne and the City of San Jose. Utterback holds a BA in Art from Williams College and an MA from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She lives and works in San Francisco.

Cantata Park explores the notion of a “cut-up narrative”. By disassembling and reassembling a passage of text, the participant is free to extract unseen meaning from an existing text. The cut-up technique was popularised by Beat poets in the 1950’s-70’s as a method to “break the linearity” of written language, with William S. Burroughs using it extensively in his works. Burroughs believed non-pictorial languages contained a virus. By using non-linear writing techniques he believed the true meaning of language could be exposed, and the spoken word used as a weapon.

Cantata Park uses a passage of 256 words from Burroughs’ The Electronic Revolution (1971) and transfers the cut-up technique into a real-time 3D environment.

The work explores the possibilities of metaverse art, limitations of Second Life’s construction tools and scripting language, and the ability to appreciate conceptual art by proxy of an avatar.

Rumsey started collecting maps about 20 years ago. In 1997, he began digitizing his maps, many of which now appear on his website. Launched in 1999 with 2,000 maps, the website now features more than 17,500 maps.

The island features a gallery in the center where visitors can view maps and receive free maps and other digital souvenirs. Surrounding the gallery is a topographical rendering of an 1883 map of Yosemite Valley; users can toggle between two-dimensional and 3-D displays. Along the skyline, two great globes, one terrestrial and the other celestial, turn, animated by an enormous clockwork that can provide front-row seats for avatars who fly inside. Visitors can also travel through an 1836 map of Old New York by J. H. Coton.

It’s this map that Rumsey says is his favorite place on the island. “There’s something about walking on it that is just fantastic,” he says. “I love walking from Battery up to Harlem and feeling the history.” …” Continue reading Historical Maps in Second Life - David Rumsey’s antique maps feature in an innovative build in the virtual world by Erica Naone, Technology Review.

For the past fifteen years, virtual reality (VR) and, more recently, mixed reality (MR) and augmented reality (AR) environments that immerse their participants in imaginary space, have emerged to define an area that blurs the lines between the seemingly different worlds of research, creativity, and technological practice, while exploring the interdependencies between the virtual and the physical. From the immersive, yet more esoteric, CAVE®-based projects of the mid-nineties to the contemporary open experiences spread out in virtual as well as physical space, creative VR / MR / AR applications are challenging the ways we perceive both digital art and the science and engineering behind them.

Early enthusiasm with the use of projection-based display structures and the development of authoring solutions for application-building has brought a level of maturity, characterized by the emergence of new technical and conceptual forms. It is this particular moment in the evolution of immersive VR / MR / AR art practice that this special issue seeks to capture. Hence, in this special issue, we aim to bring forth the topic of immersive art in its current maturity, present the newest developments and explore its evolving forms, aspiring to shape a framework that will help us to develop the next generation of environments.

Therefore, this special issue will not include contributions that deal solely with describing a narrow and specific piece of art or research without reference to a conceptual framework or a critical analysis; rather we encourage contributions that take a broad and integrative view of relevant topics, encompassing both theoretical and empirical perspectives of digitally-generated creative spaces.

Submissions are invited that touch on but are not limited to the following themes:

- Theoretical discourse on immersive virtual, mixed or augmented reality art environments.
- Novel design concepts, applications, implementations and experiences from the actual deployment of immersive VR / MR / AR art applications
- Research or empirical work addressing some of the open questions in the design of immersive art environments. For example:
- Issues concerning creativity and aesthetics, visual depiction, storytelling and narrative, triggering other senses, embodiment, etc.
- The fine line between designing for entertainment or for artistic pleasure
- Issues in the design of interactivity, interfaces, and interaction methodologies, such as navigation by and tracking of multiple users, meaningful group interaction, the integration of multi-modal interfaces (e.g. tactile and haptic displays, sensing technologies), etc.
- Issues concerning the design and development process of immersive artwork, such as the conceptualisation and collaboration challenges presented by multitalented interdisciplinary teams working together, the unavailability of resources and work environments, etc.
- Issues in the deployment of different display configurations, sizes, and installations, as well as challenges in the practical use with diverse audiences (e.g., the need to guide people in experiencing the artwork)
Contributions are encouraged from different disciplinary perspectives, including fine arts, computer science, performance art, theatre, design, architecture, communications and social sciences, philosophy, cognitive psychology, and enabling technologies.

Contributions should take a broad and integrative view of relevant topics, rather than merely describing a narrow and specific piece of art or research.

Important Dates

Submission intent (title and 300-word abstract): 1 September, 2008
Deadline for full paper submission: 31 October, 2008
Review results returned to authors: February 29, 2009
Deadline for camera-ready papers: June 30, 2009

The exhibition draws on SLAC’s continued interest in developing an awareness of the interconnectedness of space and material, with a goal of extending established notions of volume and scale. The gallery is fitted with sensors that draw real-time data from the installation and the people within the exhibition, which is then synchronized with streamed real-time data of solar activity and nuclear processes provided by SLAC and NASA. This information is then fed back into the object through layers of LED strands, re-visualizing the space in order to create an dynamic spatial experience.

Quasar Exhibition from Aaron Bocanegra on Vimeo.

The word “quasar” is a contraction of the term quasi-stellar-radio-source, used historically by astronomers to describe entirely unknown cosmological objects. Today, it is believed that quasars are the most distant, and yet still detectable, objects in the universe. Giving off enormous amounts of energy produced from massive black holes in the center of their own galaxies, quasars are intensely bright; their emitted light drowning out all other stars in the same galaxy.

“Quasar is an artificial counterpart hovering in response to the currents and activities of the visitors, and in doing so, stretches and collapses the horizons of the known. The possibilities of interrelated synthetic and natural processes begin to define new emergent ecologies. quasar questions the boundaries of scale and the psyche, offering immersion into a vastly expanded space which renders perception permeable, and in the end, disperses identity.”

Quaser will be exhibited at SCI-Arc until 9th March 2008 [posted by Ruairi Glynn on Interactive Architecture dot org]