First, could you tell us a little bit about XMPLAR, both from a storyworld point of view, and from your perspective as an artist?

XMPLAR is about a collective of nascent artificial intelligences created to learn and evolve with stimulus from crowd-sourced photography/surveillance. The gist of the experience is one where the player is put into an initially uneasy partnership with an AI, which gradually matures over time into a more whole-hearted commitment to its concerns and desires. It’s a world only half a shade off from the reality we are living already, with a soupçon of magical realism thrown in to spice things up.

As an artist, this piece is trying to concretize some ideas I’ve had for awhile now about the use of technology to create persistently reactive work. The intention is to make something that evolves over time, but never requires people to start from scratch. I’m looking to build a long-term relationship with my audience, over multiple experiences in different media. It’s also an exorcism/indictment of the always-hungry corporate façades doing their best to monetize, control, or package a product from the world around us.

How did you get into this kind of practice? What’s your background, and why are you interested in this strange hybrid of narrative, interaction design, and performance?

I was into computer science and robotics when I was younger, but had a change of heart while in undergrad, and ran headlong into Humanities. I’ve also always considered myself a writer in practice, if not so much in product at times. So there’s a thread of narrative to all my concerns.

After graduating, I started making my peace with the science/art, hard/soft disciplines through works of hyperfiction, which got me interested in the use of anonymized tracking in order to make readers’ experiences persistent. I was working as a web and graphic designer at the time in Kentucky.

I entered the UC Santa Cruz Digital Arts New Media program two years ago, and everything has exploded from there. I’ve gotten really interested in using web technology to make reactive projection installations, as well as bringing back my work with physical materials through electronics.

To me, working with all these different media is a way to push myself, and to also break through the barrier of normalcy we’ve built up around technology. I want to make it magical again. I love to make things composed of ordinary parts that, when added up, become extraordinary.

Who or what are some touchstone inspirations for you?

I’m inspired materially by the growing normalization of surveillance–both on a person-to-person level, and the organizational level–through mobile apps and GPS. Businesses like Internet Eyes, where we’re given the ability to spy on each other with sanction from the government through their own CCTV cameras, and given “prizes” for catching criminals, is a source of constant amusement and horror to me. There are so many corporate entities out there that eclipse any fiction I can create, the best I can hope is to pull faces at it and hope to expose that to my audience.

On a lighter note, I find a lot of inspiration in the work of other ARGs like the Jejune Institute and your own Reality Ends Here! I think these works are ultimately a real labor of love, and those sorts of experiences where creators take an intensely individual focus on the recipients is really ballsy and laudable.

I’m fascinated by the role of chaos in this project, particularly with respect to narrative. At first, the prompts I receive from my XMPLAR seem totally random. But as things move on, various structures — story figures, characters, etc — start to emerge. How did you do this — and, perhaps more importantly, why?

There are a couple intentions at work in the code. On one level there is an element of randomness, within the bounds of a selected set. I’m drawing from a database of millions of concepts, so things can naturally diverge quite quickly. But I try to build in checks such that the player is drawn into certain directions as they move through the experience. It sort of builds a bank as you go, and that informs its selection process. But it’s important to me to allow space for the player to map their own ideas onto the XMPLAR’s workings. There is nothing more interesting to me than hearing people offer theories on what they think the XMPLAR are doing when they take that picture!

There is also a particular story I am hoping to tell with this first chapter. But as with all good ARGs, it’s important to me to see what the players are thinking, and to let that shape the story moving forward. I’m hoping it will be a highly-mediated, but highly-responsive, dialogue!

I know you’re collecting a lot of data in real-time about usage of the app, and that this data is going to appear in a variety of ways at the exhibition. Are you seeing anything surprising in the ways that people are using the app? Are there any common trends in the way that people engage with their XMPLARs?

I’ve been surprised by how wildly the engagement varies. I was also surprised to see a fair number of people dive into the app before I’d really planned on any way of getting the word out! Thankfully having that information available made it possible to react quickly. It’s probably also horribly American of me, but I’m surprised at how the distribution of users has been pretty even-handed inside and outside the US. And to be honest, I’ve been surprised and a little unnerved at how the XMPLAR processes have been recovering from errors and ushering people onward in the experience. The chaos I’ve introduced into the project is hopefully a wave I can continue to ride!

