Simulating History

Planning for The Interacting With Immersive Worlds 2011 conference (to be held in the spring of 2011) is underway. “Serious Play” will be the theme of the conference. One keynote speaker has already been booked: Jon-Paul Dyson, Director of the National Center for the History of Electronic Games (NCHEG) at New York, USA. Dyson is also the vice president for Exhibit Research and Development at Strong National Museum of Play. You can expect a call for papers to be announced soon.
The Interacting With Immersive Worlds 2009 conference was a great experience for me, as the Conference Coordinator, as I had the opportunity to interact with world-class scholars. The conversations I had with Espen Aarseth and Janet Murray were very exciting, which makes me feel truly privileged – as a PhD candidate – to be able to discuss in person some theoretical issues that are part of my doctoral work with their original authors. I invite other faculty and graduate students to join us in 2011.

Salutations!

Here’s an update on the recent activities of the Simulating History lab:

• Adam (Research Associate) and Spencer (Programmer) have put many hours into the on-going bibliography of articles, books, and other resources that are important in Digital Media studies and for Simulating History. The bibliography will be available on the website when it is ready, so stay tuned!
• If you haven’t noticed yet, the blog is undergoing some massive renovations. These will make things easier to find and easier on the eyes. Some of the new features are seen in our “For Researchers,”“For Educators,” and the forthcoming “For Students” categories. Depending on your interest in our project, these categories will highlight all the posts and pages that might prove useful.

There are more exciting developments underway, so we’ll try to make sure we keep our readers informed.

Enjoy the holidays!

The preparations for Interacting with Immersive Worlds 2009 are underway, and the response to our Call for Papers was overwhelming.  We’re looking forward to a full slate of presenters. 

Interacting with Immersive Worlds 2009 is the second Brock University conference focused on the Interactive Arts and Sciences.  In 2007, presenters and attendees from a multiplicity of disciplines heard keynote presentations by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Claremont Graduate University), James Gee (Arizona State University), Chris Csikszentmihalyi (MIT Media Laboratory), and Denis Dyack (Silicon Knights). 

The 2009 conference will be just as provocative, with keynote speakers such as Janet Murray (Georgia Institute of Technology) and Espen Aarseth (IT University of Denmark). It will also feature an evening tour, wine tasting, and dinner party among the vines, at a Niagara winery.

The 2009 Conference paper presentations will be divided into four categories: Challenges at the Boundaries of Immersive Worlds, Critical Approaches to Immersion, Immersive Worlds in Education, Immersive Worlds in Entertainment.

Since posting the 60-second “Simulating History” video on Youtube and our website, I have turned my attention to exploring the manner in which our work may be expressed through a short documentary. Having generated some questions with our brief “teaser”, I am now focusing more on the ideas and the practices of The Simulating History Research Lab.

Simply put, our work in the lab is to employ technology for the purposes of learning and teaching, and our way to reach others with this message is shaped by my understanding of technology as inherently liberating (McClean, 2007)[1]. For example, working with a high-performance nonlinear editing system such as Final Cut Pro and its Motion application is indeed liberating in the sense of gaining more audiovisual eloquence. McClean rightly describes the technological power of visual effects in filmmaking as liberating — the virtual camera (computer generated camera effect) opens the door for different ways of expression. Another example that I have experienced closely is connected to Final Cut Motion, with its wide array of options available for controlling and combining layers of different media into one video segment.

motion

Having the ability to restructure media components in real time and virtual space augments the message’s communicative power, rather than just increasing the levels of interaction. These new, liberating tools help us release our imagination, and communicate our thoughts more compellingly.

[1] McClean, Schilo. T. (2007) Digital Storytelling: The Narrative Power of Visual Effects in Film. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

My current research at Brock University centers around the ability of computers and games to simulate and represent how systems work in the context of history. Many historians have used agent-based simulations to represent battle scenarios or migration patterns. But these simulations have limited interaction: essentially the researcher interacts (or plays) with the system to test his scenarios. In contrast, games can allow historians and their audience the opportunity to explore counter-factual scenarios. Games are also ‘persuasive’; they can represent how an argument about how a system works (see Ian Bogost). I am using Benjamin Franklin as a case study of the spreading of enlightened and revolutionary ideas. My research project describe a game based on this case study where the main game mechanic is the spreading of ideas. In this way, I am looking to the past to find new forms of interaction and game play.