It seems like wherever I go these days, I wind up looking at the past. Half of the photos my friends share on Facebook and Twitter are run through a gamut of filters to look like they were shot in 1969 (that’s even the name of one of Hipstamatic’s workflows), and now the same thing is happening with video thanks to apps like 8mm Vintage Camera.

While a major trend of late in digital content creation tools has been the retro styling of interfaces and artifacts, the last several years of PC and console gaming could be seen as a pilgrimage in the opposite direction. Solid Snake, Nico Bellic, and Nathan Drake all furrow their blemished brows and glower at us menacingly in 1080p… at least Master Chief had the decency to put on a helmet.

But not all games operate within this paradigm of photorealism – there are families of titles evolving on the plains outside of the Uncanny Valley, and groups of developers more interested in experimenting with gameplay than participating in the arms race of shader technology.

A great example of this trend towards retro visuals is the Swedish indie juggernaut known as Minecraft. The premise of the game is simple – wake up in a wilderness, prance about exploring for most of the day, find a way to build shelter before nightfall, avoid becoming dogfood for a menagerie of roving monsters – but the really interesting stuff at work in Minecraft is in the context of sandbox gameplay and open collaboration. You can work with friends online to architect elaborate in-game underground fortresses, treehouses, or even working arithmetic logic units; but everything you build has to be crafted from natural substances mined from the world around you and represented by blocks about one foot by one foot in size. While the world of Minecraft is vast, it’s also quite graphically granular. The experience looks and feels more like the result of some macabre mash-up of panspermia and Tetris than other sandbox games like Garry’s Mod, Little Big Planet, or Second Life. The easiest way to describe Minecraft’s gameplay to newcomers is as a digital version of Lego… a version where each block must be carefully smelted from elusive minerals at the core of the earth.

My Minecraft Kingdom... not so meta-meta.

What could have compelled the game’s creator Markus “Notch” Persson to employ such a distinctly retro style in the creation of such an innovative game? And what features of the game are responsible for the sale of more than 1.8 million units in the last year?

Performance
Minecraft is built and sold as a Java application. As many have discovered, it runs in a corporate web browser approximately as well as it will on a dedicated gaming rig. 1999‘s Quake III finally moved into the browser as “Quake Live” last year after heavy modifications, but Minecraft was there from the start by drawing in the thousands of blocks making up each world dynamically and by not using particularly elaborate textures. You can customize your in-game character on the minecraft.net site using a 32×32 pixel image… about a third the size of what made for a decent LiveJournal icon ten years ago.

Familiarity
It seems like it’s often assumed that hyper-real graphics will feel good because they’re similar to how we perceive the world with the HD cameras embedded in our faces. The purveyors of gigabyte-packing graphics cards surely presume that visual accuracy is what’s behind the verisimilitude of a good gaming experience. But what about those of us who grew up under the supervision of the Super Mario Brothers and a 12” TV, or their ancestors from the Old Country of Atari? I think it stands to reason that 8-bit graphics and simplistic animations make the average 20 or 30-something gamer feel more at home than anisotropic filters.

Mechanics in Focus
When you’re playing a photorealistic 3D title you’re probably going to invest less effort into considerations of underlying gameplay mechanics than you might if you were enjoying a basement romp in a refrigerator box. Games defined by shiny pretty things certainly have a time and place, but when you’re playing a title that deliberately immerses you in a lo-fi look-and-feel, you’re more likely to be pleasantly surprised by the ingenuity or complexity of the mechanics at work.

Kenfagerdotcom's Minecraft Kingdom... meta-meta to the power of meta.

Minecraft isn’t alone in utilizing retro graphics to get audiences engaged, before challenging them with innovative gameplay concepts. Jason Rohrer and Daniel Benmergui are both developer-artistes putting out engaging and genre-busting titles with beautiful 8-bit looks.

Screenshot from Jason Rohrer's PASSAGE

If you’re hungry for a particularly well-executed experiment in innovation through nostalgia, there’s a brand new Toronto-bred iPad title you’ve got to check out: Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP, a collaboration between Capybara Games, the Superbrothers squad of visual artists, and Jim Guthrie. If you spent any time with Sierra’s King’s Quest in 1990 (itself a visual retooling of the Adventure Game Interpreter 1984 original, rebooted once more last year), you’ll feel eerily at home here. But after only a few minutes of play it becomes clear that Sw&Sw is about experimenting with social gaming features that the retro aesthetic might have prevented you from anticipating. For instance, all of the game’s dialogue takes place in the form of 140-or-fewer letter exchanges – enabling players to tweet conversations as they progress, from within the game’s HUD. It’s quite a clever little innovation, allowing players to share their progress through a game that doesn’t quite align with the High Scores ‘n Headshots model of friendly competition familiar to many console gamers. Even the title of the game is displayed on my iPad’s home screen as a hashtag.

Screenshot from Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP

Could Capybara have gotten away with encouraging Sw&Sw players to tweet their progress in a photorealistic first-person shooter version of the game? Possibly. Could they have maintained as much of the delightfully corny Your Highness-esque dialogue with such an approach? Perhaps. But could they have made audiences from 15 to 35 feel immediately comfortable with the title while embracing its innovative idiosyncrasies? I’m skeptical.

For a particular group of gamers born in the final decades of the 20th century, 8-bit is the definitive visual vernacular – the lingua franca spoken by fans of racing, RPG, and shoot-em-up titles alike. Perhaps these audiences simply take comfort in the styles associated with a particular era of game development (just as classic rock inevitably trumps auto-tune in the minds of members of my parents’ generation), or perhaps there are valuable lessons to be learned here about how innovation can emerge from the juxtaposition of new ideas with the obviously ancient.

Trevor Haldenby is a producer and photographer living in Toronto. He has attended Wilfrid Laurier University, Rhode Island School of Design, CFC Media Lab, and is presently completing a Master’s of Design in Strategic Foresight & Innovation at OCAD University.

If you live in Toronto, you might be familiar with the renovations that have taken place over the last several years at the Royal Ontario Museum. A $270,000,000 budget resulted in an expansion opening up a total of nearly 388,000 square feet of redesigned exhibition space. If you’ve visited the Art Gallery of Ontario since they attempted a similar renovation, you might have learned that it cost them nearly the same amount of money to build a hall out of Douglas Fir as it cost the ROM to build one of awkward glass crystals. Inside both institutions LCD screens dot the halls, and in the AGO’s elevators, video installations by Vera Frenkel break up (or help hold) the silence between visitors to the espresso bar.

But in the shadow of these enormous structural renovations, dramatic changes to the interactive experiences on offer have been few and far between.

Museums are places that inspire a sense of grandeur in the context of human, and natural, history. But modern museums and art galleries are also institutions racing to keep pace with ever-accelerating advances in the uptake of digital technologies. The museum is a unique cultural artifact that acts as our interface with the deep past, with timeframes rarely considered in our day-to-day lives. But in relation to the ancient systems with which they interface, museums are actually rather young. The first museums in Europe began materializing only 500 years ago. The first public museum, the Louvre, opened a good 280 years after that. The “Golden Age” that museums have named in their honour, like the Mesozoic of the dinosaurs, is bordered by the late 1800’s and the First World War.

