Text-based AI - Computer Arts Society

Nothing artificial here by María Cecilia Reyes (Xeh)

I will be participating at the talk “Text-based AI - Computer Arts Society”.

SPEAKER

Geoff Davis, AI Researcher at Creative Computing Institute UAL UK. Computer art in Computer Arts Archive.

SYNOPSIS

Join us for an insightful event featuring discussions on various aspects of AI text generation, its ethical considerations, and applications in both education and the arts. Geoff Davis, editor of the AI Creative Writing Anthology and AI researcher at UAL, will provide an overview of text generation and delve into the ethical implications, and also will cover the use of text generation for computer coding.

Shu Wan and Maria Reyes will each present on the educational aspects of AI text generation, highlighting its potential in essay writing, annotating, and its use by both students and lecturers.

Tivon Rice and Ray LC, talented mixed media artists, will showcase their AI text-based art, while the renowned AI text and poetry artist, Sasha Stiles, will be discussed in relation to her celebrated book, ‘Technelegy.’ Additionally, Mark Webster's innovative 'Hypertype' art, which utilizes Sentiment Analysis for text generation, will be featured.

The event will culminate in an interactive questions and answers session, allowing attendees to engage with the speakers. The entire talk will be recorded for future reference.

"But I'm not him": My first published poem co-created with AI

A couple of years ago I started experimenting with AI to interpret and generate scenarios from and for my poems. Today, one of these poems created in collaboration with an AI system -different from chatGPT- has been published in this very cool anthology edited by Geoff Davis. Each literary creation is followed by some questions and thoughts of the authors and their process.

Published by LEOPARD PRINT: https://lnkd.in/dUCt3N5H

See the book on Amazon.co.uk: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BZQKV92T

See the book on Amazon.com: https://www.amazon.com/AI-Creative-Writing-Anthology-Computer-ebook/dp/B0BZQKV92T

See the book on GOODREADS: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/123894053-ai-creative-writing-anthology

AI Creative Writing Anthology is a ground-breaking and controversial showcase of cutting-edge writing techniques. From unexpected short stories to surreal poetry, these co-created works explore a range of themes using text generation systems. Writers use ChatGPT, GPT-4, and free open-source systems. Artists use hand-coded programs. With an introduction from Geoff Davis, an artificial intelligence researcher, and generative artist with 40 years of experience, this anthology is a treasure trove of insider knowledge from a true pioneer in the field.

In this book, you will: ✓ Get inspired and write faster with AI-powered text generation based on simple prompts, ✓ Rediscover the joy of writing with this innovative and fun approach to creativity, ✓ Learn from the pros with extensive notes, reviews and comments from 20 authors, ✓ Explore the fascinating history and evolution of creative text generation, from its humble beginnings to its groundbreaking potential today, ✓ Find out about Large Language Models.

Contributors:  Albena Baeva, Richard A. Carter, Dana Dason, Geoff Davis, Nick Fletcher, Brad Gallagher, Iqra Iqbal, Laura Hyunjhee Kim, Ray LC, Simon Lewis, David Link, Joshua Hussey, Timothy Miller, Dustin Paddock, Fania Raczinski, Maria Cecilia Reyes, Tivon Rice,  Brian Reffin Smith, Klaus Spiess, Shu Wan, and Corinne Whitaker.
Never be stuck with writer’s block again. A roadmap for unleashing your creativity, this book will help you save time and increase your output. Whether you’re looking to explore new creative frontiers or to seek inspiration, AI Creative Writing Anthology is the ultimate anthology on the future of writing. ★ Join the revolution today and unlock your full writing potential. ★

Same Different at 36. Stuttgarter Filmwinter Festival for Expanded Media 12.1.-15.1.2023

Special Filmprogramm

talents‘ encounters, Part 2: Akademie Schloss Solitude & Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg, Ludwigsburg

Fri 13.1.23 16-17h

Short films presented by the Haus für Film und Medien

The association „Haus für Film und Medien Stuttgart e.V.“ (HFM) is a collective of currently 24 non-commercial institutions from the areas of education, academy, media education, art, research, science, film and media festivals, film and creative industry, and cinema, media and cross culture - all based in and around Stuttgart. Among these are our five academy members: Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Akademie Schloss Solitude, Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg, Hochschule der Medien (HdM) und Merz Akademie. For the second time, the Haus für Film und Medien presents a joint selection of varied works by young film and media creatives studying at one of these academies at the 36th Filmwinter Stuttgart. The aim of this institute, which is scheduled to be fully set-up by 2027 in Stuttgart's city centre, is to offer young talent in the fields of art and media opportunities to realize their own productions and introduce them to a wider audience. The series Talents' encounters will give the audience a foretaste of the broad range of young creatives.

