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	<title>Shoord&#039;s Spaceless Place &#187; report</title>
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		<title>Mark Changizi – &#8220;Cultural selection as the new blind watchmaker&#8221; at “I don’t know where I’m going but I want to be there”</title>
		<link>http://shoord.nl/events/mark-changizi-%e2%80%93-cultural-selection-as-the-new-blind-watchmaker-at-%e2%80%9ci-don%e2%80%99t-know-where-i%e2%80%99m-going-but-i-want-to-be-there%e2%80%9d/</link>
		<comments>http://shoord.nl/events/mark-changizi-%e2%80%93-cultural-selection-as-the-new-blind-watchmaker-at-%e2%80%9ci-don%e2%80%99t-know-where-i%e2%80%99m-going-but-i-want-to-be-there%e2%80%9d/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 31 Dec 2011 15:37:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Sjoerd</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Events]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[optical]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://shoord.nl/?p=662</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[(This article was cross-posted on the Masters of Media blog.) In his presentation at MOTI&#8216;s &#8220;I don&#8217;t know where I&#8217;m going but I want to be there&#8221; theoretical neurobiologist Mark Changizi elaborated on the research method he applies to investigate the field of why it is that the human brain processes optical information like it [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>(This article was <a href="http://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl/2011/12/21/mark-changizi-%E2%80%93-cultural-selection-as-the-new-blind-watchmaker-at-%E2%80%9Ci-don%E2%80%99t-know-where-i%E2%80%99m-going-but-i-want-to-be-there%E2%80%9D/">cross-posted</a> on the <a href="http://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl/">Masters of Media</a> blog.)</p>
<p><img class="alignleft" title="The Vision Revolution by Mark Changizi" src="http://www.changizi.com/index_pics/visionrevolution.jpg" alt="The Vision Revolution by Mark Changizi" width="184" height="274" />In his presentation at <a title="MOTI museum Breda" href="http://www.motimuseum.nl/" target="_blank">MOTI</a>&#8216;s &#8220;<a href="http://www.paradiso.nl/web/Agenda-Item/I-dont-know-where-Im-going-but-I-want-to-be-there.htm">I don&#8217;t know where I&#8217;m going but I want to be there</a>&#8221; theoretical neurobiologist <a title="Mark Changizi's web site" href="http://www.changizi.com/" target="_blank">Mark Changizi</a> elaborated on the research method he applies to investigate the field of why it is that the human brain processes optical information like it does. Instead of trying to look for answers in and around the exact &#8216;wiring&#8217; of our brains, which largely is still a black box, Changizi in his books looks at the natural and evolutionary indicators that have influenced how our brains process imagery.<span id="more-662"></span></p>
<p>Rather than looking at why the brain responds like it does to visual cultural artifacts, this approach of looking at how natural selection affected visual perception, to Changizi, seems more fruitful when discussing design as something that has emerged out of cultural selection. Since the visual and oral tradition is a predominant aspect of society, Changizi describes culture as &#8220;a new kind of blind watch maker&#8221;.</p>
<p>In his books, &#8220;<a title="&quot;The Vision Revolution&quot; by Mark Changizi" href="http://www.amazon.com/Vision-Revolution-Research-Overturns-Everything/dp/1935251767/ref=tmm_pap_title_0" target="_blank">The Vision Revolution</a>&#8221; and the recently published &#8220;<a title="&quot;Harnessed&quot; by Mark Changizi" href="http://www.amazon.com/Harnessed-Language-Mimicked-Nature-Transformed/dp/1935618539/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1291868664&amp;sr=1-2" target="_blank">Harnessed</a>&#8220;, Changizi seeks out parameters that have their origin in nature such as color, the starburst shape, writing and music. For example, the starburst shape which is commonly used in design, can be found moving quickly through space (streaks start appearing from a center point). What is eventually applied in design is an optical illusion of movement; it generates the perception of how the world will look in the matter of a second.</p>
<p>One of the other disciplines that can be explained through natural selection is music of which the variables can be traced within the sounds made by humans. For example, beat and rhythm can be connected to gait, pitch to direction, loudness to distance and tempo to speed. Eventually, the binding factor in the relation between music and human dynamic can be found in that they share the property of having a trajectory; &#8220;a fictional story of a movement in space which can be ultimately understood through nature&#8221;.</p>
<p>In conclusion, Changizi believes that in order to understand why aspects in design and visual and oral culture exist and operate like they do, neuroscientists beyond looking at the brain for results, should not shy away from a nature-harnessing methodology to &#8220;fill in the unexplanatory&#8221;.</p>
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		<title>Report: This Happened #7</title>
		<link>http://shoord.nl/events/report-this-happened-7/</link>
		<comments>http://shoord.nl/events/report-this-happened-7/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 07 Oct 2010 14:42:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Sjoerd</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Events]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[art]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[this-happened-utrecht-7]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[thishappened]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://shoord.nl/?p=518</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Last Monday, I attended at yet another edition (the seventh) of the This Happened series, events where (interaction) designers reflect upon their projects, work philosophy and developments in the field. After my experience with This Happened #6, I had high expectations (and the fact that this time reservations were close within 8 minutes instead of [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Last Monday, I attended at yet another edition (the <a href="http://thishappened.org/utrecht/7/">seventh</a>) of the <a href="http://thishappened.org">This Happened</a> series, events where (interaction) designers reflect upon their projects, work philosophy and developments in the field. After <a href="http://shoord.nl/events/this-happened-lets-hope-for-more-to-happen/">my experience</a> with This Happened #6, I had high expectations (and the fact that this time reservations were close within 8 minutes instead of 2 didn&#8217;t affect this).</p>
<h3>Ibb and Obb &#8211; The production of an indie-game</h3>
<p>The first speaker of the evening, Richard Boeser, elaborated on the production of an indie game called <a href="http://ibbandobb.com/" target="_blank">Ibb and Obb</a>. What started out as his graduation project his Industrial Design program in 2007, four years later, he had assembled a production team to work on the game &#8211; ranging from a programming studio (<a href="http://www.codeglue.nl/">Codeglue</a>) to a music composer (<a href="http://www.myspace.com/captainkettel">Kettel</a>).</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">The is basically a side-scroll platform game with a strong emphasis on co-operative gameplay. As the game characters are able to traverse the top and bottom of the surface, they clear their path from enemies and obstacles.<span id="more-518"></span></p>