I like interacting with my XMPLAR in front of my TV. It’s actually a great way of watching TV, as it gets me searching through the channels for images I could use as responses to the prompts. I find myself watching stuff I wouldn’t normally watch, and looking at parts of the frame I usually tune out. In this way, my XMPLAR is detourning my TV watching experience. How is this typical (and/or atypical) of the way you expected people to engage with the project?

Oh wow, I hadn’t even thought of that! That’s amazing. Taking a picture of a picture of a picture! But that’s exactly the experience I am hoping to create. I’ve had players come up to me and tell me how they had never noticed something totally weird in their day-to-day world until their XMPLAR asked them to take a picture of “fine-grained parallelism” or something like that. And that’s what I’m shooting for with this first chapter.

Where and when is the exhibition, and what can people expect to see there?

The big opening is on May 2nd from 8-10pm…this Thursday! It’s at the Digital Arts Research Center up at UC Santa Cruz. I’m exhibiting with other members of my cohort in the Digital Arts program. In addition to getting a chance to see some of the data visualizations of what’s currently happening in the game, there are some interesting plans in motion that should hopefully result in a very punctuated, transitory, and shocking experience. There will be some recording happening I think as well (as any automated security company worth its salt would) so people physically unable to attend should keep an eye on the ISA Website.

Finally, what’s next for XMPLAR — and for you?

If you can believe it, I’m going to be starting a PhD in Expressive Intelligence at UC Santa Cruz this fall. So there may be more fact in XMPLAR than people suspect by the end of things, as far as AI goes. The idea is to fold this ongoing piece into my practice moving forward, while pushing myself in the sort of “harder” areas of artificial intelligence to substantiate the fiction more fully, while also continuing to move the experience into weird areas like telerobotics and cybernetic systems!

Thanks, Jacob!

Further information: Integrated Security Automation, Inc., UCSC DANM ground (ctrl), Jacob Garbe.

AUTHENTIC IN ALL CAPS, a “web audio adventure” by Christy Dena, Craig Peebles, Trevor Dikes and Simon Howe, is the kind of project I’d love to see more of on the web. Described as “a unique audio experience that combines radio drama and web navigation,” AIAC uses the process of visiting and traversing among websites as an opportunity for story-rich flanerie.

Taking its cues from both the time-tested (and, in my opinion, much undervalued) art of radio drama, and the more recent practice of real-world locative storytelling, AIAC presents a hybrid experience that promises to mix the active engagement modes inherent in web navigation with more reflective or readerly modes of story apprehension.

We’ve created this new way to experience the web. What we’ve done is create a unique audio experience that combines radio drama and web navigation. But the websites you go to will all be fictional ones we’ve created especially for this experience.

You’ll download an app to play on your iPad. Once open, you’ll be guided by a narrator and the characters as they travel across the web to their fictional websites. So you’ll hear the drama unfold, see the fictional websites, and click around the web with the characters. (Pozible.com: AUTHENTIC IN ALL CAPS)

I’ve known Christy for a few years now, and she’s always at the forefront of imagining new ways of leveraging new media to mix storytelling and play. AIAC demonstrates that she’s continuing along that path. The project is presently in the stretch run of a funding drive, so head over to Pozible and help bring this new kind of interactive story experience into the world.

Among many other important insights, Literat’s paper presents a concise breakdown of what she calls “The Levels of Artistic Participation,” identifying the affordances of “receptive,” “executory,” and “structural” participation via a series of contemporary and historical examples:

Literat’s analysis can provide critical designers with important tools for working through the many ethical and practical challenges presented by what I’m calling “participation design.” For theorists, students, and designers alike, this paper is not to be missed.

More: follow Ioana Literat on Twitter.

A Cartography of the Anthropocene from global citizenship organization Globaia presents a collection of evocative maps of energy use, transportation networks, population, airline routes, atmospheric CO2 concentration, and more:

In countries with war-ravaged pasts, concealed landmines pose a silent, hidden threat. Lurking underground for years, they risk throwing open fresh wounds in communities which are just beginning to heal.

Afghanistan, a country with a long history of war, is dotted with these subterranean dangers. According to one report, about 1 million Afghans live within 500 meters of areas expected to contain landmines. Recently, a group of 10 girls lost their lives when they encountered a hidden mine on a routine outing to gather wood. On average, landmines claim about 42 lives every month.

This “Mine Kafon” is a spherical mobile made out of biodegradable plastic and bamboo. It’s light enough that the wind would–in theory–push it around naturally. But it is also heavy enough to set off landmines as it rolls over them.