Pueblo Santo: A Cumbia Trip @ DOK Exchange XR DOKLeipzig

So happy to share that our VR musical project Pueblo Santo: A Cumbia Trip, has been selected for the DOK Exchange XR program at DOKLeipzig 2022 .

A great occasion to get insights from immersive narratives experts (as my friend and colleague Ágnes-Karolina Bakk), and strengthen our project.

Thank you Marlon Peroza, and Laura Casadiego for making this possible, for dreaming and dancing together.

While we work on awakening Pueblo Santo, we will keep you posted!

Following Nijolė

Today we close the solo exhibition of Nijolė at the city gallery of Fellbach, with the presence of Elke aus dem Moore, Antanas Perez Mockus, family and friends. I made a presentation called “Following Nijole” in which i tell the story of meeting Nijolė and creating this effort of bringing her back to an exhibition space at the Fellbach Triennale and in her solo exhibition.

Same Different in Greece, Denmark, Argentina and Brasil!

Our poetry shortfilm "Same Different” keeps travelling around the world. In the next months, the work will be screened at:

• 10th International Video Poetry Festival in Athens - 30th of September to the 1st of October 2022.

• 4th Festival Internacional de Cortometrajes Corporalidad Expandida in Buenos Aires - 13th to 17th of October.

• 15th Zózimo Bulbul Black Film Festival: Brazil, Africa, Caribbean and other diasporas - 18th to 24th of October in Brazil.

• Nature & Culture - Poetry Film Festival - 21st and 28th of November in Copenhague.
  

Poetry, Performance and Bow: Ques (Nesindano Namises) @xamques

Film: Maria Cecilia Reyes @xehreyes

Poster art by: Vitjitua Ndjiharine @vitjiart

Nijolė, la huella de la existencia

Hoy es un día importante. Esta noche en la Cinemateca de Bogotá es la premier nacional del documental Nijolė, en el cual trabajé como guionista y montajista. Sin embargo, lo que inició en aquél 2016, sigue vivo todavía hoy. Antanas alguna vez dijo que él sintió el deber de hacerse "famoso" para hacer justicia a su madre. Esta película es justamente eso.

Nijolė me mostró cómo los artistas nunca mueren. El año pasado durante mi residencia en Akademie Schloss Solitude, en la ciudad de Stuttgart, proyecté el documental. Fue justo en Stuttgart, donde Nijolė estudió bellas artes. Allí llegó en plena guerra mundial, escapando de su país natal Lituania.

El ritual de proyectar el documental en ese mismo lugar, desató una serie de eventos inesperados.

Elke Aus dem Moore, directora de Solitude, supo que debía traer a Nijolė a la tierra que la vio desarrollarse como artista. Con el equipo de la Triennale, empezamos a trabajar, junto a la familia Mockus Sivickas, para traer las obras de Nijole a la trienal de escultura en pequeña escala de Triennale Fellbach, y la obra gráfica de Nijole, que incluye una serie de dibujos que realizó mientras vivía en Alemania.

Escudriñando en sus archivos, descubrimos que no sólo estudió en Stuttgart sino que vivió también en Fellbach, exactamente el mismo lugar a donde volverían sus trabajos, más de 70 años después, y donde todavía pueden ser visitados.

Nijolė falleció un mes antes del estreno mundial del documental, en el festival de documentales DOK Leipzig, (casualmente es Alemania a reconocer el genio de Nijolė otra vez). Desde entonces la película ha sido proyectada en nuestro FICCI en Cartagena, en DocsBarcelona, en BiografilmFest en Italia, y fue la película inaugural del Festival de documentales de Vilnius, capital de Lituania.

Personalmente, desde ese momento también establecí una relación profunda con Lituania, un país que, a pesar del frío, está hecho de gente muy muy cálida y amorosa. Dagnė Vildžiūnaitė, productora del documental vino a conocer a Nijole y Antanas en un almuerzo en Vilnius y materializó el sueño. Eglė Aleksandra Marija Ozolinčiūtė logró en una semana que el Museo de Arte Moderno de Vilnius presentara la obra de Nijolė "Darbai ir Reflekcijos"; la música de Lina Lapelyte, artista ganadora del león de oro de Venecia, se mezcló perfectamente con la personalidad de esta historia, y Silvija Woolf, aprendió a amar a los personajes a través del la línea de montaje.

