A.V. Now Available on STEAM

MAGIC Spell Studios helped launch A.V. The Game on Steam! You can read more about our work in supporting this project and launching a commercial title on behalf of our recent alumni in the university press coverage. And be sure to go play the game on STEAM, it's a really unique and interesting experience!

MAGIC Launches Research Initiative on Religion, Culture & Policy

In support of the efforts of Assistant Professor Owen Gottlieb and his collaborators that span academic and industry partnerships, and to better facilitate his explorations into the ways that games and digital media can education, inform, and encourage religious literacy and cultural understandings that impact policy, practice, and community, we are delighted to announce the formation of the MAGIC Initiative on Relition, Culture & Policy. More on this initiative and the research projects associated with these efforts is available on the initiative page at the MAGIC Center.

Prosthetists meet Printers – MAGIC co-sponsors e-NABLE Conference at Johns Hopkins Hospital

We are pleased to announce the FIRST e-NABLE Conference!
Join us on September 28, 2014 at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD!

Crowd-sourced collaborative innovation is changing the face of modern medicine. e-NABLE, a global online community of humanitarian volunteers is leading the way by designing, building and disseminating inexpensive 3D printed prosthetics.

Come join the e-NABLE organization and thought leaders in medicine, industry and public policy for a ground-breaking, industry-defining event at Johns Hopkins Hospital that will include the delivery of donated prosthetic hands to children with upper limb differences.

MAGIC’s involvement and support of e-NABLE is through the Access and Collaborative Technologies initiative (MAGIC ACT), and the work of Dr. Jonathan Schull, research scientist at MAGIC and his team of RIT students. We are grateful for the engaged support of the Biomedical Engineering program in the Kate Gleason College of Engineering, the College of Health Sciences and Technology, the office of the Vice President for Research, and others across campus in support of this work.

MAGIC Serves as Founding Member of HEVGA

Aspen, Colorado — July 1, 2014 — Announced today at the Aspen Ideas Festival, The Higher Education Video Game Alliance (The Alliance) will provide a platform for leading academics to showcase the critical role video game programs are playing in educating and preparing students for the 21st century workforce. The Alliance will afford its members, including professors and other campus leadership, an opportunity to share and highlight best practices, publish research, initiate and strengthen industry connections, and educate and engage policymakers and the media.

The first-of-its-kind alliance will be led by and open to university faculty, director of game design programs ,departmental heads, and other campus leadership The founding and executive committee members include Constance Steinkuehler, Associate Professor and Co-Director of the UW-Madison Games+Learning+Society center; Tracy Fullerton, Associate Professor and Director of USC Games at the University of Southern California; Andrew Phelps, Professor and Director of the Rochester Institute of Technology MAGIC Center; Drew Davidson, Professor and Director of the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University; and Katherine Isbister, Associate Professor and Director of the Game Innovation Lab at New York University. The full list of current Charter Members, as well as more information on The Alliance can be found on www.HigherEdGames.org.

MAGIC Affiliate Presents MAGIC at the New Media Consortium Summer Conference

MAGIC was the source of much discussion at the annual New Media Consortium Summer Conference in Portland. Professor Al Biles, magic affiliate and faculty in the School of Interactive Games & Media gave the a presentation outlining the center, its goals, and its unique model of faculty participation and engagement in support of multi-disciplinary activity. You can find his presentation here, and we are grateful to NMC for hosting us.

MAGIC Affiliate Dr. Elizabeth Lawley awarded Fulbright Scholarship

MAGIC is pleased to announce that Dr. Elizabeth Lawley, a Professor in the School of Interactive Games & Media and and Director of the Lab for Social Computing at MAGIC has been awarded a Fulbright to further explore games and social applications at our campus in Dubrovnik next Spring. The entire center wishes her many congratulations for this recognition and support of her ongoing work in this area. You can follow her plans and adventures on her Dubrovnik Diaries.

