Computational Culture

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New director Frank Moss wants to bring more focus to R&D at MIT’s Media Lab — and forge closer ties with corporate sponsors.
MIT’s interdisciplinary Media Lab is famous for its blue-sky research, focusing on the study, invention, and creative use of technology. Over the years, its big thinking has led to some impressive achievements, including the development of MPEG video compression, the Hundred-Dollar Laptop project, and the founding of eInk, a company that makes electronic paper displays.

But venture capitalists no longer readily throw money at “vague” projects, and government funding is drying up. Today, 70 percent of the lab’s annual budget of around $35 million comes from corporate sponsors, with whom they must forge ever-closer ties. Since corporate benefactors want practical technologies, the Media Lab has to strike a balance between meeting sponsors’ needs and maintaining its traditional philosophy of open-ended research.

Read the interview with Frank Moss at Technology Review

There has been a lot of buzz in blogosphere about the research of Jeff Han. He knows how to combine HCI research results from an integrated hardware and software point of view. Latest trends such as joy-of-use and beauty-of-design are definitely matched. Having a click&look at the video is a MUST!

Via: - just to name a few -
We-make-money-not-art
Glück Auf!
Spreeblick

vvvv, urbi and MIDI-controlled AIBO. This is a deconstruction of the glittering new media worlds bringing back the AIBO to its roots, saying “Hello World”.

Bae Kyun-Eun is Persia

Photojournalist Robbie Cooper captured images of gamers and their real-life selves. Here are their stories.
“Bae plays a man because she thinks that male avatars have more charisma, she wants to ‘project strength’, and all the ‘masters’ in the game have male avatars.
She says if she had to play the game alone she wouldn’t bother.
Initially, she was attracted to it because she thought it looked beautiful, but the social element has become part of her life. Her guild meets up regularly.”
Look at BBC or Tagesspiegel Fototouren for further images.

There has been some media buzz about these works between 2004 and 2005. If you are in Berlin you have the chance to see the work in the exhibition ALTER EGO.
Where: Atelier C9, Grünberger Str. 73, Berlin-Friedrichshain, Berlin.
January, 28th - February, 19th.

Via De:Bug News
Am kommenden Donnerstag um 19 Uhr findet mit dem Gamedesigner Andre Stubbe und mit DEBUG-Herausgeberin Mercedes Bunz ein Gespräch statt, das Elisa Barth vom Merve Verlag in der Galerie Atelier C-9 anlässlich der Ausstellung initiiert hat. In dem Gespräch geht es um Online-Spiele, um Virtuelle Realitäten und um Spieleentwicklung. MB redet aber eher zum Thema “Technik und Entfremdung”.

If you have some time to travel we recommend to visit this year’s TRANSMEDIALE. It is one of the most or maybe the most important german event about arts and the application of digital technologies. Some words from the official website www.transmediale.de:

transmediale is a platform for artistic presentation and critical reflection on the role of digital technologies in present-day society. The annual festival provides a forum for communication between artists, those working in the media and a wide range of experts, offering a stimulating environment for the presentation of major new projects from digital culture.
Core areas of the festival are the annual conference on the respective festival topic, a biannual thematic exhibition, the open award competition as well as the associated club transmediale CTM, focusing on electronic music and related visual art.