Desde hoy la película podrá ser vista en las salas de cine de Colombia, gracias al trabajo de la productora colombiana La Olimpo, y Distrito Pacífico. El documental llega finalmente al país que acogió a Nijolė, al cual ella amó profundamente, y donde nació ese sujeto con el nombre extraño que nos recordó que la vida es sagrada.

*****

Today is an important day. Tonight at the Cinemateca de Bogotá is the national premiere of the documentary Nijolė, in which I worked as a screenwriter and editor. However, what began in 2016 is still alive today. Antanas once said that he felt a duty to become "famous" to do justice to his mother. This movie is precisely that.

Nijolė also showed me how artists never die. Last year during my residency at Akademie Schloss Solitude, in the city of Stuttgart, I screened the documentary. It was in Stuttgart, where Nijolė studied fine arts. She arrived there in the middle of the second world war, escaping from her native country of Lithuania. The ritual of screening the documentary in that same place unleashed a series of unexpected events.

Elke Aus dem Moore, director of Solitude, knew she had to bring Nijolė to the land where she develop as an artist. With the Triennale team, we started working, together with the Mockus Sivickas family, to bring Nijole's works to the small-scale sculpture Triennale of Fellbach, and Nijole's graphic work, which includes a series of drawings that she made while living in Germany.

Digging into her archives, we discover that she not only studied in Stuttgart but also lived in Fellbach, exactly the same place where her works would return, more than 70 years later, and where they can still be visited.

Nijolė passed away a month before the world premiere of the documentary, at the DOK Leipzig documentary festival (coincidentally it is Germany to recognize Nijolė's genius again). Since then the film has been screened at FICCI in Cartagena, at DocsBarcelona, ​​at BiografilmFest in Italy, and was the opening film of the Vilnius Documentary Festival, the capital of Lithuania.

Personally, from that moment I also established a deep relationship with Lithuania, a country that, despite the cold, is made of very, very warm and loving people. Dagnė Vildžiūnaitė, producer of the documentary came to meet Nijole and Antanas at a lunch in Vilnius and the dream materialized. Eglė Aleksandra Marija Ozolinčiūtė succeeded in getting the Vilnius Museum of Modern Art to present Nijolė's work "Darbai ir Reflekcijos" in only one week; the music of Lina Lapelyte, winner of the Golden Lion of Venice, blended perfectly with the personality of this story, and Silvija Woolf learned to love the characters through the editing timeline.

Today the film can be seen in movie theatres in Colombia. The country that welcomed Nijolė, which she loved deeply, and where that guy with the strange name was born and reminded us that life is sacred.

Beyond tools: We need to talk about the Author

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Some results of our activity.

Sofia Kitromili and I presented our position paper “Beyond tools: We need to talk about the Author” at the Narrative and Hypertext Workshop during the conference HT ’22: 33rd ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media, held in Barcelona.

Beyond Tools: We need to talk about the Author (Position Paper. PDF)

Sofia Kitromili (Bournemouth University, UK) and Maria Cecilia Reyes (Vilnius University, Lithuania)

Abstract: Ever since digital interactive authoring tools made creating IDNs (Interactive Digital Narratives) approachable to a wide audience of people beyond programmers and curious academics, we have not stopped talking about them. We have been inventing them, testing them, improving them, and re-inventing them tirelessly. As we should. However, if we take a step back and think about what we have really been talking about, whenever we meet to discuss interactive digital narratives, is tools, narrative forms, ‘the authoring problem’, and while all those are topics we should be discussing, and building knowledge on, we have forgotten to discuss about humans. Who are we building these tools for? Who is using them to make the stories? How are they using them? It is about time we take a break from talking about the myriads of our tools. In this article we are going to talk about the interactive author, or as we shall refer to them at the end of this article, the interactive creator.

Same Different @ International Poetry Film Festival of Thuringia

We are very happy to announce that our poetry shortfilm “Same Different” has been selected for the Special Program World Mirror of Poetry of the International Poetry Film Festival of Thuringia (Germany). The shortfilm will be available online during the days of the festival from May 20th to 31st.

