Richard Lewis teaching collaborative screenwriting
Karen Kocher teaching digital documentary
Bryan Sebok teaching Convergent Hollywood
Bruce Pennycook teaching Sound Design for Video Games and Film
Rosental Alves teaching Online Journalism
Arie Stavchansky teaching Photorealistic 3D Graphics Rendering

(As well, Arie had just finished up a semester-long Rich Web Design class in Porto, where Stuart Kelban was also teaching Screenwriting. The U of Porto summer courses end with Gary Chapman’s seminar next week on the Internet and Organizations.)

The Institute condensed a number of related media fields into a series of very intensive experiences and projects, stimulating new ideas for teaching both in Portugal and in Austin. We hope to air the great work growing out of the workshops at the Digital Media Festival in October, and also will arrange a screening/installation in Lisbon soon.

Successful applicants will receive benefits including access to facilities such as university libraries and specialized computer labs, and administrative support from the host institution. Additionally, program participants will have opportunities to work with leading scholars and professionals and network socially with potential project collaborators. The program does not include financial support.

For more information about the creative residency program’s application process, requirements, and benefits, please see the above link. The deadline for applications is July 15, 2008.

The call for entries invites submissions of web, digital video, and installation art work, as well as electronic music, 3D graphics, cell phone art and productions related to locative media, games and hybrid realities. The deadline for entries is July 11.

The festival will also include panel discussions focusing on a variety of digital media topics, featuring academic and industrial perspectives. Prospective panelists can view the call here. The deadline for panel proposals is July 31.

In short, we’re working to place qualified graduate students and early-career professionals at digital media companies in the Austin area for either a semester or a summer. These internships should provide some good learning and professional development opportunities for students. We’ll be providing some workshops aimed at professionalization to supplement the internship experience.

If you’re interested in learning more about internship opportunities, check out the internship page. And, watch here for application details, which we should have posted by mid-to-late June.

How hard can it be, after all, to link a set of searches and transactions to a particular individual? Moreover, what motivation would companies like Yahoo! have to maintain this screen of privacy? Google attempted to distance itself from behavioral targeting last year in the media, after the company came under fire for its purchase of online advertising giant DoubleClick. Now that the deal is complete, however, and other giants like Yahoo! and Microsoft are increasingly making use of behavioral targeting strategies, will Google continue to take the high road?

The UT Austin branch of the CoLab Digital Media group was also a general sponsor for the Symposium this year. The Knight Center is directed by Professor Rosental Alves, who will lead an Online Journalism workshop at the Summer Institute in Lisbon in June.

There was something for everyone, with presentations covering typography, motion design, web design, generative art, data visualization, installation, advertising, print, performance, illustration, film, and animation. Eternal rebels Fakepilot and Joshua Davis managed again to draw laughter tears out of the crowd with their edgy and ironic takes on design, inspiration and business. Other highlights include All of Us’ fun interactive spaces and objects; Fallon’s greatest hits that somehow never get old; Random International’s PixelRoller (a paint roller that paints pixels!); and Devoid of Yesterday’s beautiful cinematic stories.

This edition of Offf just left me wishing for a wider and, well, less corporate, art exhibit (maybe next year?). It was also unsettling to see TMN (major cell phone service provider) take over the festival’s image to a point where it was impossible to distinguish between Offf’s identity and the corporate advertising messages: “A wi-fi! A wi-fi! My kingdom for a wi-fi!”?

Anyway, it was fun and interesting and inspiring, and I hope to see you all at Offf Lisbon 2009.

Breakthrough, an organization that does human rights work in both the United States and India, has released a game, ICED (I Can End Deportation) to help players learn the ins and outs of immigration policy and rights. The game, which targets youth, is intended to teach players how unfair U.S. immigration policy is.

The game is available as a free download, and includes educational materials for teachers who might want to use the game in the classroom. It’s an interesting intersection of web activism and educational gaming, to say the least. The amount of collaboration that has gone into the project is impressive — New York City teachers and dozens of students weighed in on the project. A number of organizations have created web-based games related to their pet issues, but ICED is more comprehensive than many of these projects. It’s not just a gimmick to convince players to spend more time at the organization’s web site, and incorporates a great deal of significant information. What remains to be seen is how successful the project will be at reaching its intended audience and what that audience will think of the game.