http://grandtextauto.org A group blog about computer narrative, games, poetry, and art. Thu, 02 Sep 2010 01:01:06 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I’m serving now as the president of the Electronic Literature Organization. We’ve been working to move the site to a new server, which has unfortunately left most of eliterature.org down for a while. (We did make a point of getting the Electronic Literature Collection, volume 1 back up as soon ... http://nickm.com/post/2010/09/welcome-back-elo-site/ Eden, by Pablo Holmberg, Drawn & Quarterly, 2010 Yes, these comics sometimes veer into the extremely sappy, but they’re metafictional and wonderfully fabular throughout. Eden collects more than 100 simple four-panel strips featuring a diminutive, somewhat rabbit-like king, or at least, someone who wears a crown, in a magical land. An ... http://nickm.com/post/2010/08/eden/ This past week’s Virtual Cinema course at Dartmouth College proved that machinima works can go far beyond the tried and true. A mere handful of students explored lost love, gaming culture, poet-zombie attacks, and perhaps most importantly, the pensive and strange qualities of virtual life. Check out their playlist, and ... http://www.tiltfactor.org/?p=1799 Submission for the StarCraft AI Competition is now open. Complete details are provided at the submission site. http://eis-blog.ucsc.edu/2010/08/starcraft-ai-competition-submission/ Two recent hit songs on the Web are the tribute “Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury” by Rachel Bloom and the non-tribute “Fuck You” by Cee-Lo. Perhaps after me and you – us, them, him, her, and it will be next? The typographical treatment of “Fuck You” in the video is much more ... http://nickm.com/post/2010/08/fonts-unusual-creative-kinetics/ Dr. Cordelia Fine, with a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience from University College London, notes in her summary of many gender studies in her book, Delusions of Gender, about gender and the brain a) several studies have found no difference in hemispheric size in neonates; b) the allegedly bigger female ... http://www.tiltfactor.org/?p=1792 Ms. Blue pointed out a great Atari commercial that has been online for a while, but which is particularly appropriate to mention here: A TV ad for Pole Position. (The name of this blog does in fact refer to that game.) A few notes about this amazing TV spot: There’s an ... http://nickm.com/post/2010/08/tv-audiences-heres-pole-position/ After I presented poetry generators ppg256-1 through ppg256-5 at Banff in February, I shouted out, more or less spontaneously, “50 character reward to whoever gives us the best explanation of what ppg256 is!” Why did I say that? Childhood trauma, possibly, but the more immediate reason, as I mentioned earlier, ... http://nickm.com/post/2010/08/finally-your-50-character-reward/ In recent years, I’ve written a series of 1k (that is, exactly 1024 character) reviews on here. This ruse has helped me compose succinct (and possibly useful) notes about many things that I wouldn’t have otherwise written about. But some things that are worth reviewing, such as a documentary about ... http://nickm.com/post/2010/08/code-is-beauty-beauty-code/ In recent years, I’ve written a series of 1k (that is, exactly 1024 character) reviews on here. This ruse has helped me compose succinct (and possibly useful) notes about many things that I wouldn’t have otherwise written about. But some things that are worth reviewing, such as a documentary about ... http://nickm.com/post/2010/08/code-is-beauty-beauty-code/ Emerging Langauge Practices is a new journal based at SUNY Buffalo (poetic hotbed and host of the next E-Poetry) and founded by Loss Pequeño Glazier, Sarah JM Kolberg, and A. J. Patrick Liszkiewicz. Issue one is a real accomplishment. There are eye-catching creative projects by mIEKAL aND & Liaizon Wakest and ... http://nickm.com/post/2010/08/new-journal-primes-you-for-ppg256/ New Scientist is running an article about the use of data mining in computer games. The article focuses on research being presented at the IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG 2010). Catch live coverage of the conference here. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727745.100-online-games-are-a-gold-mine-for-design-ideas.htm http://eis-blog.ucsc.edu/2010/08/eisbot-in-new-scientist/ You may have noticed a slew of posts on the Get Lamp blog, Taking Inventory, or seen the writeups on Boing Boing, PC Gamer, CNET, or other sites. But I’ll say it here too: Jason Scott’s documentary about text adventures, years in the making, is completed, has been pressed and ... http://nickm.com/post/2010/08/get-lamp-and-watch/ A recent article in the Washington Post discusses South Korea’s world-leading gaming culture. Considered the world’s most technologically integrated country, with high numbers of gamers and internet users, South Korea is the one to watch as far as gaming policies. Appx 95% of households have broadband access, and in July ... http://www.tiltfactor.org/?p=1786 The 3G Summit a visionary 4-day initiative in Chicago that convenes 50 urban teenage girls with five leading women game designers and scholars for intensive dialogue, inquiry, game-play, and mentorship. Through multi-faceted workshops and a public forum, this initiative will critically confront gender representation