But the huge advances that have come in the last 50 years of digital technology, scientific practice, and design have created a strange situation for museums. As leading-edge innovation and research shifted to universities over the course of the 20th century, museums went from being centres of scientific research to institutions facing real existential dilemmata. If emerging technologies and scientific advances offered better insight into the past, museums would have to innovate and refresh exhibitions at a faster rate. And if audiences came to expect technology they’d experienced elsewhere within the museum’s walls, they would have to leap into a sprint in completely new fields of interpretation.

Museums have a number of unique relationships to digital media, some resulting from the their unique situation as a tool for interfacing with deep time; physically, informationally, and procedurally.

• Museums have digital media artworks or artifacts in their collections.
  

• Museums are among the institutions that will oversee the curation of the emergence of digital media.
  

• Museums make broad use of digital media in the design of exhibitions and interpretive displays.

Some of the most interesting exhibitions or tools in museums and galleries today take a look at how these three unique ties can be brought together, or strummed in harmony. The traditional toolkits of museum operators, designers, and audiences are evolving.

The Google Art Project, launched earlier this year, allows web surfers to head inside 17 famous museums and galleries around the world using Street View technology. Over 1,000 high-resolution (some of them excruciatingly high resolution) artworks can be accessed through the service, and they are all accessible through either a catalogue or from a virtual wall of the museum in which they reside. The influence services like this will have on the museum industry in the medium term is difficult to forecast. Will a technology company wind up becoming a dominant museum designer, in an interesting flip of the curation of media history by cultural institutions? Will curators and technicians begin preparing works solely for online exhibition? Will artists respond to this shift in curatorial process by creating more and more gigapixel artifacts that live on an external hard drive rather than in the rafters of the few remaining Queen West lofts?

Within the stacked halls of MoMA in New York City, another interesting approach to revising the interactive experience of the museum has just been unveiled.

Microsoft Digital Art is a system designed to emulate the experience of painting on canvas, using a variety of different media. “Digital Art” (an interesting name to decide upon, given the recent trademark spats between MSFT and AAPL over generic terms like “App” and “Windows”) introduces to the high-end museum space an unusual and sometimes uncomfortable element: user-generated content. When I designed Painting The Myth: The Mystery of Tom Thomson with a group of collaborators at the CFC Media Lab in 2004, our efforts were concentrated on creating a new opportunity for museum and gallery audiences to engage with works in an institution’s collection. Painting The Myth told the story of a famous Canadian painter’s mysterious death, while enabling users young and old to paint through one of his works, as he would have painted it nearly one hundred years ago.

Microsoft Digital Art, by enabling visitors to paint their own digital masterpieces, affords museums the opportunity to acquire, curate, and utilize digital media in a single device.

With the three units MoMA has been loaned through the end of August, they could encourage the creation of tens of thousands of original artistic works. It is not clear from Microsoft’s mammoth Terms of Use whether or not painters retain ownership of their works, or if the cycle between creation and institutional acquisition in the art world is compressing similarly to the time between paradigm-shifting technological advancements.

Microsoft Digital Art’s presence at MoMA seems indicative of the museum’s commitment to curating the history and evolution of digital media. Talk To Me, an exhibition opening at MoMA this July, will focus on the nature of the dialogue between human beings and the objects we’ve created. The exhibition’s site is a mildly confusing and hyper-categorized list of projects and ideas, but here and there you can get some real insight into the ideas behind the show. The curators see Talk To Me as an exhibition about the relationship between form, function, and meaning. Dead languages of innovation and metrics of techno-cultural impact will be on display in the museum alongside early daguerrotypes (some with an eerie meta-meta feel to them). MoMA isn’t necessarily trying to create another Massive Change with Talk To Me, but the exhibition has potential.

But in displaying Microsoft Digital Art, MoMA is also making a few interesting statements about the role of large institutions in rolling out digital interfaces to their collections. I think it’s telling that the museum is using Digital Art to enable user-generated content creation rather than a more engaging experience with the works in its collection. This says to me that while they think digital toys are fun, and by all means at home in the Material Lab, they’re not necessarily going to replace the LCD screens and more traditional interpretive displays scattered around the rest of the museum. Although less trendy, those traditional displays are hot media; and although it employs cutting-edge technology and big brand power, the Microsoft Digital Art system is cool… that’s McLuhan cool, not auto-tune cool. Hot media are best used for dealing explicitly with the artifacts in the collection, whether in the form of a digital audio player with tour information or a plaque. Cool media are best rolled out as creative interventions, engaging experiences ultimately divorced from the collection of the institution itself. The Virtual Museum of Canada put out a call a few weeks ago for proposals dealing with augmented reality, geo-location, and various museum collections across the country… so perhaps there is still hope for exciting innovation in digital interpretation closer to home.

In a recent piece on Rhizome, Michelle Kasprzak kicked off a great conversation on cultural institutions in an age of intangible culture. Through an examination of recent attempts at creating virtual museums, Kasprzak interrogates the nature of the museum, and how recent online incarnations such as Adobe’s Museum of Digital Media have used the word itself as a signifier for the culturally authentic. Is this what happens when we start keeping all of our deep-time lenses in a single basket, so to speak? What are the consequences of concentrating our thinking about history and artifacts into one word – museum – which can then be tossed about and attached to cultural institutions of all sorts?

Standards are emerging around what makes a 21st century museum “good” – but it’s unlikely we’ll arrive at a monocultural agreement any time soon. The very activities that used to be tended to exclusively by museums and galleries (or by the very wealthy with a fondness for the esoteric or macabre) – historical and natural artifact collection, preservation, interpretation, contextualization – are rapidly being taken up by the masses. Wikipedia is a museum of sorts, but of ideas as much as physical artifacts. Flickr may not be the best gallery in the world, but it certainly has one of the largest collections. As Michelle Kasprzak noted in her article, the US Library of Congress welcomed billions of tweets into its digital archive last year… and they had the good sense to announce the decision via Twitter.

In my previous post, I advocated the idea that designing something new often requires a new toolkit. It’s been very interesting for me to consider museums in this context… as institutions responsible for preserving our relationship with deep time in an engaging, accessible and decidedly modern manner. Ever-accelerating evolutions in technology as well as the changing expectations of diverse audiences must make the decision-making process in any modern museum even more complicated.

Trevor Haldenby is a producer and photographer living in Toronto. He has attended Wilfrid Laurier University, Rhode Island School of Design, CFC Media Lab, and is presently completing a Master’s of Design in Strategic Foresight & Innovation at OCAD University.

Trevor Haldenby is a producer and photographer living in Toronto. He has attended Wilfrid Laurier University, Rhode Island School of Design, CFC Media Lab, and is presently completing a Master’s of Design in Strategic Foresight & Innovation at OCAD University.

