connecting*the*dots

Jackson Pollock is my all-time favorite American painter. Now, thanks to Miltos Manetas, both you and I can emulate his signature “splatter” painting technique… online.

Apparently, the Flash site has been up since 2003, but I just stumbled upon it today.

Sheer brilliance.

Thank you, Miltos.

Suggested context: The next time you’re in Long Island, consider driving out to East Hampton to visit Pollock’s home & studio. I toured the grounds in the summer of 2005 and the experience expanded and edified my respect for both Pollock and his wife, Lee Krasner.

Charlie Rose on the career of Jackson Pollock, below:

Last Sunday, Ndesanjo, Andy and I attended an event over at A&T, which we thought was a discussion about the digital divide in the African-American community. Well, it turned out to be a much broader conversation — one steeped in collaborative progression towards building stronger community.

What we stumbled upon was The Dean’s Book Club, and this particular meeting was to discuss the ten covenants found in Tavis Smiley’s book, The Covenant With Black America.

As we attempted to get our bearings straight — not quite understanding the format of the discussion — Will Hall approached us and pointed out that his table (one of eight) was the setting digital divide discussion. Once the room filled out and Sharon Hoard, Dr. Ioney James and Dean Lelia Vickers gave their opening remarks about the book and the importance of Smiley’s covenants to the African-American community, each table turned inwards and began discussing the underlying concepts behind a particular covenant.

Will Hall moderating the digital divide conversation

While the discussion was centered on Smiley’s perspective of how the digital divide affects African-Americans, each person at the table had a unique perspective to share.

Barbara Davis of HandyCapable, spoke about how computers have changed the lives of disabled individuals — specifically by providing them with the opportunity to gain skills be repairing computers themselves. She also told the story of how a local woman — grandmother and matriarch of her family — received a computer with an internet connection and soon became the connectivity and application hub for her entire family.

To the right of me sat a number of students and teachers who provided a perspective about technology in the university setting; how it needed to become more infused in the curriculum across all of the schools at A&T in order to improve computer literacy.

Student participation was the centerpiece of the evening

When I mentioned the concept of blogging and how it’s already empowered so many local voices in Greensboro, especially through our local aggregator, the kids (as well as the adults) stared back with blank expressions on their faces — knowing nothing of either blogging or Greensboro101.com.

Living in a town nicknamed Blogsboro, that reaction was somewhat disappointing, but not completely unexpected. It would be foolish to think that all of Greensboro is tracking the latest personal publishing developments, especially when sitting at a table discussing the digital divide. Our blogging community is nowhere close to being representative of the entire community.

Such an obvious divide in local, amplified voices is the primary reason I began working on The People, Yes in the first place. With this reaction as impetus, I’m beginning to consider avenues for expanding our sub-community focus beyond the homeless — post-launch of course.

But I digress… back to the discussion at hand.

Professor and student reading from The Covenant With Black America

Another perspective regarding technology in the African-American community emerged from the two professors at the table. Both men seemed to focus more on the negative aspects of today’s youth, stressing that the desire for excellence with the youth isn’t consistent with the rest of society, which affects the ability to compete for advancement in society. One professor went as far as to blame mainstream media — violent video games, music, etc. — for the degradation of African American youths.

Man, I wish we had more time to explore that one.

Ndesanjo attempted to deal with the issue, as he touched upon his work at the Boys and Girls Club, expressing the importance of teaching the youth to view the web as an opportunity to participate in an upload culture by creating media — even their own games — for distribution. It was a poignant message, but I don’t think it quite stuck as the conversation quickly moved to hit the major points of Smiley’s covenant before our student representative reported our discussion back to the entire room.

As we moved from the digital divide conversation into the presentations of the various covenant discussions, I began to get a sense of how this particular community of professionals, educators and students approached building strong, supportive, humane community. Tavis Smiley might have set the framework in motion, but the pragmatism, compassion and righteousness of the participants in the room exposed me to yet another dynamic aspect of Greensboro community.

I’m telling you, there’s gold in these yonder hills; nuggets of community I’ve yet to experience living elsewhere.

Bruce Burch, Mental Floss (feed | page)
Why? I met Bruce last week at one of the screenings for Greensboro’s Child. We chatted long enough for me to know he’s a like-minded progressive soul. His site (and radio show) is good local / national fodder.

David Hoggard, Hogg’s Blog (feed | page)
Why? I’ve stumbled across David’s blog a few times since I’ve been down here, and he’s really solid with his perspectives. I met him at last week’s screening as well.

