Watch the talk here:

GVU Brown Bag

November 15, 11:30am-1:00pm

TSRB 132 (Ballroom)

Celia Pearce is an award-winning game designer, author, researcher, teacher, curator and artist, specializing in multiplayer gaming and virtual worlds, independent, art, and alternative game genres, as well as games and gender. She is currently an Associate Professor of Digital Media in Georgia Tech’s School of Literature, Media and Communication, where she also directs the Experimental Game Lab and the Emergent Game Group. She is the author or co-author of numerous papers and book chapters, as well as The Interactive Book (Macmillan 1997) and Communities of Play: Emergent Cultures in Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds (MIT 2009). She is also a member of the GVU.

The EGL is pleased to announce that we are going to host Benjamin Stokes to talk about his project “ParTour: Mobile Storytelling and Bicycles in South L.A.”

Watch the talk here:

Download the presentation here: Stokes-on-ParTour–Nov2012-v1a

November 14th starting at 6:00pm in the EGL (TSRB room 113a)

ParTour: Mobile Storytelling and Bicycles in South L.A.

Can basic cell phones and bicycles help re-imagine the city? This talk analyzes a participatory mapping platform called ParTour.  Over the past year, residents have used ParTour to transform their everyday phones into multimedia tools for neighborhood storytelling. Inspired by theories of real-world games, participants map and describe their pictures in real-time (using basic phones, not smartphones).  Later, the pictures are used for city planning and turned into paper maps for advocacy.  Unlike many mobile projects, the goal is not to generate data, or points-on-a-map.  Instead, ParTour seeks to structure civic participation, and invigorate the neighborhood imagination — a kind of urban acupuncture.  Mobile media introduces new possibilities to situate storytelling in physical spaces, with implications for place-making and civic engagement.

Benjamin Stokes (@bgstokes, http://benjaminstokes.net) is a researcher at the USC Annenberg School, where he is completing his PhD on informal civic learning and real-world gaming.  Research on ParTour is a collaborative effort by the Mobile Urban Mapping team at USC.  Previously, Benjamin served at the MacArthur Foundation as a program officer in their $50M portfolio on Digital Media and Learning.  Benjamin is a co-founder of Games for Change, the branch of the serious games movement which seeks to advance social change.  Benjamin has also led design teams on games and e-training, reaching more than 150,000 youth at the nonprofit MercyCorps/NetAid.

Chris Solarski is coming to campus to speak about his new book “Drawing Basics and Video Game Art” on Monday, Oct. 1st 2012 in Clough at 4:15pm, in the 144 auditorium. Additionally Barnes & Noble will have some of his books for sale/signing.

Chris Solarski is originally from England, but currently living in Zurich. The book will be published by the art imprint of Random House on the 1st of October. Its about classical drawing for video game design, and explores the traditional techniques that designers can use in order to create more meaningful and significantly emotional gaming experiences.

http://www.solarskistudio.com/

Other stops on his US book tour:

18 September — Book Launch, and Smithsonian Museum, Washington
20 September — swissnex San Francisco
24 September — Interactive Media Division, University of Southern California, Los Angeles
28 September — The Art Institute of Austin
01 October — Georgia Tech, Atlanta
04 October — NYU Game Center, New York
10 October — swissnex Boston