I would like to use my time as Guest Editor of to explore an idea that has stuck with me over the last ten years: designing something new often requires new tools.

The Strategic Foresight Group defines foresight as the merger of forecasting and insight. While I’ve long been a fan of clever enjambments in terminology, there really is some value to this one. Forecasting is an interesting tool, whether it’s being employed at the offices of brokers on Bay Street, at CTV’s meteorology desk, or on Yonge Street in the parlour of a psychic. All of these forecasters use specific models, methodologies, maths, and mantras in their process; and they each have unique sets of insights that provide the foundations for them.

Design is one of the areas where strategic foresight is really gaining traction, and in looking at the challenges presented by the evolution of digital media, you can see why.

While the weatherperson makes predictions that are influenced by climate change, his or her general assumption is that a new type of cloud will not suddenly emerge and wreak havoc upon Southern Ontario. Similarly, many of the traders on the TSE’s floor are thinking about change in terms of corporations and currencies, not sweeping economic models. When it comes to the design of new media and underlying technologies, you really do have to assume that what you’ll be working with in five or ten years’ time will be conceptually connectable to where you started, but changed almost completely in many other ways. When Tim Berners-Lee was developing HyperText Transfer Protocol and Universal Resource Locators, he probably didn’t think his technological darlings would even survive to become adolescent acronyms… let alone act as the foundation for petabyte-pushing video servers and social networks. Media (and media decisions, such as the CRTC’s regulations on bandwidth caps) may live long and tumultuous lives, or they may be swept away by the next disruptive technology on the block within just a few years. As people adapt their habits to match emerging media, they wind up inventing new behaviours and expectations that could generate boom or doom for existing media, and shape the subsequent generation profoundly.

Although change is a constant fact of life, big-picture change can be another beast entirely – it often involves a rewrite of so many of a system’s functions and processes that the result can be almost unrecognizable. This is what is happening in media at an ever-accelerating pace, making the ability to design for an ever-increasing pace of change more and more valuable… whether you work in climatology, or interface design.

Richard Dawkins made his name as a popular scientist in the mid-1970’s talking about the Selfish Gene, but his self-professed favourite work (and mine) is one that followed shortly after, titled The Extended Phenotype. The term phenotype refers in biological circles to the expression of genes in an organism that make it what it appears to be. You, me, and a fruit fly all have big complicated genes with surprising amounts of overlap. But the attributes that make us recognizable as humans and not as fruit flies largely result from what’s switched on in what order, not what’s scattered all over, genetically speaking. Dawkins argues in The Extended Phenotype that the ecosystems encompassing an organism and its behaviour are just as much a part of its phenotype as the colour of its eyes, or length of its fur. The beaver’s dam, for example, alters the entire surrounding landscape, and that dam is a direct result of the beaver’s more conventionally considered phenotype. You’re following along nicely if this idea of a single organism (think system) radically remaking the world around it (other interconnected systems) seems familiar – it sounds an awful lot like a certain Hominid and its relationship with technology, doesn’t it? The media phenotype, if you will, really can fundamentally shift every 10-25 years; and even if countless historical fads and meaningful innovations – like radio and television – remain present either conceptually or practically, the essence of the broader ecosystem may be fundamentally altered.

All analogies and biologies aside, there is a big question here: if the design of our media really can change the surrounding world within a generation, what are the best practices associated with making sure those media are the best they can be?

Fields of study dedicated to phenomena that are very big, very impactful, very interconnected, or all of the above are unfortunately few and far between. Economics and politics seem to fit the bill (occasionally), along with a handful of the arts and sciences. But at this point in time, it seems to me that strategic foresight exists natively at the intersection of the very big in time and space, and the very impactful. More succinctly, the field could be seen as being concerned with the creation of tools and best practices for dealing with the very important, in the medium and long term.

Through talking with Suzanne Stein, an expert in the world of strategic foresight, I’ve developed an appreciation of how diverse work in the field can be. Some proponents are interested in making sure that the verifiability of foreseen scenarios is what we focus on… others are more intrigued by using scenario generation techniques to understand group creative process. The CFC Media Lab uses scenario generation workshops to explore group dynamics and collaborative creation, and the focus of its resident-populated programs is iterative prototyping activity that might be familiar to fans of high-end design shops like IDEO, or firms like Changeist founded by Scott Smith.

When I was a resident at the CFC Media Lab in 2004, I set out to create a new kind of hands-on educational experience for museums and art galleries. The resulting prototype was called Painting The Myth: The Mystery of Tom Thomson. While I was learning about a huge diversity of prototyping processes and new tools during its creation, what really struck me was how my understanding of what to do next felt like it was coming to me intuitively.

As interesting as this field of strategic foresight is, it’s really only one way to think about identifying and shaping new possibilities. It’s only one way to look at the design of things that no-one has seen, or even thought of before. The new media landscape is full of people who have been innovating in a myriad of ways, sometimes through regimented process, and sometimes on intuition alone. What are their stories?

During Steve Jobs’ announcement of the iPad 2 last week, he reiterated how Apple’s existence has always been at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts. This reminded me of how unique the space I work within really is. The work to be done in designing and cultivating new media happens at the intersection of business, technology, and art. What can we learn from those who are only beginning to articulate their own way of working in the field? What can we learn about best practices for designing new media from products, people, and organizations that have conventionally been considered outside of its realm of influence – teachers, artists, venture capitalists, ecologists, primary school students?

My plan is to spend the guest editorship I’ve been offered exploring the new media growing up around us, and sharing observations about the creation and adaptation of new tools, the formalization of process that has heretofore only existed as intuition, and innovation that is taking place in strange and exciting new ways.

CFC Media Lab would like to send a very big THANK YOU to everyone who purchased some WagJag “Cheer” during this holiday season. With your help, we raised $361 for Make a Wish Foundation and the CFC Media Lab Scholarship Fund!

Check out the original post here: stabletalk.cfccreates.com/?p=3963

Thank you for your support!
…and yes, that was indeed Fred Penner.

Don’t miss this exclusive holiday offer!

Purchase some holiday “Cheer” from WagJag.com for only 99¢!
All proceeds go to Make-A-Wish Foundation and CFC Media Lab Scholarship Fund.

Thank you for your support and happy holidays!

Snare Books and Coach House Books present the launch of Update by Bill Kennedy and Darren Wershler (CFC Media Lab Faculty member) with special guest Jon Paul Fiorentino (Indexical Elegies) and hosted by Christian Bök.

For writers Darren Wershler and Bill Kennedy, status updates are also poetry. Or,
rather, it becomes poetry after the RRS feeds of thousands of Facebook users have
been harvested, shorn of the user names and attached to the names of dead poets or
writers.

- Globe and Mail, Books section

You haven’t forgotten about this, have you?

All Proposals are due after the weekend! December 6th!

Jacqueline Nuwame, Sr. Training Programs Manager at the CFC Media Lab, had the honour of speaking at last week’s HTMlles Festival of Media Art and Networked Practices 2010 in Montreal.