John Robinson, The Editor’s Log (feed | page)
Why? JR is the Managing Editor of the News & Record, the local newspaper. His blog is a useful resource in understanding the goings on within the paper.

Lex Alexander, The Lex Files (feed | page)
Why? Lex and I have talked shop in person on more than one occasion. He’s the Citizen Journalism Dude at the News & Record, and a really personable guy.

Chris Nolan, Spot-On (feed | page)
Why? Ed Cone pointed to a story she wrote earlier today and I liked what I read. Simple enough. I’ll consider her on a trial run.

Talk To Action (feed | page)
Why? Ben Hwang tipped me off to a post there earlier today about a religious right video game. I skimmed through a number of other posts and found the diverse perspectives to be quite interesting.

Radio Open Source (feed | page)
Why? I met Christopher Lydon at Beyond Broadcast two weeks back and we chatted for a minute about The People, Yes. I don’t know how I missed stumbling across his site until now. Really interesting posts and podcasts…

Jonathan Hutson, Talk To Action
The Purpose Driven Life Takers

Imagine: you are a foot soldier in a paramilitary group whose purpose is to remake America as a Christian theocracy, and establish its worldly vision of the dominion of Christ over all aspects of life. You are issued high-tech military weaponry, and instructed to engage the infidel on the streets of New York City. You are on a mission - both a religious mission and a military mission — to convert or kill Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the separation of church and state - especially moderate, mainstream Christians. Your mission is “to conduct physical and spiritual warfare”; all who resist must be taken out with extreme prejudice. You have never felt so powerful, so driven by a purpose: you are 13 years old. You are playing a real-time strategy video game whose creators are linked to the empire of mega-church pastor Rick Warren, best selling author of The Purpose Driven Life.

[…]

This game immerses children in present-day New York City — 500 square blocks, stretching from Wall Street to Chinatown, Greenwich Village, the United Nations headquarters, and Harlem. The game rewards children for how effectively they role play the killing of those who resist becoming a born again Christian. The game also offers players the opportunity to switch sides and fight for the army of the AntiChrist, releasing cloven-hoofed demons who feast on conservative Christians and their panicked proselytes (who taste a lot like Christian).

Is this paramilitary mission simulator for children anything other than prejudice and bigotry using religion as an organizing tool to get people in a violent frame of mind? The dialogue includes people saying, “Praise the Lord,” as they blow infidels away.

The designers intend this game to become the first dominionist warrior game to break through in the popular culture due to its violent scenarios and realistic graphics, lighting, and sound effects. Its creators expect it to earn a rating of T for Teen. How violent is that? That’s the rating shared by Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell - Chaos Theory, a top selling game in which high-tech gadgets and high-powered weapons - frag grenades, shotguns, assault rifles, and submachine guns — are used to terminate enemies with extreme prejudice.

Could such a violent, dominionist Christian video game really break through to the popular culture? Well, it is based on a series of books that have already set sales records - the blockbuster Left Behind series of 14 novels by writer Jerry B. Jenkins and his visionary collaborator, retired Southern Baptist minister Tim LaHaye. “We hope teenagers like the game,” Mr. LaHaye told the Los Angeles Times. “Our real goal is to have no one left behind.”

[…]

Freedom of speech and anti-censorship laws exist in this nation to protect our ability to hold civil discourse — even when it’s in the form of twisted, violent, crusading game narratives aimed at our children and marketed through the tenticles of the mega-church.

The redeeming factor behind the development of this specific game, is that the motive of the religous right is on display for the world to see. Too often their hatred becomes cloaked in motive numbing rhetoric — placating tales of Jesus’ love for all humanity as long as humanity devotes itself to Jesus. Over the past 20 years, such rhetoric has masked their intent, allowing them to gain a strong, political foothold in America — specifically with moderate Christians.

So when the religous right’s arrogance is responsible for removing their own metaphorical hoods, we need to gaze into their hateful, soulless eyes and take detailed notes.

The “Up In Arms” Crowd

It’s interesting to note that historically, church groups have been the most active in denouncing hip-hop music and video games for their violent content, arguing that they influence kids to become violent, misogynistic, or even worse, question authority.

Left Behind: Eternal Forces is scheduled to release in October 2006, just four months away. Where are these vocal groups now? Is “bling” and “bitch” rhetoric more deserving of protest than marketing to children a programmed, interactive virtual reality for cleansing non-Christian people from the face of the earth?

Hillary Clinton railed hard against the Hot Coffee mod, a locked, sex scene found in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (a scene that only a slight percentage of geeks even knew existed) in a move that smelled of pandering to the family values crowd. Where is her outrage?

