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Communities of Play
The odyssey of a group of “refugees” from a closed-down online game and an exploration of emergent fan cultures in virtual worlds. Play communities existed long before massively multiplayer online games; they have ranged from bridge clubs to sports leagues, from tabletop role-playing games to Civil War reenactments. With the emergence of digital networks, however, new varieties of adult play communities have appeared, most notably within online games and virtual worlds. Players in these networked worlds sometimes develop a sense of community that transcends the game itself. In Communities of Play, game researcher and designer Celia Pearce explores emergent fan cultures in networked digit...
Interactive Art and Embodiment
What is interactive art? Is this a genre? A medium? An art movement? Must a work be physically active to be classified as such, or do we interact when we sense and make sense? Is a switch-throw or link-click enough - I do this, and that happens - or must subjects and objects be confused over time? Is interaction multiple in its engagements (relational), or a one-to-one reaction (programmed)? Are interactive designs somehow more democratic and individualized than others, or is that merely a commercial strategy to sell products and ideas? This book argues that interactive art frames moving-thinking-feeling as embodiment; the body is addressed as it is formed, and in relation. Interactive insta...
Ambient Intelligence
What Is Ambient Intelligence The term "ambient intelligence" (AmI) comes from the field of computers and refers to electronic settings that are aware of and responsive to the presence of humans. Eli Zelkha and his team at Palo Alto Ventures first developed the concept of ambient intelligence in the late 1990s for the time frame of 2010-2020 as a projection on the future of consumer electronics, telecommunications, and computing. This concept was originally developed for the time frame of 2010-2020. Through the use of information and intelligence that is concealed within the network that connects these devices, ambient intelligence would make it possible for devices to collaborate in order to...
Talking Back to the Machine
From one of the editors of the renowned book Beyond Calculation, acclaimed by The New York Times for its "astonishing intellectual reach", comes a new collection of equal brilliance. Focusing on the impact of computers on humans, Talking Back to the Machine features essays on how computers will affect the ways we live, learn, teach, communicate, and relate to each other in the coming decades. Outstanding contemporary thinkers describe the myriad ways, both good and bad, in which our lives will be altered by information technology, and what we can do to influence these changes. Talking Back to the Machine is a must-read for anyone who is interested in technology and society.
Digital Play
In a marketplace that demands perpetual upgrades, the survival of interactive play ultimately depends on the adroit management of negotiations between game producers and youthful consumers of this new medium. The authors suggest a model of expansion that encompasses technological innovation, game design, and marketing practices. Their case study of video gaming exposes fundamental tensions between the opposing forces of continuity and change in the information economy: between the play culture of gaming and the spectator culture of television, the dynamism of interactive media and the increasingly homogeneous mass-mediated cultural marketplace, and emerging flexible post-Fordist management strategies and the surviving techniques of mass-mediated marketing. Digital Play suggests a future not of democratizing wired capitalism but instead of continuing tensions between "access to" and "enclosure in" technological innovation, between inertia and diversity in popular culture markets, and between commodification and free play in the cultural industries. -- publisher description.
Digital Art and Meaning
How to interpret and critique digital arts, in theory and in practice.
My Avatar, My Self
With videogames now one of the world's most popular diversions, the virtual world has increasing psychological influence on real-world players. This book examines the relationships between virtual and non-virtual identity in visual role-playing games. Utilizing James Gee's theoretical constructs of real-world identity, virtual-world identity, and projective identity, this research shows dynamic, varying and complex relationships between the virtual avatar and the player's sense of self and makes recommendations of terminology for future identity researchers.
Compressed Image File Formats
Since not all graphic formats are of equal complexity, author John Miano does not simply choose a number of file formats and devote a chapter to each one. Instead, he offers additional coverage for the more complex image file formats like PNG (a new standard) and JPEG, while providing all information necessary to use the simpler file formats. While including the well-documented BMP, XBM, and GIF formats for completeness, along with some of their less-covered features, this book gives the most space to the more intricate PNG and JPEG, from basic concepts to creating and reading actual files. Among its highlights, this book covers: -- JPEG Huffman coding, including decoding sequential mode JPEG images and creating sequential JPEG files-- Optimizing the DCT-- Portable Network Graphics format (PNG), including decompressing PNG image data and creating PNG files-- Windows BMP, XBM, and GIF