MAGIC to host Adobe Vice President of User Experience Michael Gough for Imagine RIT

When we at MAGIC think of Imagine RIT, we think of creativity. In particular, what I think of most is the creative process that we all go through to produce the work, experiences, and exhibits that we display during the festival. Walking around campus that day, it isn’t just the things that you see and experience-it’s the culmination of a year of production, a year of learning, a year of new things and experimentation. In addition to numerous other exhibits and displays that MAGIC is engaged in at Imagine, all of us in the Center felt that it would be ideal if we could find some way of reflecting on the process leading up to this day, of exploring our views on what creativity is and how it works, and to do something that would be of interest to those of us interested in digital media and its production.

To that end, we are pleased to announce that Michael Gough has agreed to join us for the day. Michael Gough is Vice President of Experience Design and Creativity at Adobe and the leader of Adobe's Experience Design (XD) Team, an internal design practice focusing on the next generation of digitally enabled experiences. Adobe XD creates smart, sophisticated applications for desktop computers, laptops, mobile phones and beyond. A longtime advocate for quality in all digital experiences, Gough has been pushing the digital envelope for years. Previously, he was the chief creative officer at Macromedia, vice president of brand design at Nike, chief creative officer of Quokka Sports and creative director of Construct.

Michael will present a short talk on creative thinking and the process of user experience design from 11-12 in the GCCIS auditorium, with Q&A about his experiences at Adobe and their approach to creativity.

MAGIC Director Andrew Phelps named kick-off speaker for Mathematics Awareness Month Series at St. John Fisher College

When we think of mathematics, we think of calculation, of order, of precision, and perhaps of functional tools to get work done. Spreadsheets, architectural plans, number-crunching big data for encrypted communications or a cure for cancer, mathematics is serious and mathematics means work. When we consider math in terms of the Arts, we might think of music as an oft-touted example, or maybe as a basis for simple games such as flashcards or Monopoly, but they are tangents, not deep drivers of the field. This talk, then, seeks to dispel all of that. The focus of this presentation is on mathematics as a tool for play, for entertainment, and magic in the modern era. In virtual worlds like Titanfall to feature Hollywood productions, recreational mathematics form the core of our entertainment landscape in a variety of ways. From fractals and analytic geometry to trigonometry, calculus, and discrete mathematics, human beings incorporate our best understanding of mathematics to create our play spaces and tell each other stories. In the legacy of Martin Gardner, this talk explores the ways we use mathematics to engage, entertain, play and learn in the world today, with appreciation and respect for his work in promoting recreational mathematics throughout his career. Come explore the magic of math, and the creativity inherent in calculation. Director Phelps will present this talk on Thursday, March 27th at St. John Fisher College in the Skalny Auditorium as the kick-off event for their series on Mathematics Awareness Month.

MAGIC affiliates create first interdisciplinary Minor in Free and Open Source Software and Free Culture

The FOSS@MAGIC initiative is pleased to announce the creation of the Minor in Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and Free Culture. This unique offering was developed in part by Stephen Jacobs, Professor in the School of Interactive Games and Media (IGM) and Associate Director of the MAGIC Center, as well as Dr. Amit Ray (associate professor of English and an affiliate of the Center), Dr. Jonathan Schull (research scientist in the MAGIC Center), and Mr. Remy DeCausemaker (lecturer in the School of IGM as well as the FOSS@MAGIC Research Coordinator), and is a unique multi-disciplinary collaboration spanning colleges, curricula, and research throughout the campus. Offered by IGM, the minor allows students from any discipline to gain expertise as contributors to FOSS and Free Culture communities. Our FOSS efforts have received support from Red Hat, Inc. and we are working in partnership with Red Hat's University Relations lead, Mr. Tom Callaway to use MAGIC and IGM's FOSS programs and activities as models for other academic institutions.

MAGIC Hosts Kick-Off for AT&T Rochester Civic App Challenge and Hackathon

AT&T, RIT, MAGIC, and partners Hi-Tech Rochester, Digital Rochester, and Hack Upstate announced the Rochester Civic App Challenge. New York Assembly Majority Leader Joseph Morelle also gave remarks and lent his support to the event, as did RIT President Dr. William Destler and MAGIC Director Andrew Phelps.

We at MAGIC are very excited about this challenge, as it focuses on two of our favorite things: (1) it engages the community in technology and development, moving public engagement from mere consumers of technology to creating new tools and software, and (2) it is focused on creating apps that provide new solutions to social and civic issues, thereby seeking to use technology in ways that advance the social good.