<div class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 510px"><a href="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4145/5052704764_81a1302dab.jpg"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4145/5052704764_81a1302dab.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="375" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Design process on steroids</p></div>
<p>The project&#8217;s research phase was very straight forward; as Boeser explains, the starting point was to develop a gameplay mechanic which genuinely appealed to him. The sketches that followed then, were excessive form experiments that seemed to push the boundaries (at least visually) of the 3d engine he used at the time. Finally, with the same engine, a mock-up was created that resembled Ibb and Obb. At that point, Boeser immediately felt that, while it was merely a &#8216;simple&#8217; toy, it had great potential to grow out to a game.</p>
<p>After three of his post-grad years, which Boeser called this the &#8216;in-between phase&#8217;, he started a company named <em>Sharpweed</em>, and financed the production of the game by funds such as <a href="http://www.gamefonds.nl/">Gamefonds</a> and <a href="http://www.rff.rotterdam.nl/">Rotterdam Media Fonds</a>. Technically, more and more mechanics were added to the gameplay. Also, the team tries build a <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ibb-and-Obb/145236605511337">community on Facebook</a> to pitch ideas and designs to.</p>
<h3>Mapping Dutch vacant buildings</h3>
<p>The second speaker of the evening would be landscape architect Ronald Rietveld, who created a Dutch pavilion as a part of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venice_Biennale">Venice Architecture Biennale</a> 2010. Initially, the invitation for the submission came from <a href="http://nai.nl">Nederlands Architecteninstituut</a> (NAi) who asked them to &#8220;contribute to societal issues&#8221; and to &#8220;connect vacancy to the potential of knowledge economy&#8221;. The focus here  shouldn&#8217;t be on office blocks (who would want to promote those on a biennale?), but rather on historical buildings like monasteries, bunkers, fortresses et cetera.</p>
<p>The question that was posed was &#8211; with the creative industries being high on the Dutch political agenda, together with i.e water management &#8211; how to reinvent and facilitate not only the buildings themselves, but their use and its dynamic. From a critical perspective, one could ask what the relation between &#8216;knowledge economy&#8217; and &#8216;creative industry&#8217; is (as Rietveld often mentioned them together) in terms of progress, economic benefits and production. As far as I&#8217;m concerned, the concept of the &#8216;creative industry&#8217; exists &#8220;only in the heads of bureaucrats&#8221; as Geert Lovink puts it (Lovink, 2008: 47).</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">
<div class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 510px"><a href="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4150/5052709810_337e1a78aa.jpg"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4150/5052709810_337e1a78aa.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="375" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Some of the visitors wouldn&#39;t even notice the ceiling ..</p></div>
<p>With the Vacant NL, <a href="http://www.rietveldlandscape.com/en">Rietveld Landscape</a> indexed the range of monumental vacant buildings, and subsequently mapped them in CAD software. These architectural models were printed with a 3d printer, and a giant installation was assembled with these prints. Indeed, the installation together with &#8220;<a href="http://www.rietveldlandscape.com/en/news/460">The Dutch Atlas of Vacancy</a>&#8221; presents us with a great potential for the emergence of creative hot-spots. Although, I&#8217;m a bit skeptic (and I suspect the audience was as well) about the political ambitions of the project. Especially, with the current threat of the &#8216;<a href="http://www.stopculturelekaalslag.nl/">cultuurkaalslag</a>&#8216; (subsidiary cuts), the revolution in urban planning that is needed for the growth of the new (pluriform) creative industry seems to become increasingly unlikely.</p>
<h3>Playing and gaming in Rotterdam South</h3>
<p>Third up, after the <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/Shoord/status/26388384075">break</a>, was director of <a href="http://www.patchingzone.net/">The Patching Zone</a>, Anne Nigten. In &#8216;her&#8217; laboratory, teams consisting of post-grads, post-docs and other professionals develop social, local projects through &#8216;artistic play&#8217;. With their current project &#8216;<a href="http://www.go-for-it-game.nl/">Go-for-IT!</a>&#8216;, commissioned by Rotterdam South Pact, the consortium of boroughs in the district, the city counsel and housing corporations, the institute seeks for ways to improve the living quality and to enhance the cultural richness in Rotterdam South.</p>
<p>The roadmap for their projects aims to involve the target group, called &#8216;stakeholders&#8217;, as much as possible. They are often asked to assist with creating and test prototypes to really gain a feeling of being co-owners of the project. (This is done to prolong the project&#8217;s lifecycle.) Meanwhile, research teams that are initially not familiar with the environment, reside in the project&#8217;s neighborhood.</p>
<p><a href="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4132/5052712874_7682bf0a7a.jpg"><img class="aligncenter" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4132/5052712874_7682bf0a7a.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="375" /></a></p>
<p style="text-align: center;">
<p>In the Go-for-IT! project, the team searched for ways to incorporate the ideas of &#8216;embodied interaction&#8217; (Dourish, 2001), in which through &#8220;tangible and social computing&#8221; a shared experience emerges. The original concept was to have a space consisting of tiles that form the user interface, subsequently a range of games was developed and tested by the local community. Although the prototype was still a bit buggy, it would run for at least a year before the team could start developing again.</p>
<h3>Radioscape &#8211; Loafing around in with antenna&#8217;s</h3>
<p>In the last presentation, sound artist Edwin van der Heide, elaborated on his <a href="http://www.evdh.net/radioscape/">Radioscape</a> project. As he explained, the development telematic soundscape ecology (sort of an instant collaborative <a href="http://rjdj.me">RjDj</a>-experience) with using radio transmitter technology become bothersome multiple times (I will spare you the technological obstacles.)</p>
<p>While originally the idea of sending and receiving was first to be implemented in Japan, Van der Heide soon found out that the transmission of radio-waves isn&#8217;t all that reliable in terms of scalability. (For example: if users would stand in close spaces, transmitting soon becomes too noisy to be useful.)</p>
<p>As Van der Heide explains: &#8220;we are not used to sending and receiving with &#8216;normal&#8217; radio&#8221;. Yet, as Hans Magnus Enzensberger discusses the cause for this is not only the lack of technological progress:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;Every transistor radio is, by the nature of its construction, at the same time a potential transmitter; it can interact with other receivers by circuit reversal. The development from a mere distribution medium to a communications medium is technically not a problem. It is consciously prevented for understandable <strong>political reasons</strong>. The technical distinction between receivers and transmitters reflects the social division of labor into producers and consumers, which in the consciousness industry becomes of particular political importance.&#8221; (Enzensberger, 1970)</p></blockquote>
