Apr

28

Natalie McKeever

Artist Interviews / Podcast
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On March 12, 2012, digital and  video artist using game dynamics, and graduating DANMite Natalie McKeever came onto Gamers on Game to talk about her work  and current projects, Internal Worlds that will be shown at the DANM MFA Graduating Exhibition, I’ve Got Something On Your Mind.

Internal Worlds. is a two-part installation using abstract video projection and interactive components to explore how our sensing bodies shape our perception, and our selves. The pulse of the participant is detected through a biosensor helmet and externalized as lights pulsing in time with their internal rhythm. The sound of their heartbeat is played back at the cadence of different species, as additional lights synchronize to this new, unfamiliar tempo. These competing pulses affect the participant’s state of mind and bring a hyperawareness to their body, as they viscerally experience the biorhythm of another species

If you missed any part of our Gamers on Game broadcast, please click the gray ‘play’ button below: [haiku url=”http://miljkovic.org/old_public_html/nada/gog31212.mp3″ title=”Natalie McKeever” graphical=”true”]

Here’s a video of our interview. The sound is a little funky at first but it get better.

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Apr

27

Ken Hullett

Gamers on Game / Podcast
KenHullett

On April 16, 2012, graduating Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at UC Santa Cruz, Ken Hullett came into KZSC and onto Gamers on Game to talk about his research in game design.
Ken spoke in length about his dissertation, The Science of Level Design: Design Patterns and Player Behavior in FPS Levels. Ken’s research is in the Center for Games and Playable Media Department and in the Augmented Design Lab with Jim Whitehead as his advisor.

We started the conversation with defining what level design which is level designers create gameplay through geometry, AI scripting, and item placement. Designers draw from their experience, design lore, and rules of thumb rather than a formal understanding of how the construction of a level creates gameplay for a player. To improve this understanding, Ken and his research group have taken a first by identifying design patterns in game levels, primarily in single player first-person shooters (FPS) and studying the cause-effect relationships between these level design elements and gameplay. To test these relationships, they are gathering data from a series of user tests. Analysis of this data will improve our understanding and provide level designers with scientifically verified tools for creating gameplay.

We explored Ken’s other research interests concerning Design in Games: Level Design, Design Patterns in Games, Game Data Analysis, Player Modeling, and Procedural Content  Generation.

Ken is a part of the first cohort to graduate from the  Department of Computer Science (CS) with Ph.D. degrees.  This program is considered one of the top ten graduate schools in video game design.

If you missed any part of our Gamers on Game broadcast, please click the gray ‘play’ button below: [haiku url=”http://miljkovic.org/old_public_html/nada/gog41612.mp3″ title=”Ken Hullett” graphical=”true”]

Here’s the video of our interview:

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Apr

26

Jesse Fulton

Artist Interviews / Podcast

Graduating DANMite, Jesse Fulton came on to Artist on Art April 16, 2012 to talk about his work and upcoming installations at the upcoming DANM MFA Exhibition 2012 I’ve got something on your mind.

Jesse’s work explores issues of transparency, autonomy, and agency on the Internet. Software studies, science studies, physical computing, street art, tactical media.

Jesse grew up in a suburb of Boston and went to undergrad in Baltimore at Johns Hopkins University in Psychology and Computer. After graduating he moved to LA shortly after and lived there for about 4 years doing web development (worked for Disney and freelanced) before coming up to UCSC.

Jesse’s thesis projects are about digital culture, digitization, and the privatization of the Internet. The basic gist is that people view technology as supporting and fostering democratic ideals, yet the very nature of a privatized internet (Google, Facebook, etc.) is inherently undemocratic. 

Jesse will be showing two projects at the MFA show: “Everybody’s Google”, and “Web Pages for Humans” (/Ocular Character Recognition)

  • EG explores the various “digital life worlds” Google builds and presents to end users through it’s personalization algorithms
  • WPfH is a bit more playful… most/all documents on the web are text-based and machine-readable so that search engines can index and query them; my project transforms those documents into digital (and physical) images, distorted in a way such that humans can still read them, yet machine algorithms cannot.

Here is a video of our interview:

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Apr

24

Jolie Ruelle

Artist Interviews / Podcast
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On April 9, 2012, DANMite animator, digital artist, musician, and educator, Jolie Ruelle came on to Artist on Art to talk about her work and the upcoming exhibition, I’ve Got Something On Your Mind. The name of her piece that will be playing is “the  Loop“, a stop-motion animation exploring  fear and anxiety. Jolie has been creating this film for the past two years.

