The Clarion Workshop at UCSD

Earlier this week, the Second Life-focused blog Not Possible IRL had an interesting post on UCSD’s Sheldon Brown, Director of our Center for Research in Computing and the Arts, and his ongoing project, the Scalable City.  The post, “Using game technology to explore the “unreality” of virtual landscapes,” includes a link to the trailer on Youtube for Sheldon’s project.

Scalable City - a project by Sheldon Brown and Experimental Game Lab - creates environments, from urban to rural, via a data visualization pipeline.

Now Scalable City has opened at one of my favorite museums in the whole wide world, The Exploratorium in San Francisco. As you move through the interactive exhibit, you literally “paint” the flying landscape with highways, buildings, and automobiles. According to Sheldon’s website, “Each step in this pipeline builds upon the previous, amplifying exaggerations, artifacts and the patterns of algorithmic process. The results of this are experiences such as prints, video installations and interactive multi-user games and virtual environments.”

Sheldon tells me that when he describes the project, the light bulb that goes off in people’s heads often displays itself in the form of comments like, “Oh, you mean like Second Life!”  In real life (pun intended), his project is a way of looking at second, third and fourth generations of the technologies that enable Second Life, in the near-term future when virtual reality worlds will be far more extensive, adaptable and available.  The next one in the pipeline appears to be Avatar Reality’s serendipitously named Blue Mars, blogged here and here this past February after being previewed at GDC 2008.

Last year’s Clarion class met with Sheldon one afternoon, in a first experiment at lab tours and conversations with faculty designed to develop relationships and see if anything interesting emerges.  This year, we’re regularizing the program a little more, setting such discussions for Friday afternoons between 3:30 and 5:00, one of the very few times during the Clarion Workshop that could be called “down time.” 

With thanks to the glorious Mr. Lewis Carroll, and in recognition perhaps of a renaissance in Carroll-ish strands within literary science fiction and fantasy, I point tonight to the marvelous blog post at the UK’s Guardian books site by 2008 Clarionite Damien G. Walter.  Damien, along with classmate Emily Jiang, is a respondent to this blog, something that the new blog etiquette requires me to disclose; their equally stunning classmates so far seem less forward (less interested perhaps?) as they prep for the crazed six-week phenomenon that is Clarion. 

Damien’s blog post heralds the excitement of the Mundane movement — a rather joyous dichotomy, this idea of a wondrous Mundane.  I won’t try to summarize the piece, because it makes its own case so well.  What strikes me as wondrous about the  post is the simple fact that the Mundane movement, for all its power, is but one of several tremendously important strands emerging from the literatures of science fiction and fantasy.  Whether you choose to focus on Geoff Ryman and the Mundane as Damien does, or Kelly Link and magical realism, or Jeff VanderMeer and the New Wierd, or Neil Gaiman and the intersticial storytelling that bridges between graphic novels, novels, young adult novels and film, and then back again, the world of science fiction and fantasy literatures is becoming as varied and exciting as the field of ‘Literatures in Spanish’ that replace the old Western-centric approach differentiating between Spanish literature and the novels of the so-called New World; or ‘Literatures in English’ that brings English (UK) Literature, American Literature and Caribbean literature in English together into a single topic. 

Damien’s piece announces the death of the starship and the birth of the mundane reality at the core of sf and fantasy.  (Okay, that’s a gross exaggeration, but I’m trying to make a point here.)  I would argue that the starship, in partnership with the vampire and comic heroes such as Iron Man, live on and indeed reign supreme in the other media that reflect the sf and fantasy genres: film, television, the web.  They will continue to dominate in those genres well into the future, since the emerging ‘Literatures of SF/Fantasy’ have more power in the written word than in other media.

Meantime, where our past focus in the study of literature writ large was framed largely by the dichotomy between ‘High’ and ‘Low’ literatures, the emergence of so many powerful variants within sf and fantasy may herald a new age.  Where it goes, well, only time will tell.  Or time travel.

My recent Race in Space post included a brief discussion of diasporas, a topic that science fiction and fantasy deal with in tremendously interesting ways.  I subsequently came across an article by Michael Fullilove of Australia’s Lowy Institute for International Policy reminding me of the broader implications of diaspora populations and their increasing importance in a globalized world:

Diasporas – communities that live outside, but maintain links with, their homelands – have been with the world at least since the Jews were exiled to Babylonia. But in recent years they have become larger, thicker and stronger…
Diasporans are becoming more interested in their origins and organising themselves more effectively; homelands are revising their opinions of their diasporas and stepping up their engagement efforts; meanwhile, host countries are worrying about fifth columns and foreign lobbies.
This trend is the result of five factors, all of them connected with globalisation: the growth in international migration; the revolution in transport and communications technology, which is quickening the pace of diasporans’ interactions with their homelands; a reaction against global homogenised culture; the end of the cold war, which increased the salience of ethnicity and nationalism and created new space in which diasporas can operate; and policy changes by national governments on issues such as dual citizenship, which license people to lead transnational lives.

