[-empyre-] projects

[James Morgan]

I am typically pretty shy about talking about my projects and as a person  
who has lurked on this list much more than I have participated I would  
welcome any comments. Feel free to message me directly if you are piqued.  
My projects cross a lot of lines and tend to not be strictly artistic so I  
offer you a core dump.

Current projects:

Cooperative Gaming Coop: We love games and we want to share them. The CGC  
is made up of two separate tracks. the Arcade Cabinets and the Game Swap.  
We invited curators to create themed collections of games and installed  
them in DIY Game Cabinets. The effects of this were truly amazing. The  
cabinets came out solid, with a real arcade feel, and the audience  
responded fearlessly to the games.  The shift from computer to Cabinet had  
a profound effect on who would engage the games. I was pleasantly  
surprised that the generations who grew up with an arcade felt right at  
home in the gallery space. I was also pleased that the interface was  
sturdy and really young kids could pound on them with little or no  
negative effect. The second aspect was the Game Swap where we collected  
classic and recent games and encouraged people to bring a game that they  
loved, but that they were done with, and come in and swap it for something  
new. Designing version 3 of the cabinets, swap seems to come out monthly.

Gamification of Advising:  Our system of advising has long had a bend  
towards punishment (you didn't fill out this form, therefore your  
graduation is delayed) rather than encouragement. Using some basic game  
principles and parts, and adding a "major" based social space my goal is  
to create a user friendly system that helps students anticipate their  
upcoming needs and provide an easy connection to experts and others who  
have successfully navigated the system.  The greater goal of this is to  
help our advising staff broaden the scope of their interactions with  
students and not have to be as concerned with paperwork, but be able to  
focus on career goals and student success.

Virtual Environment -> 3D: I have been working with small scale 3D  
printers for a little over a year and this summer printed a model of the  
Liberator, the 3D printable handgun. As a mini project, I highly recommend  
it because it pushed our little UP! printer to its limits but beyond that  
the physical assembly of the pieces and seeing how it operates  
mechanically is profound and takes me outside of my distaste of firearms.  
I mention the Liberator because of what it teaches, but I am more  
interested in the path from digital and socially interactive sculpture to  
fabricated object.  I am developing a curriculum to teach to three intro  
level classes that will allow students several entry vectors (Minecraft,  
Sketchup, Blender, BYO) and several output vectors (3D Printed, Pepakura,  
Shapeways) to see their objects physically realized. My interest is in the  
navigation of the complexity and the translation from virtual to physical  
aligns with some of the work I did with Ars Virtua. We also benefit from  
having an artist in residence in our social construction space (Minecraft).

Brief Bio:

James Morgan is an instructor for Digital Media Art at San José State  
University and is the Director of Ars Virtua. His work involves social  
interaction, coded culture and democratic structures in game-spaces and  
simulations. James curates art and games in physical and simulated spaces.



-- 

james


Anything that can be made, can be made black.