Founded in 1997 and produced by Studio XX, the HTMlles Festival of Media Art and Networked Practices explores various facets of digital technology and the web as a medium for the creation and exhibition of women’s digital artworks. The festival occupies the singular position of being one of the only Quebecois and Canadian events entirely dedicated to the promotion and dissemination of independent media art, its particularity also being emphasized by its feminist approach, concerns and engagements.

Also featured at the festival was First Person Digital, produced in partnership with the NFB, which featured some amazing female-only work.

Take a peek at these other great projects:

www.itschinesetome.net
www.otandayanaan.net
www.perfectplum.com

A big shout-out to Studio XX for organizing this great event!

Congrats to NFB/Interactive and Gerry Flahive, Kat Cizek, Branden Batuhin, Heather Frise, and the hundreds of photographers and researchers that made HIGHRISE: Out My Window happen! You deserve this nod!

IDFA presents a new documentary award: the IDFA DocLab Award for Digital Storytelling. The prize (Canon 5D Mark II camera, made available by Canon) is awarded to the DocLab project that uses digital technology in the most creative and effective way to tell a documentary story.

The award winner will be determined by an international jury consisting of Alexandre Brachet (Gaza-Sderot.com, Prison Valley 2009), Antoinette Hoes (Leylines) and Zach Wise (The New York Times).

Check out DocLab: the official new media program of IDFA, showcasing new forms of documentary storytelling, digital technology and media art.

The judging happens today! Best of luck, team!

Just announced!

UK Children’s network CBBC (Children’s BBC) has picked up animated series Smallfoot from Shark Teeth Films and Tricon for its online platform My Toons. Read the C21Media article here.

Shark Teeth Films is a cross media digital production company that creates original entertainment for TV, film and the internet. Find out more about Shark Teeth Films here.

…I challenge you NOT to love Smallfoot! I’m convinced it cannot be done.
Mad props to Adrian & Tom!

We had the incredible opportunity of taking our TELUS Interactive Art & Entertainment Residents to a Master Class by Tim Burton (Director/Producer/Writer/Artist) today at TIFF Bell Lightbox! Tim Burton is in Toronto to launch his major career retrospective at TIFF Bell Lightbox.

“Tim Burton’s visual style is unquestionably unique, loved by millions of fans and has been highly influential in multiple creative spheres. When we first heard of the show, we were convinced it was the perfect marriage of film and the visual arts and the perfect way to bring new audiences into our major exhibitions space.”

- Noah Cowan,
Artistic Director, TIFF Bell Lightbox

Tim Burton will open on November 26, 2010 and run until April 17, 2011. Exhibition and film programmes tickets on sale now! Visit tiff.net or call 416-599-TIFF (8433) or 1-888-599-8433 for more information. 

Hey Stitch. How hot are YOU!?

Leave it to CFC Media Lab Alumni Evan Jones, Victoria Ha, and Michael Schaus to knock your socks off!

Stitch Media‘s Moderation Town has been nominated as one of the Hottest Video Content of 2010 by nextMEDIA’s Digital Hot List. Stitch will be pitching the NSFW web series at NextMedia in Toronto at the end of November.

moderationtown.com
@moderationtown

WANTED: Canada’s next award-winning digital documentary!

Do you have a digital documentary idea? One that can attract a large community, win critical success on the world stage, or innovate with a successful business or creative approach? The docSHIFT Institute will support up to four experienced creators with innovative digital documentary project ideas. selected participants will receive mentorship, professional consultation and some financial support to complete their project or create a prototype.

docSHIFT is presented in partnership with Ryerson University, Hot Docs, CFC Media Lab and the National Film Board.

www.doctoronto.ca/docshift-institute

The interactive web component of Storming Juno was created by Secret Location’s Executive Producer/Writer and CFC Media Lab Alumnus, James Milward.

…For the full ReelScreen article, visit: www.realscreen.com/articles/news/20101110/stormingjuno

*Storming Juno featured today on history.ca!

2020 Media Futures (2020mediafutures.ca) is an ambitious, multi-industry strategic foresight project designed to understand and envision what media may look like in the year 2020.

By participating in 2020 Media Futures, you’ll be contributing your vision to an innovative research project which will help build capacity and drive innovation in Ontario’s Creative Cluster by helping companies and organizations to ‘future-proof’ themselves, preparing for opportunities and challenges brought on by the rapid evolution of media.

Through the practice of “strategic foresight,” the project will enable stakeholders to better manage uncertainty through deeper understanding and anticipation of change.

If you know of others who you think might be interested in participating in the Delphi, please pass them the link: 2020mediafutures.ca/delphisurvey

Yonge Street Media Feature:

Our fearless leader, Ana Serrano, talks prototypes and the direction of the CFC Media Lab in Yonge Street Media‘s feature article by Joseph Wilson:

GreenHeroes on TVO:

GreenHeroes, a smart, sexy and dynamic Web/TV crossover produced by CineFocus Canada in association with TVO and SUN TV which tells remarkable stories of people who acted on their ideas and heroically “ventured forth” to protect our planet. From the celebrity to the everyday person, each story details the different paths and interests the GreenHeroes have taken in their quests to help save the world.

Episode 2 introduces us to GreenHeroes with a lot in common. They are protecting the places they call home from industrialization and pollution of our fresh water sources and they are using the arts to get their message out to the masses.

Sarah Harmer: An internationally recognized singer/songwriter who flexes her musical muscle to protect a world biosphere site.
Sarah grew up with the Niagara Escarpment in her backyard. Today, she is dedicated to its preservation, and to achieve this goal, she co-founded PERL (Protecting Escarpment Rural Land) and mounts a concert each summer featuring renowned musicians like Bruce Cockburn and Feist.

Gord Downie: The Tragically Hip front man turned environmental activist.
Gord jumped to the front lines of a battle against an unfair polluter when a cement company was experimenting with burning tires as an alternative fuel source. He joined forces with the Lake Ontario Waterkeeper after hearing a speech by Robert Kennedy Jr. and put a halt to the unsafe practice in the lakeside village of Bath, Ontario.

Annabel Slaight: Publisher of “Owl”, the popular nature magazine for kids.
Annabel turned her corporate and organizing know-how to found Ladies of the Lake, an organization dedicated to saving Lake Simcoe. Their Naked Truth calendar released in 2006 didn’t hurt their cause either. The Ladies of the Lake’s efforts contributed to the provincial Lake Simcoe Act and federal funding to aid in the Lake’s clean-up and preservation.

Check out the CFC Media Lab Alumni behind GreenHeroes!

Out My Window Teleconference call:

Bloggers, tweeters, mainstream journos and general public unite!

Don’t miss the chance to join tomorrow’s social media teleconference about CFC Media Lab and NFB‘s Out My Window.
This project, mentioned on stabletalk last week, is a 360 panoramic video examining how global culture is shaped by the high-rise environment.

