Conference MBR'09, Brazil

Deadline: May 1st, 2009

MODEL-BASED REASONING IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Abduction, Logic, and Computational Discovery

MBR'09_BRAZIL

(Fifth International MBR Conference)

Campinas, Brazil, December 17-19, 2009

Chairs: Lorenzo Magnani and Walter Carnielli

http://www.unipv.it/webphilos_lab/mbr09.php

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MBR COMMUNITY WEB SITE
http://www.unipv.it/webphilos_lab/cpl2/
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Wired: Researchers Want to Add Touch, Taste and Smell to Virtual Reality

Researchers Want to Add Touch, Taste and Smell to Virtual Reality

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/03/realvirtuality.html

Virtual reality schemes have long tantalized geeks with unrealized visions of holodecks and long-distance cybersex.

Now, a group of British researchers want to round out the experience with virtual touch, taste and smell. To simulate the real world, they argue, all five of your senses must be stimulated. Toward that end, they've mocked up a "Virtual Cocoon" with a separate glove that — at least in theory — could tickle your tongue as it, uh, nukes your nose.

To differentiate themselves from virtual reality schemes that have come and gone, the researchers are re-branding their effort as "real virtuality."

"The crucial thing for 'real virtuality' is that it will hit all five senses in a highly realistic manner," said Alan Chalmers, a professor at the University of Warwick Digital Lab. "You can't ignore the crossmodal effect. We need to have smell, we need to have taste."

Virtual reality has been long on promise and short on delivery for more than two decades. Way back in the second issue of Wired magazine in 1993, we delivered a massive story on Jaron Lanier's virtual reality dreams. Though computing power has continued its exponential rise over the last 16 years, virtual reality feels little more "real" than it once did. Certainly, no one would mistake Second Life for real life or a virtual reality "CAVE" used in oil exploration for the geological formations themselves. Even with huge improvements in graphics, virtual reality has remained more virtual than real.

Chalmers and his collaborator, David Howard, head of the Audio Laboratory at the University of York, could be onto something with their multi-sensory approach, even if it is a daunting task. What gives them hope is that the simulations of every sense don't need to be perfect, they just need to work — and work well together. 

Drawing on cognitive neuroscience literature about how the brain prioritizes sensory inputs, they can deliver the right level of detail with maximum engineering efficiency. Cognitive neuroscientists call these crossmodal attention affects. For example, when you pay close attention to one thing — say someone's voice on the telephone — you pay less attention to your peripheral vision. Using that information could allow the researchers to build a VR system that functions with far less brute force than you might think was necessary — stimulating one or two senses at a time, rather than all of them at once. Howard compared it to the way the JPG format compresses image files. 

"The amount of brain power given to sight, once sound, smell and touch are introduced, reduces dramatically. For instance, when you are driving around looking for a road sign you will probably turn down the volume on your car stereo," Chalmers explains on his website. "This is because you need more brain power diverted to the sight sense. This means that, with other stimuli introduced to a virtual environment, we could reduce still further the amount of rendering needed." 

Or so they think. Right now, all the researchers have are a mockup and a research plan, plus enough funding from the U.K.'s Engineering and Physical Science Research Council to get started. Chalmers said it would take "on the order of millions of pounds" to deliver a working prototype in "three to five years."

They will face some daunting technological challenges, said Jane Mulligan, a virtual reality researcher at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

"Visually, we'd say that our most advanced technology is the virtual worlds of games," Mulligan said. "But even those, it's difficult to make them compelling and like you're really there."

She pointed to haptics, the sense of physical presence, as the key stumbling block. 

"Your sense of touch is extremely precise," she said. "Most people that I've talked to, people who do haptics, say that today's technology is not really there."

One area that sounds tricky is smell, but it might not be as tough as it seems. The biggest attempt to commercialize synthetic scent technology came from DigiScents, a high-profile startup that crashed during the dot-com bust. But the company's co-founder, Joel Bellenson, now CEO of Upstream Biosciences, said that his smell-o-matic technology worked. 

"The technological limitations were not the limiting factors for us," Bellenson said. "We had a functional device that was able to make thousands of smells with a scent palette of 64 elements."

He blamed bad timing for his company's ultimate failure. 

"Sony had warned us that we would need $100 million from beginning to end to create a new product category," he said. "We had raised about $25 million."

The final straw, as the market turned, were the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. 

"We narrowly missed being at the World Trade Center that day. We had accidentally canceled our appointment with Merrill Lynch," he recalled. "A month or two later, I was looking at our calendar, and saw we were supposed to be there. We said, 'Maybe this is a sign.'"

Although DigiScents' iSmell has entered the history books as a massive failure, earning a spot on PC World's Top 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time, Bellenson says that we should mark up digital scent technology as a missed opportunity, not a failed product. 

"If we'd have started the company a year earlier, we would have raised all the money we needed," Bellenson sighed. 

In fact, the British researchers see clear paths to most of the technologies they need. 

"The sight and sound, we pretty well know how to do that," Howard said. "The smell, we have an idea of how to do it."

Taste, they say, is generated largely through the sense of smell, but they are considering a mouthpiece that could simulate different textures of things that you're chewing on. 

Put it all together and they think they can trick the brain into looking around, smelling the orange, feeling the tree's bark, hearing the birds and saying, "I'm in an orchard." 