““In our program „World mirror of poetry“ we are travelling around the globe in leaps and contradictions to capture a glimpse of the state of the world and its poetry.””

— Poetry Film Festival of Thuringia

Guest Lecturer @ Vilnius Tech

I was invited by Prof. Andrius Suminas to give a guest lecture at the Creative Communication program of Vilnius University, in the Media Theory course. I will be talking about immersive interactive narratives, media evolution landscape, immersion, narrative and interactivity.

Next stop: Scholar-artist in residence @ Future Media Theaters

I’m honored to have been selected as scholar-artist in residency at the Future Media Theaters at the University of Skövde. I will be in Skövde during the month of May sharing knowledge and expertise with one of the researchers that have heavily influenced my work, and one of my favourite persons in the world, Prof. Rebecca Rouse.

During the residency, I will collaborate on the development of the Future Media Theaters immersive 360-degree VR cave platform, helping to create a workflow for porting VR artworks designed for HMD interfaces to this room-scale system.

I will also share methods of VR filmmaking and interactive narrative design with both the GAME Lab Research Group, and with the University of Skövde Game Development students in the Interactive Performance and Games course, and visit Future Media Theaters partner organisation Folkteatern Gothenburg to consult on the development of their VR theater initiative.

Stay tuned for the outcomes!

Same Different at 10th International Video Poetry Festival

Same Different a poetry shortfilm produced by Nesindano Namises and me during our time at Akademie Schloss Solitude, was selected at the 10th International Video Poetry Festival.

The shortfilm features Nesindano “Ques” Namises, Namibian poet and performer, performing her poem “Same Different” in english and Khoekhoegowab.

My role was just to stand behind the camera and see Nesindano in her all-encompasing power reciting her poem in the forest while the movement of the sun thorugh the trees was changing her siluete. I cannot express with words how lucky I was to be there.

The International Video Poetry Festival in Athens attempts to create an open public space for the creative expression of all tendencies and streams of contemporary visual poetry. The IVPF has been around since 2012. It is one of the largest international platform for video poetry. Every year, it offers poets, film directors, video artists and festival makers from all over the world a platform for creative exchange, brainstorming and meeting with a broad audience. With poetry readings, live performances, concerts, retrospectives, exhibitions, performances, workshops and lectures present in various sections the diversity of the genre of video poetry and spoken word music.

Pueblo Santo selected at New LATAM Voices

Pueblo Santo, a Cumbia Trip was one of the 10 LATAM projects we have selected to join the « New LATAM Voices » program, organized as part of the international panorama on Latin American creation of the 5th NewImages Festival, in partnership with Garage Stories.

This program aims to bring together Latam emerging talent with creators from all over the world to tell their stories and move their projects forward.

During the 4 weeks of the incubator our project grew thanks to the talent and energy of the team members brought by the New Latam Voices call.

We worked on the pitch, the visual storytelling and a 3D mockup of Pueblo Santo’s main square.

Synopsis — Immerse into the mythical village of the Colombian Caribbean coast where Cumbia was born. In Pueblo Santo, the indigenous Amacumbié cosmogony intertwines with a depiction of Colombia’s history of colonialism and violence, challenging the interactor to understand this past, overcome evil and restore the balance by playing and dancing Cumbia’s original melody. Pueblo Santo is a VR musical trip that takes the interactor to a mythological town on the Colombian Caribbean coast. The experience is based on the story of Pueblo Santo, a typical Colombian Caribbean town that suffered a massacre.

Hybrid ICIDS 2021

The 14th International Conference on Interactive Storytelling “Interconnectedness and Social Impact” ICIDS 2021 was a hybrid conference taking place at Tallinn University and online through Worksup.

ICIDS is the premier conference for researchers and practitioners concerned with studying digital interactive forms of narrative from a variety of perspectives, including theoretical, technological, and applied design lenses. The annual conference is an interdisciplinary gathering that combines technology-focused approaches with humanities-inspired theoretical inquiry, empirical research and artistic expression. This year is the 14th edition of the conference. ICIDS is the main academic conference of the Association for Research in Digital Interactive Narratives (ARDIN).

I had the honor to serve as Co-Virtual Chair, together with Josh Fisher, taking care of the website and spatial venues for Demos, Posters and Coffee Breaks on Mozilla Hubs.

INDCOR Interview: “My career has always been a negotiation between the artistic path and academia”

INDCOR Communications Chair interviewed me for the blog of our COST Action CA18230 - Interactive Narratives Design for Complexity Representations, during our fall meeting in Budapest.

