Do Simulations Engage Anticipatory Cultures?
The current version of our AirQuest game shows how dynamic visualizations of pollution distribution models influence gameplay. Each of the game missions are located in areas affected by pollution. The more a location is polluted at a given moment, the harder the game will be to play.
Mobile City Chronicles: Boss Level, May 10
After 15 weeks of study, debate, analysis and creative outbursts, the students of our Art and Anthro course on game design, Mobile City Chronicles, are presenting five final games, to wit:
American Dreams: Berkeley Edition (real estate card game)
Infected Minds (interactive narrative)
Racoonville (boardgame)
Localfolk (memory mapping app)
HabiTooth (interactive narrative)
Come join us to play these games, use these apps, or help your favorite team launch a start-up. The games begin on Thursday, May 10, from 9-11 AM, in UC Berkeley’s Kroeber Hall, Room 295.
See you there, we will provide games, donuts and coffee. Questions?
Text us at (510) 307-6145
Swinging & Flowing Success!
Our Swinging and Flowing: Inclusion and Diversity in The Age of Data Conference last Thursday (4/26) was a huge success! Throughout the day, we enjoyed compelling lectures, through-provoking debates, a unique performance from DJ Spooky, and a swingin’, flowin’ dance workshop with Traci Bartlow.
We were extremely impressed by the debate between the intellectuals from the community and those from the university. Hopefully, we will explore this theme in a future conference in the fall.
Special thanks to Professor Anna Everett, who came all the way from Santa Barbara; Helen Milner, who came from England; and DJ Spooky who came from… Mars!
For a recap on the event, agenda, photos and more- visit our Official Swinging and Flowing Site
Swinging and Flowing Student Tickets Sold Out
We are looking forward Swinging and Flowing. Student Tickets are sold out, there are a few paying tickets left however. At $20, including lunch, that is a pretty good deal. Go to include.eventbrite.com to get one of those tickets if you are interested.
Upcoming Event- Swinging and Flowing: Inclusion & Diversity in The Age of Big Data
AT&T claims that it covers 97% of all Americans. What they fail to mention is that their coverage comes at a cost- often time, a cost that bars many groups of our society from access. Even those who are able to front the cost of access are still not free. We must stop, and take a moment to realize that we are subjects to new power structures. These new power structures limit access to paths of success. Only through understanding and dissecting them, can we break free from the structural boundaries they create.
Come join our conference to discuss these issues from social, analytical and professional perspectives.
In the frame of digital media, we consider: where are the boundaries of participation? What are the conditions? and ultimately, what are the opportunities?
Details:
Time/Date: Thursday, April 26, 2012, 9AM- 7PM
Location: UC Berkeley Sutardja Dai Hall, Banato Auditorium
Registration: General ($20), Students (free)
Featuring: DJ Spooky (Keynote Speaker), Cecil Brown, Roy L. Clay, Kevin Epps, Anna Everett, Kris Fallon, Michelle Fisher, Ashley Ferro-Murray, Jennifer Gonzalez, Chalres Henry, Jabari Mahari, Omouju Miller, Helen Milner, Soraya Murray, Greg Niemeyer, Asha Richardson, Victoria Robinson, Reggie Royston, Warren Sack, Ayman Shamma, Lissa Soep, Shannon Spanhake, Ryan Shelby, and you.
Full Schedule and Registration: http://include.eventbrite.com
Sponsored by the CITRIS Data and Democracy Initiative, athe UC Berkeley Department of African American Studies, BCNM, the Department of Geography, the American Cultures Program, Swissnex San Francisco, and you.
Dengue Torpedo funded by UBS!
We are thrilled to announce that our project “Dengue Torpedo” has won an Innovation Grant from UBS Optimus Foundation. Dengue Torpedo is a web and cellphone service (in development) designed to motivate community residents to report and eliminate the breeding sites of the mosquito Aedes aegypti that transmits the virus causing dengue fever. Dengue is spreading uncontrollably worldwide, with numbers of cases doubling from one year to the next. Social Apps Lab co-Director James Holston will launch pilot-studies of Dengue Torpedo in Brazil in collaboration with Drs. Eva Harris, Josefina Coloma and their Sustainable Sciences Institute.
Like this:
Greg Niemeyer at Lunch Bytes at the Goethe Institute
If you happen to be in Washington D.C. on April 4, and you want to add some fun sauce to your lunch, come check us out at the Goethe Institute: Thinking in Digital Terms. The announcement features an image of the Tic Toc Tiles game as played by Jan Hua. For the talk, which also features Trebor Scholz and Natalie Bookchin, Greg Niemeyer approaches the Lunch Bytes theme of the impact of information on thinking from a game culture and game design standpoint. How do we engage with information in games? Does this engagement change the way we think about information beyond games? Is this a liberating or an oppressive change, and how can we tell the difference? Niemeyer will answer these questions with references ranging from Dostojevski to Big Data by way of secret mirrors.
AirQuest: A Civic Action Game
Each human being should be able to step outside, take a deep breath of fresh air and take on their day. After all, clean air should be an undeniable right for all. Unfortunately, this is not the reality of our world. Rather, school children in Fresno find themselves peeking out classroom windows to check the color of the air quality flags- dreading the yellow and red flags and longing for a glimpse of the green. On the red flag days, all children are required to spend recess inside and kids with Asthma are always the ones to blame. What if- through the power of game play- we could shift the focus from this individual problem- to a collective problem, in which we all work together to create much necessary change?
AirQuest’s objective is to make scientific data accessible and playable to all. At the Social Apps Lab, we are engaging players in a game about pollutants transmitting Asthma triggers through the air. The main character, Kean, is a 14 year-old high school student with Asthma, who feels weak and isolated as a result of his condition. As the game progresses, he finds friends, a patient support group, and ultimately a voice with which to call for ecological justice in San Joaquin Valley. To increase his power, he learns to fight, to decode climate maps, and to get around the Valley on a bike- even when air quality is low. The game is a response to the problem that Asthma is often cast as a negative, individual experience rather than an extreme and early response to a crisis that affects us all. The objective of the game is to shift player’s reasoning from air quality as a problem for someone else, to air quality as an immediate and concrete issue for all. Careful pre-play and post-play tests among our focus groups will show us if we have had the desired impact. Integrating design feedback from users will help us optimize the game for its release on Android platform tablets on the Android Market in July of 2012. AirQuest is not an merely an action game, it is a civic action game. After validation of our approach in San Joaquin Valley, we will develop a Version 2.0 expanded release of the game which includes Oakland, Los Angeles, and Riverside as additional playable locations.
Through shifting this individual perception of asthma to a collective one, the game creates a channel in which all the separate voices can come together to create change for a healthier life and a healthier world.
Read more about this project and a couple others that we have in the works!
Tic-Toc-Tiles Receives Great Review from iAutism
Tic-Toc-Tiles has earned the praise of iAutism, a blog dedicated towards informing the public about technologies for people with ASD (Autistic Spectrum Disorders) and other special needs. The reviewers were pleasantly surprised by the combination of fun and functionality that our application offers. Hopefully, with the publicity we have gain from being featured on the blog we will reach more people who can benefit from the use of our application.
Check out the review at http://www.iautism.info/en/2012/01/26/review-tic-toc-tiles/
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