Thursday, January 12, 2012

Interactive Imagination

I have been looking at new ways of using video. I like the idea of video art, and started getting some ideas during my trip to New York City last week. I'm heading back tomorrow, so maybe we will have a chance to visit MoMa again, or see some other interactive displays.

At work the talk is all about mobile apps, a way of enhancing the visitor's experience through technology. Of course I am all for it, and have developed quite a bit of material-- video, writing, photography, to support the creation of new, multi-layered content. An idea of what is possible is this interactive timeline for Norman Rockwell's years in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, which I co-directed and produced much of the content for (we won a 2007 "best website" award for this mini-site from the New England Museum Association).

Interviewing Ralph H. Baer in Manchester, New Hampshire,
October 18, 2011.
This past fall I had the chance to meet a man who was thinking about interactive content back during the very early days of the television medium. Ralph H. Baer is generally considered the "grandfather of video games." Back in the late 1960s, this creative engineer developed the first of a series of games to play on a television screen, including the popular ping-pong game. A few years later he teamed up with Magnavox to release Odyssey, the first home video game console, based on his original “Brown Box” prototype. Baer continued to experiment with technology in the 1970s, creating the immensely popular music game SIMON. At age 89, this pioneer is as active as ever, serving as a consultant for engineering and the video game industry, and still hard at work on new ideas. 

I had the pleasure to conduct a very long videotaped interview with Ralph for the Norman Rockwell Museum Archives, and it was a true pleasure-- very inspiring for me. Hopefully I can share more of this interview at a later date. In the meantime, you can read more about Ralph in this blog I created for the Museum-- get your game on!


Ralph H. Baer's website: www.ralphbaer.com

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