/* fivel rothberg */

this past august noam celebrated his 10th birthday in style at FDR skatepark. the weather was perfect and everyone had a blast. the only hangup was that noam’s name was misspelled on the cake :- (

Last night i went to the opening night of “Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures 1960’s to Now” at Exit Art. first i was simply impressed as the size of the gallery. then i went in to enjoy a large selection of political posters and some other graphics.

it was great to see works that i recognized and admire, like a large print from the Beehive Collective. they are good friends with an old roommate, morgan, who is himself a great political puppetista and propagandist. years ago he did a show about mr. block, of IWW fame, it was the first that i had heard of mr. block. part of me cried out “morgan’s work should be in this show!” okay so there are a ton of political printmakers. i suppose it was a recognition that morgan’s work is part of a strong heritage, a tradition that the Exit Art curators emphasized.

my only ‘complaint’ is that i wanted more.  maybe next time around, a similar exhibit could show the historical roots of political graphics further back than the 1960’s.

finally, there was one poster in particular that was among the Otra Campaña works. it is a poster with Mafalda as a militant Zapatista. i had seen that same poster in the Wooden Shoe and thought about buying it for Ana. but i didn’t. and then a few weeks later when i went back to the store, they had run out. grrr. wish i could find a copy somewhere. been thinking of getting a Mafalda tattoo. maybe that graphic would work well.

Exit Art is also teaming up with 16 Beaver to put on a screening series. It looks like a very impressive line-up of hard to find films.

I’ll write more later, but here are some photos of Keith + Mendi Obadike’s visit to the IMA program yesterday. I was pretty much geeking out the entire time. They presented for about an hour or so and then checked out the IMAterial show that’s happening in the Black Box. There, they offered critiques to several folks in our program including Sarah Nelson Wright, Suyin Looui, Francisca Caporali, Laura Chipley, Pilar Ortiz and Angela Ferraiolo. Not only were the Obadikes very generous with their time but it looked like they were having as much fun as we were.

I was also excited that my son, Noam, got to meet them.  He had a lot of fun playing around with Angela’s interactive flash / video piece – which can be seen below.

i shot an interview last tonight with ira goldstein of the new york city taxi and limousine commission. the interview will be included in a short documentary that i’m making about the effects of technological upgrades in nyc cabs. the new technology – gps and credit card machines – were highly contested additions. in fact, the new york taxi workers alliance (NYTWA) organized a city wide strike over the issue in october 2007, before the legislation took effect. at this point i’ve interviewed bill lindauer of NYTWA, javaid tari of NYTWA, professor edward rogoff of baruch college and ira goldstein.

in terms of the subject matter, the interview with mr. goldstein was interesting because it was great to hear a government official talk directly about issues that don’t neccessarily get touched on. in particular, i was interested in hearing where the advertising money goes. the gps / credit card machines in nyc cabs now have the capability to display ads on their screens. it was not clear who directly benefits – the medallion owner, fleet owner, or machine vendor. it seems like it’s simply a means of reducing costs for the medallion owners as they pay less money in leasing fees on the machines if they agree to have ads on the screens.  Yet from a taxi driver’s perspective, they could care less because they still pay a 5 % service charge with every credit card swipe.  And the cabbies aren’t particularly happy about hearing the same ads cycle over all day.  One person I spoke to, Bill, joked about how “these are the same people who had recorded celebrity voices – including Elmo – telling passengers to ‘buckle up’ every time they got in the cab.  It drove cabbies nuts.”  Can you imagine hearing Elmo say “Buckle Up For Safety” over 30 times a day?  yikes.

just from a filmmaking perspective what i find amazing is that everytime you turn off the camera people say far more coherent and interesting things than when on-camera. on the one hand it tells you just how practiced some folks are at acting ‘natural’ when on-camera. on the other, there must be filmmakers out there who have some amazing techniques that get people to relax.

there’s also the fact that i didn’t notice the subject’s lav mic wire had come out from behind his tie and was dangling across his body. yikes. during the interview i was just concentrating on asking the questions, listening to his responses and going with the flow of the conversation. then, after looking at the footage – wham – there it is. it feels like such an amateur mistake. and who wants to make amateur mistakes? grrrr.

that being said, i’m going to go over the footage again tonight. b/c i know the wire wasn’t visible the entire time, so there must be useful segments in there.

