Live Blog of Symposium presentations
More Information about the Improvised Comedy Games Workshop to be held at the symposium
The submission page is open!
An updated Call for Papers is out.
The Call for Special Session on work falling outside classical AI has been added.
The Call for Papers is out.
When pioneering theatre educator Viola Spolin crafted a set of exercises called "theatre games," she was primarily interested in establishing a learning environment dedicated to collaboration, experimentation and play. Some of the games she devised were intended to teach students how to create stories using three basic elements of a scene: who, what and where. "Improvised Comedy Games Workshop" applies Spolin's theatre exercises to a comedic context. The workshop will provide a foundation in the spontaneous creation of narrative, by drawing on specific games that use comedy as a story-making device. The workshop will present a diverse offering of narrative-building exercises that encourage participants to get out of their heads and into their bodies, to listen and respond, to trust their instincts and make good choices- all skills that are immensely beneficial to the creation of stories in any medium or platform of expression.
Kathryn T. Farley, Ph.D. obtained a doctorate in Performance Studies from Northwestern University in 2007, writing a dissertation that explored the relationship between media and contemporary performance practices. She currently serves as a Marion L. Brittain Post-Doctoral Fellow in the School of Literature, Communication & Culture at the Georgia Institute of Technology. As a graduate of Second City's Training Academy, Kathryn is especially interested in exploring the ways in which computerized media enhance comedic improvisation practices. In 2006 she was selected as a researcher-in-residence by the Daniel Langlois Foundation of Art, Science and Technology of Montreal, Canada, and was recently named co-principal investigator on a multi-year study funded by the National Science Foundation that examines the relationship between computers, cognition and creativity. A multimedia digital portfolio of Kathryn's work can be found here . The fundamental premise underlying Kathryn's teaching is the conviction that performance practices can be deepened, complicated, and challenged in meaningful ways by engaging with technology and its many uses in contemporary society. Her classes amd workshops draw on a variety of computerized instruments and interfaces, including: multimedia applications for theatre production, Augmented Reality, virtual worlds, viral communication and the Internet. In utilizing such tools, her aim has been to connect with and expand upon the ways that students opt to utilize media in their everyday lives, and to make the creative possibilities of digital technologies more accessible to a new generation of learners.