"If you start to join some of the dots with pieces of sensory information," Howard concluded, "The brain will suspend the belief of where it actually is."

Now all they need is money.

Read this article on Wired with hyperlinks to other pages of interest here....

IEEE Newsletter: Gaming Technology Efforts Off to Strong Start

Gaming Technology Efforts Off to Strong Start

http://www2.computer.org/portal/web/membership/newsletters/mar09

By John Harauz

Vice President, CS Standards Activities

The IEEE Computer Society has launched a number of new initiatives in recognition of the new and distinct medium of videogames, whose technology includes many topics in computer engineering and computer science. The IEEE Computer Society has formed a Task Force on Game Technology under the Technical Activities and Conferences Board (CS-T&C) and a Game Technology Standards Study Group under the Standards Activities Board (CS-SAB).

As a business, game technology is worth tens of billions each year and includes many thousands of developers. This is a significant sector of the economy and the base of technical workers. Game engineering is a multidisciplinary application area and has a research/development focus that is currently pushing the design of desktop PCs, portables, cell phones, PDAs, processors, AI and graphics methods.

In recognition of this, a Game Technology Standards Workshop was held at the Sheraton Gateway Hotel in Los Angeles on 6 February to lay the foundation for a new Game Technology Standards Committee (GTSC). Sponsored jointly by the SAB and T&C boards, the workshop was held to solicit input to help identify game technology professionals' needs and construct a standards roadmap that enjoins all relative stakeholders. The workshop was also intended to begin an initial needs analysis, designed to define the tasks and goals applicable to game engineering technology standards, and to determine how the Computer Society can best support these efforts.

Strategic participation included 13 people from the T&C Task Force on Game Technology, the IEEE Game Engineering Special Interest Group, the Computer Society and others. All workshop presentation slides and the workshop report are on the GTSC Liferay web portal.

Consensus discussion identified key issues surrounding standards in game technology, including the agreement that:

It is necessary to reach out to industry and convince gaming people who think we do not need standards;

Standards are needed but at a different level and they must be end-user driven;

Standards must be realistic for fast-moving technology and should formalize best practices;

There is a need to work with other standards committees and involve international participation, and a specific need to work with the International Games Developer Association (IGDA) in a complementary manner.

Possible areas for standardization identified include interfaces, taxonomy, process, data formats, video teleconferencing (social networks), generic Internet synchronous communication, and game interoperability (single interoperability standard). There is also a need to differentiate between commercial and serious game needs. Specific issues were identified in different areas:

• Serious games -- accessibility, access to content, and information assurance
  
• Usability -- look and feel, user interfaces, control schemes
  
• Interoperability -- working together and with other systems
  
• Durability -- technology changes, redesign reusability, redeploy, rearrange, and repurpose.
  

In conclusion, the group decided to move forward and produce a standards roadmap for game technology, prepare a set of policies and principles for the new Standards Committee, and actively utilize the Games Technology Standards Wiki for communication and production. 

If anyone is interested in contributing to standards activities for game technology please contact me at j.harauz@computer.org

--------

Microprocessor Standards Committee Seeks Members

The IEEE Computer Society Standards Activity Board (CS-SAB) is interested in identifying individuals who have an interest in microprocessors. The Microprocessor Standards Committee (MSC) is one of the Society’s oldest standards committees, predating even 802.

The most used IEEE standard, the Floating Point Arithmetic Standard, is an MSC project, as will be the Interval Arithmetic Standard when completed. The members continue to develop new and interesting standards, such as the Standard Specification for Public-Key Cryptographic Techniques, the Standard for Transmission of Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) Data within Local Area Networks, or the Standard for Transport Protocol for Time Sensitive Applications in Local Area Networks.

The MSC actively seeks new technology and has been responsible for starting projects that have launched several new standards areas such as Nanotechnology. MSC is looking for new members as well as new leaders. This is an opportunity to participate beyond your immediate job in creating innovative global standards.

For more information, contact Bob Davis at bob@scsi.com or (408) 857-1273 or John Harauz at j.harauz@computer.org or (416) 567-0874.

The Sandbox: The Digital Meta-Game

The Digital Meta-Game

http://blogs.spectrum.ieee.org/gizmos/2009/03/the_digital_metagame.htm

A couple weeks ago, I blogged about the rise of and concern over used games online. There are noises in the game industry that the best way to counter old games on Amazon is to distribute more games online. (Note: one reader posted a corrective about the term "digital distribution," saying that games on disc are digital too. Good point. But "digital distribution" is now the accepted phrase for delivering content online, which is why we use it here).

Today, there's more fuel to the pixilated fire. One prominent analyst suggests that retail stores such as GameStop will also be threatened by an increase in online delivery. More here.

Posted by David Kushner on March 23, 2009 11:38 AM 

IEEE Spectrum: Jacket Lets You Feel the Movies

Jacket Lets You Feel the Movies

By Willie D. Jones

First Published March 2009

A motor-studded haptics jacket can run a chill up your spine

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/mar09/8287

PHOTO: STEVE BREWSTER

18 March 2009—This week, researchers from Philips Electronics plan to describe a jacket they have lined with vibration motors to study the effects of touch on a movie viewer’s emotional response to what the characters are experiencing.