and participation in our society’s fastest ... http://www.tiltfactor.org/?p=1781 In their quest to use human computation ability to its fullest, U-Washington researchers made a game called Foldit available on the web to model the folding of proteins. Based on Rosetta@home project, where volunteers were contributing the downtime on their home computers to power a protein-folding program, Foldit uses human ... http://www.tiltfactor.org/?p=1779 Kurt Reinhard of the Zurich University of Applied Sciences and Arts has posted a 10-part video series about storytelling in our networked, digital age. The first part (“Change of Storytelling”) includes comments by: Ian Condry (MIT) Joshua Green (UCSB) Dean Jansen (Participatory Culture Foundation) Henry Jenkins (USC) Joe Lambert (Center for Digital Storytelling) Nick Montfort (MIT) Clay ... http://nickm.com/post/2010/08/videos-on-storytelling/ The Secret History of Science Fiction, edited by James Ptrick Kelly & John Kessel, Tachyon Publications, 2010 This book seeks to prove that science fiction cannot really be distinguished from mainstream literature, arguing this in the introduction and in quotes before each story. Whether it prevails or not, it offers stories ... http://nickm.com/post/2010/08/the-secret-history-of-science-fiction/ There are many recent studies that try to discover anew why, during a time when women are increasingly prominent in medicine, law and business, there so few women scientists and engineers. The 2010 AAUW research report Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) presents evidence that can ... http://www.tiltfactor.org/?p=1775 Local sound artist/electronic musician Keith Fullerton Whitman released an extraordinary piece on the b-side of his November 2009 cassette hallicrafters, inc. The piece is called 10 poke 54272+int(rnd(1)*25),int(rnd(1)*256) : goto 10 and is 18 minutes of sound produced by a Commodore 64 emulator running the BASIC program that is ... http://nickm.com/post/2010/07/one-line-c64-basic-music/ Jason MacIntosh at The Gameshelf has just posted a great 10-minute video introducing interactive fiction, with specific discussion of some good games to begin playing. I’m there offering some unconventional ideas about why it’s interesting for those new to IF to start off by playing complex, difficult games. http://nickm.com/post/2010/07/new-gameshelf-video-on-if/ Command your space bovine! In space, social interactions are sparse. Space Cow Clicker overcomes this problem. In this parody of a satire, you command a battlecruiser (Space Cow) in an epic battle  to click enemy units. The first player to click all of the opponent forces wins: To click is natural, to ... http://eis-blog.ucsc.edu/2010/07/space-cow-clicker/ A great event will be taking place in Mexico City at the end of April, one that is sure to help us connect computing and creativity in new ways. I’m helping to organize ICCC-11 and am planning to be there. I hope some of you will submit to this conference, ... http://nickm.com/post/2010/07/computational-creativity-iccc-11-cfp/ device design by Ed Flanagan We’re taking a moment to reflect on the lab’s move to Dartmouth. First, we found some press to share if you’d like to chart our progress with us! In an upcoming post, we’ll review all of our new games. It has been a lot of fun ... http://www.tiltfactor.org/?p=1737 “Acting for embodied interactive narrative” Ken Perlin, NYU Date: July 16th, 2010 Time: 1:15pm Place: Engineering 2, Room 192 This lecture is free and open to the public, but visitors should purchase a parking pass from the visitor kiosk at the main entrance. There they can also provide a map showing the best ... http://eis-blog.ucsc.edu/2010/07/ken-perlin-talk-at-ucsc/ There have been a variety of recent news reports on the relationship between computer ownership and education patterns around the world. The NY Times article from 9 July 2010, Computers at Home: Educational Hope vs. Teenage Reality, is one of the many articles discussing the recent studies by economists about ... http://www.tiltfactor.org/?p=1655 What happens to game designers when they don’t know the “right” answers? This is especially important in situations where designers need to somehow verify crowdsourcing data. What data can we obtain with the resources we have? Well, what do we have? 1) In the case of our ... http://www.tiltfactor.org/?p=1543 Try our online version of the Grow-A-Game© cards! We are currently waiting for the arrival of our new editions of Grow-A-Game, so our ordering area is offline for the moment until they are in. http://www.tiltfactor.org/?p=1644 About 2 weeks ago, at Asilomar in Pacific Grove, CA for Foundations of Digital Games Conference, professionals gathered to present academic efforts in “all areas of research and education involving games, game technologies, gameplay and game design. The goal of the conference is the advancement of the study of digital games, including ... http://eis-blog.ucsc.edu/2010/07/recaps-from-fdg/ In April, I blogged about adding chat capabilities to EISBot, with the goal of achieving the Eliza effect in StarCraft.  Nicholas Carr responded to my post, criticizing my approach: The sure way to distinguish the computer’s messages from the human’s is to recognize that the computer has a rather sentimental ... http://eis-blog.ucsc.edu/2010/07/eisbot-critic-appears-on-the-colbert-report/