But the success of Second Life and advances in the field of CGI have heralded a new era in digital arts.  As their wares become ever-more marketable, digital artists are out to prove that they're not playing around anymore. The media and academics have been watching the emergence of this new frontier with fascination.  New mediums are being created at a rapid rate, ripe for experimentation - and the business world is listening, enlisting the help of digital artists for advertisements, film clips, websites and more. Panellists will discuss the future of digital arts, and speculate upon its limitations.   Gaming will be looked at in a new light, as panelists explore the utilisation of the medium as a cash cow for corporations and a study in humanity.  Do behaviours depicted in Second Life reveal the true nature of the personalities behind the avatars?

Jump into this forum and start a conversation with:

Julian Stadon 

Julian Stadon is a participant in the Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT) mentorship programme - an opportunity for practitioners under 30 to explore new artistic directions, expand technical skills and increase knowledge of networks, debates and business practice spanning a three-month period.

Julian's practice explores the evolution and impact of newly evolved networked digital environments, currently in Second Life. This exploration is through both the anthropological documentation of interactions within these spaces, and the exposition of formalist elements inherent within them. 
 

Jason Hill

Jason Hill is one of Australia's most respected videogame journalists, winning Best Gaming Journalist at the 2007 Sun Microsystems IT Journalism Awards. A veteran in the industry, he has chronicled gaming's rise into mainstream entertainment and reviewed thousands of games across all popular formats since 1992 for a wide variety of Australian newspapers and magazines. Jason now contributes to The Age newspaper's Livewire section and Icon in The Sydney Morning Herald, and writes Australia's most popular gaming blog, Screen Play. Jason has also written television scripts, spoken at trade shows, seminars and schools, judged major gaming and journalism awards, and assessed game concepts for Film Victoria and the Australian Film Commission.

Joel Gethin Lewis

Joel Gethin Lewis is a designer and artist based in London. He has been the Interaction Designer at United Visual Artists since the beginning of 2005, working on projects as diverse as U2's Vertigo World tour, the 2007 Regent Street Christmas Lights and the award winning "Volume" installation at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Previously to United Visual Artists he has worked for a wide variety of clients and groups, including IBM, Rem Koolhaus, Dazed&Confused Magazine and Motorola. He is one of the founders of the Interaction Design event "This Happened". After last years lecture tour of Australia and New Zealand, he will be returning to Melbourne at the end of April to present at the AGIdeas conference.

The team at ABC's Good Game

Janet “Syd” Carr is the Series Producer of Good Game, the only Australian TV Show solely about Video Gaming.  I worked in News and Currant Affairs at the ABC for many years, on Lateline for ABC TV and as Senior Producer on Radio National Breakfast before combining my love of journalism with my passion for Video Gaming by creating Good Game.  The show has been on air since October 2006 and is currently in it's fourth series screening on both ABC1 and ABC2 and to the world via the vodcast available at abc.net.au/goodgame.

The pic is of Janet with the highly reknowned Game Developer Peter Molyneux (Fable, Black & White, Populous) at this years Games Developers Conference held in San Francisco.

Maurice “Moe” Branscombe has been in the business of videogame reportage and critique for many years, and has worked either freelance or full-time at several of Australia’s best and most respected gaming publications.

HIs previous job landed him behind the scenes of Hyper Magazine, as the deputy editor of Australia’s oldest games periodical. He is presently the researcher on ABC TV’s Good Game which he describes as the “Best. Job. Ever.”

Jeremy “Junglist” Ray is a presenter on Good Game.  He is still traumatised by the memory of catching his parents playing Zelda and Mario on an original Nintendo - “they managed to hide it from me for months, and when I busted them they limited me to one hour a night”. He says choosing his favourite game is a “very tough call between Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Half-Life 2.”

Steven O'Donnell, aka Bajo, is a presenter on Good Game. He has played every genre but has an unexplained affinity for any game with space pirates. Outside of gaming, he's been involved in filmmaking, editing and a bit of writing for a few years in various different roles and fields. He's also very much into nachos and British comedy. 

Babelswarm

Justin Clemens gained his PhD from the University of Melbourne. He has published extensively on psychoanalysis, contemporary European philosophy, and literature. Recent books include The Mundiad (Blackinc 2004) and, with Dom Pettman, Avoiding the Subject (Amsterdam UP 2004). He is co-recipient of a large ARC grant with Russell Grigg on "Psychoanalysis and Science." He is currently Secretary of the Lacan Circle of Melbourne, and art critic for the Australian magazine The Monthly. He was a recipient of the inaugural Australia Council Second Life Artist in Residency grant.

Christopher Dodds is a visual designer and director of Icon.Inc – a design and communications company based in Melbourne. He has recently completed a research degree at RMIT university on surveillance in virtual worlds, and is a contributor to the art-game portal 
selectparks.net. He was a recipient of the inaugural Australia Council Second Life Artist in Residency grant.

Adam Nash is widely recognized as one of the most innovative artists working in Multi-User Virtual Environmnets. He is a new media artist, composer, programmer, performer and writer. He works primarily in networked real-time 3D spaces, exploring them as audiovisual performance spaces. His work has been presented in galleries, festivals and online in Australia, Europe, Asia and The Americas, including peak festivals SIGGRAPH, ISEA, and the Venice Biennale. He was a recipient of the inaugural Australia Council Second Life Artist in Residency grant. He has been commissioned to present a mixed-reality participatory work at 01SJ Biennial of Global Art in San Jose 2008. He also works as composer and sound artist with Company In Space (AU) and Igloo (UK), exploring the integration of motion capture into realtime 3D audiovisual spaces. He is a Lecturer in Computer Games and Digtial Art in the School of Creative Media at RMIT University.

Chair: Ricardo Peach

Dr Ricardo Peach is the Program Manager for the Inter-Arts Office at the Australia Council for the Arts. In 2005 he initiated Australia's first Second Life Artist Residency, and continues to support new initiatives for Australian artists in synthetic worlds. His other interest is Queer Cinema, particularly in Australia and South Africa.

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