“People don’t realize how sensitive we are to touch, although it is the first sense that fetuses develop in the womb,” says Paul Lemmens, a Philips senior scientist who will be presenting research done using the jacket at the IEEE-sponsored 2009 World Haptics Conference 2009, in Salt Lake City.

The jacket contains 64 independently controlled actuators distributed across the arms and torso. The actuators are arrayed in 16 groups of four and linked along a serial bus; each group shares a microprocessor. The actuators draw so little current that the jacket could operate for an hour on its two AA batteries even if the system was continuously driving 20 of the motors simultaneously.

So what can the jacket make you feel? Can it cause a viewer to feel a blow to the ribs as he watches Bruce Lee take on a dozen thugs? No, says Lemmens. Although the garment can simulate outside forces, translating kicks and punches is not what the actuators are meant to do. The aim, he says, is investigating emotional immersion.

[Visit the article pge on the IEEE Spectrum website http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/mar09/8287 to read the rest of the story]

The Sandbox: The Rise of (Used) Games

The Rise of (Used) Games

http://blogs.spectrum.ieee.org/gizmos/2009/03/the_rise_of_used_games.htm

This month, Amazon announced that it will allow consumers to sell back used videogames to the site in exchange for credit.

There's been a lot of noise about how bad this is for videogame publishers, who'd rather you buy new stuff from them. Of course, used merchandise - books, DVDs, hardware - is old hat online, so why should games be exempt? And, more interestingly, a new study suggests that the rise of used games could - and should - fuel innovation.

A report released Tuesday by Electronic Entertainment Design and Research says that the best way for publishers to fight sites like Amazon is to distribute their content digitally. As digital distribution rises, retailers won't have used plastic discs to pawn. Good idea! Digital distribution is also a great way to keep content fresh, updated, and episodic. A win/win for publishers and players.

Posted by David Kushner on March 17, 2009 5:01 PM

Call for papers: DFG Symposion in Media Studies 21-24.09.09

Call for Papers

DFG Symposion in Media Studies

Date: 21.-24.September 2009

Location: ‚Kutschstall im Haus der Brandenburgisch-Preußischen Geschichte’

14467 Potsdam, Schlossstrasse 12, Germany

Topic: Media programs and the program of media

In 2009, the first in an open-ended series of Symposia in Media Studies organized at the behest of the DFG, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German national society for scientific research), will be held in Potsdam. In the coming years, Symposia in Media Studies will be held every second year. The idea of the Symposia is to foster the development of Media Studies (Medienwissenschaft) in Germany as part of the humanities through a debate about key issues in current and future research.

Participants are required to:

- hand in an abstract for a contribution to one of the four thematic sections listed below (1 page) by March 31, 2009.

- submit the written manuscript of their contribution (no more than 30 pages) by June 30, 2009

- act as respondents to one of the other contributions to the Symposion

- participate in discussions for the duration of the Symposion

Further questions, as well as paper proposals, should be addressed to:

Prof. Dr. Joachim Paech (Jopaech@aol.com)

Correspondence address:

Prof. Dr. Dieter Mersch

Universität Potsdam

Institut für Künste und Medien

Am Neuen Palais 10

14469 Potsdam

Tel: 0331 977 4160

mailto: dmersch@uni-potsdam.de

The first ‘DFG-Symposion’ in Media Studies will address the topic of Media Programs. The concept of program opens up a variety of productive avenues for approaches to the concept of media itself. Traditionally, programs have been understood as structures, patterns or forms of temporal and discursive ordering in the arts and the mass media. Programming situates media devices between symbolic and technical registers. Anything that can be organized and articulated in a force field of medium and form may be called programmable. We have now reached a point where even live forms seem programmable, requiring an approach to questions of program and programming that addresses issues of gender and power along with issues of medium, form and technology. Accordingly, the concept of program may be seen as programmatic for media studies in general, a platform for a continuous reassessment of the discipline in its relationship to the arts as well as other disciplines in- and outside of the humanities.

Dividing the rich and field of connections between program and medium into four major areas of inquiry, the Symposion proposes a two-day schedule of four panels with four contributions per panel. The opening night will be dedicated to a commented musical performance. In addition, the Symposion will be accompanied by a thematic exhibition of programs and artefacts relating to questions of programming in the domain of music, curated by Elena Ungeheuer and Dieter Mersch.

Section 1: Programs (Reponsible: Joachim Paech, Konstanz)

Section 1 focuses on programs as devices for announcing and structuring religious, political, artistic and mass-mediated events. Time and again, chiliastic expectations and political promises have been laid down in the form of programs. Programs articulate claims to power. Mechanically programmed production processes provide a model for marketing programs such as catalogues and other forms of inventory. Artists use programs to differentiate their work, museums present art in the form of programs and programmatic catalogues. Transitory art forms such as theatre, film and music vitally depend on programs for their presentation. Mass media distribute content through programs that identify genres and formats and create patterns that help audiences identify their content of choice. In fact, mass media depend on programs so much that it is hard to imagine such media without programs. Thus, radio and television appear in temporal sequences of various forms of output, while print programs make broadcast programs accessible by transferring the temporal sequence into the spatial layout of the printed schedule. The task of program schedules is to reduce the improbability for a specific program to find its audience and to increase the probability that the reception and consumption of a program at a given place and a given time actually takes place. In that perspective, programs are transformations or, to borrow Luhmann’s definition of the term, „media“ with specific operational tasks in the process of mediated communication. The history of programs is largely written by and with an eye to specific institutions (churches, political parties, cooperation, groups of artists, etc.). Programs thus raise a complex set of questions: How do programs organize socio-cultural processes that in turn produce new programs? How do – religious, political, artistic and mass media – programs structure events that only become readable and perceptible as events through programs? How have programs evolved over time in specific artistic and mass media contexts? Is the program of Modernity a media program, and how does the program in modernity affect, and inform, issues of gender? In systematic perspective this section focuses on approaches that study the relationship between program and medium with an eye to the question of how media „program“ the forms in which they appear, i.e. whether through an articulation of independent elements in the sense of Luhmann, or otherwise.