<p>Eventually, Van der Heide set up a prototype in the Leidseplein in Amsterdam, for the square&#8217;s not too crowded, wide and open. The antenna people were carrying along would transmit sound loops that would be transformed with the slightest move, due to the amount of parameters, the participant would feel that the sound was generated at random instead of out of a recognizable pattern.</p>
<div class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 510px"><a href="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4152/5052093695_f3b925b086.jpg"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4152/5052093695_f3b925b086.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="375" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Radioscape was also set up in Dordrecht</p></div>
<p style="text-align: center;">
<p>The device would also consist of a map that would display the active area. Since there were two antenna&#8217;s, and stereo headphones attached to the device, people could navigate towards a signal and experience the spatial acoustics.</p>
<h3>Food for thought</h3>
<p>To wrap this post up: This Happened #7 was quite inspiring. Richard Boeser&#8217;s indie-game showed a lot of potential by introducing a fresh and solid game-mechanic. Rietveld Landscape with their installation showed there&#8217;s a vast opportunity for the knowledge economy to redeem historic buildings. After the break, Anne&#8217;s elaboration on the embedded research and &#8216;play &amp; create&#8217;-philosophy in Go-for-IT! seemed like an interesting, unconventional and especially respectful one. And finally, the Radioscape project introduced interesting (social and spatial) dimensions of radio transmission, while using radio technology as a broadcasting apparatus.</p>
<p>FYI: The eight edition of &#8216;This Happened&#8217; will be held November, 22th.</p>
<h4>Sources:</h4>
<ul>
<li>Photos by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/kaeru/">Kars Alfrink</a>, <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/deed.en">some rights reserved</a>.</li>
<li>Dourish, Paul. <a href="http://www.dourish.com/embodied/">Where The Action Is</a> (2001).</li>
<li>Enzensberger, Hans Magnus. Constituents of a Theory of the Media (1970). In &#8216;The New Media Reader&#8217;.</li>
<li>Lovink, Geert. <a href="http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/portal/publications/geert-lovink-publications/zero-comments/">Zero Comments</a> (2008).</li>
</ul>
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		<title>INFODECODATA and Manuel Lima about the rise of the info-visualisation research field</title>
		<link>http://shoord.nl/events/infodecodata-and-a-report-on-manuel-limas-keynote/</link>
		<comments>http://shoord.nl/events/infodecodata-and-a-report-on-manuel-limas-keynote/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 03 Jun 2010 23:33:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Sjoerd</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Events]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[conference]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[datavisualisation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[report]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[UvA]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://shoord.nl/?p=303</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[First off, I&#8217;d first like mention an upcoming symposium as a part of the INFODECODATA exhibition (Sunday 13 June 2010, Graphic Design Museum Breda). There&#8217;ll be plenty of interesting speakers including Lev Manovich (in my opinion horrible in discussions), Jack van Wijck and Yuri Engelhardt discussing fundamental questions like &#8216;Will the Graphic Designer become a [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>First off, I&#8217;d first like mention <a href="http://www.graphicdesignmuseum.nl/en/events/calendar/infodecodata-symposium/554" target="_blank">an upcoming symposium</a> as a part of the INFODECODATA exhibition (Sunday 13 June 2010, <a href="http://www.graphicdesignmuseum.nl/" target="_blank">Graphic Design Museum Breda</a>). There&#8217;ll be plenty of interesting speakers including Lev Manovich (in my opinion horrible in discussions), Jack van Wijck and Yuri Engelhardt discussing fundamental questions like &#8216;Will the Graphic Designer become a Software Developer?&#8217; and &#8216;Is Design the new Science?&#8217;.<span id="more-303"></span></p>
<p>As I wrote in <a href="http://shoord.nl/overig/show-me-the-data-conference-may-20-2010/" target="_blank">a previous blog-post</a>, Yuri supervised the Info-Visualisation course at the UvA in which a conference was organized by the students to present their products.</p>
<div id="attachment_304" class="wp-caption alignleft" style="width: 277px"><a href="http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/"><img class="size-medium wp-image-304" title="facebook_privacy" src="http://shoord.nl/wp-content/uploads/facebook_privacy-267x300.png" alt="" width="267" height="300" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">&#39;The Evolution of Privacy on Facebook&#39;, an interactive data-visualisation by Matt McKeon</p></div>
<p>Apart from the interesting concepts, developed by multidisciplinary teams, presentations were held by various keynote speakers. I took the following notes from the keynote of researcher, designer, and founder of <a href="http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/" target="_blank">VisualComplexity.com</a>, <a href="http://www.mslima.com/" target="_blank">Manuel Lima</a> about the uprise of both the blog and the field of data-visualisations in general.</p>
<p>Lima started off by what has inspired him to theorize and write about data visualisation practices (one of them was &#8217;<a href="http://www.nathan.com/thoughts/unified/undspectrum.gif" target="_blank">The Understanding Spectrum</a>&#8216; by Nathan Shedroff) and quickly proceeded with a historiography of visual culture. While people throughout the centuries have sought new ways to present data, described in for example the Alfred Crosby&#8217;s in &#8216;<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Measure-Reality-Quantification-Western-1250-1600/dp/0521639905" target="_blank">The measure of reality</a>&#8216;, by &#8220;quantifying the unquantifiable&#8221; (Lima, 2010), collecting and organizing this data &#8211; with today&#8217;s technologies these processes has seem to become much more mathematically precise and efficient.</p>
<p>Lima continued by pinpointing five aspects that caused the visualisation techniques to emerge so rapidly. First there is the capabilities of <strong>data storage</strong>. Following Moore&#8217;s law of storage and computer chip research growing exponentially, also Kryder&#8217;s law &#8211; of &#8220;everything that can be digital, will be &#8211; applies here. Furthermore, software tends to follow along the lines of these &#8216;laws&#8217;; where the most largest encyclopedia &#8211; the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A9die_fran%C3%A7aise" target="_blank">French Encyclopedia</a> &#8211; consisted of 17.000 articles, published in 53 volumes, the English version of Wikipedia surpassed 3 million articles, and would consist of 1.300 volumes (of text-only).</p>
<p>The second reason why the field has expanded so greatly is due to the fact more and more parties (institutions, businesses, <a href="http://data.gov" target="_blank">governments</a> et cetera) tend make their data <strong>open and accessible</strong>. Also the software to build these datasets, like <a href="http://www.swivel.com/" target="_blank">Swifel</a> or <a href="http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/" target="_blank">Many Eyes</a>, are used widely. But, as another keynote speaker, Daniel Aguilar from Bestiario, would argue: many of the open platforms that promote themselves as such, are in fact limited or unstructured (for example, a client only offered a collection of flat Acrobat Reader files), which make this &#8216;openness&#8217; seem more like a buzz-word.</p>