The AT&T Rochester Civic App Challenge is a two month virtual hackathon for Rochester’s most talented computer scientists, software developers and hardware engineers to build products that have the potential to benefit Upstate New York. Details on entries and rules are available at the event website.

To support these efforts, MAGIC will be hosting a 24-hour hack-a-thon here that will begin at 6:00 PM on Friday, February 21 as well as a “check in” event for participants on March 5 at 6:00 PM. Details for the hackathon are available on our facebook page.

The deadline for app submissions is April 23 and we will host an awards ceremony in May, the date/time is still TBD, but will be announced here at a future date.

MAGIC Director Andrew Phelps Named Advisor to Rep. Slaughter for House STEM App Challenge

ROCHESTER, N.Y. –1/24/14, Congresswoman Louise Slaughter (D-NY) announced that she will host the first annual House academic competition to promote innovation in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). The House STEM App Challenge calls on high school students within New York’s 25th Congressional District to submit ideas for a software an application, or “app,” idea related to STEM fields.

Andrew Phelps, director of Rochester Institute of Technology's Center for Media, Arts, Games, Interaction and Creativity (MAGIC), is the 2014 STEM App Challenge Advisor to Rep. Slaughter. As an expert in this field, Phelps will provide guidance throughout the competition. "RIT and the MAGIC Center are deeply appreciative of the importance of STEM education to the Rochester region and the nation,” said Phelps. “I am grateful for the opportunity to work with Rep. Slaughter in support of the House STEM App Challenge, and to support this initiative on behalf of RIT. I look forward to seeing the creative and innovative ideas this challenge is sure to produce."

MAGIC Sponsored Accessibility Project Heads to Silicon Valley and DC

Congratulations to the Motion Savvy team, who are one of the first ten teams to be part of the Leap Motion Accelerator program. The students created a finger-spelling translation app for the Leap and impressed the company so much that they have been awarded $25,000 to spend three months in San Francisco to take the first steps to expand it into a sign language translation system. They'll take a short break in February to go to DC to present their work at the National Science Foundation's ERN conference for emerging researchers. You can read more about the project in the university press coverage.

The team received mentorship and funding from MAGIC Associate Director Stephen Jacobs and the Simone Center's Richard DeMartino and the Entrepreneurship Summer Program. We can't wait to see what they do next. The team also got to demonstrate their prototype to Senator Charles Schumer during his recent visit to campus (pictured here).

Magic Lab is a Steam Hardware Beta Site!

This winter/spring we will be testing out, hacking on, and generally making a mess of the new Steambox, and you're invited! We'll have a beta unit from Valve, and a custom Steam login with a bunch of games to put the hardware through its paces... and the SDK for you to make some games of your own. So welcome to the MAGIC Lab, come see us spring semester!  Also, did you know that RIT has several alumni at VALVE, from GCCIS and CIAS (IGM, CS, New Media and more)?  It's their involvement and engagement that have made this possible, so think of them and build something great for this exciting new platform...  see you Spring Semester 2013!

MAGIC Featured in University Research Magazine

MAGIC has a feature article in the University Research Magazine for the fall 2013 issue!  The article features numerous photos of the new space, Director Phelps, our projects, and most importantly our students.  It also features discussion of our recent event hosting the New York State Senate and the Honorable Martin Golden, and the kickoff of our speaker series.  We're very thankful to all the support from our friends in Sponsored Research Services, and to all the writers and producers that helped with the piece.

RIT Celebration of Research

On November 19th the MAGIC Center, as a part of Sponsored Research at RIT, will co-host a 'Celebration of Research' in our new research facility. This event is open to the campus community, and will feature remarks from Director Phelps, as well as Dr. Ryne Raffaelle, Vice President for Research, Dr. Richard DiMartino, Director of the Simone Center for Student Innovation & Entrepreneurship, and others.

