A sala: Exposições 2014: Projeto de Extensão Ações Educativas na Galeria de Arte A Sala do Centro de Artes da UFPel

A SALA é de suma importância, enquanto instância educacional e expositiva pública, localizada no Centro de Artes, que promove a partilha da produção artística contemporânea com o corpo docente, o corpo discente e com a comunidade em geral. É o espaço que apresenta a obra de arte e promove a sua fruição, como também envolve práticas profissionais que possibilitam aos estudantes de arte conhecer as etapas que envolvem a realização de uma exposição, ou seja, os projetos de curadoria, de expografia, a montagem, a produção gráfica de divulgação, encontros com o artista, ações educativas, a documentação, entre outras atividades necessárias para que as mostras aconteçam. De maneira intensa e constante os alunos são colaboradores e apreciadores das exposições, adquirindo saberes indispensáveis à formação universitária

Players Imbuing Meaning: Co-creation of Challenges in a prototype MMO

This article discusses how components in a game world can carry meaning relevant to individual players. The discussion is grounded in work with a massively multi-player online (MMO) proto- type where players in guided play-tests created their own opponents that they battled in groups of three. The opponents are called Manifestations, and can be compared to the “boss monsters” that in adventure and role-playing games pose the greatest challenges in terms of tactical game play, or battle. When creating Manifestations players define how these shall behave in play, and what they say under different circumstances. The game play mechanics in the world is centred on emotions and social relations. One of the design goals in the creation of the prototype was to cater for a system where tactical game play can be closely tied to the potential narrative contents. The Manifestations players created in the play tests were of four main categories; reflec- tions of persons they had complicated relationships with in real life, difficult situations, abstract concepts, or purely fictional entities. In several cases players brought material into the game that had personal meaning to them. These meanings were developed further when players saw how their Manifestation behaved within the rule system of the world. For example, one player created a Manifestation of an anticipated exam, while another made a Manifestation called “Mother”. The Mother cast spells called “Focused Aggression” and “Cold Ripple of Fear”. It was able to perform acts called “Blame”, “Threaten”, and “Disagree”. The group experimented with tactical choices, while reasoning about the Mother’s potential motivations. They managed to overcome the Mother by alternating between giving each other resistance and casting spells, the winning stroke being a rapid series of spells called “Forgive”

Artificial and Computational Intelligence in Games (Dagstuhl Seminar 12191)

This report documents the program and the outcomes of Dagstuhl Seminar 12191 "Artificial and Computational Intelligence in Games". The aim for the seminar was to bring together creative experts in an intensive meeting with the common goals of gaining a deeper understanding of various aspects of artificial and computational intelligence in games, to help identify the main challenges in game AI research and the most promising venues to deal with them. This was accomplished mainly by means of workgroups on 14 different topics (ranging from search, learning, and modeling to architectures, narratives, and evaluation), and plenary discussions on the results of the workgroups. This report presents the conclusions that each of the workgroups reached. We also added short descriptions of the few talks that were unrelated to any of the workgroups

AI-based game design patterns

This paper proposes a model for designing games around Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI-based games put AI in the foreground of the player experience rather than in a supporting role as is often the case in many commercial games. We analyze the use of AI in a number of existing games and identify design patterns for AI in games. We propose a generative ideation technique to combine a design pattern with an AI technique or capacity to make new AI-based games. Finally, we demonstrate this technique through two examples of AI-based game prototypes created using these patterns

AI-based game design patterns

This paper proposes a model for designing games around Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI-based games put AI in the foreground of the player experience rather than in a supporting role as is often the case in many commercial games. We analyze the use of AI in a number of existing games and identify design patterns for AI in games. We propose a generative ideation technique to combine a design pattern with an AI technique or capacity to make new AI-based games. Finally, we demonstrate this technique through two examples of AI-based game prototypes created using these patterns

A panorama of artificial and computational intelligence in games

This paper attempts to give a high-level overview of the field of artificial and computational intelligence (AI/CI) in games, with particular reference to how the different core research areas within this field inform and interact with each other, both actually and potentially. We identify ten main research areas within this field: NPC behavior learning, search and planning, player modeling, games as AI benchmarks, procedural content generation, computational narrative, believable agents, AI-assisted game design, general game artificial intelligence and AI in commercial games. We view and analyze the areas from three key perspectives: (1) the dominant AI method(s) used under each area; (2) the relation of each area with respect to the end (human) user; and (3) the placement of each area within a human-computer (player-game) interaction perspective. In addition, for each of these areas we consider how it could inform or interact with each of the other areas; in those cases where we find that meaningful interaction either exists or is possible, we describe the character of that interaction and provide references to published studies, if any. We believe that this paper improves understanding of the current nature of the game AI/CI research field and the interdependences between its core areas by providing a unifying overview. We also believe that the discussion of potential interactions between research areas provides a pointer to many interesting future research projects and unexplored subfields.peer-reviewe