Section 2: What is programming? (responsible: Hartmut Winkler, Paderborn)  

Programming, understood as an activity, first brings to mind the computer. Computing presupposes programming. But do programs necessarily have to be written by humans? Programming always already involves programs, and some programs act on their own. It is no coincidence that some types of computer programs are called „software agents“. But if programs are symbolic constructs, how can we analyzes them in terms of their „performance“?

But it is not jus the software, but the technological basis, the hardware, that raises some fundamental issues. Taking the „Berlin key“ as his example, Bruno Latour showed that material objects presuppose and induce specific patterns of actions. Should technology best be understood as a form of programming, then? Do material objects determine patterns of use? If so, technological hardware would actually be programming the user rather than the other way around. And how do we account for the unforeseen consequences of technology and its uses? How does programming relate to intention and factual outcome?

More generally, the question of programming raises the question of agency and of the validity of theoretical models of social action and competence. How can we discuss programming in terms of power? How powerful is the programmer? It is no coincidence that computer programs always take the form of imperatives. Program and execution are separate areas. Cybernetics as a discipline or a field makes claims of „control“ and „steering“ even through its title. Does the question of programming imply a return of the old logic of maser and servant, of intellectual and physical laboratory? But then again, agency appears to be distributed and even dispersed between humans and technology.

Expanding the view to include other media one could ask whether programs in media other than the computer are necessarily related to specific roles and assignments in terms of agency. Are there counter-programs that question and undermine the power claims related to, and implied in, programs?

And finally it seems as if programming did not necessarily require consciousness and planning. Are there unconscious forms of „programming“, such as convention and habit? Are genes a form of programming? Are humans programmed by their instincts? If so, how? Is programming a metaphor for biological processes, or is there a litteral sense to the application of „programming“ to „nature“? And how do the semiotic and technical devices of programming feed back into the unconscious registers of programming?

Section 3: What can be programmed? (responsible: Lorenz Engell, Weimar)

„Only worlds that we can foresee can be programmed. Only world that can be programmed can be construed and inhabited in a humane fashion.“ (Max Bense, 1969)

Today, we can probably no longer wholeheartedly subscribe to Max Bense’s decisive statement, and the wording of the phrase certainly raises questions. Despite all the current talk about the „program of life“, any direct identification of the „humane“ with the „programmable“ would raise significant objections. However the identification of „programmable“ and „foreseeable“ seems equally questionable, if not out of date. We have long reach a state where computer programs systematically generate unforeseen outcomes that transcend the framework of structured necessity. And finally we should not neglect the fact that constructing and programming are two substantially different ways of world-making, as different as ruse is from knowledge. Rather than being identical, they intersect and, perhaps, complement each other. But the deeper meaning of Bense’s statement lies in its value as a polemical document. Bense’s statement reminds us that, at one point in history, programming was a heroic mode of defence against a wild, unforeseeable, uncontrollable and inhumane world, a world that needed to be brought under control, much as, or so Bense continues, the metaphorical needed to be brought under the control of mathematics and the problematic under the control of the systematic.

But whatever became of this wild world and Bense’s heroic gesture of defence in the last forty-plus years?

We can no longer easily determine the boundaries of the programmable. For some time now, for instance, the systematic, the inhabitable world, and the program of intelligence have themselves become the problem, and metaphors now emerge from mathematics rather than being reigned in by mathematics. The unforeseeable and the inhumane have long become programmable. Experiments in programmed creativity make it to museums as easily as artefacts that keep on insisting on the resilience and the very materiality of the material.

Even in politics and the economy, in pleasure and love, we tend to carefully delineate and preserve, as if we did not know better, residual spheres of non-programmable emergence and contingency. The concept of the game has become the very essence of the program. But if that is true what, then, is the specific status, technologically, ontologically, and aesthetically, of the programmable? What does the programmable diverge from, how and in relation to what does it unfold?

Or have we reached a stage where we can no longer define the programmable by delineating its outer reaches? If so, the world of the programmable could only be analyzed in terms of its internal structures and elements, as a juxtaposition and opposition of different competing programs whose interaction and mutual production would form a kind of immanent outside of the programmable within the world of the program itself. What kind of a world would this be?

But then again, we can try to understand programming as a form of ordering in a double sense. What we need to study, then, are orderings of orderings, or rather of orders that have to be followed, that generate consequences and thus create linear time and feedback. The key to an understanding of the programmable, then, would be temporality and temporalization, and the programmable would find its boundary in that which resists temporalization, the fleeting instant and the eternal. Accordingly, we would need to contrast program and project and study their relationship. Spatial orderings could appear to be forms of programs, of programming behaviour and movement, but they would still function as supplements, or complements, to the programmable.

