ENTERTAINMENT IN THE INTERACTIVE AGE


The interactive age has arrived. Interactive entertainment and games, which have traditionally taken a back seat to linear, mainstream media, have unquestionably taken their place beside Cinema and Television as dominant cultural influences. In fact, some predict that at the current rate of growth, interactive entertainment has the potential to overtake its precursors within the next five years.

ENTERTAINMENT IN THE INTERACTIVE AGE explores the craft of developing interactive experiences, and looks at new creative and technical approaches that promise richer, more rewarding and more diverse genres of participatory entertainment in the future. Interactive entertainment for all platforms - including personal computers, home video game consoles, arcade games, portable devices, and location-based entertainment - has emerged as the most vital and pertinent art form of the new century, and the conference will focus on creating a discourse on its applications in mass entertainment content. Creative designers from industry and the arts, as well as scholars and theorists will come together to examine the evolutionary direction of genres and aesthetics of interactive entertainment now and in the future.




Entertainment in the Interactive Age is a joint production of the University of Southern California's Annenberg Center for Communication www.annenberg.edu and the Interactive Digital Software Association www.idsa.com.

The conference was organized by Celia Pearce, Research Associate, USC Annenberg Center for Communication; Doug Lowenstein, President, IDSA; and Carolyn Rauch, Vice President, IDSA.

The poster and web site graphics were produced by Jody Zellen jodyzel@aol.com.
You can see Jody's original online artwork at www.ghostcity.com.