Inforhythms GEN001
Project: Polytopia

#Inforhythms are an experiment in aural representations of annotations or metadata of information. In collaboration with Gabe Noel of Vosotros (which by the way has some great music, all licensed Creative Commons, we have started initial experiments of assigning tonal values to specific sets of metadata.


See picture big HERE
Download audio HERE



We have started by assigning aural information to the elements of IEML (information economy meta language). IEML is a representational language created by Pierre Levy (@plevy) that can act as a coordinating language between multiple ontologies. It is a system to represent and express facets of our subjectively experienced, unique worldview. Since it is meant to be understood by a computer (and is expressed in a notational syntax), the core elements combine exponentially and opens the possibility (theoretically at this stage) to compute the semantic distance between meanings.

We are at the beginning of our explorations into #inforhythms – a potentially retooling of our auditory perception through the creation of aural metadata representational systems, with the intent to create usable AR (or #aurec) interfaces that allow us to perceive, experience and interact with the multiple auras of metadata always surrounding us. This in turn opens up one vector of telesynaesthetic language.

More to come soon.

Sat, Dec 4, 2010  Permanent link
Categories: augmented reality, aurec, inforhythms, telesynesthesia, synesthesia
Sent to project: Polytopia

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The Serious ARG
Project: Polytopia

The Serious ARG (Alternate Reality Game)

In a 2007 article, columnist Chris Dahlen (of Pitchfork Media) voiced a much-discussed ARG concept: if ARGs can spark players to solve very hard fictional problems, could the games be used to solve real-world problems?[37] Dahlen was writing about World Without Oil, the first ARG centered on a serious near-future scenario: a global oil shortage.[38] Another ARG, Tomorrow Calling, appears to be a testbed for a future project focused on environmental themes and activism. [39]

Serious ARGs introduce plausibility as a narrative feature to pull players into the game. People participate to experience, prepare for or shape an alternative life or future.[40] The games thus have the potential to attract casual or non-players, because ’what if’ is a game anyone can play.[41] Serious ARGs may therefore be sponsored by organizations with activist or educational goals; World Without Oil was a joint project of the Public Broadcasting Service's Independent Lens and its Electric Shadows Web-original programming.[42]

Their serious subject matter may lead Serious ARGs to diverge from mainstream ARGs in design. Instead of challenging collective intelligence to solve a gamemastered puzzle, World Without Oil’s puppetmasters acted as players to guide the “collective imagination” to create a multi-authored chronicle of the alternative future, purportedly as it was happening.[43] By asking players to chronicle their lives in the oil-shocked alternative reality, the WWO game relinquished narrative control to players to a degree not seen before in an ARG.[44]

In October 2008 The British Red Cross created a serious ARG called Traces of Hope to promote their campaign about civilians caught up in conflict.[45]

There are possible future Serious ARGs described in fiction. In his novel Halting State, Charles Stross foresightedly describes a number of possible ARGs, where players engage in seemingly fictional covert spy operations.

In 2008 the European Union funded an ARG to support motivation for multilingualism within European secondary school students called ARGuing for Multilingual Motivation in Web 2.0 [4]. This project is now completed and papers on the project and the resources produced for education (a Methodology and Teacher Training guides) will be presented at the 3rd European Conference on Games Based Learning.

In 2008-2009 the MacArthur Foundation supported an ARG The Black Cloud to teach US high-school students about indoor air quality. The project is active and allows teachers to rent sophisticated air quality sensors to run the game locally.

- Wikipedia

How is a serious ARG taken to the next levels - the extrapolation, actualization & dramatization of 'intent' to manifestation across realities? and what's stopping us?


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#Another example of that is ARG-like (for those who haven't heard) is Superstruct, by Institute for the Future. (article)

#here's another great article on ARGs.

Mon, Aug 24, 2009  Permanent link
Categories: architecture, polytopia, augmented reality, alternate reality game, ARG
Sent to project: Polytopia

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