Fullilove’s article is a summary of a longer paper available in full here.  An interesting area of research, and a very interesting policy institute, funded thanks to a gift from Frank Lowy of Westfield mall fame.

Today’s PopMatters has a post by Mae-lee Chai on Adilifu Nama’s Black Space: Imagining Race in Science Fiction Film, on the slim presence of blacks in the genre:

How one quarter of the Earth’s population suddenly disappears in the future is not an issue generally addressed in any of these films. How then, does one write a book about black people in a genre that for the most part has deliberately excluded them? The answer: by examining the erasure as well as the limited depictions of black people in science fiction.

The review begins with an anecdote that Nama’s friends, upon learning of his planned study, would tell him it was “going to be a short book.”  According to Chai, however, the depth that the book covers — and what it leaves out, including the treatment of black women, other races, children — indicates that Nama’s volume is only a starting point on a long journey to reconsider race and science fiction.  Octavia Butler once described one of her novels as follows:

I talked to members of my family, and did some personal research that didn’t really have anything to do with the time and place I was writing about, but that gave me a feeling of the experience of being black in a time and place where it was very difficult to be black.

Nama’s work implies that most filmmakers in sf and fantasy have focused on imagining ‘the experience of their (white) world’ in a different time and place without noticing who they were leaving out.  Then again, the relatively smaller numbers of prominent black filmmakers, let alone sf and fantasy filmmakers, begs the question of what one would expect to come first, the filmmakers or the films.

This summer’s Clarion workshop presents an interesting opportunity to discuss issues of race in literature.  We’re hoping to bring Nalo Hopkinson together with some of our Literature Department faculty specializing in African diaspora literature — like Fatima El-Tayeb, Camille Forbes, Dennis Childs or Sara Johnson – together with Clarion students for a conversation.  Just another way we hope that the Clarion workshop’s new UC San Diego home can serve as a resource to the students and broaden the community dialogue.

Pardon my riff on Pogo, but I couldn’t help thinking of my favorite possum while reading the Los Angeles Times‘ article this morning, “Reporting live from a cellphone near you …” It focuses on Bay Area start-up Qik.com, leading us to a “dystopian” future by letting “users send live video directly from their Nokia phones to the web.”

 ”The worst moment in almost everybody’s life is going to be captured on film,” [Jason Calacanis, a New York-bred, L.A-based entrepreneur and tech-world celebrity] said. “But if those bad moments can be avoided or we can learn from them, that’s going to be very powerful as well.”

Wait, hold the phone . . . optimism about constant mutual surveillance? How does that work? Well, mull it over and see if Calacanis’ view doesn’t start to make sense. The key is not to think of it in Orwellian terms, in which some unseen entity is monitoring your every move. Not that Big Brother couldn’t happen or that we shouldn’t be vigilant about its creeping up on us — but that’s a different story altogether. What I’m talking about here is Little Brother — since we’re the ones with the cameras….

Consider too that it might not be so bad, collectively, to have more of our unflattering moments out in the open. It seems to me that for a long time now, we’ve all been laboring under the Puritanical myth that to be good is to be perfect.

I’m not so sure that I agree with him on that, but certainly Little Brother seems a bigger threat than Big Brother at this point.  Especially when you think what then-rare video did in the Rodney King case, and jump to today’s New York Times piece on haggling, about the increasing ability of eBay-aware shoppers to negotiate prices downward in department, electronics and other chain stores, particularly as the recession deepens.  And it’s not just pricing information or police-brutality videos that are reshaping the power of the collective individual: at UC San Diego, we have a start-up technology in the works that will put real-time air-quality monitoring in the hands of cell phone users, allowing urbanites to track pollution levels in their neighborhoods and identify hotspots.

 The power of the ‘collective individual’: Childhood’s End, anyone? 

Masayuki Oshiai’s ‘Shutter’ is about to take the concept of  ‘director’s cut’ video releases of studio films to a whole new level.  Up to now, director’s cuts have been either the version the director would have released if only the weenies in the studio hadn’t cut the movie to shreds (Blade Runner); or the extended version desired by fanatics breathlessly seeking every moment of Christopher Lee’s Saruman performance (Lord of the Rings).

As described by Paul Brownfield in today’s LA Times , in an article on the film’s star Joshua Jackson, Ochiai’s ‘Shutter’ takes that concept one step further:

What makes it more than a popcorn movie for American audiences, says the film’s star, Joshua Jackson, is that its Japanese director, Masayuki Ochiai, simultaneously made a different cut of the film for Japanese audiences.
“The old paradigm is unraveling,” Jackson said. “That idea that you could make a movie that would have regionally specific cuts. I think that’s a really interesting idea.”

