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I haven’t been writing at all to my blog! Mostly because I’ve been too busy with my thesis, my thesis blog and other things. This week I’m attending a workshop lead by Alberto Tognazzi on a parallel project with Barcelona. Their website and documentation is here, only in Spanish though. It’s a project that will bridge New York and Barcelona through local narratives, music and sound, public interaction and intervention using mobile devices. I’ll post the final product of this exciting, week-long workshop at the end of the week!

Global Game Jam and our game Lucid was reviewed by Clive Thompson from Wired magazine!

In his article Sweet Success, Fascinating Failure: 48 Sleepless Hours at Global Game Jam, Thompson writes about Lucid:

“In contrast, another Game Jam team developed a game called Lucid, with a supersimple concept: A little, dreaming boy floats upward, and you guide him past obstacles while trying to collect Lego bricks. The gameplay was pretty derivative; on paper, I thought it sounded dull. But they had a playable demo done in only 24 hours, which left them a full day for play-testing.

They nailed the physics perfectly: When you steer the little boy, you have good but not precise control, making what would otherwise be a too-simple game into a surprising challenge. Lucid became one of the most polished and enjoyable games of any Game Jam team worldwide.”

In his multimedia review Make It Quick, Play It Quick, Thompson mentions the art work, on which David and I worked together!:

“Lucid was one of the most polished games of the New York Game Jam because the team was large and diverse — game designers, programmers, music wranglers and an excellent artist who drew all the visuals by hand. The game literally looks like a pencil-and-watercolor picture.”

Awesome job Team Lucid! Kudos to Bruno, David, Matt, Merve and Rachit once again!

This weekend, I participated in Global Game Jam, a 48-hour game design event that took place in 53 locations in 23 countries. I teamed up with Bruno Kruse, Matt Parker, David Golan from ITP and Rachit Parikh and Merve Keles from the Computer Science program at NYU.

Our game, Lucid is about a boy trying to find his way to inspiration. The player has to control his thought bubble through a maze of blocks and collect Lego bricks along the way. If you bump him into the wall, he’ll wake up and the game is over.

Please play and rate our game Lucid at Global Game Jam’s website here!

Team Lucid!

Team Lucid at work!

2 weeks into the semester, I finally found the time to write on my blog!

It’s been super busy so far. I’ve been shopping for classes, trying to finalize my schedule, catching up with friends.. But at last, I got into all the classes I wanted and got back on track with everything else. It’s going to be an amazing -and busy- semester, I’m so excited!

So, I’m taking Social Facts: Motivation with Clay Shirky, Spatial Media with Jared Schiffman, Technology as Identity with Ayah Bdeir, Big Games with Greg Trefry and Story Writing Workshop with Nancy Hechinger. Plus, I’m going to intern at the Reach Project under the Technology and Social Justice internship Program.

Throughout the semester, I’ll keep documenting and posting updates about my projects, so check back regularly!

At the end of each semester, a collection of ITP projects are showcased to the public for two days. This year, the Winter Show is taking place from 5pm to 9pm on Wednesday 17th and Thursday 18th.

Art-techies, technology enthusiasts or anyone curious to see what ITP is all about should come out and play with all the wonderful projects created here this semester!

The official invite is here.

I don’t know how 10 weeks have passed already, but we are now fast approaching finals!

It is time to start thinking about our final projects. For Pcomp, I’ve been doing a lot of writing, a lot of sketching, a lot of brainstorming for the last two weeks. I decided that I want to work on my own for this project, not because I don’t like to work with a group, but because I think I want to do something more personal this time.

While I’ve been thinking about my project, I kept remembering Red’s “Play, play, play…” advice she gave us on the first day of Application’s class. What does she mean by play? Why does she want us to play? What does play mean to me? Why would I want to play with anything?

These recurring questions will not really be answered until probably when I leave ITP, but still, I always find myself trying to figure out what the essence of play is while I’m working on a new project. In fact, it’s so liberating that we are greatly encouraged here to do whatever inspires us; moves us; drives us. We are so fortunate to be in such an open environment where creativity and collaboration are the most emphasized notions and we are allowed to play along the way.

Having said all that, what I see in play for this semester is that we have room for making things that are more about exploring the very new tools we have been learning so far, and not so much about making things that can be packed and shipped as products. Do I make sense? Maybe that’s all what ITP is about anyway! Well, for me, I take the final projects this semester as an opportunity to create art. Not that I would give up on that in the future, but… Oh, I’m confusing myself!