The Loop is a stop-motion animation short exploring the human relationship with anxiety. In this animation the viewer watches the main character and its response to an abstract feared element through the use of a metaphors.  The Loop  uses a combination of puppet stop motion, object animation, and compositing techniques. The main character is made from a ball and socket armature with a magnetic tie-down system. The body is built out of foam and fabric, while the hands and head are molded out of polymer clay. The hands are animated using the replacement technique, a collection of gestures which can be swapped from one frame to the next.  The set consist of both fabricated props, and found objects, completing the character’s world. Digital compositing plays a key role in the development of both the character and the environment. Photographs of the artist’s eyes are superimposed directly onto the character’s face to create a dynamic range of emotion. Objects of impossible scale, are collaged together to create a seamless yet surreal environment. Internal and external spaces are defined through composited windows and doors. Each frame is color corrected, cropped and digitally enhanced. The combination of digital and object animation allows for a tactile aesthetic while maintaining the flexible process that digital animation enables.

This year’s UCSC DANM MFA Exhibition, I’ve Got Something On Your Mind happening April 28-29 and May 3-6 with the reception, Friday, May 4, 5:30 – 8:30PM. The Gallery is open from 10AM – 4PM and located at The Digital Arts Research Center (DARC), off Meyer Drive near the Music Recital Hall and Theater Arts on West Campus.

If you missed any part of our Artist on Art broadcast, please click the gray ‘play’ button below: [haiku url=”http://miljkovic.org/old_public_html/nada/aoa4912.mp3″ title=”Jolie Ruelle” graphical=”true”]

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Apr

23

Helen Hyunkyung Park

Artist Interviews / Podcast
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On April 9, 2012, multi-media digital and installation artist/collaborator/educator, Helen Park came into KZSC to talk on Artist on Art about her work and current project.  She is also currently completing her MFA in DANM at UCSC.

Helen’s work investigates how affective processes provoked by aesthetic experience can shape, and be shaped by, the intersubjective, cross-cultural encounter. She uses video, sound, installation,  and performance, while employing strategic poetics of the image and representation to shape environments for encounter and engagement between strangers. In designing mediated spaces of engagement, she questions how subject positions orientated by race, ethnicity, citizenship, education, and class can realign within the self in dialogical relation to another.

Living from 2009-2010 in Seoul, South Korea on a Fulbright Fellowship in the field of Performance Art, Helen’s research investigated the Korean psyche and national identity as they are negotiated and embodied through the traditional performing arts.  Since 2003, she has been a collaborator with Open University, a transdisciplinary multimedia collective and alternative education project, founded in Brooklyn, New York.

Helen is currently producing  “My Future Is Here” a site-specific project that brings to light the most pressing issues immigrant youth face when making a new life in the global city. Produced with students in Queens, New York, this multimedia project utilizes immigrant narratives and social intervention to foster public engagement and exchange.

Excerpts of the movies will be shown at the upcoming UCSC DANM MFA Exhibition, I’ve Got Something On Your Mind happening April 28-29 and May 3-6 with the reception, Friday, May 4, 5:30 – 8:30PM. The Gallery is open from 10AM – 4PM and located at The Digital Arts Research Center (DARC), off Meyer Drive near the Music Recital Hall and Theater Arts on West Campus.

If you missed any part of our Artist on Art broadcast, please click the gray ‘play’ button below: [haiku url=”http://miljkovic.org/old_public_html/nada/aoa4912a.mp3″ title=”Helen Park” graphical=”true”]

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Apr

22

Emily Martinez

Gamers on Game
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The DANMite Interviews continue. On March 26, 2012, visual multimedia artist, Emily Martinez came into KZSC to talk  about her work and  philosophy while in the throes of completing her Digital Arts and New Media degree. We talked specifically about Emily’s current project and upcoming installation, The Ghost of History: On (Collective) Memory, Light and Vision using HD video, custom software, and an electro-encephalograph (EEG) brain-computer interface.

Emily Martinez is a Cuban immigrant that began her practice in the visual arts through photography while also being influenced by sound, music, math, and the written word.  Actively involved in Miami’s emerging art scene from 2000 – 2010, Emily’s work has been exhibited as part of group and solo exhibitions, collaborations, and site specific installations. For examples of her work, visit her website, something nothing.

Emily’s new installation, The Ghost of History, opens April 28, 2012 at UCSC’s Digital Arts and Research Center (DARC). The Ghost of History explores how the embodiment of memory in networked media influences how histories are re-inscribed onto themselves. This project creates an immersive digital cinema composed entirely of appropriated web content, re/assembled as animated loops, and remixed in real-time by the viewer’s fluctuating brainwave rhythms. Oscillating between visual perception and mental observation, the viewer navigates a labyrinth of multiple, discontinuous, collective memories, exploring the disorienting and transformative liminal spaces between these virtual records, their material manifestations and psychic traces.