WHEN: Thursday, November 4, 2010
2:30 pm Eastern Standard Time (Toronto, Canada)

This teleconference will be a conversation with the director, Katerina Cizek, using collaborative web technology and the telephone (to hear the audio, you will need to call in via telephone technology, but you can use skype, gmail or any kind of VOIP). Get a tour of the Out My Window interactive film, and ask your own questions about the production or motivations behind one of the first 360º feature-length documentaries.

Happy Hallowe’en weekend, everyone!
Enjoy your sugar comas…

DUE TO HIGH DEMAND, WE HAVE SCHEDULED AN ADDITIONAL INFO SESSION FOR CFC MEDIA LAB’S TELUS INTERACTIVE ART & ENTERTAINMENT PROGRAM – SPRING 2011. PLEASE RSVP TO MEDIALAB@CFCCREATES.COM FOR LOCATION DETAILS!

Think your ideas are farfetched? Think again. There’s no limit to what you can create at the CFC Media Lab. In just five months, you will learn from some of the best in the interactive business and develop engage in a collaborative process that will allow you to develop an original prototype.

ACCELERATE YOUR FUTURE

The CFC Media Lab TELUS Interactive Art & Entertainment Program (IAEP) is Canada’s first post-graduate training and production program based on a philosophy that compelling content is created though a collaborative process harnessing a wide range of creative skills.

Residents learn from a variety of perspectives including academic, industrial, artistic, technological, and practical. Team-based and project-driven, the TELUS IAEP merges the fundamentals of new media with creative collaboration.

More than 92% of CFC alumni are currently working in the Film, TV and New Media industries. Award winning Alumni companies include Stitch Media (stitchmedia.ca), Smiley Guy Studio (smileyguy.com) and Trapeze Media (trapeze.com) to name a few.

Out My Window:
CFC Media Lab co-produces with NFB the installation Out My Window: Interactive Views from the Global Highrise, one of the world’s first 360 degree webdocumentaries, set to premiere at International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA).

This co-production brings together NFB’s Out My Window team led by Katerina Cizek with Artist Priam Givord, and CFC Media Lab team David Bouchard, Galen Scorer and Ana Serrano to create a more than life size version of Out My Window.

It explores the state of our urban planet through the people who look out onto the world from highrise windows.

Out My Window features 90 minutes of documentary material from 13 cities around the world, shot in 13 languages. As the director, it’s been an honour to work on this huge global collaborative effort over the last year: we worked with over 100 photographers, journalists, architects, residents, activists, researchers around the world to bring you these incredible stories of inspiration, community and resilience.

- Katerina Cizek
Director of Out My Window

(Quote from IDFA DocLab Article by Caspar Sonnen. Read the full article here: http://blog.doclab.org/2010/10/idfa-doclab-presents-out-my-window-by-katerina-cizek)

Seminar Series to Assess the Financial Landscape of Digital Media in Canada:
With the recent launch of the Canada Media Fund, the financing landscape for Canadian film and television has changed dramatically. New media extensions are part of the new reality and there are a LOT of questions that are probably on your mind:

• When should I start planning?
• What are the implications for my production?
• Who should I work with?
• How will this help my bottom line?
• Where can I find out more?

To answer these and many other questions, the Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund, the CMPA and Zeros 2 Heroes Media are continuing the seminar series that has been held in cities across the country. Speakers in Toronto will include:

• Andra Scheffer, Executive Director, Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund
• Shawn Bailey, Director, Chocolate Liberation Front
• Jessica Clark-Bojin, Head of Entertainment Business, VFS
• Johnny Kalangis, Creative Director, Marble Media, and CFC Media Lab Alumnus
• Matt Toner, President, Zeros 2 Heroes Media

These speakers will share years of experience working with convergent media and provide the inside track on how best to advance your production. With the next Bell New Media Fund and CMF windows fast approaching, it is time to finally figure out the best way to go digital.

Last week we had the absolute pleasure of introducing International Guest Director, Dawid Marcinkowski (Director/Screenwriter/Editor/Designer), to our current Residents of the TELUS Interactive Art & Entertainment Program*.

What began with screenings of his online interactive music videos Smolik Attitude (www.nobudget.art.pl) and Someday on the Misty Island (www.dawidmarcinkowski.com/mistyisland) as well as his interactive film Sufferosa (sufferrosa.com) at TIFF Bell Lightbox, ended with a reveal of his process as an interactive filmmaker during the post-screening Q&A with our Residents and CFC Media Lab Guest Faculty member, Todd Denis, Founder/Editor of jawbone.tv.

Sufferrosa is one of the biggest interactive web-based movies ever made (110 scenes, 3 alternative endings, and 20 different locations!) The film is a satire of cult, beauty and youth in the present-day world.

Do you remember the film ‘Logan’s Run’ (1976), where everybody who is older than 30 gets exterminated? Probably our generation is not endangered by such experiments. But there is a chance that, in 40 years time we will all have transformed into frustrated woopies (Well-Off Older People) who spend their life savings on plastic surgery. And when it happens that the scalpel is not enough, we will probably head directly to the clinic of Carlos von Braun. As Mae West once said “You are never too old to become younger”…

TELUS IAEP

*Interested in being part of the next TELUS Interactive Art & Entertainment Program at the CFC Media Lab? We’re now accepting RSVP’s for our TELUS IAEP Spring 2011 Info Session on November 17th at 6:30pm in Downtown Toronto. Please RSVP to medialab@cfccreates.com to be forwarded the location details.

The deadline for TELUS IAEP Spring 2011 applications is DECEMBER 15, 2010. For more information, check out www.cfccreates.com/what_we_do/cfc_media_lab/telus_interactive_art_and_entertainment_program

SURROUND YOURSELF WITH NEW WAYS OF THINKING

Think your ideas are farfetched? Think again. There’s no limit to what you can create at the CFC Media Lab. In just five months, you will learn from some of the best in the interactive business and develop engage in a collaborative process that will allow you to develop an original prototype.

ACCELERATE YOUR FUTURE

The CFC Media Lab TELUS Interactive Art & Entertainment Program (IAEP) is Canada’s first post-graduate training and production program based on a philosophy that compelling content is created though a collaborative process harnessing a wide range of creative skills.

Residents learn from a variety of perspectives including academic, industrial, artistic, technological, and practical. Team-based and project-driven, the TELUS IAEP merges the fundamentals of new media with creative collaboration.

More than 92% of CFC alumni are currently working in the Film, TV and New Media industries. Award winning Alumni companies include Stitch Media (stitchmedia.ca), Smiley Guy Studio (smileyguy.com) and Trapeze Media (trapeze.com) to name a few.

Last night, the Canadian New Media Awards (CNMA’s) announced their 2010 Nominees!

The CNMAs are the country’s only nationwide competition that clebrates the accomplishments of Canada’s most successful digital media companies. Now in its 10th year, the Canadian New Media Awards are a part of nextMEDIA Toronto, Canada’s leading forum for the convergence of all forms of digital media, taking place November 29th & 30th, 2010 at the Design Exchange in Toronto. The CNMA gala ceremony will be held December 1, 2010, on the Trading Floor of the Design Exchange. The event is a four-part affair comprised of a pre-awards showcase, cocktail reception, awards ceremony and the much-anticipated after-party.

