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Hyperpolis 3.0: Really Useful Media
Conference and Celebration
October 19th and 20th of 2006

We don't know enough about digital media as something other than a means to an end, as “instrumental culture”, where culture itself —mainstream, alternative, underground, or otherwise— is degraded to the status of tools (some hard, some soft, all ware).

We know too much about media discourses as, on the one hand, “popular culture”: alienated and commodified cultural forms; and on the other, “cultural theory”: paranoid cosmologies of hyper-rhetoric, and the ubiquitous inevitability of evil...

Hyperpolis: Really Useful Media will provide a forum for the discussion and presentation of some positive contributions to the field, in light of these chronic imbalances.

Atopia (David Turnbull and Jane Harrison)
Katherine Carl
Wendy Hui Kyong Chun
Jodi Dean
Karen Hall
Tom Keenan
Michael Liegl
Geert Lovink
Rev. Luke Murphy
Eric Redlinger
Richard Rogers
Ruth Ron
Michael Schumacher
Steven Shaviro
Juha Uitto
Greg Van Alstyne
McKenzie Wark

Thursday, October 19th and Friday, October 20th, 11am to 6pm, 2006 in Dibner
Auditorium, Polytechnic University, 6 MetroTech, Brooklyn, 11201.
Contact Carl Skelton at 718-260-4018 or cskelton@poly.edu.
Check out~ the Hyperpolis page for more info and come join us!

We're nearing graduation for this year's MS students and a host of fascinating thesis projects are coming to fruition. For instance:

Kids Connect

The pilot program of Kids Connect, co-directed by IDM grad student Dan Winckler, concluded last Friday with a mixed reality performance in New York City, Amsterdam (NL) and Second Life, in which Dutch students in SL told stories about their neighborhoods and their creations in SL to New York City students, who "played back" (performed) their stories to them onstage at Polytechnic via streaming video. See the story in images or read about it on the Kids Connect wiki.

Chaotic Terrain

Mary Ann Benedetto's abstract, non-linear gaming experience Chaotic Terrain built on the Torque Game Engine has expanded ferociously in scope and detail since we last posted about it. Let's all bug her into sending us screenshots and a blurb by posting comments on her blog, shall we? Good.

v001

Anton Marini's visual performance application v.001 (formerly vade) has grown by leaps and bounds, accelerated by the latest developments in graphics technologies in Mac OS X and Jitter. It's a pity I can't show you any screenshots from it but Mary Ann has some on her blog and beta testers can clamor to get their hands on it at 001.vade.info.

Dynamic Architectural Modeling

Not a very sexy title, is it? But what Peter Robertson, Daniel Krengel and Wai Lun Chan are up to is teh sexy indeed. Mentioned previously, they are developing dynamic modeling practices for architectural design. In other words, a set of digital blueprints that can instantly morph to show the design team and the clients changes in design in a 3D, explorative model more akin to World of Warcraft or Quake III than blue ink on paper. Using bleeding edge features of Digital Project and Maya, they can show changes in materials (brass instead of copper fittings), envelope (10 more feet of sidewalk), atmosphere (a 'green wall' of honeysuckle instead of glass windows) and more. Eventually, these models will be accessible through map technologies like Google Earth and A9 street-level maps. More to come as thesis papers get done and final presentations get pretty. :)

Kids Connect is coming along swimmingly. In our first two weeks, we've taught our students the basics of videography, improvisational performance, critical research on the Internet, short playwrighting, collaborative storytelling, audio recording, virtual communications, media awareness, scripting, 3D artwork, and networked performance. Check out more pictures on our Flickr site.

May 13th and 14th, IDMI hosted DrupalCamp, a gathering of users, web developers, and community leaders to share knowledge and teach about Drupal, a flexible and powerful open source content management system. Drupal is the CMS of choice for many political action groups, campaigns and non-profit organizations. Go to Drupal-Camp.org for more information about Drupal.

As mentioned previously, Mary Ann Benedetto is creating quite a unique gaming experience with the game engine Torque. At long last, we have coaxed a more descriptive blurb out of her:

chaotic.terrain is an exploration-motivated 3D game, in which a player finds himself or herself in a lush but deserted world. The world is a vehicle for and manifestation of a nonlinear story, which is an abstract interpretation of my mental/emotional "landscape" over the course of the project's life. A player must find and choose a path out of each of the five regions (each with distinct landscapes), and each choice made affects the appearance of the world and direction the story follows.

From the artist's mouth, ladies and gentlemen. Now that's good blurb. To see some screenshots from chaotic.terrain, see our last post linked above.