It’ll be interesting to see how long Left Behind: Eternal Forces flies under the radar of both the church and Hillary Clinton.

It’ll actually be quite telling…

via productdose

From the I Am 8 Bit art opening. The gallery images bring me back to ‘82, when I lined up “got next” quarters that I lifted from my father’s NJ Parkway commuting dish (top drawer, to the right under the papers) up on the screen of Elevator Action at Keil’s Pharmacy in Upper Montclair.

Jay, I know you’re closer to 2-bit, but there’s gotta be room in here for your pixel style, no?

Jim Brazell moderates this panel and kicks off the discussion

The X-Box 360 costs $300. In 1995 the same computing power would have cost $100M.

Ubiquitous computing is the fourth generation of computing; a system on a chip. Cooper’s law says that the capability of wireless computers is doubling every year. The convergence of science and technology is driving this technology.

Dude, he just said that they can control the movement of a mouse, just like a remote aircraft. The tipping point of creepyness?

Serious games are serious. The US Armed Forces, the UN, foreign countries, they’re all creating games for training, social changes and then remixing them with the industry to create n number of emmersive, narrative experiences.

Irwin Kaplan

The Army is redesigning their training corriculumn from level 1 (books) to level 3 (interactive), SCORM Conformant (has to run across a network). They upped their interactive traing from 0 of 150 hours to 82 of 150 hours. They’re trying to equipt soldiers to react in the midst of battle with necessary information available from everywhere.

They have simulation centers as large as the ACC to train soldiers on games. Warehouse sizes.

MLT is Medical Leadership Training. They build realtime scenarios based on field exercises and import them into an interactive narrative, running on the Unreal engine.

He considers himself an educator… and recruiter.

Dr. James Bower

Whyville teaches kids how to eat right based on an avitar/persona thats responds to good or bad choices. There are 1.5 million kids on the site and they stick around (one kid has visited 2000 times over six-years, that’s one visit per day). They play with the social/non-social curve of the game’s narrative to watch boys and girl’s interests shift.

The kids have been writing articles for six years now. They’re running their own government online. They’re replicating democracy.

Now marketing is interested, and smart firms like Toyota, are dipping into Whyville to understand the concept of interactive engagement. They offered Nestle to get involved, but they only wanted to get Purina involved; healthy choices meant more to Nestle in relationship to dogs than kids.

New marketing will enable people to design their worlds and affect mass production.

Michael Whalem

Ignite Learning has developed Reality, Inc., which creates emmersive storytelling games for middle-school students, based 100% on state curriculum. The virtual head of the reality space (Mortimer Gravitas) presents the goals for moving through the interactive curriculum. (very similar to a project I worked on in 1996, “Simon Fefher’s Junkland Jam”)

It’s a linear progression through different activities, such as a game full of levers, which must be moved, created, put in motion to feed some monkeys bananas. If you mess up, it’s ok, try again (the army guys smiled when he said that).

Quote of the day: Bower: “The more games tap into the chemical changes of the brain… the more we will learn.”

Disclaimer: This is live blogging; all quotes are paraphrases.

Goofy quote from this 35 year-old man: “They’re animated!”

So_much_fun.

(via Boing Boing)

This game genre is a long-time overdue:

If A Force More Powerful finds an audience, the possibilities for social justice gaming are endless. Imagine games that provide proper context to historical events — Chomsky style — and are a blast to play. Quite seriously, that could drastically alter the political landscape of future generations. I mean, what would the propagandists counter with? Non-thinking first person shooter games that simply glorify war and death?

I ordered it today, so figure 5 days for delivery and 3 consecutive all-nighters for gameplay… I’ll have a review by the end of next week. Unfortunately, I’m not kidding around.

(via The Republic of T)

Remember the bouncy ball ad?

You gotta love Machinima.

(via Boing Boing)

Now *this* is the internet I imagined when I left the cd-rom gaming industry in ‘97.

It’s only a preview, but it’s so_much_fun. If the experience continues to evolve along its current path… wow. Great job, Microsoft!

The A9 Yellow Pages team has to view this as steep competition, as it directly challenges their Block View feature (which they invested a lot of time and resources into capturing and developing).

Maybe now focus can shift to improving search precision, allowing us to tap into store inventories to help us find *exactly* what we’re looking for; the rest of the results equation — proximity and recognition — is now officially covered.

(via Techcrunch)

Forget connecting*the*dots; it’s time for eating*the*dots.

Bunchball. This could get really interesting… fast.

(via Michael Arrington)

Awesome mashup.

(via fixeight)