In Medias Res Fall 2007 1 FEATURE STORIES
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INSIDE: COLLOQUIUM AND COMMUNICATIONS FOrum calendar In Medias Res cms.mit.edu • fall 2007 The Changing Face of CMS Introducing Nick Montfort and Erin Reilly CMS, Media Lab Launch Center for Future Civic Media C3 Hosts Futures of Entertainment 2 Conference Project New Media Literacies Tackles Moby-Dick The Education Arcade and NBC Announce iCue GAMBIT Unveils Six New Game Prototypes William Uricchio on the Future of Digital Heritage New Staff, New Faculty, New Visiting Scholars, and the Class of 2009 Dpnqbsbujwf .&%*" Tuvejft FALL 2007 1 from the directors 12 events 22 people, places, things Space: The Final Frontier CMS to Host 2007 Media CMS Welcomes New Staff Henry Jenkins and William Uricchio Literacy Conference and Additions Futures of Entertainment 2 2 feature stories 25 poem Project NML’s Erin Reilly 13 project updates From Kevin White and the Cyphibian Theory C3: Massively Multiplayer Ed Barrett Huma Yusuf Fandemonium! Joshua Green & Sam Ford 25 people, places, things 3 feature stories Faculty & Alumni Updates Location Scouting 14 project updates in Second Life The Education Arcade, 33 cms in the news Amanda Finkelberg NBC Announce iCue CMS Makes Headlines by Scot Osterweil Wrestling and Dancing 4 feature stories Preserving Our 15 project updates 34 people, places, things Digital Heritage Project NML Sends a Shout- CMS at the Movies William Uricchio Out to Mixed Magic Theater Generoso Fierro Anna van Someren & Kelly Leahy 6 feature stories I N S I D E : C O L L O Q U I U M A N D C O M M U N I C A T I O N S F O R U M C A L E N D A R Connecting the Future: 16 project updates The MIT Center for Future Jo!Nfejbt!Sft From the Local to the Global: d n t / n j u / f e v ! ¦ ! g b m m ! 3 1 1 8 Civic Media New Digital Humanities Huma Yusuf Projects in HyperStudio Kurt Fendt 7 feature stories The Changing Face of CMS What is Civic Media? project updates Introducing Nick Montfort and Erin Reilly 17 CMS, Media Lab Launch Center for Future Civic Media Henry Jenkins C3 Hosts Futures of Entertainment 2 Conference GAMBIT Summer 2007: Project New Media Literacies Tackles Moby-Dick The Education Arcade and NBC Announce iCue All Work and Lots of Play GAMBIT Unveils Six New Game Prototypes William Uricchio on the Future of Digital Heritage New Sta, New Faculty, New Visiting Scholars, 9 feature stories Clara Fernández-Vara and the Class of 2009 St0ryte11er: Introducing imr_2007_01.indd 1 10/24/07 7:42:03 PM ON OUR COVER Nick Montfort 18 people, places, things Geoffrey Long The Changing Face of CMS CMS Welcomes Class of 2009 Photos by Talieh Rohani, Beth Coleman and others; collage by Geoffrey Long 10 events people, places, things 21 TOP Fall 2007 Colloquium From Around the World to Calendar audiOdyssey, one of six game Cambridge: CMS Welcomes prototypes by GAMBIT: p17 Four New Visiting Scholars FROM THE DIRECTORS Space: The Final Frontier By Henry Jenkins and William Uricchio, CMS directors The new GAMBIT lab facility over at 5 Cambridge Center (two stories above Legal Sea Foods) opened mid-summer and has transformed how CMS operates. If you haven’t been over to GAMBIT yet, you should do so. The Lab space was created with support from the Singapore Media Development Authority and National Research Foundation and from MIT to help sustain a new center designed to do the kind of research and development that is not taking place within the games industry but which will stretch the medium in important new directions. As you walk through the door, you will flowcharts, and development schedules, These sessions brought together 25 members see an image of the screen of Spacewar! etched signs of a creative process at work. What of our (sometimes loosely) affiliated faculty, in glass. Here’s the back story: Spacewar! is these students did this summer has already who cut across almost every part of the HASS believed to be the first interactive computer attracted media attention in both the United school and beyond. Those participating were: game, built in the early 1960s by the Tech States and Singapore; participants are scoring Alan Brody, Tommy DeFrantz, Jay Scheib, Model Railroad Club, which was at the time top level jobs in game companies around the Ian Condry, Stefan Helmreich, Marty housed in MIT’s legendary Building 20. The world; and the projects themselves are being Marks, Philip Tan, William Uricchio, Sarah game deployed the Artificial Intelligence closely reviewed by game companies in the Brouillette, Noel Jackson, Wyn Kelley, Lab’s PDP-1 computer. Soon, the game was hopes that some of them will get picked up Nick Montfort, Ute Meta Bauer, Glorianna widely deployed as a test whenever PDP-1 for commercial distribution. Davenport, Kurt