Here is the full post.

She is filmmaker, storyteller, screenwriter and also, the INDCOR Social Chair and the Virtual Networking Manager. From Barranquilla (Colombia), with a double PhD from the University of Genoa (Italy) and Universidad del Norte (Colombia), she moved to Germany to be Artist-in-Residence at Schloss Solitude Akademie. Together with six Virtual Mobility grantees, she will be working on a virtual strategy to improve the networking of the INDCOR members.

How did you know about INDCOR?

I joined the Interactive Digital Storytelling community through our conference ICIDS of 2015 in Copenhagen. At the time, I was in the first year of my PhD in Digital Humanities at the University of Genoa (Italy), and as a filmmaker and storyteller, I was interested in interactive ways to tell stories. The academic conference and the art exhibition of that year literally opened a new world for me. A great number of colleagues from this community are now working on a new frontier of the field of interactive digital narratives, that is the representation of complexity, INDCOR. When I heard about using IDNs to analyze complexity, at the first edition of the ZIP-SCENE conference in Budapest, my mind was overwhelmed about all the possibilities that IDNs offer us to understand our world.

What does it mean to be the Social Chair?

This position came up with the pandemic situation, and the need to gather the members of our action to meet each other and discuss relevant topics for our work. Collaborations, papers, projects, new ideas often are generated in relaxed environments, the breaks in the conference, a networking dinner, a walk, so the social chair position was intended to generate these spaces online. We started to use gather.town to make the meetings, and probably some of you can remember the first INDCOR social when we were banned by Facebook for promoting our keynote speakers on conspiracy theories narratives. With this position that now has become Virtual Networking Support Manager, my main goal is to facilitate the networking between the members of the action, for the production of knowledge, but also to create new unexpected synapses in our network.

How is your research related to Interactive Digital Narratives?

I come from a communication sciences background, I have worked in radio for many years, and simultaneously I have worked as a documentary filmmaker. My career has always been a negotiation between the artistic path and academia. In my city, Barranquilla in Colombia, I started teaching the first course on audiovisual narratives and new media, back in 2013. This is how I started doing research but also producing interactive video stories, some with my students, and some on my own. In 2014, with the hype of 360º video, and interactive 360º video, I started to get close to virtual reality research. And my PhD thesis is precisely about “Interactive Fiction in Cinematic Virtual Reality“, I would say in the heart of IDNs.

As an artist, where can we see you work?

Some of my artistic work can be found on my online portfolio Xeh Reyes. However, recently with my VR projects I’ve been facing an issue very well-known for new media artists, and that is the obsolescence of the platforms, hardware and software that we used to create our work. I’m working together with the team of the authoring software that I used to create my projects to find a way to reproduce my work on newer VR headsets.

You are involved in the Virtual Networking Support Team for INDCOR. What is the main goal of this group?

This opportunity was born thanks to the Virtual Networking Tools that COST habilitated last year due to the pandemic. Together with the Virtual Networking manager and six Virtual Mobility grantees, we are about to implement a very complete strategy to improve the networking between the action members. The strategy includes the organization of our asynchronous and synchronous networking tools as Google Drive and Discord, but also new online activities as workshops and training sessions with external stakeholders, and in general improved procedures to work on our field and publish our results. This is a dream team formed by early-career researchers with great ideas and energy to boost the action.

The Up-Rooted

While in Schloss Solitude I started to develop a documentary project based on intimate conversations with fellow artists in the Solitude forest. We talked about art, life, but also about this condition that artists and people in this generation share: the nomadic life.

The eternal moving makes us wonder about roots and interconnections, about the concept of home, family and safety net. During this process I wrote this piece, inspired by a phrase that Olivia told me from a poem about having roots in the air.

The documentary is meant to be also a map, tracing artists’ personal spots in the forest.

This is what connected the uprooted, or better, the up-rooted.

There are those who grow and no matter how much they spread, they keep their roots well anchored in the earth. There are those who grow inwards, and to the outside they only show a handful of leaves. There are those who grow up with weak roots that break with the first storm. And there are those like me, we stretch like a rhizome in the air. The longer this aerial plant grows, the more it meets and intertwines with other plants with acrobatic roots. They are plants whose seed flew away, fell on a piece of fertile ground, and began to grow upwards and to the sides, until their roots also detached from the ground, and began to grow above the clouds. Delicate electromagnetic connections here and there feed the aerial plant, like wireless roots picking up nutritious signals.

