WRT: Writer Response Theory

In the most recent step toward the conversational agent takeover (a conversonator apocalypse), the new video game Bot Colony by Montreal-based North Side marches toward its launch. The game’s website promises “Unrestricted conversation in English between players and characters.” WRT took some time out from rearing our own chatbots for some unrestricted conversation with Bot Colony chief designer, Eugene Joseph.

Trailer for Bot Colony

WRT: Bots attract people for lots of different reasons. Can you describe when and how you first became interested in developing conversation bots?

We are working on NLP since 2003, and initially the target application was different (specifying simulations in English).

It is a very large effort to do NLP, and the simulation market is a fairly small outlet for it. I started thinking about other applications, and one day I decided to let my right hemisphere take over. I have always enjoyed writing, and that’s how Bot Colony was born.

WRT: What bots (of the the Loebner world) would you say yours are most similar to? ALICE, JABBERWACKY, ELIZA, (I’m assuming Jabberwacky)

You should not assume anything. We have nothing to do with any of them, and you can add MyCyberTwin to the list.

I think people get tired very quickly of bots that don’t UNDERSTAND what they’re saying, and don’t show they make a real effort to understand. We do.

Continue reading ‘Interview with Bot Colony creator Eugene Joseph’

[updated 6/1/09]

Introducing PeoplePaper:

Last spring, Holly Willis and the Institute for Multimedia Literacy hosted the 24/7 DIY Video Summit. (See the newly relaunched web-page here, complete with videos and much much more.) here’s a project that invited you to DIY using the participants of that summit! Don’t just cite media critics, make them say what you want them to say with the video: The Media {Scholars} are the Messengers.

They are PeoplePaper.

Add your own text here using Bubbleply.
See one version of the video with text here.
Become PeoplePaper by recording yourself holding up a blank sheet.

WRiTing on videos:
Back in 2007, Michael Wesch released the rabidly viral video “A Vision of Students Today.” In it, his 200 students sit in a giant lecture hall at Kansas State University, where Wesch teaches. The camera zooms as the students, one by one, hold up signs on paper or computer screens that make statements from a survey the students participated in. The statements describe their study habits and daily media consumption. “I will read 8 books” this year, says one sign, but “2300 web pages,” says another. As with Wesch’s other releases, the video has provoked quite a response. Perhaps more striking than the over 3 million views are the 60+ video responses posted on YouTube.

Continue reading ‘The Media {Scholars} are the Message {diy}’

Hello everyone!

Boy, I’ve been a bad poster here. Nearly finished the PhD though. So will be back on teh case. Anyway, I wanted to share with you a project that I think some of you would find interesting.

For a few years I’ve been working with the Australian Literature Board on their Story of the Future project as a strategist, MC, judge and mentor. The project has now ended, but the project manager didn’t want it to end without sharing some of the things we’ve been doing. So, The Writer’s Guide to Making a Digital Living was born. It covers the various ways digital technology can be used for storytelling, distribution, marketing and so on. It is aimed at writers at various stages of their career, who work in a variety of artforms (screenwriting, game writing, poets, novelists, ewriters), and addresses writers worldwide. The Guide is intended to compliment excellent existing Guides like Digital Livings: The Report by Chris Meade for De Montfort University, read:write (PDF) by the Institute for the Future of the Book, The Writing Game by the Writer’s Guild of Britain, and the IGDA Guide to Writing for Games (PDF). There are some excellent Australian talents in this guide too, like Jason Nelson and Mez.

I was commissioned to write the sections on the craft of new writing forms, professional development, concept development, marketing and distribution. As well as being packed in with stuff, there are extensive delicious bookmarks, and I created a chart of the New Writing Universe to give a glimpse at the vast range of emerging writing forms out there.

The chart is available in PDF format, but also as a flash file online (created by the Lycette Bros). The terms in the chart are actually from a database of terms and definitions I’ve been developing for a few years now. If luck is on my side, I may be working with another WRTer on the proper visualisation of this data in the not-too-distant future. ;)

As a start, check out the very tongue-in-cheek promotional video they created:

Check it out at: www.australiacouncil.gov.au/writersguide

Enjoy! And let me know what you think.