Fendt, Leila Kinney, and computers were installed. More importantly, With the start of the academic year, CMS Jing Wang. Many of those who came ended it set the stage for subsequent experiments has taken over much of the lab space to serve up hanging out with students and research with computer and video games. Oddly our own expanding pedagogical and research staff longer than expected and came away enough, there is no plaque honoring the needs. (If you don’t think CMS is expanding, with a much better picture of what CMS is Tech Model Railroad Club for its place in just look at all of the announcements of new becoming. The Lab space will also host a video games history amongst the various staff and students in this issue!) Each of the growing number of post-docs and visiting memorials to Building 20 in the new Stata CMS research initiatives now have designated scholars who are being better integrated into Center, so we’ve chosen to recognize it within spaces, which means that we have room the research process and will bring valuable CMS, one of a number of recent efforts to help for teams of students to work together on new perspectives to our ongoing discussions. our students recognize the fit between their projects. The result has been a dramatic shift Other CMS activities remain scattered current projects and a much larger history of towards greater collaboration throughout across multiple locations on campus media theory and production at MIT. the research process and a fuller integration (including, of course, our headquarters space If you walked past the Spacewar! of learning and research activities. It is also in building 14) as we await completion of the memorial this summer and into the heart of resulting in greater collaboration across the new MIT Media complex where our core GAMBIT, you would have seen something teams because people run into each other in operations will unfold alongside those of the truly remarkable: a team of 40 students the hallways at GAMBIT and start to talk Media Lab, the Center for Advanced Visual from 9 different Singaporean institutions about the work they are doing. Increasingly, Studies, and other media-related groups. working hand in hand with undergraduate we are using the GAMBIT space for teaching During the summer, the GAMBIT Lab and graduate students from CMS and with several of our required graduate subjects is emblematic of the ways CMS translates Computer Science to develop cutting-edge being hosted there this term. humanistic insights into pragmatic projects games. The projects they built were creatively The space played important roles during and the ways our research is starting to have interesting and technically challenging; our orientation for new students; it is the a global impact. During the academic year, they had compelling graphics and engaging location for Friday afternoon game playing GAMBIT is allowing CMS to reinvent itself, soundtracks; and they were all developed sessions designed to bring the community to better achieve our goals both inside the through an eight-week rapid prototyping and together and familiarize them with new classroom and inside the research laboratory, development process which would put most developments in this area, as well as the to bring faculty, staff, and students together professional game companies to shame. To location chosen to host a half-day series in new ways, and to create a context for visit the lab at that point, you would have of faculty meetings to help redesign the collaborative work in the future. found walls plastered with artist sketches, requirements for our undergraduate major. in medias res fall 2007 1 FEATURE STORIES Project NML’s Erin Reilly and the Cyphibian Theory by Huma Yusuf Erin Reilly, the new Research Manager for faculty member for the International Film Project NML, has arrived at the Comparative and Television Workshops and subsequently Media Studies program with a highly evolved taught at the Art Institute of Dallas. She also philosophy about digital learning. At her coordinates the National Geographic Photo previous job, she coined the Cyphibian Camp at annual Pop!Tech conferences. Theory. “I believe that kids today have one foot At Project NML, Reilly is excited to in the cyber world and one in the real world,” convert theories about new media literacy says Reilly. “Digital learning requires a cross- into practice. “I’ve been away from academia pollination of those two worlds. There has for a while and am still in an entrepreneurial to be a balance between them and educators girls’ knowledge of science, technology, spirit,” she admits. “I want to move fast, plan, have to consider when is the best time for kids engineering and math. “We wanted to help and think about the budget.