<p>Thirdly, datasets of <strong>social platforms</strong> have grown immensely, from tagged Flickr photos to workout information (Nike+), and currently with the #hashtags of Twitter (recently, the hashtags of the Dutch political debate, #rtldebat, <a href="http://www.mobypicture.com/user/supestw/view/6621678" target="_blank">popped up as first</a> in the worldwide Trending Topics), people are willingly engaging with ongoing trends through different means of producing and sharing.</p>
<p>Fourthly, <strong>tools have become available</strong> at a great scale, from Adobe Flash to <a href="http://prefuse.org/" target="_blank">Prefuse</a> or <a href="http://processing.org/" target="_blank">Processing</a>. While some of them require advanced programming knowledge others offer templates level the production field.</p>
<p>Lastly, <strong>mainstream media have adopted visualisation methods</strong> quickly thus taking it out of the academic sphere. Through publishing these graphics the became popular amongst readers, and gives traditional media the chance to explore communicating through graphics. Common examples are visuals in the New York Times or even NRC.next.</p>
<p>In conclusion, Lima sees there&#8217;s still a lot work to do, to finally develop the &#8216;new science field&#8217;, most notably, a &#8220;taxonomy is needed to meet the requirements&#8221; (Lima, 2010). He tries to cover the existing models (i.e radial or 3d globes) as well as explore some future directions in his upcoming book (unfortunately, I couldn&#8217;t find a link anywhere). Also, the exploration of potential interaction techniques still has a long road ahead to eventually make &#8220;use of computer-supported, interactive, visual representation of abstract data to amplify cognition&#8221; (Voigt, 2002) in empirically effective ways.</p>
<p>Finally, fundamental questions arise from current visualisations. For example, while comparing the mapping projects of &#8216;Mouse&#8217;s neuronal network&#8217; and &#8216;Millennium simulation&#8217; they tend to behave in striking similar ways. In that sense, data-mapping can give us understanding of both micro- as meso and macro-patterns in nature or culture and draw lines between them, and thus seem to offer us exciting new tools for a broad range of research fields.</p>
<ul>
<li>Voigt, Robert (2002), An Extended Scatterplot Matrix and Case Studies in Information Visualization, Master&#8217;s thesis, Hochschule Magdeburg-Stendal, 2002, Classification and Definition of Terms</li>
</ul>
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		<title>This Happened, let&#8217;s hope for more to happen!</title>
		<link>http://shoord.nl/events/this-happened-lets-hope-for-more-to-happen/</link>
		<comments>http://shoord.nl/events/this-happened-lets-hope-for-more-to-happen/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 12 May 2010 23:25:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Sjoerd</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Events]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[HKU]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[report]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://shoord.nl/?p=224</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Last Monday I had the chance to attend at the sixth edition of the immensely popular event called This Happened, held at the HKU (Utrecht&#8217;s art academy) theatre. With the registations being closed within merely 58 (!) seconds you&#8217;d figure that there would be some quality keynotes to be held. And actually, there were some [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Last Monday I had the chance to attend at the sixth edition of the immensely popular event called <a href="http://thishappened.org" target="_blank">This Happened</a>, held at the <a href="http://hku.nl" target="_blank">HKU</a> (Utrecht&#8217;s art academy) theatre. With the registations being closed within merely 58 (!) seconds you&#8217;d figure that there would be some quality keynotes to be held. And actually, there were some good ones.</p>
<div id="attachment_229" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 310px"><a href="http://shoord.nl/wp-content/uploads/IMG_0198.JPG"><img class="size-medium wp-image-229 " title="IMG_0198" src="http://shoord.nl/wp-content/uploads/IMG_0198-300x225.jpg" alt="Drumroll anyone?" width="300" height="225" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Drumroll anyone?</p></div>
<p><span id="more-224"></span>First up, the co-creators <a href="http://mijnnaamishaas.nl/" target="_blank">Mijn naam is Haas</a> (a pun that&#8217;s translated as &#8216;My name is Hare&#8217;) presented their findings and future plan around their graduating project that they continued to refine after their study. The main concept consists of an interactive learning-tool that helps toddlers train their language-skills. Especially the product&#8217;s artwork is outstanding, also their hands-on experience with fine-tuning of the product resulted in some valuable insights concerning the interaction between the software and the target group.</p>
<p>Thereafter, Matt Cottam (from <a href="http://tellart.com/" target="_blank">Tellart</a>) elaborated on his design study, entitled <a title="Wooden Logic project page" href="http://www.openarts.org/matt/" target="_blank">Wooden Logic</a>, in which he mixed physical computing, affective computing, and experimented with different organic shapes and materials. The presentation was followed up by Sebastiaan de With, who developed an <a href="http://classicsapp.com/" target="_blank">e-reader application</a> for the iPhone that was visually appealing and used clever user interface design. The project was nice executed in both form and functionality, but not exactly mind-blowing. (Anyhow, for more extensive writing on these previous speakers I&#8217;d like to refer to <a href="http://targetisnew.com/2010/05/12/this-happened-6-on-the-soul-of-products/" target="_blank">Iskander Smit&#8217;s report</a>).</p>
<p>The last presenter, Keez Duyves from the <a href="http://www.pipslab.org" target="_blank">PIPS:lab</a> collective, presented his experience with the music performances the lab developed. With their show called <a href="http://www.pipslab.org/Archie_N_bees.htm" target="_blank">Archie and the Bees</a> (a geeky reference to the RGB color-pallet), each musician would wear a solid colored suit (red, green or blue). Each suit would correspond with a certain sound sample (snare-, bass-drum or hi-hat), subsequently the samples triggered when a rotating marker &#8216;touched&#8217; a body-part (or a colored object). With both the performer&#8217;s bodies projected on the ceiling as an interface, they were able to adept to the movements of their fellow musicians and thus engage in a generative music performance.</p>
<p>At a certain point in the show, the public would also be involved by pointing a webcam at them (again, the rotating marker recognized color and brightness) which would add another layer of generative sound. Additionally the artists would use &#8216;prototypical instruments&#8217; to improvise upon the created loops. The instruments themselves also seem arbitrarily controlled and by doing so extend the concept of chance electronics.</p>
<p>Anyway, here&#8217;s some footage of the refined version (the original installation was created in 2009).</p>
<p><object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="400" height="300" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="src" value="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=7664080&amp;server=vimeo.com&amp;show_title=1&amp;show_byline=1&amp;show_portrait=0&amp;color=&amp;fullscreen=1" /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="400" height="300" src="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=7664080&amp;server=vimeo.com&amp;show_title=1&amp;show_byline=1&amp;show_portrait=0&amp;color=&amp;fullscreen=1" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object></p>
