Summaries

[JIM BIZZOCCHI] Ambient Video is designed to play on the walls in the background of our lives. Like Brian Eno's "Ambient Music", it must be "as easy to ignore as it is to notice". Jim's research tracks the development of this emergent medium, and his video art explores its poetics.

Jim Bizzocchi's Dada Processing Website

Jim Bizzocchi's Ambient Video Website

[YIN WU] Many academic studies examine video games with a focus on their gameplay and interactive storytelling components. Video games relies heavily on graphic elements to communicate to players. In this thesis, I contextualize my research in the fields of aesthetics, storytelling, and new media studies. Borrowing analytical tools primarily from Rudolf Arnheim’s theory of expression, Jim Bizzocchi’s narrative framework, and Eric Zimmerman’s theory on rules of play and drawing on case studies and close readings of various games spanning across genres,I construct an analytic framework including three salient dimensions, narrative, ludic and aesthetics. My framework reveals important relations between graphic styles and various categories of visual components in video game. It also suggests design heuristics of maintaining a dynamic balance between graphic stylization and realism in game graphics to maximize their communicative potential in supporting players’ engagement in different games.

Biographies

JIM BIZZOCCHI is an Associate Professor in the School of Interactive Arts and Technology. His research and teaching interests include: narrative, interactive narrative, video and film studies, and the future of the moving image.

YIN WU is a graduate student in the MA program of School of Interactive Art and Technology at SFU. His research primarily focuses on the aesthetics of video game graphics and he is currently under the supervision of Jim Bizzocchi.