Stefana Broadbent gave a very insightful talk at Pic Nic 2007 (called "Trends in Communication and Entertainment"), in a misconception-countered-by-data fashion that I liked. She and her colleagues at Swisscom Innovation built a "observatory" which aims at following behavioral trends regarding comm...
The embodiment of space
"We cannot express its relation to ourselves in any other way than by imagining that we are in motion, measuring the length, width and depth, or by attributing to the static lines, surfaces, and volumes the movement that our eyes and our kinesthetic sensations suggest to us, even though we survey t...
Quotes from Pic Nic 2007
Some quotes heard at Pic Nic 2007, in Amsterdam: "At that time, Lisa was the female of Bart" - The Simpsons director. "Games are about expectations and permissions slips: you give players the fact that everything is permitted" - Katie Salen. "Lots of picture of the Wii are not picture of games but ...
Intriguing signs in Amsterdam
A short collection of signs I encountered in Amsterdam this week: Is there a pattern here? No, there are warnings of course My favorite? certainly the "surprising toilets" one, with an awesome blue-to-red-meter visualization that I don't really grasp. Why do I blog this? certainly material for s...
PicNic Talk: pervasive gaming and pets
This morning, Julian Bleecker, Fabien Girardin, Dennis Crowley and myself participated in a panel called The Near Future of Pervasive Media Experience. Here is the annotated version of my slides from the PicNic talk (pdf, 9.5Mb): The talk entitled "new interaction partners: perspectives on the per...
Phone booths
... or how phone booths can be turned into bike parking lots... seen in Amsterdam today. Why do I blog this? yet another usage of phone booths, at least in this case the phone itself is still there. ...
Physical instantiations of "Processing"
Concrete is a quite trendy store in Amsterdam, NL that sells clothes, toyz as well as designers' accessories. Yesterday, it proposed some work by Casey Reas (viz/image design) and Cait Reas (dresses). Why do I blog this? what was intriguing there was the presence of the book "Processing: A Program...
Trans-media gaming
Given that I am at PicNic, the "cross-media" topic is everywhere (from talks to random people met on streets of Amsterdam). Being interested by that topic as well, it made me think of this pdf that stands on my desktop for ages: "Transmedial Interactions and Digital Games, actually a description of...
Lying in design research
Funny highlight of the day: Dan Saffer's talk at Design Research 2007 entitled "How to Lie with Design Research". Have a look at the slides (.pdf, 9.5Mb) or watch the video. The talk is a funny description of tips about how to lie in design research. Saffer describes how to "Deliberately misinterpr...
Hard Science of Making Games
PopSci has a short series about The Hard Science of Making Game, which cover different aspects of video game design. Interestingly enough, it shows how AI, water, human faces, light and shadows, fire, realistic movements. The article aims at summarizing "the top ten hurdles facing game designers to...