“With each detonation the Mine Kafon loses just one or two legs so it could potentially destroy three or four landmines in one journey

The Mine Kafon, at this prototype stage, has been exhibited at the London Design Museum, Milan Design Week, Helsinki Museum, Dutch Design Week, Lodz Design Festival and acquired by MOMA in New York. (Kickstarter: Mine Kafon)

Massoud Hassani and the team behind Mine Kafon are currently seeking funding on Kickstarter. Help them out here.

Via @lanceweiler

Haley Moore is an artist and designer who specializes in using technology to tell stories with objects. She is also the cohost of the Transmedia Talk podcast, and has covered the ARG and transmedia scenes for the Workbook Project, among other outlets. Haley’s wealth of experience in conceiving and fabricating story artifacts (including the flags, medals, and other swag we commissioned for Reality Ends Here) has established her as an expert in what she calls “evidentiary fiction” or “tangible storytelling.” Her most recent project, The Laser Lace Letters, exemplifies the kind of care, detail, and depth present in Haley’s object-driven storyworlds.

Hi Haley! Thanks for doing this interview. I thought we would start with the big picture first. Could you tell us a bit about “tangible storytelling,” and how you ended up working in this space?

Tangible storytelling – that’s easy, it’s telling stories through physical objects. It can be a supportive art that sets the mood for a story, like dressing a set, costuming a character, or choosing just the right presentation for your mailers. Often it’s the first thing people experience in a transmedia campaign, through an object they get in the mail or something set up in a public place. Some projects rely more on tangible, some less.

At its deepest, tangible storytelling ties in closely with the idea of story archaeology. When we’re asking the reader to dig up some fossils, I’m the person who designs the bones.

I started doing tangible work on my very first Alternate Reality Game, which was a fan ARG for the TV show Alias. Shortly after, I was recruited to build some key artifacts for Dave Szulborski’s second Chasing the Wish ARG, Catching the Wish. By then, my reputation for being a jack-of-all-trades craftsperson was settled, and my artistic development became hopelessly entangled with ARGs.

Describe the Laser Lace Letters. How do people experience the story world you have created? How does it differ from other kinds of fiction?

Every few days, I’m coming up with a new way to describe Laser Lace, and at the moment it’s this: Laser Lace Letters are short stories that you explore by pawing through other people’s stuff.

In Laser Lace Letters, you’re tasked with piecing together the evidence related to a disappearance – and by evidence, I actually mean physical artifacts. Diary pages, sketches from the journals of inventors, pages torn out of childrens books, deeds, manifestoes, photographs, love notes, suicide letters.

The cool thing is, all this evidence comes from an alternate steampunk Victorian era, so you aren’t just looking at beautiful handwritten letters, but ones that talk about clockwork powered tiny robots and how you can use them to assassinate people, or what it’s like to be an airship captain, or the challenges of being a stage magician in a world where technology is already a bit magical. It’s like this fell out of time and into your mailbox.

At the center of each story, we have a unique central artifact. I’ve been working on these for about a year now – felt laser cut cameos that represent the central character in each of our seven stories. When you’re done with Laser Lace Letters, you come away with a wearable momento.

These things are made on a hobby laser cutter that I’ll be buying with the money raised in the Kickstarter. They’re amazingly detailed – for example, one of them features an airship fleet, complete with little windows on the sides of the cabin. We have one cameo that’s surrounded by crimson gears, daggers, and a bloody red heart.

Obviously, there are a lot of things in this approach that are different from film or a novel. There’s no third person omniscient and no proscenium. Each story has at least one character who’s a bit of a narrator, but it’s very much about reading between the lines and putting the pieces together. Voice and intertextuality are extremely important, and because we can’t see our characters, context and style become part of the narrative language. Even the color of paper each character writes on becomes significant.

What were your inspirations for the project?

Ah, Jordan Weisman, how do I love thee? I was utterly enchanted with Cathy’s Book, and I dug on Personal Effects: Dark Art. Like most people, I was also in love with the Jejune Institute, even though I never got a chance to play it in person. Those are tangible, tech-light experiences that present really deep rabbit holes to fall into.

I’ve been tossing the idea of a steampunk project around ever since I met Yomi Ayeni at Storyworld last year and found out he was interested in partnering with some other artists for Clockwork Watch. That’s exactly what ended up happening with Laser Lace, it’s the first big Clockwork Watch spinoff.