MAGICs Evan Selinger on Mobile Etiquette

We've all done it, and we know it is (sometimes) wrong, as our faces are glued to our mobile screens while friends and family chatter in the background. RIT Associate Professor of Philosophy and MAGIC's Head of Research Communications, Community and Ethics Evan Selinger writes this month in The Atlantic on "How Not to Be A Jerk With Your Stupid Cellphone." And really, what could be more timely? Check out the article for an in-depth review of the pressures, forces, and behaviors that shape our acts, and ways in which we frame our use of these portable communication ...

MAGIC's Stephen Jacobs in WIRED on EEG-Gaming

MAGIC Associate Director and IGM Professor Stephen Jacobs writes this month for WIRED UK Edition on the subject of EEG Neurogaming. His article, "Hands-Free Neurogaming" is published under the tag "EEG-Neurogaming will provide an intimate interface between humans and machines" and features discussion and review of several products and solutions that are both available today and that are emerging in the coming year. The issue is available both on iTunes as well as online at Zinio. Check it out!

Smarter Than You Think

We are delighted to host the award-winning New York Times and WIRED Magazine tech writer Clive Thompson as he discusses the ideas presented in his new book, Smarter Than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better. Clive Thompson writes a monthly column for WIRED magazine on the everyday impact of new technologies. He is also a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine. Thompson was a Knight Science Journalism fellow at MIT. His work has been widely anthologized, and he has received two Mirror Awards for his coverage of digital media.

Clive Thompson will kick off the “MAGIC Speaker Series”, which aims to bring together thought leaders from industry, the academy, and journalism who are advancing the frontier of digital culture-- folks who are creating the next generation of innovative devices and theorizing the profound ways digital innovation impacts society. In choosing speakers who are as highly regarded for their ideas as their communication skills, the MAGIC Speaker Series aims to spark inspired dialog across campus. Elizabeth Lawley, Professor, School of Interactive Games & Media and Director, Lab for Social Computing at the RIT MAGIC Center says, “we're really excited to be starting off this year's lecture series with one of the world's best technology journalists--the New York Journal of Books recently described his wonderful new book as 'required reading for anyone interested in, working in, or enjoying the culture of the Internet,' and it's full of ideas and research that are highly relevant to students and scholars in a range of technology fields. Clive's wide-ranging mix of interests and knowledge are a perfect example of the kind of multidisciplinary work that MAGIC is all about."

Becoming Visible by Jessica Catherine Lieberman

Becoming Visible is a photographic exhibition of visibility and illness, an experience in treatment for Hodgkins lymphoma, medical imagery, and personal testimonial about that time.

Please join us for the First Friday opening reception and book launch: Friday, 6-9 p.m., November 1, 2013 at Gallery r. The complete exhibition will run from November 1–27, 2013, at Gallery r, RIT’s Metro Showcase and Learning Laboratory for the Arts. The gallery is located at 100 College Avenue, Rochester, NY 14607. Open hours will be from 1-5 p.m. Wed–Sun. Jessica Catherine Lieberman is an Assistant Professor of Visual Culture in the College of Liberal Arts at RIT and an affiliate of the RIT MAGIC Center. There is also the Becoming Visible catalog available from RIT Press: ritpress.rit.edu

MAGIC Affiliate Elizabeth Goins of COLA Presents at Digital Heritage 2013

Dr. Elizabeth Goins, Associate Professor in the College of Liberal Arts and MAGIC Affiliate, is presenting her work on digital games with museums at the Digital Heritage 2013 conference in Marseille. DH2013 is "The largest international scientific event on digital heritage in history will take place under the patronage of UNESCO, in Marseille (France) from 28 October to 1 November 2013. Digital Heritage 2013 will bring together hundreds of participants to discuss digital technology applied to the protection, documentation and understanding of humanity’s shared heritage. Researchers, practitioners, cultural and digital professionals, students and teachers, as well as policy makers are invited to participate." You can read more about the conference, and Dr. Goins presentation, at http://asemus.museum/event/digital-heritage-2013-conference-france/

MAGIC sends the FossBox to Hack Upstate, team Honored by Dean Liddy of the Syracuse iSchool.

MAGIC Open Sourcerer Remy Decausemaker and fifteen students were the largest contingent at the Hack Upstate hackathon at the Syracuse Tech Garden. RIT Projects developed during the 2-day event , October 12th & 13th were Mass over Volume, Traffairious and TabScribe.