But then, the reverse is possible, too: Only programs are programmable. Only that which already has the form of a program before being programmed can be programmed. If programs function as forms, i.e. as articulations of independent events, then programs depend on media in and through which they articulate a chain of events. But then, media have always already pre-structured these events, however loosely. Accordingly, media and programs may be differentiated, but they can still be seamlessly converted into each other. If so, the preparatory production of programmability would constitute the key function of media. The programmable would be nothing less than mediality itself, and vice versa.

Section 4: The Research Programs of Media Studies [Medienwissenschaft] (responsible: John Durham Peters (Department of Communication Studies), University of Iowa, USA)

Media Studies has a long past but a short history, as Ebbinghaus supposedly once said of psychology. Precipitously coming together in the late twentieth century, the academic field of media studies has been fiercely interdisciplinary in its ambitions and voracious in its interdisciplinary borrowings. For some of its practitioners, media studies is not just one among many competing fields: it is a new meta-field that promises to engulf and govern several older fields by bringing together the natural and the social sciences, the humanities and the fine arts, mathematics and philosophy. On some campuses around the world, departments of media studies recreate the intellectual and disciplinary diversity once found across several faculties. If media are indeed fundamental to political and cognitive order, then media studies endorses a vision of history, culture, and society that promises to rewrite our understanding of the past, present, and future. 

The last thing to be secured in a science is its foundation, quipped Alfred North Whitehead, and media studies has reached a point in which it needs to shore up and secure its intellectual resources and disciplinary identity. This section proposes to make a critical inventory of the traditions and opportunities as well as pitfalls found in the new blossoming of media studies. To what extent is there a canon of media studies? What are its central methods and questions? What is the legitimacy of the practice of rereading older authors and texts, retroactively baptizing them as media scholars? To what degree are different traditions of scholarship ripe for interdisciplinary dialogue with media studies? To what degree can media studies in the German language exist apart from its strong philological method and philosophical inheritance? To what degree may we incorporate diverse intellectual traditions into the ambit of media studies—such as German idealism, psychoanalysis, American pragmatism, the Frankfurter Schule, Canadian political economy, art history, the sociology of media and Publizistik, Foucaultian archaeology, feminist and critical race analysis, etc.? To what degree is the intellectual heritage of media studies a wish-list or fantasy of noble ancestors? What principles can help produce a useable past for media studies that is equal to the ambition and intellectual excitement of the field? 

Some specific areas for consideration:

Classics: orality and literacy, the Homer problem,

Comparative religion: ritual practice as cosmological media

History: the record and its transmission as a media problem

Literature: the seedbed of modern media studies

Law: inscription, filing, and documentation practices

Mathematics: paper-machines as the context of mathematical production

Medicine: the body as fundamental datum of media studies

Music: performance, notation, and reproduction

Theology: “media salutis”

Press Release: NASCE A BOLOGNA L'ARCHIVIO VIDEOLUDICO

Bologna, 11 marzo 2009

NASCE A BOLOGNA L'ARCHIVIO VIDEOLUDICO

DALLA CINETECA DI BOLOGNA UN PROGETTO PIONIERE PER L'ITALIA

CONFERENZA STAMPA

MERCOLEDI' 18 MARZO, ORE 11, BIBLIOTECA RENZO RENZI

DELLA CINETECA

(via Azzo Gardino 65)

Nasce a Bologna, con sede nella Biblioteca Renzo Renzi, l'Archivio Videoludico.

Un progetto pioniere in ambito italiano promosso dalla Cineteca di Bologna.

Per la prima volta, lavorando a stretto contatto con l'industria e l'ambito accademico, si punta a dar vita a un polo di salvaguardia e promozione del medium videoludico, con l'intento di sensibilizzare il pubblico di fronte a uno strumento complesso e sfaccettato come il videogioco.

Il progetto ha ottenuto il pieno supporto di AESVI (Associazione Editori Software Videoludico Italiana), l'associazione di categoria delle maggiori aziende produttrici che già da anni opera a stretto contatto con le istituzioni governative, del Dipartimento di Discipline della Comunicazione e del Dipartimento di Musica e Spettacolo dell'Università di Bologna, delle associazioni e dei principali publisher italiani.

Il progetto e il primo nucleo dell'Archivio Videoludico saranno illustrati nel corso di una conferenza stampa che si terrà mercoledì 18 marzo, alle ore 11, nella Biblioteca Renzo Renzi della Cineteca di Bologna (via Azzo Gardino 65, Bologna).

Interverranno: 

• Gian Luca Farinelli, direttore della Cineteca di Bologna; 
  
• Thalita Malagò, Segretario Generale AESVI; 
  
• Patrizia Violi, direttrice del Dipartimento di Discipline della Comunicazione dell'Università di Bologna; 
  
• Guglielmo Pescatore, docente di Semiotica del cinema del Dipartimento di Musica e Spettacolo dell'Università di Bologna; 
  
• Andrea Dresseno, curatore del progetto Archivio Videoludico.
  

Si prega di considerare la presente come invito.