A couple of other things spurred it on. Girl Genius is a fantastic comic that influenced the way I think about steampunk. David Malki does a series called True Stuff From Old Books, which is full of very real weirdness from the same era that steampunk stories exist in. I’m a huge fan of the Phoenix Wright games, which often involve closely examining evidence. I’ve been knee deep in the Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs Online Catalog, and also following the work of Lea Redmond, a killer tangible artist who runs World’s Smallest Postal Service and was involved with Jejune.

The cameos came directly out of some experiments that I did at the Dallas Makerspace last December. I’d finished my annual donation to the Desert Bus for Hope Craftalong. Last year was a giant soft mosaic made from laser cut felt, and afterward I started experimenting with self-forming woven shapes using the leftover felt. The story grew out of the design process, and has a lot of close ties to the real origins of the cameos.

This kind of work seems to have so much potential, especially in the age of the ebook. It’s almost like this is where physical book publishing in general needs to head — that is, toward providing readers with more than just pages of text, but with real artifacts that can’t be duplicated digitally. In that sense, do you consider this a kind of publishing project?

It’s an ironic question, because Laser Lace straddles the border between digital and physical. Everything has a digital origin – even the cameos, which are made from parts cut out by a computer-controlled robot. And yet, so far on Kickstarter, people have shown that they want the physical version of the stories rather than the digital version. Designers have to set out to create a specific physical experience, in order to get audiences to not take the “shortcut” to digital.

Yep, it’s a publishing project. It’s most similar to a comic book series, except we have a digital book instead of a trade paperback.
I think we’re in a transitional era right now, where the safest thing is for publishers to stick with a straightforward content design that they know how to push to both print and digital efficiently. I can’t wait to see what happens once we get a good standard for introducing interactivity in a traditional reading flow on a tablet. Then, I have a feeling digital artifacts are going to become extremely common, just as they are in video games.
There’s no doubt that publishers can profit from integrating tangible in the right way – but I’ve imagined what this project would look like in the hands of a big publisher, and it involves manufacturing everything in China and leaning on economies of scale; it’s a big investment for a publisher to make.

The flipside of the internet age is that, even though it’s pulling the traditional reading experience to digital, it’s also connecting suppliers and creators. Today, a small outfit can do a project like this, which would have been impossible without a publisher ten years ago. It’s the same reason we don’t necessarily need big apparel companies, toy makers, or technology companies to bring great stuff to market today – although it certainly helps. Small creators can bring an artisanal dimension to the art – everything in Laser Lace Letters has been put together from start to finish by an artist, whether its weaving the lace or putting the wax seal on the package.

I’d love to see a publishing partnership with a group like a hackerspace. Some very interesting and innovative stuff would come out of that.

This question has two parts. First, who is the intended audience for Laser Lace Letters? And second, how broad is the audience you imagine for tangible story projects in general?

If you like steampunk, ARGs, or mystery stories, you’re going to love Laser Lace. Though we’re doing some online teasers/expansions, the core experience is no-tech, so anyone who can pick up a book can enjoy one of these stories.

That said, while Laser Lace is a reading experience for adults, I think the audience skews a bit younger, with people who are more familiar with things like the Harry Potter franchise that has all sorts of artifacture surrounding it. The steampunk audience is in about that age range as well, so I’m reaching out to an audience that has a sweet tooth for this kind of thing.

I’m really trying to introduce some diversity to steampunk and break gender norms. Too often, the genre seems like an endless parade of white men. So, when we went to create an in-game advert to appear in the new Clockwork Watch comic, the art we created was of an Indian woman. She’s wearing period costume and some stylish goggles, and she’s utterly gorgeous. Again, we can’t see the characters in the main story, so most of them we have no idea what their race is. I want to open it up a bit, so everyone can come and play in our world.

The breadth of audience for tangible stories depends a lot on the type of story. You have the best shot by working in a genre that has a popular appeal, just because so much of the story is tied up in stye. I’m inclined to think that kids who grew up on things like Harry Potter and the Ologies books are going to be more disposed than the current average to start reading things like Laser Lace, as they move out of their teens and into their twenties over the next five years.

Of course, as extensions of a bigger story world, tangible stories are a pretty easy sell to fans of the larger project. They’re like merchandising and spinoff fiction rolled in one.

What can readers do to support this project?

If you like the idea, you can check out all the stories and pledge on our Kickstarter page, or if you’re broke, you can spread the word on your various Twitters, Facespaces, and Mumblers.

Any surprises you can tease us with?

