January 4, 2006
Machinima Essays Wanted
If there’s an essay on machinima you’ve been burning to write, now’s your opportunity. Henry Lowood and Michael Nitsche are editing The Machinima Reader, the first collection of essays to critically review the phenomenon of machinima from a variety of prespectives. 500 word abstracts should be sent as RTF files to Michael Nitsche (michael.nitsche@lcc.gatech.edu) and Henry Lowood (lowood@stanford.edu) by April 3, 2006. If your abstract is accepted, final essays should be 5000-7000 words and will be due July 2006. Here’s the full CFP:
CfP: The Machinima Reader
Edited by Henry Lowood and Michael Nitsche
Machinima is on the verge of stepping beyond its chaotic mix of artistic, ludic and technical conceptions into established traditions and vocabularies of contemporary media. As machinima invents itself, the flexibility of its form poses an interesting challenge to academics as well as artists and critics. We want to offer an inaugural reader for the further development and critical discussion of Machinima, one that charts its growth from several angles and also provides a foundation for critical studies in the future.
The rapid development of Machinima is closely connected to the culture of computer and video games. In a repetition of early cinema’s history, many of Machinima’s milestones are formulated as mixtures of artistic expression and technical achievements. In our organization of The Machinima Reader, we will recognize that the creators of Machinima have been at times just as concerned with demonstrating mastery of technology and gameplay as in artistic expression or narrative performance. At the same time we acknowledge an artistic maturing process that has led to more professional production methods and results of higher quality. Consequently, we are looking for essays that address a range of topics. These include (but are not limited to):
- Culture: History of Machinima – definitions, technology, and context; performance practices; evolving and new presentation platforms, theory
- Technology: Promise and impact of real-time engines for animation; future developments in hard- and software; technical relationship and dependencies among games, technology and machinima
- Communities and Contexts: Machinima as community-based practice and performance; legal issues; use in classroom; relationship to other media; machinima as guerilla film making; Machinima and modding; players as performers; machinima in MMOs
- Art: Aesthetics and poetics of Machinima; Machinima and new media; from game to Machinima – what translates what does not?
Please submit a 500 word abstract via email as RTF document to michael.nitsche@lcc.gatech.edu and lowood@stanford.edu by 3 April 2006. We expect that final essays will not exceed 5000-7000 words and will be due July 2006.
January 5th, 2006 at 12:50 am
I assume they have contacted Paul Marino the Director of the Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences (http://www.machinima.org)? I am sure he would have much to contribute. You can contact him through the site if you have not already, or I can help you with a direct introduction if you like.
January 5th, 2006 at 1:29 am
Yes, both the editors know Paul Marino.
January 7th, 2006 at 11:45 pm
Latest Machinima Feature from the makers of Killer Robot
Hello Ian
Your call for essays is a great idea and very timely. I’m not sure exactly what your procedure is but I thought your participants might be interested in the latest Nanoflix project.
“Stolen Life”, the latest Machinima feature from Nanoflix is currently in production. This dark and moody detective mystery stars Claudia Black and Chris Jones. Sci-fi fans know Claudia from Farscape and will see her soon in Stargate SG-1 season 9. Interactive movie legend Chris Jones stars in the ground breaking and highly unusual Tex Murphy series of interactive adventures.
More info and a brief trailer can be found at
http://www.Nanoflix.net
I look forward to seeing what essays people come up with.
Cheers
Peter
Peter Rasmussen
Nanoflix Productions
http://www.Nanoflix.net
raz@zipworld.com.au
April 22nd, 2006 at 10:17 pm
Tell me, doesn’t this raise the bar on the whole machinima thing?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzjzQKzOCjc
This is above and beyond anything I’ve seen. Funny, too.
dP