IDMAa eh? (day 70)

I'm astonished to say that I have no recollection of not blogging on Wednesday night.  I was up until 2 working on Paula's The Wall project again and I guess I just tuned out at some point.  Last night though I was exhausted from a travel odyssey to Muncie Indiana to the IDMAa conference (which Emily Carr is hosting next year).   It was a conscious decision that sleep was better than blog.

The conference started early with a keynote from Tom Kelley of IDEO.   He was...umm...perky.   We came in late so I'm not sure what the red queen is was going on about was, but it seemed to apply to a lot of things.  To be honest I didn't get much out of his talk but that may be because I have a block when it comes to that kind of presentation.  It's a sort of inspirational tone that just says "nothing deep here, move along".   But let me be clear.   I have nothing but respect for IDEO and what they do.   Many people seemed to enjoy his talk a lot.

The next talk I totally missed because of jetlag.  I slept through most of it.   The little bits that I remember were fascinating.  That talk was from John Fillwalk from the Digital Intermedia Arts Institute which is part of Ball State University.   Turns out the Institute was part of the campus tour later so I got to see some of what he talked about in his talk which was great.   The best part was a Second Life instrument that rang the real life bells in a bell tower on campus.  It was amazing to walk down the street and hear the seemingly random bell sounds, like a postmodern concert.

The next panel I attended was about the Future of Interactivity.  I was impressed with the work of Richard Elaver (Indiana University - Purdue University Fort Wayne) who is using generative patterns based on nature to create 3D printed forms.  Some beautiful modular jewelry and other objects.  I can't find a website unfortunately.

The last talk I attended was at the Museum of Art where they also had the conference exhibit.  I toured about half of the exhibit before having to break to go to the panel.  It's an awesome show.  There were two highlights to the panel session.  One was Lindsay Grace (Miami University) talking about Critical Games.  He did one game a week for six weeks, all critiquing particular aspects of game play that are pathologically repeated and not often questioned.  He demoed one game called "Wait'  where the details of the game (and points) only come if you remain in one place in the game space.   As soon as you walk, the environment goes white.  Another is game was 'Black/White' where all characters are visually the same except for colour and behaviour.  There is no way to tell if the characters are enemy or not.  The other talk that caught my eye was from Tammy Brackett (Alfred University) who uses cellular automata to remix video feedback.  She has some great images that were generated from a seed of a musical score derived from chromosome six.  She had work installed in the exhibit but I didn't get to see it because when it was closed after the talks.  I was very disappointed about this.  Particularly because it's doesn't open again until 1:30pm tomorrow at which time I'll be on my way home. 

My biggest regret of the day is not having toured all of the exhibit.  My second biggest regret of the day is not being able to attend all of the afternoon panels.  My possibly third regret of the day is joining twitter.

A song for this post.