We’re slowly rolling out teasers for each of the stories at LaserLaceLetters.com, but we haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of four of those stories. Pretty soon you’re going to meet our mad science character and get a load of his special brand of quackery.

Also I highly advise you watch the stream for Desert Bus for Hope. A bunch of comedians play the worst video game ever made until you stop giving them money for charity. It’s a blast and well…you’ll just have to see.

Finally, what’s next for you?

If all goes well, I’ll be lasering and writing for several months. I hope to take Laser Lace to trade shows and conventions in the Spring and Summer of 2013, including at least one event with the Clockwork Watch crew. After that, so very many projects. I’m still working on an object-augmented book called Research and Developments, as well as a tangible city exploration project.

This workshop is intended for those who wish to explore how games can be designed to directly impact the social fabrics of lived environments such as schools, public institutions, workplaces, and neighborhoods. In specific, this workshop is about how artists, entertainers, educators, policy-makers, and activists can use game design to embolden and empower communities to actively engage in the creative construction of their own realities.

The kinds of games explored in this workshop do not take place in simulated worlds; indeed, many of the games discussed here are not digital at all, and draw more on party games, Happenings, and Situationism than they do on code and computation. What all the games mentioned and imagined in this workshop have in common is that they are woven into or layered upon the lived environments of their players. These kinds of games go beyond merely calling for change by actually bringing it about through playful interventions that both embody and enable transformation, discovery, and social engagement.

Presented October 19, 2012 at Meaningful Play in East Lansing, Michigan.

Additional information: see Research.

UPDATE: Photos from the workshop:

This little guy (seen here at the bar where we went immediately after receiving the award) now has a permanent home in the @scareality Game Office.

Sam Lavigne is the co-founder (with Ian Kizu-Blair) of Situate, a design and consulting studio that produces “games that inspire people to create, explore and connect online and in the real world.” Sam’s groundbreaking work in collaborative production game design has set the standard for challenge-driven social media-making games. The interview below was conducted via email on July 27, 2011.

A lot of different disciplines have been converging on pervasive gaming (or whatever you want to call it) over the past few years. What’s your trajectory into this space?

Ian and I have always loved playing games. We first started making games when we were undergrads at the University of Chicago; at the time, I was studying Comparative Literature, and Ian was studying English. We read about The Beast and were inspired by its ability to bring people together to solve seemingly impossible problems. We got an arts grant from the U of C to make a similarly structured (but entirely noncommercial) game called Helen Chanam, in which players were tasked with finding a missing art student. Shortly afterward, we moved to San Francisco and created SF0. Our goal in SF0 was to let players experience what we had experienced while making our first game: to create adventure and mystery for each other. In SF0 everyone is a player, but everyone is also a game designer. Since our success with SF0, we’ve started a company called Situate and have continued to make games that blur the line between everyday life and game.

There are quite a few urban derive projects out there, but one of the things that’s made SF0 so special is the way that you use a pretty tight set of game mechanics to structure and drive the players’ creative interventions. One line from the game’s About page stands out in this regard: “You may find that your own willingness to interact with the city in new ways varies linearly with relation to your Score.” Why did you choose to structure things with rules and point systems?

Games provide an incredibly compelling vehicle for recontextualizing normal spaces. When we play a game, we let go of our everyday constraints, and our everyday motivations for action. Games open up new possibilities, and new ways of interacting with the world and each other, especially when played offline. Rules and points are an invaluable part of any game, and a key component in allowing us to behave playfully. We can ignore the rules of our everyday lives by embracing the alternate rules of the game. Points both help players track their progress through the game world, and provide a pleasant motivation for continuing to play. (Although with SF0, we found that many of the most advanced players didn’t really care that much about their score after a certain point.)

Collaborative production games have a long pre-digital history. For example, some of the spirit of SF0 seems to trace its origins to Fluxus’ “event scores” and other participatory performance activities and games. What are some of the big inspirations for you from the world of analog games and interventions?

We’re greatly inspired by the Situationists; so much so, in fact, that one of the groups in SF0 is called the BART Psychogeographical Association. We were particularly inspired by the Situationist critique of urban spaces structured for cars and consumerism, the concept of a revolution of everyday life, and resisting the spectacle through everyday direct action and modified behaviors. That is not to say, however, that SF0 is a Situationist game-the Situationists are simply a major inspiration.

InterroBANG and Flashback are both projects intended to be engaged with by young people, students and teachers and as extensions to more formal classroom activities. Did this make the design process significantly different for you and your team? Why or why not?

