Keynote Presentation

Bio:

Mike Jones combines fifteen years professional experience in media production with proactive research interests in
visual aesthetics, computer gaming, motion graphics, narrative form and education. Mike has built a considerable profile
as an award winning writer with broad-ranging expertise in online development, gaming, screen industry trends and
journalism. he is the author of three books related to media education and more than 250 published essays, articles
and reviews. Mike has also extensive experience in museum sector coordinating projects and exhibitions dealing with
popular culture and technology as well as involvement in developing new software tools for creative practice. He is
currently Lecturer in Screen Studies at the Australian Film TV and Radio School and teaches in areas of screen history
and production at the University of NSW.
In 2007 he was awarded the Professional Teachers Council outstanding service award. His online home can be
accessed at www.mikejones.net.au
 

Abstract:

"Space, Game, Camera.
The perspective interface, the virtual camera, and the simulation of ‘I’"

For screen-based media the ‘frame’ is the compositional axis around which an interaction paradigm is assembled.
Drawing from ideas embedded in auteur cinema this act of populating the frame is known as Mise en Scene, from the French,
meaning to ‘place into the scene’. What is subtly embodied in this model is the pre-defining of the position of the Viewer in
their survey of the screen interface; a staging for the user.

Yet, the heart of the contemporary computer gaming interface is the 3D  computer-generated environment - one that, by
its nature, largely breaks with many of the traditional ideas of framic composition. A 3D CGI environment is not built on a
pre-defined viewing position but, rather, on infinite and variable positions within an holistic space. Such composition is distinctly landscape-architectural rather than framic. Here it is the environment, the world, the space of the interface that is composed by the designer not the ‘frame’. The camera - a vanishing point of perspective - is then immersed into the
scene, a staging OF the camera rather than a staging  FOR the camera.

What results is an interaction paradigm of User-as-Cinematographer and the compositional process is inverted in
its relationship to the frame. The frame is a means for the user to interpret and present the composition to themselves.

It is here that the software mechanic of the virtual camera is the foundation of the game interaction interface. The user
as Camera-Operator is the bridge between intent and experience; conducted via a simulation of self into a virtual space - the simulation of ‘I’.

This paper will examine the roles of the virtual camera and landscape architecture in the construction of game interfaces
and modes of interaction. It will draw upon the overlaps between moving image forms - live-action, animation, motion graphics and gaming - and techno-creative processes to present a functional paradigm for articulating the act of interaction composition in gaming; the Mise en Space.

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