“We received more entries than any other year from almost every province in Canada, and we’re thrilled to be recognizing such a diverse range of companies and individuals. Every year the bar is raised with innovative creativity, entrepreneurship, and pioneering technology.”

- Jory Groberman, Executive Director of nextMEDIA

I’m crossing my fingers for CFC Media Lab Alumnae, Victoria Ha (Stitch Media) for Producer of the Year!

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS:

On Thursday, September 29, 2010, CFC Media Lab launched the prototypes created by Residents from the Fall 2009 and Spring 2010 sessions of the TELUS Interactive Art & Entertainment Program.

On Saturday, October 2, 2010, these prototypes were exhibited for Scotiabank Nuit Blanche 2010 at InterAccess Gallery.

CFC Media Lab Presents: CLOSE ENCOUNTERS

A night of "Exploratory Play"...

"Exploratory Play"... IN 3D!

Scotiabank Nuit Blanche 2010 Exhibit: Zone C #19

Neighbourhoodie, Created By: Rose Bianchini, Kathleen Climie, David McCallum

Unit N-O14, Created By: Camille Betts, Justin Ferrato

DruMeBa, Created By: Dee Balkissoon, Cathy Chen, Orla Garriques, Conor Holler

Voicings, Created By: Dawn Buie, Liz Gallo, David Goorevitch

I Should Be Dreaming of Butterflies, Created By: Sharon Switzer, Featured Alumni Artist

A good-lookin' crowd being addressed by our fearless leaders...

Slawko Klymkiw, CFC Executive Director

Ana Serrano, CFC Media Lab Director

Jacqueline Nuwame, CFC Media Lab Senior Training Programs Manager

And what party is a party without decadent food!

A great big THANK YOU to everyone who made the night such a success!

Make sure InterAccess Gallery (9 Ossington Ave.) is a stop on your route for Scotiabank Nuit Blanche 2010!

Here is a preview of what’s there to explore!

I Should Be Dreaming of Butterflies – By: Sharon Switzer
Voicings - By: Dawn Buie, Liz Gallo, David Goorevitch
DruMeBa – By: Dee Balkissoon, Cathy Chen, Orla Garriques, Conor Holler
Neighbourhoodie - By: Rose Bianchini, Kathleen Climie, David McCallum
Unit N-O14 - By: Camille Betts, Justin Ferrato

This festival is predicated on the notion that as artists, designers, engineers, architects, marketers, corporations and citizens we have the tools to (re)build the world, conceptually and actually, virtually and physically, poorly and better, aesthetically and pragmatically, in both large and small ways.

Under the theme “Build Your Own World,” the CFC Media Lab led a series of workshops where participants made their Hoodie “zombie-tag” ready for a widespread, participatory game:

The making of…

Project Hoodie Play is based on a wearable game by Rose Bianchini, Kathleen Climie and David McCallum created during their residency at CFC Media Lab’s TELUS Interactive Art & Entertainment Program. (Special shout out goes to Kate Hartman, CFC Media Lab guest faculty for helping us design the workshop!)

Check out Project Hoodie Play in ACTION:

Also at 01SJ, CFC Media Lab and Art for Commuters founder, Sharon Switzer presented the “Best Of” works from the Art For Commuters library that speak to the theme of conscious creation.

Take a peek at the “Best Of” works here:

Also at 01SJ was Luke Jerram’s “Play Me I’m Yours” an installation in which 19 street pianos appeared on the streets of San Jose, CA (www.01sjpiano.com). Located in public parks, streets and squares, the pianos were for any member of the public to play and enjoy. This project was about enlivening the urban space and the community in places you would least expect it.

Check out the music video below featuring Canadian Jazz Artist, Ori Dagan (Produced by CFC Media Lab and Leonardo Dell’Anno):

CONGRATS TO ALL!

I can hardly wait to see Project Hoodie Play in action on Toronto’s streets this Saturday during Scotiabank Nuit Blanche 2010.

So you think you’re the fastest Zombie in Toronto? PROVE IT! Make InterAccess Gallery (9 Ossington Ave.) a stop on your Nuit Blanche route and sign-up for a game of Zombie tag at 9pm, 12am, or 3am.

Come out and bring me coffee PLAY!

Shawn Micallef, Treehouse Talks, Sept. 3 2010 @ MaRS from Joseph Wilson on Vimeo.

Shawn describes his new book Stroll: Phsychogeographic walking Tours of Toronto and where his inspiration comes from.

September 9, 2010

Dear Friends,

I hope this letter finds everyone well, rested from a glorious summer, eager to embrace fall, and ready to rock n’ roll through to the rest of 2010. This August I was lucky to have spent some time in the mountains of the French High Alps at a place called Les Terraces, above the small alpine village La Grave — that’s The Grave to you. The place feels totally different from Banff, — less wilderness-y, though still wild, and feels more like a portal into the 12th century.

Here’s a picture taken from one of our walks!

Now, given what you see here, you’d think the mountains would keep thoughts of work at bay. But I must admit I would often think of the Lab. Before you groan and mutter “crazyworkaholic” let me explain.

MY TOP FIVE REASONS WHY IT WAS OKAY TO THINK OF THE CFC MEDIA LAB in the FRENCH ALPS:

1. Galen Scorer, former CFC Media Lab Research & Tech Manager is sleeping on my couch as we rush to premiere our new interactive production! Alum, Patrick Dinnen is part of the team building this exciting new work.
   
   CFC Media Lab in co-production with TIFF, will be launching an installation entitled “What’s Your Essential Cinema?” on Saturday Sept. 11 at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.
   
   As you enter TIFF Bell Lightbox, you will encounter an interactive projection above the box office: a dynamic visualization of kinetic images from each of the Essential 100 Films. Text in “your essential cinema” — one film from the Essential 100. The system takes note of it and adds it to every other person’s choice. The projected visualization then changes as the difference between what you think and what TIFF thinks is displayed on the screen. “What’s Your Essential Cinema?” pits the general public against the experts and puts you at the center of the conversation.

   A CFC Media Lab and TIFF Production
   Creative team: Ana Serrano, Galen Scorer and Patrick Dinnen
   September 12 – October 23

2. Alumni David McCallum, Rose Bianchini, Kathleen Climie, Sharon Switzer, Angella Mackey, & Pearl Chen are currently rocking out (in spirit and in person) in California under the helm of Leonardo Dell’Anno!
   
   CFC Media Lab launches Project HoodiePlay and Let’s Build Our World Intentionally at 2010 01SJ Biennial.

   The 2010 01SJ (ZER01, San Jose) Biennial is predicated on the notion that as artists, designers, engineers, architects, marketers, corporations and citizens we have the tools to (re)build the world, conceptually and actually, virtually and physically, poorly and better, aesthetically and pragmatically, in both large and small ways.