<p><a href="http://vimeo.com/7664080">Archie and the bees UPGRADED 2.0!</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user1878612">PIPS:lab</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>
<p>(Unfortunately, it doesn&#8217;t seem the show will be re-launched anytime soon. In the meantime: check their <a href="http://www.pipslab.org/agenda.htm" target="_blank">agenda</a> for upcoming shows).</p>
<p>Overall, the keynotes were quite inspirational while they discussed interaction design from different angles. Personally, I found Tellart&#8217;s <em>Wooden Logic</em> and PIPS:lab&#8217;s <em>Archie and the Bees</em> projects to be more appealing due to their conceptual nature and theoretical approach, opposed to the work that relies more on conventional design methods.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>Social Media, Privacy and Publicity with danah boyd</title>
		<link>http://shoord.nl/events/social-media-privacy-and-publicity-with-danah-boyd/</link>
		<comments>http://shoord.nl/events/social-media-privacy-and-publicity-with-danah-boyd/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 15 Apr 2010 09:32:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Sjoerd</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Events]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[boyd]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[privacy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[report]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[socialmedia]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://shoord.nl/?p=209</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This post below was previously posted on the Masters of Media Research Blog. Note that the keynote brought together many of the inquiries done by boyd. So, if you&#8217;re familiar with her work, this won&#8217;t be groundbreaking. (I still had a blast though). Last week I had the chance to attend at a symposium held [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em>This post below was previously posted on the <a title="'Social Media, Privacy and Publicity with danah boyd' original post on the Masters of Media Research Blog" href="http://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl/2010/04/14/social-media-privacy-and-publicity-with-danah-boyd/" target="_blank">Masters of Media Research Blog</a>. Note that the keynote brought together many of the inquiries done by boyd. So, if you&#8217;re familiar with her work, this won&#8217;t be groundbreaking. (I still had a blast though).</em></p>
<div id="_mcePaste" style="position: absolute; left: -10000px; top: 0px; width: 1px; height: 1px; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden;">Last week I had the chance to attend at a symposium held at the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology and Society (TILT) entitled as &#8216;Privacy and Social Network Sites&#8217;. The keynote speaker of the day would be danah boyd, who has worked in many think tanks in the past (going way back to Friendster) and currently works at Microsoft&#8217;s research department.</div>
<div id="_mcePaste" style="position: absolute; left: -10000px; top: 0px; width: 1px; height: 1px; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden;">Her presentation was split up in five sections: youth practices, networked publics, visibility, privacy and publicity. In the first section there was a focus on how it came to be that youngster felt so attracted to online social networks. One of boyd&#8217;s theories about this large-scale migration was ascribed to the teenagers being both pulled toward the public spaces (in example shopping malls and cinemas) while at the same time obstructed from these spaces due to possibilities of shoplifting and the public discomforts of hanging groups. Together with an increasingly feeling of insecurity at the parent&#8217;s accounts (partly imposed by media and governments), they saw no other choice than to keep their offspring indoors. Thus hanging out simply ends up happening in Social Media.</div>
<div id="_mcePaste" style="position: absolute; left: -10000px; top: 0px; width: 1px; height: 1px; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden;">According to boyd, hanging out in these (virtual) environments is just as crucial as it&#8217;s ever been, as it&#8217;s a social process of creating meaning of the world around you, and a way to learn about the social world. While the original network sites has been developed for goals other than just &#8216;meeting up&#8217; (namely either for business networking or for dating), youngsters have developed their practices to create their own social space. What&#8217;s noticeable in their use, living double-lives and maintaining invisibility for unwanted audiences has been at times very successful (for example by by setting their age to 100).</div>
<div id="_mcePaste" style="position: absolute; left: -10000px; top: 0px; width: 1px; height: 1px; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden;">In the second section, networked publics, boyd started out by outlining some of the intrinsic characteristics of digital networks. These aspects range from persistence (every expression is automatically recorded and archived), searchability (disclosed content can easily reach large publics through networks), scalability (blogs can be infinitely be indexed even if they&#8217;re not actually read) and invisible audiences (not all audiences might be visible or co-present at the moment of posting). According to boyd, these specifics together would&#8217;ve cause the social networks to represent a collapsed context since &#8220;the lack of spatial, social and temporal boundaries makes it difficult to maintain distinct social contexts&#8221;. Eventually, the coming of these fundamental different contexts would also demand a constant adjustment in our behavior.</div>
<div id="_mcePaste" style="position: absolute; left: -10000px; top: 0px; width: 1px; height: 1px; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden;">In the next section, visibility, boyd elaborated on many case studies in which teenagers struggled with their double-lives. One of the named examples was a girl who posted the outcome of a quiz called &#8216;What drug are you?&#8217;, after her father was outraged after finding his daughter being involved in such practices. Fortunately, the conversation that followed turned up to be a valuable one after the daughter explained to him what it meant to participate in such a quiz in a social environment. In another example, a student (coming from Compton) was rejected from a scholarship after the board found his MySpace which was filled with hip-hop and gangster references. In the latter case the board had probably no idea that youngsters in suburbs like Compton have practically no other choice than to adopt these street culture to simply survive.</div>
<div id="_mcePaste" style="position: absolute; left: -10000px; top: 0px; width: 1px; height: 1px; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden;">Thereafter privacy was covered that boyd defined as &#8220;control over how information flows&#8221;, in social networks this would also mean conveying texts how it is meant, to the audiences it was meant for. In most cases, this privacy is not always just about hiding; the mantra of &#8216;security through obscurity&#8217; is maybe not a weird start since people seek an audience all the time. Although teenagers acknowledge that their content might be watched by undesirable audiences, the ones that they most fear are the ones with &#8216;real&#8217; power over them, such as their parents or teachers.</div>