Con i migliori saluti

Info: Ufficio Stampa Cineteca di Bologna

Patrizia Minghetti

tel. 051 2194831

Cinetecaufficiostampa@comune.bologna.it

Andrea Ravagnan

tel. 051 2194833

Cinetecaufficiostampa2@comune.bologna.it

Ufficio Stampa AESVI

Antonella Violante

tel. 02 721431

Antonella.Violante@bm.com

Call for Papers: The Philosophy of Computer Games 2009

Please redistribute.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPUTER GAMES

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE IN OSLO 2009

August 13-15, 2009

CALL FOR PAPERS

We hereby invite scholars in any field who take a professional interest in the phenomenon of computer games to submit papers to the international conference "The Philosophy of Computer Games 2009", to be held in Oslo, Norway, on August 13-15, 2009.

Accepted papers will have a clear focus on philosophy and philosophical issues in relation to computer games. They will also attempt to use specific examples rather than merely invoke "computer games" in general terms. We invite submissions focusing on, but not limited to, the following three headings:

Fictionality and Interaction

Computer games are often conceived as a setting for fictional narratives, facts, objects and events, although the interactive setting is thought to give fictionality a special character and to be intertwined with non-fictional aspects in various ways. We invite papers on relevant discussions of fictionality, narrative, fictional objects, simulation, virtuality, and kindred cognitive notions like make-believe, pretense, and imagination.

Defining Computer Games

Is it possible to point to some defining characteristic(s) of computer games? We are especially interested in discussions of formal definitions of computer games in terms of characteristics such as rules, play, representation, computation, affordances, interaction, negotiable consequences, and so on. We welcome both constructive and critical discussions, as long as they are directed at clearly articulated proposals.

Ethical and Political Issues

What are the ethical responsibilities of game-makers in relation to individual gamers and society in general? What role, if any, can games serve as a critical cultural corrective in relation to traditional forms of media and communicative practices, for example in economy and politics? Also, what is the nature of the ethical norms that apply within the gaming context, and what are the factors that allow or delimit philosophical justifications of their application there or elsewhere?

Your abstract should not exceed 1000 words. If your submission falls under one of the three headings, please indicate which one. Send your abstract to submissions@gamephilosophy.org. All submitted abstracts will be subject to double blind peer review, and the program committee will make a final selection of papers for the conference on the basis of this. Full manuscripts must be submitted by August 8, and will be made available on the conference website.

Deadline for submissions is June 1, 2009. Notification of accepted submissions will be sent out by June 10, 2009.

Olav Asheim

Miguel Sicart

Frans Mäyrä

Patrick Coppock

Sten Ludvigsen

Ole Ertløv Hansen

Stephan Güntzel

Runje Klevjer

John Richard Sageng

Ragnhild Tronstad

The conference is a collaboration between the following institutions:

* Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas at the University of Oslo, Norway

* Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo, Norway

* Digital Games Research Center, University of Potsdam, Germany

* Department of Social, Cognitive and Quantitative Science at the University of Modena & Reggio Emilia, Italy

* Nordic Game Research Network

* Intermedia, University of Oslo, Norway

* Games Research Lab, University of Tampere, Finland

* Center for Computer Games Research at the IT-University of Copenhagen, Denmark

* Philosophical Project Centre (FPS), Oslo, Norway

* Department of Information Science and Media Studies, University of Bergen, Norway

For more information and for pdf-version of the call, visit

www.gamephilosophy.org

The Sandbox: Little Game Planet

Who says you need gigabytes to make a cool game?

http://blogs.spectrum.ieee.org/gizmos/2009/03/little_game_planet.htm

As Kotaku reminds us, the contestants are in for Java4K - a competition to build the best game using 4K of data, or less. The winner will be announced on March 16.

Why 4K?

"4KB is the smallest unit of file possible on most operating systems, if you create a file that contains only one character (or one byte) it takes up 4KB on the disk," according to the contest's coordinators, "...it's a perfect fit for 1 person to work on."

I love this idea, because it strips games down to their raw essentials. This weekend, I was at a house where a 9-year-old was playing videogames. He had a Wii with about a dozen games, but you know what he liked most? He had a Jakks videogame collection - a bundle of classics including Ms. Pac Man, Pole Position, and, the kid's favorite, Mappy. The games come in a joystick that you plug right into your TV. Mappy was made 26 (!) years ago, and this kid spent more time with it than Super Mario Galaxy. Just goes to show that it's not the eye candy, it's the action.

Posted by David Kushner on March 9, 2009 2:08 PM

The Sandbox: Game Group Fights for Broadband

The Sandbox

David Kushner, Rob Garfield, and Harry Teasley blog about the latest in gaming for IEEE Spectrum.

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Game Group Fights for Broadband

http://blogs.spectrum.ieee.org/gizmos/2009/03/game_group_fights_for_broadban.htm

Michael Gallagher, president of the Entertainment Software Association, tells Congress Daily that the game industry wants better, cheaper broadband access across the U.S. Now the ESA is making the cause part of its 2009 lobbying efforts. Last year, according the Gamespot, the ESA spent $4 million on lobbying on issues such as copyright protection and free speech.

Here's more from Congress Daily below:

Opportunities to play games online and download games and game-related content from a range of legitimate download services help drive demand for broadband, the Entertainment Software Association said in a briefing paper sent to President Obama's transition team. "We're the only form of entertainment online that's interactive -- movies and music are linear." Gallagher told CongressDaily. "We're very pleased with the president's strong embracing of broadband deployment as a high value goal for our country." The $6 billion-plus in broadband funds in Obama's economic stimulus package was a good start, he added. Gallagher's group also supports efforts to free up wireless spectrum as gaming moves from PCs and plasma screens to handheld devices. "The administration and Congress have a huge amount to contribute to make sure that resources are available and make sure that rules of the road encourage investment and give companies and customers access to it at reasonable prices and terms," he said.

Posted by David Kushner on March 4, 2009 12:01 PM

Computing Now: March 2009 - SERIOUS GAMES

Computing Now 

March 2009 - SERIOUS GAMES: EDITORS' INTRODUCTION

by Tiffany Barnes and L. Miguel Encarnação

http://www2.computer.org/portal/web/computingnow/archive/march2009

Serious games use video game technologies to simulate realistic situations, providing valuable experience that can support discovery and exploration while saving money and lives. Serious games have been used for many purposes, including flight and vehicle simulation, scientific simulation and visualization, industrial and military training, medical and health training, education, and geographic information systems, as well as to raise public awareness and spur policy change. The articles in this month's theme look at serious games and related technologies from a variety of perspectives.

In "Making Them Remember-Emotional Virtual Characters with Memory," Zerrin Kasap, Maher Ben Moussa, Parag Chaudhuri, and Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann introduce techniques for having virtual characters "remember" interactions with player-learners, enabling serious games to tap into emotions to connect with and motivate players. They also introduce techniques for augmented reality (AR), an exciting new area for serious games that lets us use real-world artifacts in simulated situations. Advances in the use of emotion and AR can make serious games more immersive, intelligent, and believable, and expand the domains they can address.

New interfaces for virtual reality and interaction have made their way into games for exercise (exergames), which are being tapped as tools for researching physical health. Ben Sawyer's "From Cells to Cell Processors: The Integration of Health and Video Games" showcases many of the ways in which health and games can be integrated. In "Using a Virtual Body to Aid in Exergaming System Development," Jeff Sinclair, Philip Hingston, Martin Masek, and Ken Nosaka present a way to simulate physical exertion that will help reduce the time it takes to test and develop exergames. Their innovation is a simulated model of physiological performance metrics such as heart rate. Using this model, the playtester can make gameplay decisions without having to strenuously perform the required physical activities.

Serious games have great potential for providing scalable, repeatable training, especially for cultural and social skills and understanding. In "Culture, Models, and Games: Incorporating Warfare's Human Dimension," S.K. Numrich explores the new need to understand the roles that culture and the "human dimension" play in modern conflicts and other domains. Expressing the richness of place, culture, and society in simulation and training is becoming critical for business and political commerce.

Another way serious games enable cultural exploration is through location-based games at significant places, such as those in "Experiencing the Past through the Senses: An M-Learning Game at Archaeological Parks." Authors Carmelo Ardito, Paolo Buono, Maria F. Costabile, Rosa Lanzilotti, Thomas Pederson, and Antonio Piccinno use a mobile-phone-based game with local sound effects to engage children in exploring ruins and information about the past while playing the role of a character out of history.

While serious games offer venues for new experiences, there is a need to continually evaluate the effectiveness of game approaches for their intended purposes. In "To Game or Not to Game?" Christiane Gresse von Wangenheim and Forrest Shull present a meta-review of games used for teaching software engineering. They find that out of 21 studies in this area, just a few of them were conducted using rigorous experimental methods, but many were used to teach the "soft" skills related to project management.

From Celia Pearce: IndieCade Call for Submissions

IndieCade invites independent game artists and designers from around the world to submit interactive media of all types – from art to commercial, ARG to abstract, mind-bending to mobile, serious to shooter, as well as academic and student projects – for consideration. Work-in-progress is encouraged.

A diverse jury of creative and academic leaders will select entries for top prizes at the IndieCade 2009 Festival. All entries for the Festival will also receive consideration for presentation at all 2009 IndieCade international exhibitions including:

IndieCade 2009 Events:

IndieCade @ E3, Los Angeles (June 2-5)

IndieCade Asia TBA

IndieCade @ SIGGRAPH, New Orleans (Aug 5-7)

IndieCade 2009 (Oct 1-10)

IndieCade Europe, GameCity, UK (Oct 26-29)

Submissions Deadline: April 30, 2009 at Midnight PST.

For more information and to enter: www.IndieCade.com.

IndieCade’s successful flagship 2008 festival held last October at Open Satellite contemporary gallery in Bellevue, Washington, was the first major intertaional exhibition of independent videogames and videogame art in the area. Event organizers include IndieCade Founder Stephanie Barish, Chair Celia Pearce, and Festival Director Sam Roberts.

In ev'ry job that must be done

There is an element of fun

We find the fun, and snap!

The job's a game!

-Mary Poppins

......................................................

Celia Pearce

Festival Chair, Indiecade http://www.indiecade.com

Asst. Prof., Literature, Communication & Culture, Georgia Tech http://www.lcc.gatech.edu

mobile & text: +1 310 866-8014

e-mail: cpearce@indiecade.com

There: Artemesia

Second Life: Artemesia Sandgrain

Uru: Artemesia, Dr.Artemesia

World of Warcraft/Hellscream & Thunderhorn Realms: Artemesia

Guild Wars: Artemesia Aurora, Artemesia Ludica, Magdalena Ludica

DiGRA 2009 - Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

Someone (Dario Compagno at Siena) just kindly reminded me of the DIGRA conference CfP deadline on March 6th

I imagine most of you probably are aware of this in any case, but here it is anyway!

