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Archive for September, 2007

September 28th, 2007 by christo

virtual berlin in real berlin

The Tesla is a laboratory for multimedia art housed in an impressive building in the mittestad of Berlin. This weekend they will be hosting what promises to be a really interesting event. From their online programme:

grossformat [sl]

for the first and only time in berlin: a second life mega-event by and with jo fabian and his guests.

after two turbulent tesla salons about second life in may and june, jo fabian moves to the kubus and zooms the avatar cosmos into first life format. no longer in front of and on individual 17”- screens, but rather out in the open, in the middle of the real berlin. practically unter the television tower, first and second life meet eye-to-eye and intermingle. friday evening lifts off with highly informative visits between the two worlds. we tune into various concerts and land in virtual clubs.

the second evening heightens into a spectacular open-ended party until early sunday morning.

image from second life

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Play! A Videogame Symphony

September 21st, 2007 by Pippa

"It’s no secret… Today’s most thrilling scores are coming out of video games." Arnie Roth - Conductor

Whilst browsing one of my favourite websites - Selectparks.net I came across this announcement, unfortunately the event has already passed, but it’s worth posting anyway! You can also see a small preview of the show if you follow the link below.

Sydney Symphony Orchestra paid tribute earlier this year to the creative force behind early video game soundtracks.

Play! was a video game symphony that brought to life the award-winning music of 20 of the biggest and best computer games around. Music from the games was performed by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra (conducted by Arnie Roth and backed by choral sensation Cantillation) while massive screens, suspended over the orchestra, captured stunning game play sequences. Play! ran from 19-23 June and was exclusive to the Sydney Opera House. Music was performed from games including:

Final Fantasy VI &VII
Metal Gear Solid
Halo
Castlevania
World of Warcraft
Kingdom Hearts
The Legend of Zelda
Super Mario Bros
Sonic The Hedgehog

Check it out here

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Human Brain Cloud

September 17th, 2007 by Pippa

Just a short post - I was sent a link to this great website by a friend - it’s a word association game that maps peoples first thoughts to words and compiles them into a database. You can then view the map and everyone’s associations.

"The idea is that given a word, a player types in the first thing that comes to mind and the results are combined into a giant network.

For instance given the word "volcano", a common word people might submit would be "lava", and this would result in a very strong connection between "volcano" and "lava". On the other hand, given the word "volcano", fewer people might associate it with something like "birthday party", resulting in a very weak connection or no connection at all. Over time and with many players, I hope the cloud will gradually grow to represent words and phrases people tend to associate with other words and phrases, assuming it doesn’t get inundated with spam. The cloud started with just one word, "volcano". All other words were submitted by visitors to this site."

Check it out at humanbraincloud.com

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Have City Will Play

September 17th, 2007 by Tegan

Anthea Moys and I (Tegan Bristow) are hosting a play event Have City Will Play for the Newtown LockDown on the 29th of September as part of the Arts Alive and CIT:Y festival in Johannesburg.
Playing begins at 10:00 with workshops open to all interested members of the public. In these workshops Anthea will speak about play in art and performance art and I will address communication technologies and how they are used for play in art and interactive art games. The workshops will be held in Museum Africa and are free of charge.
If you can’t make it to the workshop – the games begin at 13:00 outside Museum Africa!
The first game is Anthea’s ‘Nonsensical Obstacle Course Race’ and the second is my "Shoot Me If You Can" interactive cellphone game which is loosely based on this game.

Have City Will Play is Anthea’s incentive to further explore her passion and love for play in the context of art. These games form part a project in which she attempts to the redefine mostly negative conceptions of the inner city through play.

"Johannesburg is one of the most dangerous cities in the world, making Johannesburg people ‘car people’. When last did you just go for a walk in the city? Have City Will Play is about negotiating this chaos and perceived danger of Jozi through negotiating the city space in an engaging manner through the playing of a game. Have City Will Play is taking advantage of the safe and car free zone in central Newtown created by the Arts Alive Festival to engage in play in this public space. Newtown is seen as a practising grounds as I hope to extend this project into other areas of town over the years to come.

Have City Will Play is part of an ongoing project, which I began as an investigation into the notion of play within various kinds of performance within public space. This project is kindly sponsored by the NAC (National Arts Council) and will be included in a solo exhibition to take place in November this year." (Anthea Moys)

For any queries please contact me on tegan bristow(one word) at gmail dot com. Else if you are in Jozi we hope to see you there.

Posted in announcements, digital art, opportunity | 1 Comment »

African Gaming

September 12th, 2007 by Pippa

I’ve come across a few great websites recently, which brought a number of different things to my attention, mainly in the field of game development in Africa. As a South African, my focus has mainly been on the struggle to build up a gaming industry in South Africa, and comparing our development to that in other areas of the world, mainly to those countries classified as ‘First World’. Recently however, whilst browsing the website White African, which deals with Africa and technology, I came across a feature on Africans in the gaming industry, and was pleasantly surprised to find a number of different games that I had been unaware of up until now. One of these was a game made by Gwimgrafxstudios called ‘Adventures of Nyangi‘ as well as a game made in Ghana called ‘Sword of Sygos‘. Additionally a MMO game that unfortunately has perhaps been abandoned (I cant find information to the contrary) called ‘Africa‘ has been promoted by MTV.

There are a number of other South African games around, most notably from the now defunct I-Imagine, and recently another studio has opened up called Mann Made Games, a child company of Mann Made Media.

The talent and the initiative is out there to encourage a strong African game development industry, we just need to be aware of what’s going on around us.

For additional information if you’re interested you might want to check out SAGameDev and GameDotDev for news on the local industry.

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Archive for September, 2007

Play! A Videogame Symphony

Human Brain Cloud

Have City Will Play

African Gaming

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