Mass Over Volume is described by the team as "a convenient way for your favorite coffee shop to notice your arrival, help you bypass all lines, skip the traditional cashier, wirelessly place an order, and process payment." We're most proud of the fact that this team was awarded the iHacker Award . This was given to the group that was the most helpful to the hackathon and other teams as a whole and Dean Liddy presented the team with a Google Nexus 7 Tablet. They also won first place in the Rounded API challenge, second place in the Overall and Density Rounded challenge category, earning a Chromecast and 3rd place in the Dwolla API challenge and got T-shirts as well.

Traffairious is a collaboration between The FOSSBox members and Rochester's Hack/Hackers group; a local chapter of an international organization that brings journalists and hackers together to improve digital tools and processes for journalists. H/H Rochester was interested in using data to map the levels of air pollution around school locations and areas with high air pollution and an RIT team built a tool to do just that. Traffairious took second place runner up, taking home a Chromecast and tickets to Startup Weekend.

TabScribe is A Tabulature Translator that allows you to "translate" stringed instrument music tabs (a type of musical notation that denotes the string and fret to position your finger on) between instruments (for example, guitar to ukulele). TabScribe was a runner up and won a Chromecast and tickets to Startup Weekend, a business startup bootcamp and a tie for 3rd place in the overall challenge category.

RIT and MAGIC Welcome the New York State Senate and Industry Leaders

It is with great pleasure that the MAGIC Center hosts NY State Senator Martin Golden, Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Science, Technology, Incubation & Entrepreneurship for a full day of discussion on how to further grow the games industry in New York. The event, which is open to public, will also feature remarks from RIT President Bill Destler and MAGIC Director Andrew Phelps. More information and registration is available through our events page listing, as well as local press coverage. You can also watch a live stream of the roundtables.

MAGIC Contributes to new Journal of Interactive Humanities

MAGIC is proud to announce that RIT has recently launched a new Journal of Interactive Humanities, in collaboration with the RIT Press, the Wallace Center, the College of Liberal Arts (COLA), and the MAGIC Center (to name just some of the entities engaged in the support of this venture). Dr. Elizabeth Goins, Associate Professor in COLA and MAGIC affiliate, is serving as the founding Editor-In-Chief, while MAGIC Director Andrew Phelps and Associate Director Christopher Egert sit on the advisory board as a part of our commitment to both the journal and the overall RIT digital humanities initiative. The board also features outside editors from the Getty Villa, the J. Paul Getty Trust, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and numerous other academic and cultural institutions. The inaugural issue features works and articles by MAGIC affiliates Adrienne Decker and David Simkins, in addition to Chris, Andrew, and Elizabeth (as well as other authors and contributors). In the future, the journal will also provide peer-review and publishing processes not just for written contributions, but also for other forms of digital media, including games, movies, audio, etc., all of which are published via open access through the RIT Press.

MAGIC Contributes to Wisconsin Video Games & Learning MOOC

On October 15 the first of several MAGIC contributions to the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s MOOC on Video Games & Learning went live to a world-wide audience. The course features video segments from Andrew Phelps, Director of the MAGIC Center, as well as Elizabeth Lawley, Director of the Lab for Social Computing at MAGIC, as ‘guest instructors’.

The first online lectures, in week 2 of the course, features Professor Phelps discussing the emergence of games as a topic of educational study over the past decade, as well as the ways in which games lend themselves towards systems-oriented exploration and patterns. Dr. Lawley’s lecture is a discussion of environmental control in game worlds, and the relationship of this concept to education. The Video Games & Learning course is described as a best-in-class distance education course offered through Coursera, and is taught by Professor Constance Steinkuehler and Professor Kurt Squire who co-direct the Games+Learning+Society (GLS) Center at UW-Madison. The course has attracted over 30,000 students.

e-NABLE Program Featured in Google+ Webcast

On Friday October 11 at 8pm, IGM professor and MAGIC affiliate Jon Schull, and his e-NABLE project for distributed design and fabrication of assistive technologies, were featured in a live international webcast organized and Adafruit, makers of the Raspberry Pi microcomputer. The program, Make The World: Prosthetics is a one month program on Google+ aimed at crowdsourcing the manufacturing and delivery of the Robohand prosthetic to people in need.