The design process was actually pretty similar. We tried to structure InterroBang and Flashback in the same way that we structured SF0: give players fun and exciting things to do, and inspire them to create fun and adventure for each other. We wanted the games to act as democratizing forces, allowing students to review each others’ work, and even shape curriculum by giving them the ability to create new missions for the games. We believe real learning can only happen when you’re excited about the topic at hand, so we focused on inciting passion for subject areas rather than trying to teach specific dates and times. In Flashback, we wanted to present history as a living entity, something you participate in directly by taking action in the world.

Can you briefly describe these two projects? What is the main gameplay and what are some key observations about the ways in which people play them? In hindsight, is there something you think that works particularly well and in turn, anything you would change?

Both games have almost the same gameplay as SF0. You start at Level 1 with 0 points. You get points and progress through a series of levels by completing missions in the real world, and posting documentation of what you did online. Other players vote and comment on your work. You also have the ability to create missions for other players to complete. Both projects targeted high school-age students and younger. Flashback was about American history and civics, and InterroBang was more about general problem solving. A quote from Flashback’s about page sums it up nicely: “Flashback is a game in which you complete real-world missions with the aim of de- and re-constructing American History and connecting with others to change the world. You begin at level 1 with 0 points. As you complete missions and advance in level you gain the skills and historical knowledge you’ll need to develop strategies for overcoming persistent historical injustices and defeating your class enemies.”

We were very excited to see how creative and engaged students were in both projects–we got some truly amazing results. Most of the kids who played the games loved them, and I think part of the reason was that we gave them more freedom and space to be expressive than is usually possible in a classroom. We also learned that the games worked best in classrooms with excellent teachers who took time to work with their kids. If I could change anything about these games it would be to give students even more freedom and trust, and provide more support to participating teachers.

 Do you think that location-awareness poses unique or new redefinitions of activism?

This is a very interesting question that I don’t really feel qualified to answer. Knowing and being connected to your surroundings is certainly very important. That said, when we’re online it doesn’t really matter where we’re physically located. SF0, for example, is called “SF0″ because we initially thought it would only be for residents of San Francisco. Instead, people started playing it from all over the world and SF0-like communities sprouted up in many unusual and unexpected places.

What is your perspective on “gamification” – both generally, and more specifically, in context to civic society and engagement?

I believe that games should fun and stimulating more than anything else. I love that people want to make more and more interactions playful or “gameful” but I think the current trend of trying to add a game layer to every possible activity is worthless unless the resulting games are high quality. Just because something can be a game doesn’t mean it needs to be.

In terms of civic society and engagement: I believe that games can improve the world in the same way that a great work of art can improve the world. Games, like art, have the capacity to teach us, challenge us, and reveal the world to us in unexpected ways. Both games and art can defamiliarize the world, make it new, and this I think is the starting point for all forms of change.

2012 Games for Change talk. Short presentation of Reality Ends Here. Delivered Tuesday June 19th at the Skirball Center, NYC.

This is the quick-and-dirty presentation for the 2011 version of Reality Ends Here. Versions of this presentation were delivered at the 2012 Game Developers Conference, the 2012 Digital Media and Learning Conference, and at Transmedia Storytelling Berlin.

Charles Eames, as interviewed in 1972 by “L. Amic” of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. Eames’ Zen-like answers amount to a thorough and timeless definition of design. What stands out to me is the exchange about constraints: “Does design admit constraints?” the interviewer asks. Eames says, of course, design depends on constraints. When the interviewer asks, “What constraints?” Eames begins his reply by saying, “The sum of all constraints.”

What is your definition of “design?”

A plan for arranging elements in such a way as to best accomplish a particular purpose.

Is design an expression of art (an art form)?

The design is an expression of the purpose. It may (if it is good enough) later be judged as art.

Is design a craft for industrial purposes?

No— but design may be a solution to some industrial problems.

What are the boundaries of design?

What are the boundaries of problems?

Is design a discipline that concerns itself with only one part of the environment?

No.

It is a method of general expression?

No— it is a method of action.

Is design a creation of an individual?

No— because to be realistic one must always admit the influence of those who have gone before.

…or a creation of a group?

Often.

Is there a design ethic?

There are always design constraints and these usually include an ethic.

Does design imply the idea of products that are necessarily useful?

Yes— even though the use might be surely subtle.

It is able to cooperate in the creation of works reserved solely for pleasure?

