Future: Life Skills Through Video Games

Artist, film maker and game designer Michael Highland discusses the significant impact video games have in programming the brain in his film As Real as Your Life:

The beauty and reality of video games today lies not in the lifelike graphics, the vibrating joysticks or the virtual surround sound, it lies in that these games are beginning to make me emotional.  What is sadder is that my inability to understand and decipher the real world I live in makes these simple, virtual emotions even sweeter.  The people that make these games are smart, They know what makes me tick.  What makes me scared, excited, panicked, proud and sad.  They use these emotions to train me to survive in the worlds they create.

As Real as Your Life (Original Cut) from Michael Highland on Vimeo.

Michael Highland discusses the way virtual violence is increasingly mimicking that of the real world, with real violence often reflecting methods used within video games.  Highland believes the increasing amount of time spent in the virtual world allows gamers to form emotional bonds with virtual characters.  The use of repetition and real-life situations in gaming creates survival instincts within the brain.  Once purely virtual, these survival instincts begin to arise in real-life situations, making video games a most effective tool for propaganda and ‘brain reprogramming’.  Highland believes that video games’ significant influence over people’s brain functions can be used to educate people for the better, but warns: “Be careful what you play, and what your game might be wiring into you.”

Source TrendONE, PSFK, As Real as Your Life (Original Cut) from Michael Highland on Vimeo.

Michael Highland - As Real As Your Life / games and experience

Sony запускает виртуальную вселенную Home

Спустя почти полтора года после анонса, Sony Computer Entertainment наконец-то завершила подготовку своего самого масштабного проекта. На завтра назначен релиз виртуальной игровой вселенной Home. Данная разработка, по задумке Sony, станет ключевым местом встреч, общения и игр владельцев игровых консолей Playstation 3. Концептуально, "Дом" производства Sony будет представлять собой классическое смешение стилей - здесь будут присутствовать элементы из Second Life с одной стороны, из Microsoft Xbox Live с другой, и социальных сетей, таких как Facebook, с третьей. Читать дальше

Source CyberSecurity

Puma City: World’s First Large Scale Mobile Building

Create an 11,000 square foot building that contains a retail store, lounge, event space, and offices. And by the way, the building needs to be assembled and disassembled a number of times at different harbor sites around the world over the span of a year. That’s the challenge that NYC based architects LOT-EK faced when they began work on the Puma City project. The building is traveling around the world with the 70-foot long Puma sailing boat - il Mostro - which is competing in the 2008 Volvo Ocean Race.

Their solution started with using a material they are fond of and have lots of experience working with, shipping containers. The team fitted out 24 containers. But the issue of the building being assembled in a variety of countries presented the biggest challenges. It had to adhere to the international building code. The plug-in electrical and heating and air-conditioning needed to be adaptable to the region. And the assembly needed to be easy enough that crews around the world speaking different languages could assist. Puma City’s next stop is at Boston harbor in early May 2009.

Source PSFK

Make Your Own Xmas

Each year, the Tate Britain selects an artist to create a Christmas tree for the gallery. Multimedia artists Bob and Roberta Smithcreated this years tree called ‘Make Your Own Xmas’. The tree is a spirited, thought-provoking response to the season of contemplation, celebration, and consumerism. Its overt humor and ramshackle aesthetic promote a variety of interpretations, evoking memories of hand-made Christmas decorations, as well as highlighting global concerns over energy production and waste. The artist aims to introduce an energetic, hands-on approach to art by getting the public actively involved in his work.

The wooden structure of the tree is made of recycled and reclaimed materials including sandwich board and an oil drum. Eight different bicycles are fixed in stands around the base, each holding a generator that is connected to a set of lights on the tree. Visitors are encouraged to help bring the tree to life by providing the pedal-power to illuminate the tree.

Measuring 36 feet, this year’s tree is the tallest in the program’s twenty-one year history. It will be on display in the Rotunda through January 4th.

Source PSFK

Faux Rockstar!

Source TrendhunterTV

Amsterdam PICNIC08 Trendmap

Trends are diverse and multidimensional. Trendonomy developed a solution to capture and display trend data using a dynamic map. For PICNIC08 Trendonomy conducted interviews with conference participants to find out about their trend ideas and to visualize their consolidated view on a map. View PICNIC trend map.

