Our conversation on "the current and future uses of AI and immersive technology in theatre and performance," chaired by TORCH Director Wes Williams, will also feature the Royal Shakespeare Company's Director of Digital Development Sarah Ellis, multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker Ruthie Doyle, immersive producer & curator Dan Tucker, and David Taylor, Associate Professor of English.
I'm hugely looking forward to chairing a roundtable next weekend with good friends Asiphe Ntshongontshi (Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation Youth Centre), Joahnna Berti (Debajehmujig Storytellers), and Maurianne Reade (Northern Ontario School of Medicine University).
You can catch our conversation, titled "Shadowcasting from Manitoulin to Masiphumelele: 'Citizen Science Fiction' as Mixed-Reality Role-Play for Civic, Scientific and Media Literacy," at 1:30pm on May 28th.
This conversation on "the current and future uses of AI and immersive technology in theatre and performance" features the Royal Shakespeare Company's Director of Digital Development Sarah Ellis, multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker Ruthie Doyle, and immersive producer & curator Dan Tucker.
While I'm there, I'm also excited to talk further with Prof. Williams and his team about their upcoming project Fantasy Futures: Imagining Immersive Innovation, which will use motion capture and augmented reality to "harness the energies and enthusiasm that are generated by worlds peopled by monsters – from Ancient cultures through Tolkien’s monstrous imaginings to the Marvel universe."
"The project emerged out of a desire to reimagine for the twenty-first century the Humanities Division’s centuries-long expertise in unearthing fascinating research narratives from the worlds of Ancient and Fantasy Literature.
"By synthesizing this research excellence with the UK’s world-leading gaming sector, the project is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the opportunities afforded by the latest cutting-edge advances in immersive storytelling."
To celebrate the end of term, I'm posting a playlist of all the Media Arts Futures guest speakers I've been lucky enough to host in CMA 1123 Writing for Games and Interactive Media over the past two years.
Game Designer Abhi on Venba, a Game about Culture, Cooking and Change
Writer Evan Narcisse on Video Games Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Dot’s Home
SpookiTalk: The Natural Language Parsing Engine of Douglas Adams’s Starship Titanic, with Robbie Stamp, Emma Westecott, Neil Richards, Yoz Grahame and Jason Williams
AI as a Character and the AI-Driven ‘Play as Anyone’ Mechanic in Watch Dogs: Legion, with motion-capture author and actor Pascal Langdale
How in the World to Carmen Sandiego: Making a Netflix Interactive Special, with director Jos Humphrey
Forget ChatGPT. A quarter of a century ago, a point-and-click CD-ROM adventure game from Douglas Adams featured a groundbreaking conversation engine called "SpookiTalk", which allowed you to chat with actual robots.
To celebrate the release of Starship Titanic 25 years ago this April, here's a panel discussion with members of the dev team which I hosted as part of my York U course Writing for Games and Interactive Media this time last year.
March 2022 was the 25th anniversary of the game's original deadline whooshing by, and as I'd actually worked at The Digital Village back in the day, I figured I'd introduce my old colleagues to my first-year Media Arts students, none of whom were alive when the game was released, so we could all feel old together.
In preparation, I assigned for homework J.C. Herz's 1998 New York Times review, PushingUpRoses' 2014 YouTube review, and the following brief audio interview of Douglas Adams by Aram Sinnreich on the release of the new game:
(CC Attribution-Share Alike 3.0. Excerpt from original audio file "Aram Sinnreich interviews Douglas Adams," publication date 1998-04-21, at https://archive.org/details/ASDA042198. Photo by Robbie Stamp of Douglas Adams working on Starship Titanic in 1997 at The Digital Village, Camden, London.)
With the table set, the class welcomed our guests in from three timezones. Here are our contemporary portraits and job titles at TDV:
Clockwise from top left:
• Robbie Stamp (Chief Executive, The Digital Village)
Less than a year before the pandemic, on 12 March 2019, peer health interns Zanele Melapi and Sibulele Bontshi reflected on their participation in the "citizen science fiction" storyworld Shadowpox: The Cytokine Storm, at the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation Youth Centre, Masiphumelele, South Africa.