All best for now

Patrick

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http://www.digra.org/news/archive/2008/11/14/cfp-digra-2009-breaking-new-ground-innovation-in-games-play-practice-and-theory

DiGRA 2009 - Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

Brunel University, West London, United Kingdom, Tuesday 1st September -- Friday 4th September 2009

The South of Britain Consortium are pleased to announce the Call for Papers for the Digital Games Research Association 2009. DiGRA is an organisation that embraces all aspects of game studies, and the conference aims to provide a diverse platform for discussion, and a lively forum for debate. We therefore welcome papers from any discipline focused on any aspect of games, play, game culture and the games industry. The conference will be the fourth DiGRA conference, following Utrecht, Vancouver and Tokyo, and welcomes contributions from scholars working in any area of interest to the association. The official business of the Subject Association will also be conducted at the conference.

PLEASE NOTE THE NEW DATES FOR SUBMISSION AND DEADLINE FOR REGISTRATION FOR GUARANTEED ON-CAMPUS ACCOMODATION

The Conference invites the following proposals for consideration

Individual or Collaborative Papers Panels Workshops Posters

Initial selection will be through the peer review of both full papers and abstracts of 500-700 words in all categories. Selection of presentations will be proportionate to the submissions received, and no distinction will be made between papers selected from abstract or full paper review. Panel and Workshop proposals should include abstracts for the contributions of all participants.

Individual or collaborative papers - addressing topics relevant to the wide remit of DiGRA (including therefore industry, education, political, social, theoretical concerns appropriate to the association). Presentations should be limited to 15-20 mins.

Panel proposals - 3 - 4 papers which address a common theme, a common research method, a shared conceptual issue etc.

Workshops - proposals are invited for 2 - 3 hour workshops that address a range of themes relevant to the aims of the association. Workshops that are particularly targeted at a wide audience are most welcome.

Poster sessions - presentations of work in progress in the format are most welcome and will be showcased throughout the event.

The conference committee are also interested in including featured symposia/colloquia to address particular 'late-breaking' research projects or issue-based topics (an example might be a colloquia based around Wii research or a symposium based around Women in Games. Please contact a member of the conference organising committee with any expressions of interest.

Graduate student participation

In order to support graduate students and early career researchers the conference will focus on graduate student issues on its opening day, 1st September 2009. The conference organizers seek appropriate mentors to work with those addressing common themes/topics/issues in graduate roundtables.

Strands

Please also indicate your preference for consideration in one of the following broad strands:

Games Culture

Games and Commerce

Games Aesthetics

Games Education

Games Design

Games and Theory

Key Dates

Deadline for all submissions for presentation at the conference (includes full papers, abstracts and workshop/panel/symposia proposals): Friday 6 March 5pm GMT

Deadline for full papers for inclusion in digital proceedings: Friday 26 June 2009 5pm GMT

Notification of acceptance: June 1 2009

Deadline for booking on-campus accommodation June 30 2009

Conference Dates: 1-4th September 2009

Abstracts should be of 500-700 words and include an indicative bibliography. Full paper submissions may be of up to 6,000 words, not including bibliography. Full details of the submissions procedure, including the method of electronic submission, will be published here and on other forums as soon as possible.

All contributions must be original, unpublished work. The conference language is English, and papers, abstracts and other proposals should be written in English.

Delegates are also advised that individuals will be limited to one paper presentation and one other form of presentation to allow space and time for the largest number of participants.

Templates and guidelines are available here: http://digra2009.newport.ac.uk

About the Conference Location

Brunel University is located conveniently near Heathrow Airport and is on the London Tube system. A range of affordable accommodation is available on campus, including 1500 en suite rooms all on one campus, 400 standard bedrooms, 8 holiday flats (5-7 persons per flat), 51 specially adapted rooms for people with disabilities, plus hotel standard rooms in the Lancaster Suite. The Brunel Conference Centre boasts 22 theatres, 29 classrooms and 5 seminar rooms all presented to the highest standard. The following are also available: Free car parking (on application); Full office support for photocopying, faxing, internet and word processing (on application); Comprehensive range of audio visual and media services; Mini market; Pharmacy; Banking facilities; Reference library; Sports Facilities; Fitness Suite; Medical centre; 24 hour security; Self service cafeteria; Licensed bars and cafes. There are also a range of restaurants, cinemas and shopping in Uxbridge town.

Local attractions

Historic Windsor & Eton -Windsor Castle, Legoland and shopping are just 20 minutes drive away London - Central London and West End are easily accessed by bus or Underground. Historic Oxford is a 40 minute bus ride away.

The Conference Organisers

The conference is being hosted by a consortium consisting of Brunel University, University of the West of England, and the University of Wales, Newport.

Tanya Krzywinska, Professor of Screen Media, Brunel University. Tanya.Krzywinska@brunel.ac.uk

Helen Kennedy, Chair of the Play Research Group, University of the West of England. helen.kennedy@uwe.ac.uk

Barry Atkins, University of Wales Reader in Computer Games Design, University of Wales, Newport. barry.atkins@newport.ac.uk

Conference Website

http://digra2009.newport.ac.uk