All contributed trends have been evaluated in respect to the forces (drivers) they are influenced by.

This evaluation helps to clearly position each trend on the map. Here we are sharing the outcome of the conducted interviews after 3 days PICNIC.

At a first glance it is conspicuous that the PICNIC Trend Map is dominated by trends on the technological hemisphere; only 20% are located at the societal hemisphere.

As the main theme of PICNIC’08 was Collaborative Creativity, it is probably no surprise that most trends were posted in the Trend Groups of CONNECTIVITY, INTERACTION and NEW MEDIA CONSUMPTION bearing a respectable isle.

Taking a closer look at this isle it is fascinating to see that CONNECTIVITY and its related trends seem to have an effect on the trends of NEW MEDIA CONSUMPTION and vice versa.

As the “chicken or the egg causality” it is hard to say what originally gave rise to the other – the technological enablement or the need and desire to get connected. However, the trends of the PICNIC Trend Map reflect a certain desire out there to share thoughts, ideas, pictures, films, music and creativity – new technology makes it happen.

The second biggest isle is determined by the Trend Group SUSTAINABILTY located at the societal hemisphere reflecting one of the most obvious tensions in today’s society. The trends appearing in this isle are all about responsibility, value orientation and “doing good”. A cool example is “carrotmob” (consumption as activism) were consumers are organized to make purchases that give financial rewards to those businesses who agree to make socially beneficial choices.

Thanks to the well informed PICNIC crowd all posted trends show news value and are described with meaningful up-to-date examples such as the “Adwall” (social computer interaction) you probably came across at the PICNIC or the “Meshes” a nice example for interactive art.

Source Amsterdam PICNIC08

IBM have released this video with their suggestions on 5 so-called amazing innovations we’ll see by 2013

It lacks imagination, progression and inspiration. With dodgy predictions the video feels like one of those 50s reels that presented what the future would look like. Or maybe it’s just me.

The wonder predictions (and PSFK’s reaction) are:

-Energy saving solar technology printed and stuck onto asphalt, paint and windows (and then it will peel off in the baking sun)
-A crystal ball to help you monitor health (Your doctor will still be referring you to a specialist just in case anyway)
- We will talk to the Web . . . and the Web will talk back (We refuse to comment on this. Stunned into silence.)
-We will have our own digital shopping assistants (What about all the assistants available right now?)
-Forgetting will become a distant memory via smart appliances in every area of the home and office (Sure. Just like we all use the To Do tool on MS Outlook)

Source IBM

YouTube to Create Global Orchestra Online

YouTube’s latest venture is a good example of new approaches to collaboration: an endeavor to engage musicians from all over the world and create the first global symphony orchestra in the process.  Although grand in scope, the concept’s success relies on individual participation. To that end, musicians of all types are asked to record themselves playing any classical selection of their choosing, along with a piece written specifically for this project by composer Tan Dun entitled “The Internet Symphony”.  All videos of the original composition will then be rolled into one collective performance to generate the global event. Contributors are given the opportunity to download sheet music and rehearse with a conductor online. As an added incentive, the best entrants (as voted on by the larger community) will be invited to a 3-day summit that culminates in a live concert held at Carnegie Hall. Submissions are being accepted through January 28.  Details and tutorials are available on YouTube’s microsite.

Source ReadWriteWeb

Kevin Kelly On Technology As The 7th Kingdom Of Life

There’s a video from the O’Reilly group where Joshua-Michele Ross interviews Kevin Kelly. Kelly discusses the rise of large scale co-operation and the similarity between technology and biology. A couple of quotes:

Socialism 2.0. We don’t have very good terms for what we’re seeing. Collectivism, communism, socialism which have negative connotations in American politics but in fact that’s what a lot of this is: Cooperation on a large scale. Elevating the common collective good and the individual at the same time. That’s the difference with communism which was about bring everyone down to a level.

…What does technology want? It wants us to be happy, it wants our co-operation. Right ow we’re the sexual organs of technology. It wants increasing diversity, increasing complexity, increasing energy density (efficiency), increasing specialization… The patterns that we see technology follows are the same patterns biology and evolution follows. In biology there is extinction, in technology we find that ideas and technologies remain and they are very hard to extinguish… There is almost no extinct technologies.

Source Radar O’Reilly & PSFK