Tag: picnic 09 (Page 1 of 2)

PICNIC â€™09: Day 3, Rebuild

October 28, 2009 / DaniÃ«l van Gool

PICNIC 2009 The final day of PICNICâ€™s three day conference was themed â€œRebuildâ€ and focused on world-changing developments and the visionary people behind them. The day started with Start Breathing, a short presentation by independent writer and consultantÂ Linda Stone. Stone told us about the importance of breathing and the dangers ofÂ a phenomenon called â€œE-mail apnea.â€Â

E-mail apnea refers to when peopleÂ hold their breath while reading and writing e-mails or text messages. Stone put a lot of research into this common condition, and was told by several medical specialists that irregular breathing can contribute heavily to stress-related diseases. StoneÂ suggests that we do not suffer from information overload, but rather from information overconsumption. If you want to know more, check out her op-edÂ on the subjectÂ for the Huffington Post.

Next, Nicholas Negroponte delivered his keynote speech, which served as the highlight of the third day and possibly even of the entire conference. Negroponte is co-founder of the MIT Medialab and spearheads the One Laptop Per Child program. Heâ€™s considered a true visionary and, especially with OLPC, has beenÂ working on projectsÂ that literally change the world.Â Although it has been over 15 years since Negroponte asserted â€œcomputing is no longer about computers, it is about life,â€ the sentiment remains highly relevant today.

PICNIC â€™09: Peter Molyneux on Innovation in Entertainment

October 27, 2009 / DaniÃ«l van Gool

molyneux1 InÂ our previous coverage of day 2 of the PICNIC conference, I skipped over Peter Molyneuxâ€™s session called Innovation in Entertainment because it warranted additional attention. In case you’re unfamiliar with his work, Molyneux is a computer/video games mogul who has been working in the games industry for over 20 years now. His workÂ pioneered several genres of video gamesÂ through projectsÂ like Populous, Theme Park and SyndicateÂ for Bullfrog Production, now integrated into EA UK.

MolyneuxÂ later moved on to Lionhead Studios, where heÂ created ground-breaking gamesÂ including Black & WhiteÂ and Fable. Molyneux is currentlyÂ the head of Lionhead Studios, which was acquired by Microsoft Game Studios in 2006. Since June 2009, MolyneuxÂ has also beenÂ head of the European division of MS Game Studios.

MolyneuxÂ started his speech by showing his passion for games and the games industry. He declared thatÂ games are one ofÂ the most creative endeavours in existence because they take technology and use it to present a story in the most engaging and immersive way imaginable. For Populous, this involved using a 5×4 pixel grid for a characters face,Â making it rather hard to show emotions. MolyneuxÂ noted that the distance between the screen and the player is still huge: current resolutions are still far from reality. Moreover, games today mostly seem to be for one of only two categories: either for corporate use, or for the hardcore gamer.Â Games requireÂ a lot of manual dexterity, use complicated controllers and create other barriers that prevent players from having an enjoyable experience.

This is where Project NATAL comes in. You have probably heard of NATAL, the new technology allowing you to use your body as a controller, from Microsoftâ€™s showcase of at the 2009 E3. NATAL is not justÂ a motion detection technology, however. It also offers the possibility of facial and voice recognition. Molyneux and Lionhead have been working on taking these technologies and combining them with advanced versions of the AI and adaptive learning systems used in games like Black & White to create a whole new entertainment experience called Milo. Milo is a little boy that lives in your Xbox whoÂ interacts with the user inÂ several very interesting ways. The best way to get an idea of what Milo can do is to watch Molyneux discuss the project.

Not Your Ordinary PICNIC: Exploding Media, Part II

October 15, 2009 / DaniÃ«l van Gool

PICNIC 06 This articleÂ resumes our PICNIC coverage on day two of the conference, which focused on theÂ theme of “Exploding Media.” The second half of PICNIC’sÂ Exploding Media coverage explores brandingÂ campaigns, location-based entertainment, andÂ the development of special effects.Â

Jessica Greenwood, deputy editor of trendwatching magazine Contagious, took the audience on a tour of innovative branding and marketing campaigns that are all on the frontlines of the changing media landscape. One of the quotes she used in her introduction was one of Douglas Adams: â€œAnything invented before you were 18 has been there forever, anything that turns up before youâ€™re 30 is new and exciting, and anything after that is a threat to the world and must be destroyed.â€Â Adams’ quote raises anÂ interesting notion, indicative of how innovations are often received. Greenwood elaborated on several innovations in the marketing field that didÂ receive favorable receptions, and, probably more importantly, were also quite successful in reaching their goals.

The first case was Virgin Mobileâ€™s Australian campaign Right Music Wrongs, which kicked off with a video of musician Vanilla Ice apologizing for his music, asking the public to vote on whether he was guilty or innocent of â€˜music wrongs.â€™ The project had an initial budget of only $150k, launching an engaging campaign around the musician and the concert he was going to give in Sydney in March â€™09. It ended up reaching 22 million people and getting hundreds of thousands of people engaged in several online activities.

