In our director Mary Flanagan’s home state (coincidentally also home to D&D creator Gary Gygax and GenCon), Dungeons & Dragons is not allowed to be played in prison. In a recent New York Times article, prison officials were noted as saying that Dungeons & Dragons could “foster an inmate’s obsession with escaping” his or her incarceration situation. Another great discussion on this situation by Professor Ilya Somin at George Mason at this legal blog.
It is difficult to imagine anything but D&D as a wholesome family activity after this commercial:
Perhaps this old classic Tom Hanks movie Mazes and Monsters, may have had more influence than one would have imagined.
Composer Pauline Oliveros joins us in our weekly variable_d salon via the Dialogues. In Dialogues, students and members of the community come with ideas, themes, and questions and engage in a teleconferenced discussion of contemporary issues in the work. Past visitors have included Brenda Laurel, The Guerrilla Girls, and Katherine Hayles.
4pm, Jan 26th 2010
Tiltfactor lab
Additional links to Oliveros’ artifacts:
running electric charges through herself
Pauline Oliveros, composer, performer and humanitarian is an important pioneer in American Music. Acclaimed internationally, for four decades she has explored sound — forging new ground for herself and others.
Through improvisation, electronic music, ritual, teaching and meditation she has created a body of work with such breadth of vision that it profoundly effects those who experience it and eludes many who try to write about it. “On some level, music, sound consciousness and religion are all one, and she would seem to be very close to that level.” John Rockwell Oliveros has been honored with awards, grants and concerts internationally. Whether performing at the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., in an underground cavern, or in the studios of West German Radio, Oliveros’ commitment to interaction with the moment is unchanged. She can make the sound of a sweeping siren into another instrument of the ensemble.
Through Deep Listening Pieces and earlier Sonic Meditations Oliveros introduced the concept of incorporating all environmental sounds into musical performance. To make a pleasurable experience of this requires focused concentration, skilled musicianship and strong improvisational skills, which are the hallmarks of Oliveros’ form. In performance Oliveros uses an accordion which has been re-tuned in two different systems of her just intonation in addition to electronics to alter the sound of the accordion and to explore the individual characteristics of each room. (Tuning Chart)
Pauline Oliveros has built a loyal following through her concerts, recordings, publications and musical compositions that she has written for soloists and ensembles in music, dance, theater and interarts companies. She has also provided leadership within the music community from her early years as the first Director of the Center for Contemporary Music (formerly the Tape Music Center at Mills), director of the Center for Music Experiment during her 14 year tenure as professor of music at the University of California at San Diego to acting in an advisory capacity for organizations such as The National Endowment for the Arts, The New York State Council for the Arts, and many private foundations. She now serves as Distinguished Research Professor of Music at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Darius Milhaud Composer in Residence at Mills College. Oliveros has been vocal about representing the needs of individual artists, about the need for diversity and experimentation in the arts, and promoting cooperation and good will among people.
Please join us in Hanover for an upcoming symposium at Dartmouth College, “Activism in the Electronic Age: The impact of technology on political protest” will examine the recent 2009 Iranian elections and other historic moments of activism involving the use of technology. Tuesday, February 9, 2010 @ 4:30 PM, Location : Haldeman Center, Room 041.
From a 4 January 2010 conversation between Mary Flanagan and Nick Montfort (posted in parallel on www and on PostPosition:
nick: so, I just have this question about the way you (and someone else) reacted to gender stereotyping in a nightmarish/dystopian/stereotypical game environments
nick:you wroteWhile there are some glaring stereotypes that take away from its freshness and originality (especially in regard to gender; the character’s wife is in the kitchen with a frying pan in the morning and tells the character he is late for work; the office execs are all male, etc.) about Every Day the Same Dream[previously on Post Position]
We’ve got a slew games to design this winter term at Tiltfactor (http://www.tiltfactor.org), Dartmouth’s nonprofit game research lab — and you can help, if you are up to the challenge!
We’re asking Dartmouth students to propose to take on one of these five game challenges — more info will be sent on some of the projects upon inquiry. Approved proposals could launch student individuals or teams into game-stardom! Students who develop one of these games for Tiltfactor (with ample feedback from us) up to a working, fun, usable prototype will receive a Tiltfactor Fellowship, which comes with an honorarium of $1,000. Students of course will receive a design credit in the finished work.
The games include flash based game plans, as well as card games and board games.
Let the games begin! For more specifics, contact Professor Flanagan.
Respond with “tiltfactor fellowship” in the subject line!
Tiltfactor is interested in learning and in our context as an academic-focused research laboratory. The essay “Making College ‘Relevant” by Kate Zernike (Dec 29 2009) offers up an interesting take on “training” students for specific careers and jobs. While students and parents increasingly worry about the applicability of students’ future skills, the “Association of American Colleges and Universities recently asked employers who hire at least 25 percent of their workforce from two- or four-year colleges what they want institutions to teach. The answers did not suggest a narrow focus. Instead, 89 percent said they wanted more emphasis on ‘the ability to effectively communicate orally and in writing,’ 81 percent asked for better ‘critical thinking and analytical reasoning skills” and 70 percent were looking for “the ability to innovate and be creative.’” We’re delighted to see this type of response. Students who work with Tiltfactor , and who learn at Dartmouth College, learn broad thinking, problem solving, and creativity skills while innovating in new forms of communication– in our case, games.
A second article, though a little short, struck us as offering an important nugget of information. In Barbara Strauch’s “How to Train the Aging Brain,” the journalist interviewed neuroscientists on the challenges and benefits to an older mind and the types of learning we benefit from in different stages of life. A quote from the article that relates to Tiltfactor and our method of Critical Play: “Educators say that, for adults, one way to nudge neurons in the right direction is to challenge the very assumptions they have worked so hard to accumulate while young. With a brain already full of well-connected pathways, adult learners should ‘jiggle their synapses a bit’ by confronting thoughts that are contrary to their own, says Dr. Taylor, who is 66.”
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