<div id="_mcePaste" style="position: absolute; left: -10000px; top: 0px; width: 1px; height: 1px; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden;">boyd continued that we often have certain expectations of the system&#8217;s architecture concerning privacy, and overlook for example the changes terms of use that were recently imposed by FaceBook that privileged publicity by default. In many cases though, people weigh their possible gains and losses while exposing themselves online. In one case, a girl put up very exhibitionistic pictures of herself to become a model in the same way Tila Tequila did. Additionally teenagers rely very much on social norms, meaning that because it&#8217;s just out there, it&#8217;s not meant for anyone.</div>
<div id="_mcePaste" style="position: absolute; left: -10000px; top: 0px; width: 1px; height: 1px; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden;">In the last section, of publicity, boyd compared two networks (Twitter and FaceBook) in terms of their intended publicity. While on Twitter, people often want to reach a larger audience, FaceBook users tend to prefer a network of people they know, build on mutual relationships. As with the Tila Tequila case: teenagers want to become celebrities, but in many cases overlook the possible social consequences of such a status, for example paparazzi. However, this doesn&#8217;t mean that on Twitter people want to bluntly reach the largest possible audience, but more often expand it to the level of &#8220;comfort with public&#8221;.</div>
<div id="_mcePaste" style="position: absolute; left: -10000px; top: 0px; width: 1px; height: 1px; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden;">Concluding, many teenagers approach social networks as an opportunity to express themselves in disclosed online environments (&#8216;disclosed&#8217; as in amongst friends online), which doesn&#8217;t mean the content is meant for anyone. Consequently, parents&#8217; fears of this publicity lies in the fact that they might encounter things they wouldn&#8217;t want to see (bullying for example). These gaps calls for education that goes beyond parents and youngsters, as anticipating to online behavior needs different approaches and insights. With the four intertwining areas that Lawrence Lessig introduced in &#8216;Code&#8217; &#8211; namely market, law, social norms and architecture &#8211; we constantly need to reshape the role and place of policy in these networks, and try to understand the profound implications these technologies can have.</div>
<p>Last week I had the opportunity to attend at a symposium held at the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology and Society (<a title="Tilburg University, TILT" href="http://www.tilburguniversity.nl/tilt/" target="_blank">TILT</a>) called &#8216;Privacy and Social Network Sites&#8217;. The keynote speaker of the day would be dr. <a title="danah boyd's website" href="http://danah.org" target="_blank">danah boyd</a>, who has joined many research groups in the past (&#8216;way back&#8217; to Friendster) and currently works at Microsoft&#8217;s Social Media research department. Much of her work as an ethnographer focusses on media use of American teenagers.<span id="more-209"></span></p>
<p>boyds keynote was divided in <strong>five sections</strong>, namely youth practices, networked publics, visibility, privacy and publicity. In the <strong>first section</strong>, boyd elaborated on how it came to be that youngster felt so attracted to online social networks. One of the driving forces behind this large-scale migration was ascribed to the fact that teenagers were both being pulled toward the commercialized public spaces (for example shopping malls and cinemas) while at the same time being obscured from these spaces due to the possibilities of shoplifting and the public discomforts of hanging groups. Together with an increasingly feeling of insecurity on the parent&#8217;s accounts (partly imposed by media and governments), they saw no other choice than to keep their offspring indoors. Thus hanging out simply ends up happening in Social Media.</p>
<p>According to boyd, hanging out in these (virtual) environments is just as crucial as it&#8217;s ever been, as it&#8217;s a social process of creating meaning of the world around you, and a way to learn about the social world. While the original network sites has been developed for goals other than just &#8216;meeting up&#8217; (namely either for business networking or for dating), youngsters have developed their practices to create their own social space. What&#8217;s noticeable in their use, living double-lives and maintaining invisibility for unwanted audiences has been at times very successful (for example by by setting their age to 100).</p>
<p>In the second section, <strong>networked publics</strong>, boyd started out by outlining some of the intrinsic characteristics of digital networks. These aspects range from persistence (every expression is automatically recorded and archived), searchability (disclosed content can easily reach large publics through networks), scalability (blogs can be infinitely be indexed even if they&#8217;re not actually read) and invisible audiences (not all audiences might be visible or co-present at the moment of posting). According to boyd, these specifics together would&#8217;ve cause the social networks to represent a collapsed context since &#8220;the lack of spatial, social and temporal boundaries makes it difficult to maintain distinct social contexts&#8221;. Eventually, the coming of these fundamental different contexts would also demand a constant adjustment in our behavior.</p>
<p>In the next section, <strong>visibility</strong>, boyd elaborated on many case studies in which teenagers struggled with their double-lives. One of the named examples was a girl who posted the outcome of a quiz called &#8216;What drug are you?&#8217;, after her father was outraged after finding his daughter being involved in such practices. Fortunately, the conversation that followed turned up to be a valuable one after the daughter explained to him what it meant to participate in such a quiz in a social environment. In another example, a student (coming from Compton) was rejected from a scholarship after the board found his MySpace which was filled with hip-hop and gangster references. In the latter case the board had probably no idea that youngsters in suburbs like Compton have practically no other choice than to adopt these street culture to simply survive.</p>
<p>Thereafter <strong>privacy</strong> was covered, a term that boyd defined as &#8220;control over how information flows&#8221;, in social networks this would also mean conveying texts how it is meant, to the audiences it was meant for. In most cases, this privacy is not always just about hiding; the mantra of &#8216;security through obscurity&#8217; is maybe not a weird start since people seek an audience all the time. Although teenagers acknowledge that their content might be watched by undesirable audiences, the ones that they most fear are the ones with &#8216;real&#8217; power over them, such as their parents or teachers.</p>
<p>boyd continued that we often have certain expectations of the system&#8217;s architecture concerning privacy, and overlook for example the changes terms of use that were recently imposed by FaceBook that privileged publicity by default. In many cases though, people weigh their possible gains and losses while exposing themselves online. In one case, a girl put up very exhibitionistic pictures of herself to become a model in the same way Tila Tequila did. Additionally teenagers rely very much on social norms, meaning that because it&#8217;s just out there, it&#8217;s not meant for anyone.</p>
