Media, Meaning and Computation: Expressive Intelligence and the Future of Playable Media

Speaker
Michael Mateas
Associate Professor, Computer Science Department, University of California, Santa Cruz

When
-

Where
Gates and Hillman Centers 4401 (Rashid Auditorium)

Description

Recent years have seen an explosion of interest, both inside and outside academia, in games and other forms of playable media. The computing research community has responded to this interest in a variety of ways, including research driven by the technical needs of existing game genres (e.g. path planning in complex worlds, network protocols for multi-player games), exploring the application of existing research areas (e.g. machine learning, planning) to games, and exploring the application of games to non-entertainment domains. But little computing research takes the perspective of computation as an expressive medium, where the primary driver of research questions is making compelling media experiences as computationally flexible and responsive as possible. This talk argues for computational media research aimed at expanding the expressive range of playable media, and illustrates the argument with concrete examples from current projects in the Expressive Intelligence Studio at UC Santa Cruz.

Speaker's Bio

Dr. Mateas is recognized internationally as a leader in AI-based interactive storytelling. He is currently a faculty member in the Computer Science department at UC Santa Cruz, where he holds the MacArthur Endowed Chair. He founded and co-directs the Expressive Intelligence Studio, one of the largest technical game research groups in the world, and is also the founding director of the Center for Games and Playable Media at UC Santa Cruz. His research interests include interactive storytelling and autonomous characters, procedural content generation, AI-based interactive art, and intelligent authoring tools. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University.

Speaker's Website
http://users.soe.ucsc.edu/~michaelm/

Host
Steven Dow