   Under the theme “Build Your Own World,” the CFC Media Lab will be leading a series of workshops where participants can make their Hoodie “zombie-tag” ready for a widespread, participatory game. There won’t be cut throat competition. And Heidi Klum won’t show up. But you will get to make your own signature “wearable Hoodie” that enables you to play Zombie Tag during the AbsoluteZER0 street festival on Friday, September 17. Project HoodiePlay is based on a wearable game by Rose Bianchini, Kathleen Climie and David McCallum created during their residency at CFC Media Lab’s TELUS Interactive Art & Entertainment Program.

   Special shout out goes to Kate Hartman, CFC Media Lab guest faculty for helping us design the workshop!

   CFC Media Lab and Art for Commuters founder, Sharon Switzer will also present the “Best Of” works from the Art For Commuters library that speak to the theme of conscious creation. Screenings will happen during 01SJ as part of the Future Films program.

3. Nuit Blanche is almost upon us and we have a launch to prepare for Oct. 2nd! CFC Media Lab IAEP Coordinator Kimberly Dean, while not running stabletalk, is helping fearless leader Jacqueline Nuwame make this happen at our new venue partner InterAccess!
   
   At this year’s Scotiabank Nuit Blanche the CFC Media Lab will present Close Encounters, an annual exhibition of work by residents of the TELUS Interactive Art & Entertainment Program. These interactive media projects run the gamut from interactive sound pieces to iPhone wearable gaming systems. From those which explore notions of first contact, to others which invite us to reimagine play. Regardless of technology platform or theme, each of these projects makes us look at things a different way. Shaving cream, pillows, mud – they can all become vehicles for our persistent visions. The gallery will be transformed into a space for inquisitive discovery and play. Created by: Dee Balkissoon, Camille Betts, Rose Bianchini, Dawn Buie, Cathy Chen, Kathleen Climie, Justin Ferrato, Liz Gallo, Orla Garriques, David Goorevitch, Conor Holler, David McCallum and featured Alumni Artist, Sharon Switzer.

   Location: InterAccess Gallery (9 Ossington Ave. Toronto)
   VIP Launch (Invite Only): September 30 from 7-10pm
   Open to Public: October 2 from 7pm-7am

4. Prototype Launch? Hell ya, we can do more!  So, CFC Media Lab Digital Production Manager, Steve Ferguson and our new Research and Technology Manager, Dave Kretz are working alongside our new partners the Royal Conservatory of Music to create a whole new work for Nuit Blanche.
   
   Commissioned by TELUS, Musical Rumble: Jazz vs Classical, is an interactive experience where larger-than-life musicians are projected onto the TELUS Centre windows while audiences use their smartphones to play a virtual game where jazz and classical musicians battle for your vote. Stop by the Bloor Street courtyard of the TELUS Centre (273 Bloor Street West, Toronto) on October 2nd from 7pm-7am to see, hear and interact with the projected performances!

   and last, but not least,

5. Jacqueline Nuwame, CFC Media Lab Senior Programs Manager, has redefined multitasking as she helps me keep all of the above running smoothly while ushering a new group of residents for the Fall 2010 TELUS IAEP session!
   
   The average age of this group is sweet-thirty and boasts the following stellar individuals:
   
   Ryan Bigge is a Toronto-based freelance journalist and content strategist with a focus on technology and cultural trends. His publication credits include the New York Times Magazine and the Toronto Star.
   
   Edwin Lara is a digital artist whose recent work was on display at the Launch Projects art gallery for the “Do Artist Dream of Electric Easels” exhibition. Edwin’s studies include everything from graphic design, marketing to art history.

   Dylan Reibling hails from a small rural community in southwestern Ontario. He makes documentaries, narrratives, and experimental films and organizes events and art installations.

   Vanessa Shaver is an award-winning writer and filmmaker who possesses a passion for story well-told, character well-wrought and concept well-formed. Vanessa has worked with Shaftesbury Films, Henry Less Productions, ImagiNation Film and Television, marblemedia and Big Studios.

   Bobie Taffe is an independent interactive cross platform Producer. Her production company, Taffe Entertainment, produces feature films/documentaries/dramatic series/lifestyle programs that focus on exploring issues of race, sexuality, self-image, multiculturalism and social justice. Bobie has been actively working in the Canadian Film and Television Industry for a little more than a decade.

   Ron Wild worked in traditional Civil / Structural disciplines before earning an MBA from the University of Western Ontario. Ron managed small hi-tech venture companies for over 15 years before transitioning into creating and exhibiting digital art.

   Tsu-Ching Yu with a Bachelor’s degree in computer science and diploma in digital media at the Recording Arts Canada Digital Arts College, is a lyric coloratura soprano. She is also an ACTRA stunt performer for film and television who trains in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

I was thinking of listing my Top 10 Reasons…but got tired after five. (Now I see why I may have needed to climb almost 15,782 ft to get away from it all.) But the reality is that I wasn’t letting thoughts of work destroy my zen mountain moments: I thought about the team of staff, alumni, faculty and former colleagues of CFC Media Lab because I was in awe of how much amazing work they are doing. (Notice I didn’t even mention any of the other work our esteemed community has been building within their own corporations and practice! Way to go Caitlin! Woo hoo Gorbets for the San Jose Airport! Congrats, Martha, on finishing up your comprehensives! Dare I go on?)

And as many of you know, there are another five projects lurking around the corner ready to be announced after we get through the 01SJ/TIFF/NUIT Blanche triage.

So here I am sitting in a dusty hallway of the new Bell Lightbox, high from sleep-deprivation, copying and pasting text into the Max Patch for Galen.  The plug behind me does not work, my black skirt is now drywall white, and sure I miss the mountains. But I’m really excited about this Fall and seeing everyone this weekend for our annual BBQ.

Namaste to all,

Ana

Check out the full coverage of Cross Media Toronto 2010 (CMTO10) now up on YouTube as a 13-part series: www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_hiHUhFtCY

CFC Media Lab and MaRS co-presented with Jumpwire Media to launch Cross Media Toronto on July 21st, 2010 at the MaRS Centre. Cross Media Toronto (www.crossmediato.com) featured heavyweight media industry executives who discussed perspectives on how transmedia content will be produced, distributed and consumed in a cross media environment, with a specific look at ways to incorporate cross media into business models.

I recommend taking a few minutes out of your Monday to go YouTubing down the web-stream!
Bombs away!

Congratulations to CFC Media Lab Alumnus, Suyin Looui, a New York Artist/Producer who developed Hey Baby, a provoking online first-person shooter game (available to play for free at heybabygame.com).

…At first (Hey Baby) appears to be a self-consciously ridiculous revenge fantasy for women who have felt oppressed or threatened by sexual attention or commentary from men. Think of “Death Wish” with a woman walking home from work in the role of Charles Bronson.

Yet over several hours my initial alienation and annoyance gave way to a swelling appreciation of Hey Baby, not as a game but as a provocative, important work of interactive art as social commentary. The people who should really play Hey Baby are men, even if you have never said a word to a woman you didn’t know on the street.