Application deadlines for Digital Arts and Culture (DAC) 2009 are coming up!

• Paper proposals to tracks (such as the Software / Platform Studies Track) are due by May 1.
• Proposals for VaRiEtY Night presentations and Electronic Literary Arts Performances are due by May 15th.

Check the DAC 2009 call for details on all tracks, presentations and performances, and don’t forget to submit a proposal online by the deadline!

Under the management of Simon Penny, DAC 09 will be held at UC Irvine Dec. 12-15th (just in time for your holiday shopping). This year’s theme, “After Media: Embodiment and Context” continues DAC’s expansion, pushing out the boundaries of how we consider digital art and culture.

DAC full list of tracks:

• Embodiment and performativity (Nell Tenhaaf ,Melanie Baljko)
• After mobile media (Kim Sawchuk, Marc Böhlen)
• Software/ platform studies (Jeremy Douglass, Noah Wardrip-Fruin)
• Environment/ sustainability/ climate change (Andrea Polli)
• Interdisciplinary pedagogy (Nina Czegledy)
• Cognition and creativity (Fox Harrell)
• Sex and sexuality (Susanna Paasonen)
• A Space-Time of Ubiquity and Embeddedness (Ulrik Ekman, Mark Hansen)
• The Present and Future of Humanist Inquiry in the Digital Field (Terry Harpold, Lisbeth Klastrup, Susana Tosca)

Continue reading ‘DAC 09 Calls (WRT answers): 5/1/09′

WRT has it on good authority (the authors’) that Chris Crawford, collaborating with Laura J. Mixon, is readying the full launch of an interactive story-authoring system almost 20 years in the making. Introducing “SWAT” (Storyworld Authoring Tool) and Storyteller (the software for playing a SWAT Storyworld). Crawford first took on this epic quest in 1991, developing the system (previously called Erasmatron).

Crawford finally broke down and gave us an(other) interview to discuss the release of this storied project. And since Web 2.0 is in perpetual beta, according to Tim O’Reilly, I’m calling Crawford’s gesture close enough to calling it done. (Read and hear Christy’s previous CC interview here.)

SWAT offers a robust authoring system, which gives electronic literature and game designers easy access to powerful possibilities. (There I go again with my adjectives — when I should’ve been emphasizing my verbs — what Crawford considers the keys to powerful interactive authoring).
Crawford has written, “Interactivity requires verb thinking” (Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling 97).

Of course the new system allows authors to go well beyond verbs as the site describes:

Using our free authoring tool, SWAT, creative individuals with a story to tell can script their own sets of Actors, Stages, Props, and a web of potential interactions known as Verbs. Players seeking a unique new form of computer entertainment can play those storyworlds, engage with the Actors, and explore a wide range of choices and behavior in the dramatically rich environment developed by the author of that world.

The larger set of software includes Storyteller, Rehearsal, Scriptalyzer, an LogLizard. In fact, SWAT authors will find a veritable Lizard Lounge for tools for editing, rehearsing, et cetera. SWAT relies on Deikto (simplified English system used to communicate with the player) and Sappho (Scripting language for authoring). Crawford wrote about Deikto most notably in First Person, reprinted at ebr.

The system features editors for: verbs, actors, relationships, props, and stages. Truly object-oriented story composition, actors have states, locations, modes, and traits, all adjusted via sliders. Verbs can have emotional effects on particular audience, direct objects, timing, and more. At the point at which the verbs enter the authoring toolbox, Storytron shows it’s true mettle (especially to those who have downloaded the latest version of Java). My initial exploration of the authoring system has found it to be mind-boggling rich with potential for processing complexity — even while it eschews the center of processing of most video games. (More comprehensive review to follow this post)

Crawford is still equalizing his first title “Balance of Power - 21st Century,” (”unrelated” to the classic commercial game of the same name and by the same author) but will release that as soon as he is done tweaking (which he promises will be much less than 17 years from now). The download also comes with “ChitChat,” a “mini-storyworld,” featuring a few characters in a bar.

Continue reading ‘Chris Crawford Delivers a Sneak Peek at SWAT! (with Interview)’