European Avant-Garde: Art, Borders and Culture in Relationship to Mainstream Cinema and New Media

This research analyses the impact of transformation and hybridization processes at the intersection of art, science and technology. These forms of transformation and hybridization are the result of contemporary interactions between classic and digital media. It discusses the concept of 'remediation' presented by Bolter and proposes the concept of 'digital ekphrasis,' which is based on Manovich' s analyses of the interactions between classic and digital media. This is a model which, borrowed from semiotic structures, encompasses the technical as well as aesthetic and philosophical transformations of contemporary media. The thesis rejects Baudrillard's and Virilio's proposed concepts of 'digital black hole' as the only possible form of evolution of contemporary digital media. It proposes a different concept for the evolutionary model of contemporary hybridization processes based on contemporary forms of hybridizations that are rooted in aesthetic, philosophical and technological developments. This concept is argued as emancipated from the 'religious' idea of a 'divine originated' perfect image that Baudrillard and Virilio consider to be deteriorated from contemporary hybridization experimentation. The thesis proposes, through historical examples in the fine arts, the importance of transmedia migrations and experimentations as the framework for a philosophical, aesthetic and technological evolutionary concept of humanity freed from the restrictions of religious imperatives

Ludics for a Ludic Society. The Art and Politics of Play

This dissertation provides an analysis of, and critical commentary on, the practice of playfulness as persistent phenomenon in the arts, technology and theory. Its aim is to introduce political reflections on agency through the study of playful technological artefacts, which were largely ignored in the recent discussions on game and play. Following the critical analysis of historic discourses and actual studies of play under differing auspices, and in order to understand play as inherently political agency, this thesis’ research question addresses the immersive effects of playful agency in symbolic exchange systems and in the material consciousness of the player. This thesis conducts an analysis of material cultures, in order to categorise play as technique of an inherent critique of technological culture. It traces the development of contemporary technological objects and their materiality in relation to the application of the concept of affordance in design theory. The author consequently proposes a new category of ‘play affordances’ in order to describe these new requirements of play found in consumer technologies. The structure of the analysis in the distinct chapters is informed by a stringent historic, theoretical and arts analysis and an alternating arts practice. The convergence of these elements leads to insights on further uses, options and perspectives of the research problems discussed, in particular in relation to the requirements of playful interaction in contemporary technologies, which increasingly radicalises the importance of play. The thesis’ hypothesis states that playful practices in arts and technologies provide models for political agency, like the strategic use of Con-Dividualities (Jahrmann 2000). This term describes the concept of shared identities in society or social media consumer technologies, as discussed in historic case studies and the author’s own arts practice, related to the modification of technologies as methodology of arts research. In this way the arts practice and theory of playfulness informs the emergence of a new methodology of research, intervention and participation in society through the arts of play, which is coined as Ludics, as an original outcome of this thesis

The Aesthetics of Paradoxism (Second Edition)

In the history of thought and creation, the decisive events, the great and significant moments, the strongly affirmative stages - then the imposition of the optimizing novelties - have depended on the name and prestige of a personality. Referring to those, we personalize further on. The examples are extremely numerous, even in our nearest past. When we mention a creation - in the largest sense of the term - with the name of the personality who illustrates it most extensively at a given time, we state precisely the specific importance of it; we give it, with other words, the identity to which we can refer continuously with full knowledge and without causing any confusion among the receivers. The facts are called with the name of the man who produced them, and in this way we can compose a parallel onomastic dictionary, in which the work is included in the person’s space, keeping its content. The consecrated proper names evolve through quickly imposed habits, a large range of increments that announce the essential outline of their peak production. No space for ambiguity remains when we address to readers or listeners who are somewhat acquainted with the subject and we use such terms as Aristotelianism, Platonism, Kantianism, Hegelianism, Proustianism, Eminescianism, Barbianism, etc. We have even the advantage of a centered communication when we suggest with a sole notion the work as well as its dominant features, linked with the renown of the concerned author. There is no doubt that this way of denomination, when practiced a long time, has become a reflex and now is part of the habits of a correct expression. And neither the semantic objectification of works by a person nor the inherent axiological sanction disturb anybody. Personification being inevitable in creation, the history of art can be superposed to the history of the authors or, at, least gets tangled very strongly with them. It is precisely the case with the recent literary movement of Paradoxism, conceived in Romania and affirmed in the United States, which is closely bound to the temperament, inclination, taste and creative disposition of its initiator and organizer, the poet-mathematician Florentin Smarandache (paradoxism = smarandachism, in an “internal” and already notorious interpretation)