Who would say that pleasure is not useful?

Ought form to derive from the analysis of function?

The great risk here is that the analysis may not be complete.

Can the computer substitute for the designer?

Probably, in some special cases, but usually the computer is an aid to the designer.

Does design imply industrial manufacture?

Some designs do and some do not—depending on the nature of the design and the requirements.

Is design an element of industrial policy?

Certainly; as in any other aspect of quality, obvious or subtle, of the product. It seems that anything can be an element in policy.

Ought design to care about lowering costs?

A product often becomes more useful if the costs are lowered without harming the quality.

Does the creation of design admit constraint?

Design depends largely on constraints.

What constraints?

The sum of all constraints. Here is one of the few effective keys to the design problem—the ability of the designer to recognize as many of the constraints as possible—his willingness and enthusiasm for working within these constraints—the constraints of price, of size, of strength, balance, of surface, of time, etc.; each problem has its own peculiar list.

Does design obey laws?

Aren’t constraints enough?

Ought the final product to bear the trademark of the designer? Of the research office?

In some cases, one may seem appropriate. In some cases, the other, and certainly in some cases both.

What is the relation of design to the world of fashion (current trends)?

The objects of fashion have usually been designed with the particular constraints of fashion in mind.

Is design ephemeral?

Some needs are ephemeral. Most designs are ephemeral.

Ought it to tend towards the ephemeral or towards permanence?

Those needs and designs that have a more universal quality will tend toward permanence.

To whom does design address itself: to the greatest number (the masses)? to the specialists or the enlightened amateur? To a privileged social class?

To the need.

Can public action aid the advancement of design?

The proper public action can advance most anything.

After having answered all these questions, do you feel you have been able to practice the profession of “design” under satisfactory conditions, or even optimum conditions?

Yes.

Have you been forced to accept compromises?

I have never been forced to accept compromises but I have willingly accepted constraints.

What do you feel is the primary condition for the practice of design and its propagation?

Recognition of the need.

What is the future of design?

(No answer)

(transcript via Brimstone and Treacle.)

If you’re in NYC, you might want to check out my talk at the Design and Technology program at Parsons The New School for Design. I will be presenting Reality Ends Here and some ideas about the role of applied pervasive games in education. Hope to see you there.

Talk info:
Monday, February 27th at 2:00-3:00pm
66 W. 12 Street, 5th Floor, Room A510

Detailed presentation of Reality Ends Here, with remarks on the methodology underlying pervasive placemaking interventions of all kinds. Originally presented February 2, 2012 at the Berkeley Center for New Media.

I will be presenting at the Game Developers Conference and the Digital Media and Learning Conference in the first week of March, 2012. These presentations are a part of a panel series jointly organized by the University of Southern California, the Rochester Institute of Technology, and Microsoft Research. The panels, entitled “Gameful Layers for the Freshman Experience”, discuss two very different approaches to using game systems to impact post-secondary education. More details below:

DML
9:00 AM March 2, 2012 Cyril Magnin Ballroom, Wyndham Parc 55 Hotel

The transition to college is a difficult experience for many young people, marked by rapid change as well as social, emotional and intellectual challenges. Additionally, today’s students may feel disconnected from traditional university classroom materials and structures, spending the majority of their out of class time interacting via text and web. This session will look at two very different experimental games which attempt to scaffold that freshman experience, allowing digital natives to bring their existing communication and media skills to bear on the building of college-level social groups and 21st century skills such as team-building, problem-solving, creative and critical thinking, brainstorming, experimentation, etc.

The two case studies were both launched in Fall of 2011 and each team has worked to assess and evaluate the outcomes so far. Just Press Play, from the Rochester Institute of Technology, is funded by Microsoft Research, and is an achievement-based system that encourages students to think of the obstacles in their path as part of a narrative of their educational development. Reality Ends Here, from the University of Southern California, is an internally funded project from the School of Cinematic Arts. Structured as an alternate reality game, the experience introduces students to the culture and history of the school, encouraging them to become part of that tradition from day one. Designers and evaluators from each project will discuss learning goals, design strategies, assessment approaches, preliminary outcomes and next steps for these innovative digital learning environments. (DML 2012)

GDC
10:00 AM Tuesday March 6, 2012 Room 2004, West Hall, 2nd Fl, Moscone Convention Center

DESCRIPTION: A comparison of two experimental games that each attempt to scaffold the first year university experience. “Just Press Play,” from RIT, an achievement-based system that encourages students to think of the obstacles in their path as part of a narrative of their educational development. “Reality Ends Here,” from USC, is a DIY media-making ARG that introduces students to the culture and history of the cinema school, challenging them to become part of the school’s storied tradition. Designers and evaluators from each team discuss learning goals, design strategies, assessment approaches, preliminary outcomes and next steps for these innovative digital learning environments.