Last week I attended a unique gathering – Future of Interactive Technology for Peace Conference – at Carnegie Mellon University. It was sponsored by the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) – an impressive interactive technology program in Pittsburgh. I went with Hunter’s own Professor Mary Flanagan, who had invited me along for the ride. Mary founded Tiltfactor at Hunter, a game research center that focuses on social issue video games. She also worked in the game industry and has published a number of articles, and so on, about gender and the values inherent in video games.

The conference was inspired by a game called Peacemaker, which was developed by ETC graduates at Impact Games. Apparently ETC and CMU have an incubator program for start-ups coming out of the program. And Impact benefited from this program, obviously. The game is essentially a “God” game that places players in the shoes of either the Palestinian President or the Israeli Prime Minister. And unlike the typical video game scenario, one must “wage peace” to succeed. Players have various methods with which to wage peace, such as making a speech, sending in military forces, contacting the UN, etc…

Although I’m from Philly, I’d never been to Pittsburgh. And for some reason I had it in my head that it would be a very similar place. But no, I was pleasantly surprised by the new scenery. It’s certainly has an Appalachian feel to it, with the three rivers converging among hilly streets, a slew of victorian houses, etc.. We didn’t have much time to wander around. Okay, none really. But we did get a tour. Pittsburgh has a ton of cathedrals, and because we were at a game-related conference, we all thought of how they could have been levels in Zelda or Super Mario Bros.

The conference opened last Wednesday afternoon with unremarkable speeches at the main campus. In the evening we gathered at the Entertainment Technology Center facility, which is adjacent to the Ohio river. The center takes up about three floors of a modern building, which also houses some science labs. Coming from Hunter College, the facility is all the more spectacular. Electronic gadgets, toys and all kinds of games abound. The students have collaborative studio space to work in which looks like it came right out of Silicon Valley – which it essentially did. The primary faculty are ‘alums’ of big corporations like Disney, Pixar and LucasArts. And those are just a few of the places that students end up.

So, it’s a bit surprising that Peacemaker came out of that program, and that this program is even holding a conference related to technology and peace.

okay, so i feel like i’m “the last to know” about this. why didn’t anyone tell me? harvard computer science courses are entirely available for free online and so-far are amazing. i’m particularly looking forward to the course about programming. here’s that course description:

Computer Science 50: Introduction to Computer Science I is a first course in computer science at Harvard College for concentrators and non-concentrators alike. More than just teach you how to program, this course teaches you how to think more methodically and how to solve problems more effectively. As such, its lessons are applicable well beyond the boundaries of computer science itself. That the course does teach you how to program, though, is perhaps its most empowering return. With this skill comes the ability to solve real-world problems in ways and at speeds beyond the abilities of most humans.

OMG this is amazing.

Here are some photos from my trip to San Francisco:

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

GDC – Day 4, sort of.

It’s day four of the GDC, more or less.  The first two days of the GDC were only open to pass holders who paid for the summits – which included the Serious Games Summit, which I was interested in attending.  However, upgrading to the two day pre-main conference pass provided by the IGDA scholarship was prohibitively expensive.  The all access pass costs around $2,000.  With the high prices of passes, it’s pretty clear who this event is aimed at.  The average attendee seems to be white, male, 30’s to 40’s and an employee at a major game firm, i.e. Midway, Sony, Nintendo, and the like.

Seriously, I think the conference is about 80% male.  I’ve seen more men with a combination of beer bellies, goatees and pony tails in the past few days than at any other time in my life combined .

I suppose all things considered, it doesn’t matter that I haven’t posted since November.  Been lots of things going on.  Most importantly at the moment is that I’m in San Francisco at the Game Developers Conference, which is apparently 16,000 strong.  I was fortunate to receive a scholarship through the International Game Developers Association.  Otherwise it costs a fortune to attend.  Will post more about it soon.