Here’s a video from our live broadcast:

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Apr

18

Heather Logas

Artist Interviews

Educator, artist, professional game designer and mother, Heather Logas came on to Gamers on Game March 19, 2012 to talk about her art and practice and how that relates to her game design and developing practice. She is currently completing her MFA in Digital Arts and New Media at UC Santa Cruz.

Heather will be presenting  Game/Reality Workshops at the DANM MFA show: I’ve Got Something on Your Mind, Project Nubby — a commercial game for Sony Playstation Home due out this year.

Here’s the video of our interview:

Game/Reality Workshops is a series of live art game making events inspired in part by the playful participatory works of Fluxus artists and the New Games movement. The work presented at the show is one facet of the Gaming Reality Project, another part of which is a longer-term experimental game design event at UCSC. Games reflect and reinforce narratives of reality which are then passed on to their players. The Gaming Reality Project is an art initiative which empowers communities to envision new realities for themselves through game creation and play.

This year’s UCSC DANM MFA Exhibition, I’ve Got Something On Your Mind, is happening April 28-29 and May 3-6 with the reception, Friday, May 4, 5:30 – 8:30PM. The Gallery is open from 10AM – 4PM and located at The Digital Arts Research Center (DARC), off Meyer Drive near the Music Recital Hall and Theater Arts on West Campus.

To hear our Gamers on Game broadcast, click the gray ‘play’ button below: [haiku url=”http://miljkovic.org/old_public_html/nada/gog31912.mp3″ title=”Heather Logas” graphical=”true”]

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Apr

12

Daniel Christopher

Artist Interviews / Podcast
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Digital media artist Daniel Christopher came onto Artist on Art on the March 19, 2012 live interview show to talk about his current project and installation, Journey Through Light, as part of the DANM MFA Graduating Exhibition entitled I’ve got something on your mind the culmination of two years of research and artistic exploration, and will include new media works that explore performativity, interactivity and participation.

Journey Through Light is an interactive, group adventure through the visible light spectrum. Participants with glowing orbs move about a landscape of networked sculptures, activating embedded light elements by proximity. While participants can experience aspects of the work individually, only through collaboration can the visible light spectrum be transcended. In the spirit of the gameplay, participants are asked to refrain from engaging in any form of disembodied social interaction by temporarily exchanging their cellphone for an orb. Initially orbs will pulse with red light – the longest visible wavelength that humans can perceive. By seeking out others with orbs and visiting sculpture sites collectively, orbs progress through colors of the light spectrum, increasing in frequency until fully activated – signified by a violet state. Violet-colored orbs will unlock elements of a media experience at the central installation located in the Light Lab (DARC 306).

There will be five, two-hour sessions of “Journey Through Light” throughout the two-week MFA show. If you would like more information or are interested in participating, contact Daniel. This work could not have been developed without a dedicated team: computer science students Ace Levenberg and Aidan Seine. Others involved in the development of this work include: DANM Alumni Levi Goldman & Joe Cantrell, Sudhu Tewari, and Peter Elsea.

If you missed any part of our art broadcast, please click the gray ‘play’ button below: [haiku url=”http://miljkovic.org/old_public_html/nada/aoa31912.mp3″ title=”Daniel Christopher” graphical=”true”]

Here’s a video of our interview:

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Apr

09

James B. Pollack

Gamers on Game / Podcast
Jpollack

Continuing on with our DANMite Series:
On March 12, 2012, artist, hacker and game developer, James B. Pollack came into the KZSC station to talk about his upcoming installation entitled, be there (bethere.io) at this year’s UCSC DANM MFA exhibition, I’ve Got Something On Your Mind.

“be there” has two components, virtual and physical, both of which consider the problems of persistence and presence. The virtual part (bethere.io) is an interactive, web-browser based multi-user three-dimensional environment. Users acquire sculptures by navigating the sculpture’s length as strange and special creatures called neshamot. The physical part of “be there” is the electroplating of organic materials with certain floral elements as a way of interrogating exosomatic desire.

Here’s the video of our radio interview:

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Apr

05

Advocate Danny Sheehan & Dr. Paul Lee

Artist Interviews / Podcast
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Constitutional Advocate, Danny Sheehan, and Ancient Greek Philosopher, Dr Paul Lee came into UCSC’s KZSC radio to talk about their art of activism from the philosophies that argue for the definistions of justice, human rights and law.

If you missed any part of our Artist on Art broadcast, please click the gray ‘play’ buttons below: [haiku url=”http://miljkovic.org/old_public_html/nada/AoA4212.mp3″ title=”Dr. Paul Lee and Danny Sheehan” graphical=”true”]
[haiku url=”http://miljkovic.org/old_public_html/nada/AoA4212_1.mp3″ title=”Dr. Paul Lee and Danny Sheehan” graphical=”true”]

Here’s the video of our interview:

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