TAKEAWAY: Attendees will learn design strategies, assessment approaches for creating innovative digital learning environments. From-the-trenches reports of technologies of play interacting with established curriculum. Outcomes for these experiments that point the way to new and exciting design solutions for games in educational settings. (GDC 2012)

Other movies, like Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days, explore the unsettling social implications of a technology that enables people to digitally capture and play back what their brain sees and hears and feels. More recently, Charlie Brooker’s brilliant Black Mirror (episode 3, “The Entire History of You“) presents a plausible vision of how such a technology could become ubiquitous, and the devastating effects it will have on privacy, intimate relationships, and the way we remember our lives.

And so it was somewhat disconcerting to come across this research conducted at Berkeley’s Gallant Lab:

The researchers describe the project as follows:

As you move through the world or you watch a movie, a dynamic, ever-changing pattern of activity is evoked in the brain. The goal of movie reconstruction is to use the evoked activity to recreate the movie you observed. To do this, we create encoding models that describe how movies are transformed into brain activity, and then we use those models to decode brain activity and reconstruct the stimulus. (UCB Gallant Lab)

Right now, to capture these recordings, the subject needs to be positioned inside a giant fMRI machine, so we’re a little way off from the dystopias described by the narratives of Strange Days and Black Mirror. But as the researchers at the Gallant Lab write, “both the technology for measuring brain activity and the computational models are improving continuously. It is possible that decoding brain activity could have serious ethical and privacy implications downstream in, say, the 30-year time frame.”

Strange days, indeed.

I will be speaking at the Berkeley Center for New Media on February 2nd, 2012, at 5PM in the BCNM Commons (340 Moffitt). Here’s the description of the talk:

In this talk, Jeff Watson will present Reality Ends Here (2011), a pervasive alternate reality game designed to effect immediate change in the community of learners at the USC School of Cinematic Arts (SCA). Over the course of the project’s 120 day run, collectible cards, rumors, secret websites, and a mysterious black flag drew more than 150 students into an intense underground social game involving collaboration, strategy, and artistic experimentation. By connecting students to one another in unpredictable and serendipitous ways, and by providing a framework for meaningful play and performance, the game transformed a collection of heavily siloed academic divisions into a productively chaotic and interdisciplinary community of practice. Drawing on the research and methodology underlying the design, implementation, and assessment of Reality Ends Here, Watson will argue for the transformative potential of pervasive game interventions across a range of domains, from education and public policy, to activism, innovation, and beyond (Berkeley Center for New Media).

UPDATE: Slides posted here.

Some of my own first inklings of this sort of systems thinking came about when I was learning how to write JavaScript. One of the first projects I did was a kind of “random log line generator” that put together snippets of beginnings, middles, and ends to create surprising (and often absurd) pseudo-random stories. As I worked to make the program do more sophisticated things — things like check if there had been a car mentioned in an earlier part of the story, and if there had, bring it back in later in the story — I began to see more clearly how traditional fixed linear stories (at the time I was working on various screenplay projects) were in fact complex dynamic systems (at least in terms of the development process — though of course as far as their relationship to spectators goes, they remain so long after they are “finished”). Making a change in one part of the text has cascading effects throughout the whole, changing meanings, altering stakes, and opening (or closing) lines of possibility. It seems obvious now, but for me it also felt like a breakthrough.

Maybe that discovery was part of why I became interested in participatory and environmental media broadly and game design more specifically. The thrill of watching those possibilities open and close and those changes ripple through the system was something I wanted to design for. Why should authors have all the fun playing with the pieces and seeing how things shake out differently as the constituent elements of a story environment are changed? As Phillips puts it, it’s a wonderful game to imagine “how else we might have assembled the same cogs and gears to make [the clockwork machine of a story] run faster or quieter or keep time better.”

This pleasure, I think, is at the heart of game play, not just game design. It’s a unique kind of pleasure that comes from a feeling of real agency, of having one’s actions effect tangible consequences upon a system, and of discovering the new and unforeseen challenges associated with those consequences — and it’s what keeps me passionate about writing, designing, and playing alike.