Earlier this year, Schull created a participatory online map and invited hobbyists with 3D printers to volunteer to fabricate and fit prosthetics for clients worldwide. Schull subsequently created a google+ community to help coordinate the growing network of volunteers, which now comprises 130 people on 5 continents. To view or join the public map of volunteers, go here.To request to membership in the e-NABLE google plus community, go here.

MAGIC's Evan Selinger Reflects on Clive Thompson's Recent Work

As a part of our celebration in having Clive Thompson come to campus and kick off our speaker series, MAGIC's own Evan Selinger, Associate Professor of Philosophy and MAGIC Center Head of Scholarly Communications, Community and Ethics, wrote a recent piece reflecting on Mr. Thompson's work over at Slate. The article, "Humans Are Already More 'Enhanced' by Technology Than We Realize," offers some insights from our perspective as we continue to engage with Smarter Than You Think in preparation for Mr. Thompson's visit. Be sure to check out both the article and the book, and we hope you can come to the talk!

MAGIC Appears at the Captivate Conference

MAGIC’s Director, Professor Andrew Phelps, along with Associate Director Stephen Jacobs will be presenting at the Captivate Conference in Austin, TX. Andrew will present on a panel entitled “Innovation in Media Education” along with Russell Rains, Don Howard, Brian Burton, and Suzanne Freyjadis as part of a larger discussion on the future of digital entertainment. Stephen is presenting on the use of open source technologies in his talk entitled “Serious Games for Social Good”. In addition, both Andrew and Stephen will be meeting with conference organizers, members from the International Game Developer’s Association, and the New Media Consortium while in Austin.

MAGIC Essay in the Chronicle Focuses on Innovation and Start-Ups

MAGIC Director Andrew Phelps and Evan Selinger, Associate Professor of Philosophy at RIT and MAGIC Center Head of Research Communications, Community & Ethics, published an essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education entitled “Entrepreneurship: Part of a Liberal Education”. The piece focuses on the nature of the start-up experience and its core value as both a reflective capstone experience, and a key component in teaching creativity and innovation. It is available through the Chronicle as a part of a special issue focusing on the future of higher education. (NOTE: A subscription to the Chronicle is required for viewing).

ANOMALY at the Rochester FRINGE Festival

Congratulations to W. Michelle Harris, MAGIC Affiliate and Associate Professor in the School of Interactive Games & Media. Her work with BIODANCE entitled "Anomaly", a collaboration between Prof. Harris, Sound ExChange, and the Rochester Museum & Science Center, received rave reviews at the FRINGE Festival. Be sure to check out the kickstarter that helped fund the project for a more lengthy description of the work itself. It's an amazing blend of music, dance, and interactive art. You can also see it on YouTube, although it doesn't compare to the live experience.

MAGIC Welcomes Sebastian Deterding to RIT

We are delighted that Sebastian Deterding is able to join us for the year. Sebastian is a recognized scholar in the area that has become popularly known as ‘gamification’, which draws on core areas of game design, user experience design, and the psychology of motivation. He has authored numerous papers and publications in this space, with notable presentations at ACM SIGCHI, Google, Microsoft Research, the European Commission Joint Research Centre, and numerous other venues and organizations. We are excited to work with him on several emerging initiatives. MAGIC Affiliate Elizabeth Lawley, who directs the Lab for Social Computing at the MAGIC Center, is already working directly with Sebastian on both Just Press Play and new and emerging opportunities as they relate to the field, and we encourage other members of the RIT community to engage with him during the year as well. Welcome Sebastian!

RIT MAGIC Center sends students to White House Champions of Change Event

The RIT Center for Media, Arts, Games, Interaction & Creativity (MAGIC) is pleased to announce that a student-led project to create an educational game entitled “Sky Time” in the Sugar Learning Platform originally created for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) XO computer has been selected for inclusion in the White House Champions of Change event on July 23rd in Washington, D.C. The event celebrates the best projects to emerge from the nationwide Hack for Change event that was part of the National Day of Civic Hacking. In particular, the Champions of Change program will highlight “…extraordinary leaders in transformative civic hacking and civic engagement” and we are thrilled that RIT students have been chosen to be included in this event. More information on the Champions of Change program is available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/champions. You can view the local press coverage here.