The uprooted are a strange species of acrobatic beings, in constant mutation and expansion, they cut with autonomous pain the heavy roots that unite them to a single group of sage, to exchange the vital sage with other uprooted ones. At the end of their days, their blood is not of a unique type, but a river whose flow collects hundreds of rivers of diverse providences. The uprooted barter for books, bedding, clothes, food, language, memories. Sometimes they even swap skin to feel what the other uprooted one feels. They meet in the air and at the blowing of the first wind they move, sometimes scattered, sometimes together, sometimes in pairs, sometimes as a family, often alone. The uprooted can share the same wireless roots, and there is no need for another uprooted to ask for it, the uprooted share everything because they own nothing. Nothing belongs to them because they own the world. Their growth is anarchy in its purest form, there are no limits for the expansion of the uprooted, for the interconnections they generate, for the time of their lives, or for the time of their death. The lightness of their existence allows them to be everywhere, to learn everything, and at the same time, to be absent, to be lost, to become a cloud and to let the sunlight pass through them.

It can happen that ground plants grow so tall as to be able to intermix with the uprooted, the aerial plants celebrate this fact and often hug the branches of the plants with earth roots for decades or centuries, but there is always a time when both are unlinked by a slight change in the direction of the wind. Sometimes that entanglement becomes so tight that the aerial plant can generate a wireless root connected to the ground plant to return at times or to feed itself when it is time of drought on the other side of the globe. Other times they spend so much time entwined that the ground plant spreads its youngest branches around the aerial plant and convinces itself that it is becoming an aerial plant. Until the root pulls it towards the ground with such resistance that the tension ends up breaking the young branches and dismantling the tangle of leaves created between the aerial and the terrestrial plants.

The uprooted are not beings without roots, they are beings with roots that extend into the air. Their rhizomatic roots create an energy network that connects to the electromagnetism of the globe at specific points for nutrition and communication. Their celestial acrobatics create another kind of soil in the sky, one that draws the tips of the ground plants upward, toward the sun, toward the stars, toward the movement of the wind. They transmit the information of the world to terrestrial plants, they bring news for growth, they mix pollen, sage, colors. The uprooted are always ready to seed, collect, exchange, and depart, without ever abandoning.

Original spanish version: www.xehismo.wordpress.com

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Schloss Solitude 2021

Summer time is arriving. Today, a solar eclipse just happened, they say is some type of re-start. If they are right, I think it is my case, I am definitely re-starting myself. It’s not like starting again, but more a re-boot, an update to a better version of this software of mine.

The castle of the loneliness helps, even though it is not a lonely place at all. It is full with brilliant minds, chill humans, vibrant birds, friendly snails and humble trees. The forest’s maze offers conferences with the silence and parties under the rain.

So many things to do, words to write, books to read, friends to meet, music to hear, pianos to play, notebooks to draw on, maps to forget, postcards to send, days to see.

Today I found a poem by Christina Rosetti (1830) a romantic poet, that came to my mind coming back to the castle all the way up the hill. I guess I feel like this, arriving to the castle's beds.

Does the road wind up-hill all the way?

Yes, to the very end.

Will the day's journey take the whole long day?

From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place?

A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.

May not the darkness hide it from my face?

You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?

Those who have gone before.

Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?

They will not keep you standing at that door.

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?

Of labour you shall find the sum.

Will there be beds for me and all who seek?

Yea, beds for all who come.

Online and Inspiring ICIDS 2020

The 13th edition of the International Conference on Interactive Digital Narratives - ICIDS 2020 just ended. After months deliberating if having a mixed conference or a totally online conference, we finally agreed that the best solution was to have an virtual conference.

The virtual Live/synchronous conference was articulated through different platforms: a single room on ZOOM for all the academic events (papers, keynotes and debates) which gave us the feel of continuity, that feeling of being in a conference leaving the jacket on the auditorium to come back after the breaks; a Discord Server with multiple dedicated channels for discussion, questions, announcements, and videoconference tables to “meet the artists” or meeting the presenters of posters and demos; and finally a Gather Town space to socialize after the academic talks.

We also had 3 live artistic performances: An interactive theater piece The Evidence Chamber (twice) and the netprov Fantasy Spoils: After the Quest, and an one-hour radio show: ARDIN Radio, everynight with a recap of the conference day.

