Positive Technology Journal

Re-blogged from Medgadget

Researchers at Breakthrough Learning have developed the world's most stressful board game to help foster systems thinking, collaboration, and innovation in the health care setting.

Played out over a simulated 24-hour day at a hospital, "Friday Night at the ER" graphically shows the downside of short-term thinking, faulty assumptions and an every-manager-for-himself philosophy.

Four-player teams try to juggle a limited number of hospital beds, a relentless influx of patients and a gradual attrition of nurses to care for them, all while racing against a clock that forced faster and faster decisions. Every so often, game cards announce another mini-crisis to ramp up the pressure.

The patient count in the ER waiting room soars as the day goes on, especially if the players running the operating room, critical care unit and medical-surgical floor don't cooperate to free up bed space, share nursing staff and think ahead to the next challenge.

"It's about collaboration and teamwork, about seeing your department as one piece of an enormous mosaic," game leader William Ward [Johns Hopkins University professor of health finance and management -ed] told the players. "Whether it's lab, registration, records, we tend to manage just in our own little departments. I swear at the bottom of the Atlantic there's still a hospital department manager in dry room on the Titanic who went down thinking 'It's OK. My department is dry.'"

Bubbl.us is a (free) web application that lets you brainstorm online. Key features include: 

• Create colorful mind maps online
• Share and work with friends
• Embed your mind map in your blog or website
• Email and print your mind map
• Save your mind map as an image

Here is an example:

From Creative Technology Network website  

6 September 2007

Cross-sector seminar/workshop to generate new ideas for products, services and collaborations in the interactive arena

2pm - 5.30pm followed by drinks| Venue: Watershed, Bristol | 

From alternative reality games to located mediascapes, the internet offers a wealth of opportunity for collaboration around gaming and interactive experiences, and with its blend of digital creatives and highly skilled computer programmers, Bristol should be in a unique position to ride and exploit this wave.

Recent research commissioned by South West Screen highlights the significant number of SMEs working in disciplines like animation, education, interactive media and post-production who are already supporting the games industry. How do we network these producers and create opportunities to engage with emerging disciplines such as mobile gaming, pervasive media and serious games?

Showcasing a diverse array of Bristol based talent, this afternoon seminar/workshop will bring together experts and professionals from a mix of disciplines to explore innovation, content distribution and opportunities for collaboration in gaming and virtual worlds.

From Networked Performance

Programmable Media: Open Platforms for Creativity and Collaboration :: A symposium organized and presented by New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., hosted by Pace Digital Gallery :: Date: March 2, 2007 :: Time: 10 am to 3:30 pm :: Venue: Multipurpose Room, 1 Pace Plaza, Pace University :: Contact: Helen Thorington (newradio[at]turbulence.org); Jillian McDonald (jmcdonald2[at]pace.edu). Registration is encouraged: email turbulence at turbulence.org.

In July 2004 the not-for-profit media organization New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. began the networked_performance blog to chronicle observations that internet based creative practice is expanding due to the ready availability of wireless, mobile, and GPS computational devices and the emergence of the programmable web. We observe that artists, designers and researchers working in digitally networked and programmable environments are increasingly making projects that are media platforms, tools and services which are open and contingent upon participation and the contribution of content to realize them.

Programmable Media: Open Platforms for Creativity and Collaboration, hosted by Pace University, will explore two forms of current practice. First, the creation of original software to create tools and services for creative and social use, such as a freely available 3-D drawing tool and musical instrument, or a public commons meta layer conceived as a continuous public space for collaboration. Second, the creation of original work using the tools available within open platforms such as Second Life and MySpace to build community and raise awareness.

 

 via Networked Performance

NIME 2007 CALL FOR PARTICIPATION: On behalf of the NIME07 Committee, we would like to invite you to be part of the 7th International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME), organized by Harvestworks and New York University's (NYU) Music Technology Program in partnership with LEMUR and the NYU InteractiveTelecommunications Program (ITP).

We encourage contributions of the following kinds: * Papers (full-length, short-length, posters) * Demos * Live Performances * Installations. Complete submission guidelines are now available at http://www.nime.org/2007.

Via World of Psychology

Researchers from the University of Toronto found that creativity is improved when people are in a good mood.

Read the post on WoP

Read ABC health report on the study

Via Networked performance

Dance and music go together. Intuitively, we know they have common elements, and while we cannot even begin to understand what they are or how they so perfectly complement one another, it is clear that they are both are an expression of something deep and fundamental within all human beings. Both express things that words cannot - beyond intellect, they are perhaps two of the fundamental building blocks of human expression, common to the souls of all people. Which is why when we saw this machine which links the two, we knew there was something special brewing.

The GypsyMIDI is a unique instrument for motion-capture midi control - a machine that enables a human being to become a musical instrument - well, a musical instrument controller to be exact, or a bunch of other things depending on your imagination.

Read the full post on NP

Re-blogged from Networked Performance

Synthecology combines the possibilities of tele-immersive collaboration with a new architecture for virtual reality sound immersion to create a environment where musicians from all locations can interactively perform and create sonic environments.

Compose, sculpt, and improvise with other musicians and artists in an ephemeral garden of sonic lifeforms. Synthecology invites visitors in this digitally fertile space to create a musical sculpture of sythesized tones and sound samples provided by web inhabitants. Upon entering the garden, each participant can pluck contributed sounds from the air and plant them, wander the garden playing their own improvisation or collaborate with other participants to create/author a new composition.

As each new 'seed' is planted and grown, sculpted and played, this garden becomes both a musical instrument and a composition to be shared with the rest of the network. Every inhabitant creates, not just as an individual composer shaping their own themes, but as a collaborator in real time who is able to improvise new soundscapes in the garden by cooperating with other avatars from diverse geographical locations.

Virtual participants are fully immersed in the garden landscape through the use of passive stereoscopic technology and spatialized audio to create a networked tele-immersive environment where all inhabitants can collaborate, socialize and play. Guests from across the globe are similarly embodied as avatars through out this environment, each experiencing the audio and visual presence of the others.

Continue to read the full post here

From Networked Performance

EvoMUSART 2007: 5th European Workshop on Evolutionary Music and Art: 11-13 April, 2007, Valencia, Spain: EVOSTAR: EVOMUSART: "ArtEscapes: Variations of Life in the Media Arts"

The use of biological inspired techniques for the development of artistic systems is a recent, exciting and significant area of research. There is a growing interest in the application of these techniques in fields such as: visual art and music generation, analysis, and interpretation; sound synthesis; architecture; video; and design.

EvoMUSART 2007 is the fifth workshop of the EvoNet working group on Evolutionary Music and Art. Following the success of previous events and the growth of interest in the field, the main goal of EvoMUSART 2007 is to bring together researchers who are using biological inspired techniques for artistic tasks, providing the opportunity to promote, present and discuss ongoing work in the area.

The workshop will be held from 11-13 April, 2007 in Valencia, Spain, as part of the Evo* event.

The event includes the exhibition "ArtEscapes: Variations of Life in the Media Arts", giving an opportunity for the presentation of evolutionary art and music. The submission of art works for the exhibition session is independent from the submission of papers.

Accepted papers will be presented orally at the workshop and included in the EvoWorkshops proceedings, published by Springer Verlag in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science series.

Further information can be found on the following pages:
Evo*2007: http://www.evostar.org
EvoMUSART2007: http://evonet.lri.fr/TikiWiki/tiki-index.php?page=EvoMUSART