The cuts in this case include Japanese-language scenes left out of the American version, and changing the story-line to remove the evil connotations surrounding spirits that haunt the couple at the center of the film to better relate to Japanese culture’s respect for one’s ancestors.

Wikipedia lists seven different versions of Blade Runner, at least four of which seem to be available to the hungry fan willing to scrounge around eBay and Amazon.  If Ochiai’s starting a trend, how many more are we heading for?

UC San Diego Physics B.A. Philip Rosedale has decided to move up within Second Life, the virtual world his Linden Lab created, to make room for an experienced manager who can manage the world’s explosive growth:

Rosedale founded Second Life, the 3-D virtual world in which players can fly, look like rock stars and build their own palaces, as well as pursue less savory endeavors, in 1999. The fanciful role-playing game now has about 500,000 active users.

The virtual world grew rapidly over the last two years. The number of people who pay $9.95 or more for a premium membership (you can also use the site for free) nearly doubled to 93,219 in late 2007 from the year before. Corporate sponsors such as Nissan Motor Co., Dell Inc. and Best Buy Co. bought virtual land and set up shop in Second Life with the hope of marketing to its residents.

Dean Takahashi at VentureBeat has an interesting review of The Making of Second Life: Notes from the New World, the recent book by Catherine Winters.  It’s a nice take on where Second Life is, as we contemplate where it’s going.

A Los Angeles Times article on the upcoming release of “Iron Man,” the first film out of the new Marvel Studios, highlights the changing nature of ’story’ in film thanks to the ongoing digital revolution.  While of Marvel Comics’ most exciting characters – the Fantastic Four, Spiderman, the X-Men and others – are in the hands of other studios, how to leverage the company’s lesser known figures?  And perhaps more importantly, given the economics of moviemaking, ”why go into the movie-making biz now?”

Maisel said the question is the wrong one. “We’re not in the movie business, we’re in the ‘Iron Man’ business right now. Marvel owns the intellectual property. We have an Iron Man video game coming, the toys, the comics, we have an animated television show coming, a direct-to-DVD animated Iron Man movie last year. We’re going to have an Iron Man ride at an amusement park in Dubai in a few years. We have a different perspective.” 

Now there’s an interesting topic for a Comic-Con panel…

 Meanwhile, Gore Verbinski, of “Pirates of the Caribbean 3” fame, talks to the Business section of the Times about his move into gaming with “a secret project that would let him apply his creative vision to the games business.” Again, the nature of narrative itself is at the core of Verbinski’s approach:

After working seven years straight on five movies back to back, I picked up my game controller and started playing. I just was blown away by the potential. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I feel that we are on the brink of something phenomenal. It’s a completely different form of narrative than being told a story in the traditional sense. So all the narrative rules, although I enjoy them, you have to start throwing them away and say, “Wow, look at what you can do here in this world!”

There’s a great piece on MSNBC’s Cosmic Log today about a visit by Doug Liman and Hayden Christensen, director and star of the new sf movie “Jumper,” to MIT to meet with some physicists to discuss the movie.  With teleportation at the core of the film, Liman was waiting to be “shredded,” but found the visit “incredibly inspiring, because the physicists explained how they use movies to make physics more appealing and more magical.”  MIT cosmologist Max Tegmark, who organized the event, found it much more fun and enlightening than he’d expected:

Tegmark said the best thing about science-fiction movies, even movies where the science is especially fictional, is that they spark more interest in science fact.

“As a scientist, often the hardest thing is not finding the right answer, but finding the right question - and science fiction is great for generating the right questions,” Tegmark told me. “It’s like when you’re watching a movie and you say, ‘It’s obvious that that’s impossible.’ Then you realize, it’s not so obvious why it’s impossible. You start asking very basic questions about the nature of space and time.”

That’s how Einstein started along the path that eventually led to E=mc² and more.

He also admitted to being a little surprised by the number of “groupies” scattered among the MIT students, noting that “the affair had a party atmosphere, with some students sporting Darth Vader masks and lightsabers.”  Sounds more like a con.

Today’s Los Angeles Times reports on the efforts of L.A. developer Sonny Astani to bring his memories of “Blade Runner” to life in the city’s Figueroa district.  As shown here, Astani’s seeking approval for a 14-story high ‘billboard’ made up of “of tiny panels embedded with LEDs, or light-emitting diodes — a concept viewed by some at City Hall as the next frontier in outdoor advertising.”  While massive billboards already exist, Astani’s would be the first with moving images — and would face right out onto the 110 Freeway, where drivers so desperately need distractions like this.

Reading through Astani’s comments, one gets the sense that he didn’t notice that Blade Runner’s vision is dystopian, not utopian.  Then again, he’s not alone: the story also focuses heavily on desires among developers in the district to turn Figueroa into Times Square West, like that’s a good thing.