Anyway.

If I stop and try to make a clearer picture of what I have in mind, I would say that I saw myself inclining towards choosing a subject matter that is personal to me. For that reason, one that is perhaps very risky to communicate. But we are encouraged to take risks; we are encouraged to play! So, instead of doing something gadget-like or something more of a product, I decided to work on a interactive sculpture or installation piece that plays with the idea of memory.

I am extremely interested in the notion of memory for a number of reasons; one important one being the fact that I have a very poor personal memory. I am the type of person who forgets events, dates, numbers, names, plots, stories; you name it, I’ll forget it! It is very sad that it is the case, but I never know what I can do about it other than revisiting my memories whenever possible or keeping a journal, which I have never been so consistent at… This blog will definitely be a collection of my creative memories and I will appreciate it greatly later on, I’m sure.

Where was I? Yes, memory! With this project, I want to explore my personal memory; as well as political, social, cultural, artistic and religious memories. But, how would that be interesting to other people? Would they want to interact with it, and if yes, how? How am I going to approach it? Am I going to recreate a memory, or should I focus on making memory tangible? Something that represents the memory, but not necessarily communicates it directly?

I have many questions. I’m going to start sketching and writing and see where I go from there.

Right now, I’m acting in the short film “Hear No Evil”, by Jason, Diego, India and Dimitris. I am the female lead and now Diego is going to say hey to me, while I’m working on my laptop. (hence, this blog post is possible.) I’m going to say hey back to him and smile. This is kind of fun actually, but I much prefer acting on stage.

Oh I miss acting for theater!.. Last year back home, I was part of an amateur theater group and we put ‘Antigone’ on stage at the end of our year-long training. The whole preparation for the play and the actual performance were few of the most memorable experiences in my life.

I am Tiresias, the oracle. I have two dogs. My dogs guide me and follow me. They give me strength when I need it. I feel what is to come. I see the future. I am to give the omen to the people of Thebes. King Creon, blinded by his own ego, humiliates me. In return, I cast a curse on the King and the city of Thebes. And in the end, he loses everything he has and loves: his power, his respect, his wife and most importantly, his own son.

Greek tragedies… Maybe I should read some Sophocles this week for inspiration.

(Starting to hate that I am always on the look for inspiration and seeing everything as a source of inspiration for future projects!)

I have to admit: I’ve been a horrible blogger.

At first, it was appealing; it was a novelty and it was fun.

Later on, I became too self-conscious and that did it. It was almost like when I try to speak too fast (in any language) and use big words and hope to come out as a super-smart person, I always, always stutter, because I’m self-aware the whole time… So was the case with blogging. The more I became self-aware (What if everyone I know starts reading this? What if they see my cheesy lab videos for PComp? What if people find it so boring that they will never come back again?), the less I wanted to write.

An issue all perfectionists to some degree experience I guess… Writing the perfect blog entry… Making the perfect video, taking the perfect picture, finding the perfect time to write that perfect blog entry… I could go on. But until that perfectness is reached, you end up doing nothing, which is pretty damn sad.

Anyway. Today, I realized that I’m being stupid. This might be the only time in my life when I can blog carelessly! Recklessly! This is an opportunity! Because noone I know will read this blog! Only people from ITP will read this blog and they won’t care how boring it is, because theirs are just as boring as mine!

SO. I’M BACK!

From now on, I’m going to document restlessly and post them immediately, no matter how boring and how imperfect my entries are.

There is nothing to be scared of! I’m going to stop being self-conscious and write, post, draw, link, brainstorm, collect, share and telecommunicate.

First thing to do: I have to design my own design for my own blog. That’s crucial. Because I can’t go on being associated with “White as Milk designed by Azeem Azeez”. I have to reinstate my cyber entity.

Oh my! It’s my cyber integrity that is at risk and I have to do something now!

Does anyone know where to start?

ps: i wonder if the word cyber makes people a little uncomfortable… i kind of hope it does.

Diego and I created the images of the comic strip in Photoshop and then transferred them to ComicLife for structure and captions. It took us longer than we expected; we pulled our first all-nighter in ITP on a Friday night! Here is the pdf format:

Super Mario

Don’t ask me how.

I’m a real New Yorker now.