ecopolis

The Super Mario Nintendo game console is one of the defining experiences of video games. Mario (マリオ) is a video game character created by Japanese game designer Shigeru Miyamoto and the official mascot of Nintendo. He has appeared in over 100 video games since his creation, more than any other character.

The ultimate Nintendo hero is taking the ultimate step. Memorable Super Mario nowdays can walk just about anywhere. When he lands on a sphere, he can walk all over it, going sideways and upside down in the space. Sometimes you’ll simply jump in one area and end up gravitating toward the ceiling or walls or even another nearby planetoid without even realizing it.

Often Mario will need to track down launch stars: when you shake the Wii Remote while standing near or inside one, will send you flying to a whole new, unexpected area. There are even sections where you’ll be floating through space, using specialized pull stars to hop from area to area, while floating through the spatial void. Audio is also excellent, thanks to the soundtrack, made up of classic Mario tunes.

Another innovation involving the pointer is the new Costar Mode. In Costar Mode, a second player can manipulate the environment, helping the player who is controlling Mario by holding enemies in place and shooting Star Bits. The Costar can also help Mario perform special high jumps in coordination with the playing partner. Spaced out!

Every galaxy you explore is an absolute joy to experience. The level designs here are top flight in every regard, with traps and puzzles for Mario to float from land mass to land mass on a giant spinning flower. To quote the Nintendo game: You got a Grand Star.

Super Mario Galaxy
Publisher Nintendo
Release Date 16.11.2007

Collaboration work of Kenichi Okada & Chris Woebken and MBA students from the Oxford Saïd Business-school, Animal Superpowers is an experimental series of toys as sensory enhancements for kids to experience animal superpowers rather than just an traditional play-object.
5 wearable devices allowing kids to feel how like an animal or experience special extra qualities how they perceive the environment.

Bird – sense of direction with a head mounted solenoid compass
Ant – feeling like an ant seeing 50x through microscope antennas on your hands
Giraffe – a child to adult concerter changing your voice & perspective
Elephant – shoes picking up transmitting vibrations from fellows
Electric Eel – enhanced spatial vision through head mounted Theremin

Rather than creating a series of toys and super-heros with weapons, those devices could possibly create empathy with animals, experiencing what they experience. Like tools for play with more layered interactivity and therefore providing an interface to communicate with other species.

chris(at)woebken.net I london +447726439435 I hamburg +491721555699 I skype: chriswoebken

Mafia is a 3D action game. The player assumes the role of a gangster in an American city of the 1930s, and gets a chance to live through gangster’s rise and fall: high-speed car chases, bootlegging, assassinations, and bank robberies. The figures move thanks to Motion Capture technology, through which the movements of real actors transfer onto the figures of the characters. When a character is speaking, the program moves the lips in synchronization with the words spoken and facial expressions – a smile, a frown, an expression of fear, or we can move the eyebrows. The result is a very lively impression that pushes the real-time animation of figures forward considerably.

Platforms: PC CDROM (Windows 98, ME, 2000 or XP)
Developed by: Illusion Softworks
Published by: Gathering of Developers

Roma, 22 ottobre 2007 source RaiNews24 13:14

La prima azienda italiana si chiama ‘Mafia spa’ e ha un fatturato annuo di 90 miliardi di euro: il 7% del Pil, pari a cinque manovre finanziarie e otto volte il Tesoretto. E’ quanto emerge dal rapporto Sos impresa della Confesercenti sulla criminalità, presentato questa mattina a Roma, in cui si sottolinea che usura e racket – con 40 miliardi di fatturato – costituiscono il principale business per le associazioni mafiose.

Dalla filiera alimentare al turismo, dai servizi alle imprese a quelli alla persona, dagli appalti alle forniture pubbliche, al settore immobiliare e finanziario – afferma il rapporto – la presenza della criminalita’ organizzata si consolida in ogni attivita’ economica

http://www.sosimpresa.it

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with Vladimir Putin

Putin and an entourage arrived in Teheran for a summit of the leaders of the five states bordering the energy-rich but ecologically threatened Caspian Sea. His visit is the first to Iran by a Russian head of state since 1943, when Josef Stalin, Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt met in Tehran, to map World War II strategy.

Russia plays a crucial role in this moment as the main interlocutor of the Islamic Republic as to the nuclear issue is concerned and as the major obstacle to the adoption of a military resolution against Teheran which Washington and the neo-cons try to impose if diplomacy fails resolve the issue.

The Tehran Conference (codenamed EUREKA) was the first World War II conference among the Big Three (the Soviet Union, the United States, and the United Kingdom) in which Stalin was present. It succeeded the Cairo Conference and was followed by the Yalta Conference and Potsdam Conference. The chief discussion was centered on the opening of a second front in Western Europe. At the same time a separate protocol pledged the three countries to recognize Iran’s independence:

“The Three Governments realize that the war has caused special economic difficulties for Iran, and they are agreed that they will continue to make available to the Government of Iran such economic assistance as may be possible, having regard to the heavy demands made upon them by their world-wide military operations, and to the world-wide shortage of transport, raw materials, and supplies for civilian consumption.” (Declaration of the Three Powers Regarding Iran—December 1, 1943)

Prince of Persia(PC9801)

Prince of Persia is a platform game, originally developed by Jordan Mechner in 1989 for the Apple II, that was widely seen as a great leap forward in the quality of animation seen in computer games. Mechner used a process called rotoscoping, in which he studied many hours of film of his younger brother David running and jumping in white clothes, to ensure that all the movements looked just right.

Rethinking Wargames is a participative net art project promoted by Ruth Catlow of which calls for ‘pawns to join forces to defend world peace’. It uses the game of chess to find strategies that challenge existing power structures and their concomitant war machineries.

The website documents and illustrates the technical responses of chess pundits alongside more philosophical and political replies from amateur players. It illustrates alternative games with rules suggested by participants as well as documenting the creation of the online multiplayer game, Activate:3 Player Chess, commissioned by , developed by Ruth with programmer Adrian Eaton.

Ruth Catlow – is an artist who works with networked media. She initiated Furtherfield with Marc Garrett in 1996 and works with him and the Furtherfield community to devise platforms that facilitate artistic collaboration across networks and to initiate and manage projects online and for physical and social spaces including HTTP Gallery. : http://www.furtherfield.org/about.php

Further Critical Approaches to War in Videogame Art