Not Your Ordinary PICNIC: Exploding Media

October 1, 2009 / DaniÃ«l van Gool

PICNIC 04 Itâ€™s time for day two of PICNIC, and a new day means a new theme: Exploding Media. The theme brought with it an exciting schedule, filled with more on social media, but this time focusing on trying to find parallels between social media and brands and marketing strategies, as well asÂ on games and interactivity.

The first speaker wasÂ movie director Chris Burke, who is also the creator of This Spartan Life, the worldâ€™s first and only â€œtalkshow in game spaceâ€. I hadnâ€™t previously heard of This Spartan Life and thus wasnâ€™t familiar with theÂ show’s format, where a host (Burke)Â interviews a guest (in this case, Gerri Sinclair, CEO of the Center for Digital Media), while playing Halo.

Apparently,Â This Spartan Life has been a big Â hit since 2004 and has gathered quite a bit of praise for its innovative presentation. I can see how the concept might work well with smoothly edited episodes showing Halo game play supplemented by added voiceovers. However, as a live concept, I thought itÂ came off asÂ a forced way of trying something new. The Halo backdrop compounded by the clumsiness of Sinclair trying to master the controls of the game were so distracting that I hardly followedÂ the actual interview.

Sinclair, hailed by Burke as a â€œgaming professor who actually knows what sheâ€™s talking aboutâ€ has a great track record when it comes digital media and narrative . Most of the times when the interview took an interesting turn, though, the conversation got interrupted by shrieks of â€œOh no! I fell of a ledge!â€ and â€œsomeone is shooting at me!â€ or with Burke trying to keep track of where his interviewee went in the Halo level. It’s a shame, because I would have loved to hear more of what Sinclair had to say on gaming and the changing ways of delivering narratives.

Not Your Ordinary PICNIC: Turning Points, Part 2

September 27, 2009 / DaniÃ«l van Gool

PICNIC 02 Onwards to part two of the first day of the PICNIC conference schedule–this section of three consecutive panels and presentations was all about the shifts in demographics: the role that race and ethnic background play in producing theatre on Broadway and in emerging online communities, and the role of a changing audience and the way that audience divides its attention on â€œtraditionalâ€ media.

First off was a presentation by renowned producer David Binder, who talkedÂ us through his experience bringing Lorraine Hansberryâ€™s 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun back to Broadway for a modern day revival. AsÂ A Raisin in the Sun is a classic African-American play, Binder wanted to honor its roots, which to him meant that he had to find an African-American director. Broadway isnâ€™t exactly brimming with diversity (of the 40 directors active on Broadway last season, 36 were men and only one person of color), so Binder had his work cut out for him.

What followed was a mildly interesting relay of his quest for a director (he ended up working with the then relatively unknown Kenny Leon) and cast (he managed to snag Sean Combs aka P DiddyÂ for the lead role). I think my appreciation of Binderâ€™s excited monologue was slightly hampered by the fact that my knowledge of all things Broadway is virtually nonexistent and the fact that as a European, Iâ€™m a lot less used to such a heavy emphasis being placed on race, soÂ some of his points sounded (literally) rather foreign to me.

On a personal note, Binder gets a lot of creditÂ from me for having the creative guts to bring The New Island Festival to New York City. The festival is based on two important Dutch theater festivals, Oerol and De Parade. From what I gathered from his talk, reviving a play like Raisin in the Sun took a lot more guts than that.

Not Your Ordinary PICNIC: Turning Points

September 26, 2009 / DaniÃ«l van Gool

PICNIC 01 Not your ordinary PICNIC:Â thatâ€™s the tagline I found plastered all over the Westergasfabriek terrain during PINIC â€™09. And PICNIC indeed is something quite out of the ordinary.Â

I arrived Wednesday around 11:00am, a few hours before the official opening of the conference part of PICNIC, which meant that I could take some time to explore the impressive central area of the festival, the PICNIC club. A place to meet, to eat, to tweet (there was a Twitter tree set up in the main area, with UTP cables hanging down its branches) and to look at all the interesting stuff that PICNICâ€™s official partners, includingÂ UPC and Microsoft, were showing off.

The area was brimming with activity. During the morning, several sessions of PICNIC Young had already started, which is a collection of workshops and seminars for teachers and students, exploring technology and creativity and their possible adaptation to school programs. PICNIC Young is only one of many â€œtracksâ€ running alongside the main conference schedule of PICNIC, and if you wanted to cover all of it, you would need at least 5 or 6 people on the ground.

Other interestingÂ events wereÂ also already going on at the various PICNIC Labs that were scattered among the conference area, like the Digital City Special, or the Augmented City Lab, exploring present and near-future adaptation of various mobile augmented reality technologies. I did not attend any of these sessions, but if youâ€™re interested in what augmented reality can do today, check out the iPhone 3GS app that the folks at Layar have launched at PICNIC.

The main conference has a different theme for each of its three days. The first dayâ€™s theme was â€œTurning Pointsâ€, focusing on social changes that have their impact on society and social media, and kicked off with a familiar face: Israeli conductor Itay Talgam. I had heard Talgam speak at PICNIC last year and his ideas on leadership really stuck with me. The one-liner he kicked his talk off with this year: â€œIn these times of insecurity and crisis, people are sick of leaders. Itâ€™s about communities now.â€