The student team responsible for “Sky Time” are:

• Jennifer Kotler, Major in Biomedical Illustration, CIAS
• Ryan Stush, New Media Interactive Development, GCCIS
• David Wilson, Game Design and Development, GCCIS
• Ian Furry, Game Design and Development, GCCIS

“Sky Time” began as a class project in a course on Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software offered through the RIT School of Interactive Games and Media, designed by Professor Stephen Jacobs and taught by Justin Sherrill. From there, it was refined during the Rochester Hack for Change Hackathon, an event hosted by the RIT MAGIC Center and orchestrated by Remy DeCausemaker, research staff in the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) @ MAGIC initiative sponsored by Red Hat, Inc. The hackathon was part of the White House's National Day of Civic Hacking.

MAGIC Director Andrew Phelps interviewed in Democrat & Chronicle

“Increasingly, we’re looking at ways in which digital media is broader and more pervasive than that,” Phelps said. “So we can use games for things like augmenting educational experiences, or focusing people’s behavior on health care activities, or any wide variety of simulation scenarios. It’s games and digital media, but applied to a larger view of the human condition.” Read more of this interview with Director Phelps in the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle... You can also find coverage of this interview at the RIT University News site, http://www.rit.edu/news/. The general article covers some of our hopes and aspirations for the new Center, as well as some particular plans for the new space.

MAGIC and IGM Host Game Design Legends John and Brenda Romero

From Doom and Wizardry in the 80’s to Ravenwood Fair and The Walking Dead in this decade, John Romero and Brenda Romaro (formerly Brathwaite) have designed close to two hundred games separately and together and helped shape the industry. They have designed for numerous platforms and systems over their careers across many different game genres. On June 28, it was our pleasure to host them for an evening of public Q&A, in partnership with the GCCIS School of Interactive Games & Media and in partnership with The Strong’s International Center for the History of Electronic Games.

MAGIC @ TEDx Flour City

Director Phelps will be giving a TEDx Flour City talk on June 8th about ‘the continuum between student innovation and commercialization coupled with American views on creativity’ [we're still working on a catchy title]. The RIT MAGIC Center will feature heavily as an example of the ideas in the presentation. If you would like to attend the event in Rochester, you can apply here for attendance, or just watch the talk online when it is available through the TEDx website.

MAGIC @ ADOBE MAX : The Creativity Conference

MAGIC Director Andrew Phelps will be presenting student work at the Adobe MAX conference this year in Los Angeles, comparing game development and technology workflow between WebGL and Flash3D technologies. This work is made possible by the fantastic students that participating in this work on the "Glauntlet" and "Flauntlet" teams, in collaboration with the School of Interactive Games & Media in the B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing & Information Sciences. In addition, Director Phelps and Dr. William Destler, President of RIT, will visit Adobe headquarters in the weeks leading up to the conference.

MAGIC Welcomes Walter Bender and the OLPC

Walter Bender has worked to empower the children of developing countries to learn using technology. The co-founder of One Laptop Per Child and founder of Sugar Labs will share his lessons with educators, social entrepreneurs and technologists during a free and open talk at 7 p.m. April 17 at Rochester Institute of Technology. Find out more in the university press coverage of the event. MAGIC is co-sponsoring this talk with Red Hat, StormFrog, and the Simone Center.

MAGIC Affiliates in the News

Several faculty affiliated with the MAGIC Center made the news this week, as Associate Professor Stephen Jacobs and MAGIC Lab developer and FOSS evangelist Remy DeCausemaker were interviewed in reference to our work with Open Source Software. In addition, Associate Professor Jon Schull was interviewed for an article on hi-tech business startups and his experience in creating SoftLock. And finally, Associate Professor Evan Selinger was quoted in The Boston Globe in an article on attitudes surrounding the American tax system and IRS implementation.

