1. How interactivity is afecting the arts
June 8, 2010, NY tech & the arts meetup
Gabe Smedresman
@gabesmed

2. About Me

Degree: Architecture and Computer Science

Profession: Game Designer and Web Developer

Context: College Risk → Turf → Echo Team
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Place: San Francisco
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Dabbled in many felds to be mentioned, but nowhere
near the depth of the work I'll discuss here.

3. Games and the arts
Games pull from the other arts, and resynthesize them to
support meaningful interactivity.
We've developed new techniques for designing for
interactivity in games.
Tese techniques are being taken up and furthered in their
original felds.
Game design techniques are key to all of these new
interactive forms of media.

4. Film
Te presentation of many
video games pull from flm.
(Max Payne)

5. Film
And games have expanded
the possibilities of
storytelling with immersive
cinematic sequences.
(Half Life)

6. Film
Now some flm directors are
re-imagining cinema to
explore interactivity.
(HBO Imagine)

7. TV
Voting!

8. Music
Games have always benefted from the immersivity of a
soundtrack.
Adaptive music splits a track into chunks and layers, then
recombines them on the fy to adapt to player situation and
game state.

9. Music
“Cellist and composer Zoe Keating
uses live electronic sampling and
repetition to layer the sound of her
cello, creating multi-layered
compositions which explore the
boundary between the familiar and
the strange, the ugly and beautiful, the
dark and the transcendent.”

10. Music
“When lawyers are still discussing if
RjDj is music or sofware we decided
to call these sofware songs SCENES.
You will fnd scenes that are made to
sing along and record yourself with
beautiful realtime efects on your
voice. Some scenes are designed like
games and others are instruments.
And then we also have scenes which
opened the world for augmented
music because they are intertwined
with the world around you through
the sensors of your smart music player.
All in all, RjDj is a new musical
world.”

11. Live Performance
Te Go Game builds interactive
scavenger hunts with live actors,
using a technological backend to
co-ordinate teams.

12. Live Performance
Accomplice NY: “Part game,
part theater, part tour. Using
the sprawling backdrop of
the city as its stage, utilizing
elements of improv theater
and scavenger hunt,
Accomplice will make you
laugh, think, and experience
the city in a whole new way.”

13. Live Performance
Punchdrunk's “SLEEP NO MORE”:
“Part installation, part performance art,
part adventure playground”
“And while moments of revelation were
many, wandering alone through a foggy,
abandoned Birnam Wood (really just
Christmas trees in an auditorium) may
well have been unforgettable. Certainly,
I have been seeing it in dreams ever
since.” - Timeout NY

14. Nonlinear Literature
(Mission Stencil Story)

15. Reactive Architecture
(NYC Subway)

16. Temes
Games are a second-order art: there is a loss of control that
is unfamiliar to traditional practitioners, but empowering
to create totally new forms.
Te ability of games to engage bodes well for the ability of
these techniques to continue to enliven traditional arts and
entertainment.

17. What can I do with this?
Game design:
- Designers create rules (mechanics).
- Audience experiences a unique interaction (dynamics).
- Audience feels ________ (aesthetics).
Tis is explicit in game design, but implicit in all creation.
How do the explicit or implicit rules in what you do
indirectly afect your audience's experience?

18. People doing interesting things
Accomplice NY - http://accomplicetheshow.com/
Come Out & Play - http://comeoutandplay.org/
Nina Simon - http://museumtwo.blogspot.com/
Jane McGonigal - http://avantgame.com/
Fourth Wall Studios - http://www.fourthwallstudios.com/
RjDj - http://rjdj.me/
Ken Eklund - http://writerguy.com/

19. Tanks!
Gabe Smedresman
@gabesmed
gabe@echoteamgo.com
http://smedresmania.com/