Re: iDrama or hiDrama??

["Brandon J. Van Every" <vanevery@indiegamedesign.com>]

thom@indiana.edu wrote:

> I objected to the idea that any art can be automatically generated in any field 
> from writing to visual art to music.
Well, seeing as how you don't even consider a modern 
Impressionistically-inclined painter to be producing 'Art', I'd say your 
view of what can be generated is very limited.  'Art' for you seems to 
be some kind of verbally layered semantic content.

> History pretty much shows that art does 
> not appear randomly, that machines never produce it and that humans are always 
> in the mix.
History also shows you can't fly an airplane, or play a video game on a 
handheld device, for most of human history.  At any rate, what you 
define / deride as 'decoration' problems, I consider an easier class of 
problems to solve than verbal semantic problems.  Also, for solving AI 
problems in general, there's a school of thought that a lot of are 
so-called 'intelligent' behaviors are based on our bio-hardware 
capabilities.  Like that image recognition isn't an entirely 'brainy' 
problem, but is partly contained in capabilities of the eyeball that do 
not make it all the way back to the brain.  Furthermore, there's a 
historical school of thought that we're determined very much by what's 
available in our environments.  Take a read of "Guns, Germs, and Steel" 
for instance.

> I think the goal of any art has to always be ART in caps otherwise we are 
> lowering the bar too low for it to even be considered art in lowerCaps.
>  
So what do you think of popular entertainment such as Star Wars?  Mere 
decoration?

> Totally personal point of view on my part. I embrace no objectivity.
>  
Clearly.  Your MBTI wouldn't happen to be 'Feeler', would it?
Those are the subjectively inclined ones....  http://www.personalitypage.com

> Regarding the 'i' in iDrama I see no reason to even consider lowering this to 
> merely procedural programming of any sort to generate automatic iDrama. 
I wouldn't eschew available tools.

> I'm not 
> concerned with a business model even marginally related to a mass audience. 
> Phillip Glass the musician made his living for years as a non-union plumber so 
> he could do his art free of constraints.
Do you like plumbing?  Do you have a tolerance for it?  I definitely 
find that signature gathering is getting old.  And, having a day job is 
not "being free of constraints."  Having less time to work on stuff is 
very much a constraint.  I'ts just a better constraint than many of the 
alternatives.  Anyways, my goal in life is to someday be paid tons of 
money for doing exactly what I want to do.

> Many artists have made their living in 
> other fields so they could do their art; insurance seems to have been a popular 
> one for some reason.
>
>  
Do you like or have a tolerance for insurance?  I'm noticing you have an 
*.edu address.  Have you had to self-fund your high mindedness yet?

> Interactivity is completely related to communication and it is what any 2 human 
> beings does naturally once they are within 5 feet of each other even if they 
> don't know each other: "Hi," snear, nod. <em> This is my definition of 
> interactivity <em> With this definition of interactivity the iDrama box is much 
> larger than the envelop most of the discussion on the iDrama lists occupies at 
> the moment. The issue isn't modeling emotion or meta-story development, the 
> issue is the story you personally want to tell, something which drives your bus 
> and rings your bell the same way all art has been created through out history. 
> That comes first and then the 'how' is dealt with. 
>  
So you embrace a subjective order of operations for reaching 'the 
goal'.  Fine, but it doesn't invalidate the more objective approach of 
building tools and infrastructure, and solving more tractable problems 
that financially contribute to 'the goal'.

> Far more interesting and very definitely related is all the work going on in 
> the 'alternative reality gaming' groups where people are very much telling 
> interactive stories which are so far outside the box that there is no box so 
> the story unfolds on all the screens we own from tv to film to cell to 
> computer, to fax, phone, chat and even into the real world with real human 
> beings.
>
> The args seem to me to be the real model for iDrama & iStory. 
>  
You aren't going to find "the one true model of iDrama."  It's too big a 
subject.

> This list has a collection of talent. What happens if rather than endless 
> deconstruction of why we can't make a living the way we want to or why we can't 
> model this emotion or meta that story this collection of talent decided to 
> create an interactive story/drama just for the hell of it and see where it 
> takes them. 
>
> Thank could be fun.
>  
Been there, done that.  Yes it was fun, and educational.  But I also 
increased my writing skill to a point where I was better off without 
collaborators.  Granted, maybe I needed better collaborators.  The 
problem is, unless someone can show me how I can keep from getting 
evicted by working on iDrama stuff, it will always play second fiddle to 
my main life concerns.  My 'copious free time' committments go to Common 
Lisp, OpenGL, and AI code for my games.  Why?  Because I want to produce 
my games, and I think there's probably a business model in the Lisp 
skillset, somewhere.  Whereas iDrama offers me the opportunity to 
flounder with relatively unlikeable day jobs indefinitely.

I hope someone else comes up with commercially viable iDrama tools while 
I'm working on my other problems.  It would be an entirely different 
proposition if all I had to do was write something and then sell it.  
Unfortunately, this remains in the realm of the deeply unproven.  I know 
what it's like to pursue gratuitous R&D.  Been there, still doing that.  :-)


Cheers,                     www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every           Seattle, WA

Taking risk where others will not.