Red Hat Donates to RIT's MAGIC Center for Open Source Software Education Program

Red Hat Inc., the world’s leading provider of open source software solutions, has made a gift to strengthen its support of Rochester Institute of Technology’s new Center for Media, Arts, Games, Interaction and Creativity (MAGIC). The gift will support Professor Stephen Jacobs’ leading efforts in fostering humanitarian free and open source software work amongst RIT students, staff and faculty. Read more about this gift and its impact in the RIT News.

MAGIC is the Talk of the Town

MAGIC is on everyone's mind at the Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco this week. The announcement of the Center at the panel presentation by Director Phelps (along with speakers from Northeastern, UCSC and USC) created quite a stir, as other universities are interested and engaged in the models we are proposing. The reaction from industry is equally positive, as the Center is beginning to establish new connections and also find new ways of working with established partners. In addition, RIT's Reporter Magazine also featured the new Center in this month's issue to help kickstart a dialog with students and the campus. And we'll be talking about MAGIC at the RIT GDC Alumni Gathering on Thursday as well!

MAGIC Rocks PyCon

FOSS@RIT, a program of the Lab for Technological Literacy, and affiliate of the MAGIC Center, participated in and supported the PyCon 2013 python conference in the following ways:

Professor Stephen Jacobs, IGM Faculty Member and MAGIC affiliate participated in a panel on engaging students and faculty in Python and Open Source.

Remy DeCausemaker, MAGIC/LTL Research Assistant was a speaker for this year and students Nathaniel Case (graduate student in CS) Eitan Romanoff (Graduate in CS) Ryan Scott Brown (GCCIS ANSA undergrad) and David Gay (IST undergrad) assisted in running the Open Space program during the afternoon portion of the education summit and the students were general volunteers throughout the day as well.

MAGIC Heads to the Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco

MAGIC is off to the Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco, CA., as a part of our partnership with the School of Interactive Games & Media at RIT. MAGIC Director Andrew Phelps will be speaking on what it takes to establish a nationally ranked games program, and several other RIT faculty will be attending and presenting. RIT students will be hosting a booth on the GDC exhibit floor, and RIT will be hosting an alumni event on Thursday, March 28th.

MAGIC and IGM Host Microsoft HTML5 Games Workshop

Want to build HTML5 games but just not sure where to start? Let Jeff Burtoft, HTML5 Evangelist for Microsoft, show you how! IGM and MAGIC are co-hosting a half-day workshop with Jeff that will cover an overview of components, game application structures, moving from HTML5 to Windows 8 applications, and extending your game with Windows 8 native features. Andrew Parsons, of ImagineCup fame will also be there! Seating is limited to 60 people, and registration is required although the event is free of charge. Thursday, March 7, 2013 from 2:00 PM to 6:00 PM (EST) GD&D Lab (70-2000).

Getty Museum Game with COLA and Digital Humanities

The RIT Center for Media, Arts, Games, Interaction, and Creativity (MAGIC), in conjunction with the College of Liberal Arts, is pleased to announce a project between RIT and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles to explore the use of games and mobile applications to assist and extend participants understanding and engagement with the Getty’s collection at the Getty Villa. The Getty Villa in Malibu, California is an educational center and museum dedicated to the study of the arts and cultures of ancient Greece, Rome, and Etruria. This multi-disciplinary project is a collaboration by partners across RIT, including Performing Arts and Visual Culture of Liberal Arts and the School of Interactive Games & Media in the B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing & Information Sciences. This work will be led by Assistant Professor Elizabeth Goins from the Department of Performing Arts and Visual Culture, and Associate Professor Christopher Egert from IGM. Funding for this work is provided by the Getty Museum, and will support students in the development of an iOS prototype application to explore this topic.

MAGIC would not be possible without the sustained and welcome efforts of the faculty, staff, and students of the School of Interactive Games & Media (IGM). IGM is the initial unit out of which MAGIC was born, and it is the unprecedented success and established excellence in IGM that acted in part as the precursor to this new, more broadly encompassing initiative. MAGIC is exceedingly grateful to the School, and the B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing & Information Sciences in which it is housed, for its initial and sustained support of our efforts, the scholarly and creative contributions of the IGM faculty, and the engagement of IGM and GCCIS staff in enabling many of our activities.