- SETH SCHIESEL, The New York Times

To read the entire NY Times article, click here: www.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/arts/television/08baby.html?_r=1

PLAY NOW! www.heybabygame.com/play

Way to go, Suyin! (I’ll certainly be thinking of you next time I walk by a construction site…)

The CFC Media Lab invites you to join us for our TELUS IAEP Spring 2010 Prototype Preview, exhibiting the talents of Dawn Buie, Orla Garriques, Conor Holler, Cathy Chen, David Goorevitch, Liz Gallo, and Dee Balkissoon.

“Voicings”
Created by: Dawn Buie, David Goorevitch, and Liz Gallo

Listen in on a journey of discovery and creation, revealing the human passions and motivations that drive the process of innovation. From the everyday to the truly profound, hear a symphony of voices offering insights into the personalities driving innovation at MaRS. Voicings mines these people’s words for elemental phrases about how they act in the world and what they say they believe. Where Voicings differs from documentary is by revealing the playful aspects of these personalities through associative word play and in doing so finds unanticipated resonances.

“DruMeBa”
Created by: Orla Garriques, Conor Holler, Cathy Chen, and Dee Balkissoon

DruMeBa is a customizable drumming experience promoting collaboration among children with Autism. By combing the communicative and collaborative power of drumming, DruMeBa brings music therapy into the 21st Century. At one of four drumming station, each player hears the rhythms she or he creates while DruMeBa’s central table displays dynamic visuals. These provide players with immediate, whimsical, and easy-to-understand information regarding how hard they are hitting the drums, how much they are collaborating, and whether or not they are in-time with one another.

Congratulations are in order for Rose Bianchini (rosebianchini.com) CFC Media Lab Alumnus from the Telus Interactive Art & Entertainment Program, Fall 2009!

Rose is now a Senior Writer at GANZ in the Interactive Department.

Way to go girl!

Whether you’re a strategic collector of railroads or would rather invest in hotels on Mediterranean and Baltic, here is your official invitation and reminder to come out and play award-winning Gentrification: The Game! developed by Atmosphere Industries (www.atmosphereindustries.com) comprised of CFC Media Lab Alumnus and Guest Faculty Member, Kate Raynes-Goldie, with Luke Walker, David Fono and Alex Raynes-Goldie.

Gentrification: The Game! is a game*! But not your usual kind of game.
It’s a game that happens on the street, with sidewalk chalk, parades, and even a mobile web app if you feel like it. It’s called a Big Game by festivals like Come Out and Play in NYC, who awarded us Best in Fest and Best Use of Technology this summer, out of 40 other games from organizations like Disney Imagineering and NYU. Ditto for the Hide & Seek Festival in London, who are flying team across the pond this month for an ultra-exclusive edition of Gentrification: The Game: The British Expansion Pack.

But never fear! The party’s coming back to Toronto as part of Kensington Pedestrian Sunday (as promised: stabletalk.cfccreates.com/2010/05/28/gentrification-the-game-created-by-cfc-media-lab-alumnus/)

Find out more and register to play at www.atmosphereindustries.com/gentrification

*Gentrification in a nutshell: 30 people, divided into teams of developers and locals, fight to collect real-life properties, build chain coffee shops, form BIAs, and bend the neighbourhood to their will. They’ll craft slick advertising campaigns, deliver impassioned speeches, and probably run around a bit. It’s part Monopoly, part public space hacking, and part something else entirely.

THE WHAT: Cross Media TO 2010

THE WHEN: 6 – 9:30pm, July 21, 2010

THE WHERE: MaRS Centre, 101 College St. Toronto

CMTO 2010 features an all-star line-up of industry executives and technology experts. Our goal is to bridge the gap between the different media sectors in order share information and find new opportunities. We want the gaming people to meet the TV people, the publishing people to meet the web video people, and everyone to meet the advertising people but let’s be honest, in the end, it’s all about the money.

Headline speakers include:

Lisa Charters – SVP Director Digital for Random House of Canada

Sabrina Geremia – Head of Agency Relations for Google Canada

Pete Watson – Senior Business Development Manager for RIM

Steve Pratt – CBC’s Director of Digital Music

Other special guests include:

Dr. Siobhan O’Flynn – Transmedia Consultant and CFC Media Lab Faculty Member

Chris Van Hoy – Akamai’s Chief Strategist

For more, check out www.crossmediato.com

The application deadline for the Telus Interactive Art & Entertainment Program’s Fall 2010 session has been extended to June 21, 2010!

To download the application package, click here: telusiaep_apppack_fall2010

Or visit: www.cfccreates.com/what_we_do/cfc_media_lab/telus_interactive_art_and_entertainment_program/apply

All application inquiries can be directed to medialab@cfcmedialab.com

About the CFC Media Lab

Created in 1997, the CFC Media Lab provides a unique training, research and production think-tank environment for emerging new media content developers, practitioners and companies. An internationally acclaimed and award-winning facility, graduates of the CFC Media Lab emerge as leaders in the world of interactive media, produce innovative projects and start up 21st century companies. CFC Media Lab has graduated more than 150 professionals through its various programs and services including Interactive Art & Entertainment Programme (IAEP), Interactive Project Lab (IPL), Interactive Narrative Feature Program (INFP), and NBC Universal Multiplatform Matchmaking Program (MMP). Over 100 interactive new media content products have been developed and delivered in a variety of platforms. Companies formed by the CFC Media Lab participants include Smiley Guy Studios (smileyguy.com); Trapeze Media Ltd (trapeze.com); and Xenophile Media (xenophile.ca).

APPLY TODAY!

nextMEDIA+Banff2010 will be chock-full of inspiring conversations and exciting keynotes!
Still trying to decide when to be where and where to be when? Check out the CFC Media Lab’s top picks!

To register for Banff2010, visit: https://registration.achillesmedia.com/delegate_registration/list_products?event_id=19

To check out the full schedule, visit: http://www.banff2010.com/schedule.dynamic.php?

On.Fire (onfire2010.ca) is the national media arts conference and festival of the Independent Media Arts Alliance (IMAA), a non-profit organization representing over 80 artist-run media arts centres serving more than 12,000 artists and cultural workers across Canada.

On.Fire 2010 will run June 15-19, 2010. Highlights include Opening Keynote with Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller on June 15th at 6:30pm, and Closing Keynote with Rafael Lozano Hemmer on June 19th at 6:30pm.

Check out the full schedule here: onfire2010.ca/?page_id=236

To register for On.Fire 2010, visit: onfire2010.ca/?page_id=3

REGISTER: www.netchangeweek.ca/registration

MOBILE TAKEOVER: www.netchangeweek.ca/conference/events/mobile-tech-triple-threat/
THE FUTURE PANEL: http://www.netchangeweek.ca/conference/events/the-future-panel/
CYBER SECURITY FOREIGN POLICY: http://www.netchangeweek.ca/conference/events/cyber-security-foreign-policy-implications-for-canada/