The asynchronous conference had space through 3 different websites:

The main website of the conference with the schedule and general info.
The website of the Art Exhibition “Texts of Discomfort”_ with 18 selected pieces. Each piece contained a link to download the artwork or a link to web-based artworks, and a video in which each artist presents their work. In this way interactors were able to enjoy the pieces in their own time and space, protecting that intimacy between the digital art piece and the visitors.
The website of ARDIN - Association of Research in Digital Interactive Narratives_ This website contains all the academic presentations with 20’ videos, and the recordings of all the live ZOOM sessions of the conference.

A very dynamic conference with several pros regarding the physical conference, and not a lot of cons, as we might have thought at the beginning. For sure, nothing replace the physical contact with researchers and artists, however now we can’t go back from this virtual experience, and everything indicates that the future is hybrid.

Invited Speaker - Monthly ARDIN Online Social

On September 30th we will be hosting our first ever ARDIN social and grad student meet-up!

Time: 1 pm to 3 pm EST | 7 pm to 9 pm CET

Agenda:

• ARDIN Social: Discussion of news relevant to the community, 1 invited speaker (Josh Fisher), member's announcements, academic speed-dating session.

• Grad Student Meet-Up: A roundtable discussion of what our community's graduate students are working on, 1 invited speaker (Maria Reyes). Graduate students, come ready to briefly pitch the projects you're working on!

About the Speakers:

Josh Fisher: I work with emerging media forms to facilitate social change. My specific focus is on community storytelling and I collaborate with community leaders, artists, educators, writers, and students on stories of communal significance. For example, I developed an augmented reality storytelling platform for Georgia Tech. Then, as part of my research, assessed the impact of the platform through both qualitative and quantitative methods. Over the years, I have become an established public speaker and storyteller with performances, lectures, and talks on digital publishing, interactive narratives, and augmented reality design. I have had the pleasure of teaching courses on visual design, interactive storytelling, communication and culture, mobile and web design.


Maria Reyes is a Colombian researcher and screenwriter based in Italy and working as a researcher at the Institute of Educational Technologies at the National Research Council of Italy (CNR-ITD). She holds a double PhD degree in Digital Humanities from the University of Genoa (Italy) and in Communication Sciences from Universidad del Norte (Colombia). Her research focuses on interactive digital narratives, immersive technologies and distance learning processes. 

During her career, Dr. Reyes - known to her friends as Xeh -  has worked as lecturer in digital storytelling and cinema; as a screenwriter and editor for cinema; as a creator of interactive VR projects; and as a radio producer at the Latin American Association of Educational Radio (ALER). She is researcher-in-residence 2020-2021 at Schloss Solitude Akademie. Co-curator of ICIDS 2020 Art Exhibition.
 

Link to Join Meeting on Gather.town

Password: ARDIN_social_space1


We hope to see you there!

Nijole's Lithuanian Premier at VDFF

This year NIJOLE will be the opening film of the Vilnius Documentary Film Festival - VDFF 2019. The first time that the documentary will be screened in Nijole’s land. The festival will be held from 19 to 29 of September 2019, and will have screenings in Klaipeda and Kaunas.

During the opening, Antanas Mockus, one of the most famous lithuanians of all times and Nijole’s son will be present.

This is how VDFF describes our film:

Nijole doesn’t really like people. She is provocative, an artist, an iconoclast. And much of this was inherited by her son, Antanas Mockus. Along with the peculiar relationship between mother and son – in fact Antanas is the film’s guiding force – their communication and lack thereof, the memories of a Lithuania that, in times of war, had to be fled from, her artistic works and her written reflections, this film has the same irreverent, strong, and somewhat disperse character of the fascinating woman it portrays.

VDFF

From lithuanian press:

https://www.lrt.lt/naujienos/kultura/12/1091875/lietuvoje-filma-nijole-pristatys-pagrindinis-herojus-kolumbijos-politikas-antanas-mockus

https://www.15min.lt/kultura/naujiena/kinas/neuzkliuti-uz-slenkscio-arba-vilniaus-dokumentiniu-filmu-festivalio-atidarymas-4-1192986

https://www.zmones.lt/naujiena/lietuvoje-dokumentini-kino-filma-%E2%80%9Enijole-pristatys-pagrindinis-herojus-kolumbijos-politikas-antanas-mockus.00f9ecf4-c8b0-11e9-a421-aa000054c883