Ian Bogost: The Material Constraints of Art and Programming

Double Plus Good... I was planning on attending this lecture, and then was asked to work the event.  Score.  I got to get paid to go, and had a few extra moments to speak with Ian.  Not only that, it was amazing.

Ian Bogost at ATL&S' Black Box Theater

Ian Bogost is a media philosopher and designer who focuses particularly on video games.  He is a professor at Georgia Tech and accomplished author.  This afternoon Ian gave an excellent presentation about the evolution of not only video game media, but also some of the theory behind material constraints.  For example, he programs for an Atari system, but is limited not only by the amount of RAM he can use, but also the number of addressable sprites and objects is 'limited'.  These boundaries, Ian poses, help to define the creativity that goes into the utilization of these types of tools.  This goes for older systems like Atari, or even newer platforms like like the XBox360 or PS3.

Don't take Everything so Seriously

I saw this squirrel lounging on my tree and I managed to capture a picture of it. Just a good little reminder to kick back and enjoy life every now and then. (Click on it to see the full size)

Image by E.J. Posselius © 2009

Victor Wooten Master Class

Victor Wooten - wikimediaCommons

Victor Wooten was called in as a replacement for the West African Highlife Performance that evening. As part of his commitment to the music community, he gave a secret master class (that about 150 people found out about). He is a fountain of wisdom and a reminder that you don't need to study music theory to understand music, and we often forget this.


Some memorable quotes:

"Change your mind, change your performance."
"If I tell you the answer, it's over."
"When you learned English, you said the word before you understood it."
"Theres a lot of mistakes, but you don't care, do you? Neither do I."
"A mistake is something you didn't think about."
"If you could describe music with only one word, what would it be? Certainly not anything from a theory book."