<p>In the last section, of <strong>publicity</strong>, boyd compared two networks (Twitter and FaceBook) in terms of their intended publicity. While on Twitter, people often want to reach a larger audience, FaceBook users tend to prefer a network of people they know, build on mutual relationships. As with the Tila Tequila case: teenagers want to become celebrities, but in many cases overlook the possible social consequences of such a status, for example paparazzi. However, this doesn&#8217;t mean that on Twitter people want to bluntly reach the largest possible audience, but more often expand it to the level of &#8220;comfort with public&#8221;.</p>
<p><object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="480" height="385" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/nrlSkU0TFLs&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1&amp;" /><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="480" height="385" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/nrlSkU0TFLs&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1&amp;" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object></p>
<p>Concluding, many teenagers approach social networks as an opportunity to express themselves in disclosed online environments (&#8216;disclosed&#8217; as in amongst friends online), which doesn&#8217;t mean the content is meant for anyone. Consequently, parents&#8217; fears of this publicity lies in the fact that they might encounter things they wouldn&#8217;t want to see (bullying for example). Noticing these gaps call for education that goes beyond just parents and youngsters, as anticipating to online behavior needs different approaches and insights. With the four intertwining areas that Lawrence Lessig introduced in <a title="Lessig's book 'Code'" href="http://www.amazon.com/Code-Version-2-0-Lawrence-Lessig/dp/B000WCNW4C/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1271253525&amp;sr=8-1" target="_self">&#8216;Code&#8217;</a> &#8211; namely market, law, social norms and architecture &#8211; we constantly need to reshape the role and place of policy in these networks, and try to understand the profound implications these technologies can have.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>Bashers/Xi-Online debate on Game Journalism</title>
		<link>http://shoord.nl/events/bashersxi-online-debate-on-game-journalism/</link>
		<comments>http://shoord.nl/events/bashersxi-online-debate-on-game-journalism/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 11 Dec 2009 17:04:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Sjoerd</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Events]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bashers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[debate]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gaming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[report]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://shoord.nl/?p=185</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Last Wednesday I attended at the discussion night organized by Xi-Online (the student magazine of Media Studies) and Bashers (a collective of bloggers that aim to write about the cultural aspects of videogames). The discussion panel consisted of Jan Meijroos (freelance game journalist), Jurrie Hobers (vicepresident sales &#38; marketing at Codemasters), David Nieborg (game researcher [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Last Wednesday I attended at the discussion night organized by <a title="Xi-Online" href="http://www.xi-online.nl/" target="_blank">Xi-Online</a> (the student magazine of Media Studies) and <a title="Bashers.nl" href="http://bashers.nl/" target="_blank">Bashers</a> (a collective of bloggers that aim to write about the cultural aspects of videogames). The discussion panel consisted of Jan Meijroos (freelance game journalist), Jurrie Hobers (vicepresident sales &amp; marketing at Codemasters), <a href="http://gamespace.nl">David Nieborg</a> (game researcher at the UvA and freelance game journalist) and was moderated by <a href="http://nielsthooft.com">Niels &#8216;t Hooft</a> (game journalist and writer). The main subject would be in what&#8217;s the position the today&#8217;s game journalism, how the journalist considered as independent and how revenues are being made.<span id="more-185"></span></p>
<p>Througout the debate, the audience frequently provided the needed criticism. The smaller game sites (I can&#8217;t even recall them..) as well as the larger ones (i.e <a href="http://gamekings.tv">Gamekings</a>) were represented. Although it was interesting to hear so many different experiences, there also appeared to be  fragmented interests concerning game journalism. Some Web sites of the smaller scale segment have the reputation of proudly admitting that they bluntly copy press articles (sometimes even literally), sites like Bashers tend to look outside (or around) of those PR hypes.</p>
<p>Moreover, the debate sometimes swiftly shifted from several definitions of the game journalist. As <a href="http://blammo.nl">Blammo</a> founder, Boris van de Ven, replied on Twitter a &#8216;reviewer&#8217; is in no way comparable with a &#8216;journalist&#8217;. Although I don&#8217;t necessarily agree with that (doesn&#8217;t every preview report include some kind of qualifying descriptions?), it is essential to specify these terms in such a debate.</p>
<p>Also one of the repeatedly raised arguments was that in-depth writing should be considered of more cultural relevance than the &#8216;overdone&#8217; reviews. In general, I think there&#8217;s no proper reason to dismiss game reviews (or in that case, any kind of review) as abundant or inferior. As mentioned in the debate, it still remains the starting-point for a lot of consumers, and obviously they&#8217;re still popular in most game-magazines. This being said, it should rather be the discussion what <em>proper</em> game critique should consist of (why is a game significant? What kind of authority should the reviewer present?). All these minor aspects of current game journalism were categorized by David as &#8216;short-term discussions&#8217;, being less important than the overall potential of the field. But essentially, I think that these minor aspects altogether show us what is to be considered as quality in these writings, and how to shape the field any further.</p>
<p>Another discussion was if there&#8217;s a market for the more extensive writings that focus for instance on smaller parts of gaming culture or software studies that discuss games. According to David, there&#8217;s a potential for the current media and journalism scholars, that increasingly move to the field of gaming. Unfortunately, this argument was fought by economical objections (to survive as a blog, you have to conform to a certain publish rate), and lack of &#8216;proof of concept&#8217;.</p>
<p>Lastly, it appeared that succes of game-journalism would be ascribed to different factors, as some Web sites claim that PR determined news items is viable because their public reach and sufficient bannering revenues. This point makes the discussion a bit awkward. First and foremost because the field is clearly scattered in terms of intentions and ambitions, and secondly, because the different platforms were mixed up (magazines, newspaper, blogs) without taking in consideration their fundamental characteristics. For instance, isn&#8217;t it so that an extremely active news-site like <a href="http://kotaku.com">Kotaku</a> is incommensurable by definition with traditional ways of publishing? Here, the different medium allows different approaches.</p>
<p>In conclusion, the debate left some crucial questions unanswered. According to David, the journalistic field struggles with structural problems (the stereotypical isolement, dependency on game-producers et cetera). However, it would still have a greater potential with, for example, reporting from a broader viewpoint and reaching a more myriad audience. Personally, the most prominent questions are what kind of content journalists should produce and what qualities it should hold? More importantly, what other ambitions can be formulated coming from the writers themselves instead of what has been accepted by (or sold to) older audiences.</p>
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		<title>Adobe User Group; een samenvatting van het voorafgaande</title>
		<link>http://shoord.nl/critique/adobe-user-group-een-samenvatting-van-het-voorafgaande/</link>
		<comments>http://shoord.nl/critique/adobe-user-group-een-samenvatting-van-het-voorafgaande/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 14 May 2009 10:33:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Sjoerd</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[critique]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Adobe]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[conference]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[report]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://shoord.nl/?p=67</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Gistermiddag voltrok zich de twaalfde editie van de Adobe User Group in Pakhuis De Zwijger. Dit keer met het thema &#8216;games&#8217;, een sector waar behalve veel geld wordt verdiend, ontwikkelingen als augmented reality, physical computing, MMO&#8217;s et cetera hun plek innemen. En hoewel de toekomst weinig eenduidig is, lijkt de sector zich behalve te verbreden [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Gistermiddag voltrok zich de twaalfde editie van de Adobe User Group in Pakhuis De Zwijger. Dit keer met het thema &#8216;games&#8217;, een sector waar behalve veel geld wordt verdiend, ontwikkelingen als augmented reality, physical computing, MMO&#8217;s et cetera hun plek innemen. En hoewel de <a title="'Future of Games' blogpost" href="http://shoord.nl/?p=26" target="_blank">toekomst</a> weinig eenduidig is, lijkt de sector zich behalve te verbreden ook te specialiseren in wat er al was. Met die specialisatie verandert ook de methodologie van game-ontwikkeling, hetgeen waar het leeuwendeel van de verhalen bij de User Group over ging.<span id="more-67"></span></p>
<p><a title="Quinten beek van mediamonks over het hacken van games @adobeu... on Twitpic" href="http://twitpic.com/53fdn"></a></p>
<p><a title="Quinten beek van mediamonks over het hacken van games @adobeu... on Twitpic" href="http://twitpic.com/53fdn"> </a></p>
<p><a title="Quinten beek van mediamonks over het hacken van games @adobeu... on Twitpic" href="http://twitpic.com/53fdn"></p>
<p></a></p>
<div class="mceTemp"><a title="Quinten beek van mediamonks over het hacken van games @adobeu... on Twitpic" href="http://twitpic.com/53fdn"></a>
<dl id="attachment_83" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 310px;"><a title="Quinten beek van mediamonks over het hacken van games @adobeu... on Twitpic" href="http://twitpic.com/53fdn"></a>
<dt class="wp-caption-dt"><a href="http://twitpic.com/53fdn"><img class="size-medium wp-image-83" title="MediaMonks bij de Adobe User Group" src="http://shoord.nl/wp-content/uploads/8557979-300x225.jpg" alt="De huisstijl (door Momkai) was wel geslaagd." width="300" height="225" /></a></dt>
<dd class="wp-caption-dd">De huisstijl (door Momkai) was wel geslaagd.</dd>
</dl>
</div>
<p>Zo kwam <strong>Senne de Jong</strong> van Little Chicken Game Company vertellen over hoe ze 3-dimensionale, of eigenlijk de gesimuleerde versie &#8217;2,5d&#8217;, hebben weten te ontwikkelen in Flash en Actionscript. <strong>Tim Hudson </strong>(Serial K-Killers) hield een vergelijkbaar verhaal over hoe ze 3d hebben kunnen inzetten in een Flash-applicatie middels het exporteren van Maya-modellen naar Actionscript en <a title="'Papervision 101' op 't Katerluyk blog" href="http://www.katerluyk.nl/papervision3d/" target="_blank">Papervision</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Paul Tondeur</strong> van WebWonders hield vervolgens een demonstratie van een combinatie van Unity3D (real-time 3d rendering vanuit een webbrowser), Flash en Red5 (een opensource multiplayer servertechniek). Hiermee bleek hij in staat 3d-beelden te combineren met Flash panelen (als invoer of modificatie van data) voor de 3d wereld. Voor de interoperabiliteit (hoe alle onderdelen elkaar begrijpen) werd JavaScript gebruikt. Moeilijk.</p>
<p>Als een soort rots in de branding nam <strong>Wim van der Pla</strong><strong>s </strong>zijn plek in voor enige relativering van het grote verhaal. Er werd een verhaal geschetst over hoe de industrie zo groot heeft kunnen worden, met virtual reality als onvermijdelijke toekomst. Tussen het verhaal door werd er gerefereerd naar een minor van de Hogeschool van Utrecht &#8220;What&#8217;s in the game?&#8221;, waar dieper in wordt gegaan op games als medium, de fysieke of technische vorm die zij heeft/krijgt, en maatschappelijke invloeden.</p>
<p>In het <em>power hour</em> deden drietal case-presentaties de ronde. <strong>Stefan van der Heijden</strong> (thePharmacy) vertelde over hoe ze een Myst ripoff hebben weten te bouwen in Adobe AIR, <span class="status-body"><span class="entry-content"><strong>Martin Janse</strong> (Playlogic) vatte samen hoe hij in de uitgeverij te recht is gekomen en wat uitgevers (kunnen) betekenen voor ontwikkelaars en </span></span><strong>Daniël van Gils</strong> (Kamerblauwlicht) over een voor Cinekid ontwikkelde installatie.</p>
<p>Wat me vooral stoorde aan de insteek van de Adobe User Group was dat de verhalen soms enorm ingingen op programmeertalen, script-methodes, en mogelijkheden van applicaties. Dit alles terwijl de potentie van games zich juist beweegt naar one-man producties, <a title="Trendspotting in San Fransisco" href="http://bashers.nl/kijktip-trendspotting-san-francisco" target="_blank">de indie-game sector</a>. Wanneer grote game-ontwikkelaars terrein (EA, Midway, Eidos) verliezen zouden de mid-grote ontwikkelaars zich juist niet moeten richten op het imiteren van dezelfde high-end productiemethodes.</p>
<p>Driedimensionaliteit wordt door Little Chicken, Webwonders en Serial K-Killers als specialisme voorop gezet. En ergens is het een goed uitgangspunt; verfijning van de techniek en complexiteit heeft de ontwikkeling van de game-industrie veel goeds gedaan. Maar als het gaat om inzet van de potentie van deze technologiën denk ik dat SecondLife de grootste ontkrachting (&#8216;shock &#8216;n awe&#8217;) is geweest. Hebben we ons hoofd al niet eens gestoten aan dit plafond?</p>
<p>Maar de strijd om terrein gaat niet alleen om 2d versus 3d. De echte onderscheiding ligt in de conceptualisering van games en hoe het medium opnieuw kan worden vormgegeven. Manieren van het samenbrengen van spelers of het experimenteren met ethiek of moraliteit (<a title="The Path" href="http://www.google.nl/url?sa=t&amp;source=web&amp;ct=res&amp;cd=1&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Ftale-of-tales.com%2FThePath%2F&amp;ei=4vELSuH2LNDB-Ab29oDDBg&amp;usg=AFQjCNEItY4cUmRgFZtbn2KdWdA2sXktJw&amp;sig2=Bn5CkaMMrijhfYIoVsMpdQ" target="_blank">The Path</a>), boodschap en betekenis, waarbij de vorm op voorhand onbepaald is. <strong>Daniël van Gils </strong>was hier het beste, en enige, voorbeeld van. Voor de installatie van Cinekid had hij een denkbeeld uit zijn jeugd uitgewerkt. Spelers (kinderen) moesten diamanten opgraven voor ondergrondse &#8216;beestjes&#8217; door middel van fietspompen die gemonteerd waren aan de installatie. Feedback werd gegeven door ledjes en rokende pijpen.</p>
<p>Oja, en <strong>Quinten Beek</strong> van MediaMonks, gaf uiteindelijk een presentatie over hoe Flash-games beter te beveiligen zijn tegen hackers. Leuk, maar ondertussen had de deillusionering over games als uitgekristalliseerd medium al zijn afdrukken achtergelaten.</p>
<p><a title="Adobe User Group op Twitter" href="http://twitter.com/adobeusergroup" target="_blank">Twitterlog van de Adobe User Group.</a></p>
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