Media Arts Futures: In Conversation with Pascal Langdale, Actor, Teacher, and Co-Author of "Performing for Motion Capture"
Moderated by Alison Humphrey
Presented by the Department of Cinema and Media Arts, York University
March 29, 2022
About Pascal
Pascal Langdale is an actor and teacher known for his reliable versatility across multiple media. He has worked in TV, film, voice and video game, and has been described as the “Swiss Army Knife” of Mocap. Head of the Canadian branch of The Mocap Vaults, he is a movement specialist with an expertise in nonverbal behavior, bringing characters to life through voice, body and psychology.
Pascal's most recent mocap work includes Far Cry 6 as a body double, and the voice of Bagley in Watch Dogs: Legion (for which he as nominated for a Canadian Game Award), also contributing to many of the 'Play as Anyone' NPC's, as actor and movement choreographer. He has worked on numerous video games since his first role as Ethan Mars in Heavy Rain, including voice, mocap and performance capture, actor performance matching, reverse ADR, facial capture operation and demo production.
A born Londoner, Pascal is a graduate of the 3-year acting course at the UK's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and made Toronto his home in 2011. He has credits in supporting roles in more than 100 TV, film roles, in the past decade in Canada, these include Killjoys, Bitten, Suits, and the recent Randal Okita movie, See for Me.
With John Dower, Pascal co-wrote Performing for Motion Capture, the world's first in-depth resource for the education of the next generation of actors in digital production, including interviews with over twenty experts in all stages of the pipeline.
The event was kicked off by special guest Dr. Steven J. Hoffman, Director of the Global Strategy Lab, Professor of Global Health, Law, and Political Science at York University, and Scientific Director at the CIHR Institute of Population & Public Health. Huge thanks to Steven for joining us!
One of the students in the course, Man Yiu Kingsley Wong, is also a talented photographer, and took the initiative to document the afternoon, which was particularly poignant as it was the only day of the whole term in which we gathered on campus in person.
Three-quarters of the class met outside York's Centre for Film and Theatre, right across the street from the Global Strategy Lab in the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research...
...while intrepid teaching assistants Lokchi Lam and Kurt Walker made sure the other quarter of us could participate via Zoom...
Please join us on March 10 for a free webinar with pop culture polymath Evan Narcisse, writer of comics, video games and animation, which I'll be hosting as part of my course Writing for Games and Interactive Media.
Evan Narcisse works as a writer and narrative design consultant in video games, comic books, and TV, often focusing on the intersection of blackness and pop culture. As a journalist and critic, he’s written for The Atlantic, Time Magazine, Kotaku, and The New York Times, in addition to teaching game journalism at New York University and appearances as an expert guest on CNN and NPR. He’s also the author of the Rise of the Black Panther graphic novel and a contributor to Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Redfall, and Marvel’s Avengers. A native New Yorker, he now lives in Austin, Texas.
Presented by the Department of Cinema and Media Arts.
The new project is titled Co-Creating Vaccine Confidence: An Anishinabe Theatre-Based Approach to Strengthen Indigenous Youth and Young Adult Vaccination Support, and it's funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research under the COVID-19 Vaccine Confidence - Indigenous Health Research Operating Grant.
The team has grown to include more great folks from the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, among others, and is led by principal investigators Marion Maar, Maurianne Reade, and Mariette Sutherland. (Yes, Marion, Maurianne and Mariette – a trio of names tailor-made for a musical theatre number!)
Update: A recording of the webinar has just been released by the McMaster Museum of Art. The short sections where I speak about Shadowpox and the role of art in changing perspectives are cued up below.
Citizen science fiction, Captain America, and the X-Men:
"Who is my neighbour?" – The teaching stories of Spider-Man and Black Panther:
Moderator: Steven Hoffman, Director, Global Strategy Lab, York University
Panelists: Annemarie Hou, Executive Director, UN Office for Partnerships Alison Humphrey, Vanier Scholar, York University Lauren Paremoer, Senior Lecturer, University of Cape Town John-Arne Røttingen, Norway’s Ambassador for Global Health
Please see the webinar registration page for full bios, and check out what's coming up next in the series:
