As always, it all comes back to the same question: Who am I? You might tell me I am not my body, my thoughts, or my emotions. I can accept that most everything is illusion. Deep inside maybe there is something real, but likely, the ‘me’ that matters to you exists mostly out here as myriad fragments dispersed over countless servers. The EGOPLEX is a distillery for these impressions of self, a cozy home for my digital ego.
This place could look a countless number of ways, why then like this? It was my intention that the EGOPLEX deliver an impressionistic rather than informational perspective of myself. The experience should be exploratory and a little foreign maybe. Don’t worry you won’t break anything.
I hope you feel something.
Best Regards,
Michael Highland
P.S. This site is still under construction - I'll be filling in content over the next few weeks, so come back soon (2/20/10).
SECTION 01 IDENTITY MAP Hyperlinked for your convenience
*The EGOPLEX is a final collection point for all of these sources. Thanks to the magic of cooperation and public APIs, it all funnels back to here. New impressions are presented in the following section.
SECTION 02 THE FEED A convergence of virtual presence
SECTION 03 IN PROCESS The current work in progress
GamerThink
An Exploration video game philosophy
WHAT IS IT: Critically thinking about games and virtual experiences is the first step in collectively understanding video games have the potential to be far more than just entertainment products or educational tools. GamerThink is a blog dedicated to illuminating and exploring the meaningful roles video games could play, and are already playing, in so many people's lives.
MY ROLE: I am the creator, and currently the only full time writer on GamerThink.
WHAT IS IT:Port 127 is an independent digital media outfit based in Philadelphia, PA. I founded the company in 2009, and we specialize in video game development and digital media consulting. Our first title (for iPhone), a Philly centric pixel art racing game, is due out fall of 2010.
MY ROLE: I am Creative Director for Port 127 and leading a small team in the production of our first game.
WHAT IS IT: 'Looking For Grace' is a 10 episode series currently being shot exclusively for the internet. After a young man (Harold) discovers his memories have been replaced by those of a mysterious woman named Grace, he sets out on a journey to find her, hoping to reclaim that which he has forgotten. However, along the road, he discovers a strange world in which nothing is as it seems - and that he is not the only one 'Looking For Grace'.
MY ROLE: I'm working with long time friend Nathaniel Halpern (writer,creator) to help develop a compelling online experience for the project.
WHAT IS IT:
‘The Making of Being’ is a documentary film that explores the awakening of human consciousness leading us towards a quantum shift in human evolution. In the whirlwind of globalization, rapidly advancing communication technologies, and converging crisis; our interconnectivity can no longer be ignored. Experts tell us we are no longer flirting with the sixth mass extinction on planet earth, but we are already deep within it. As we find ourselves on the midst of the most destructive time in human history the emergence of a new worldview may be a very real & anchoring hope for a sustainable future.
MY ROLE:I am working closely with the film's creator, Tanya Kaps, to write a narrative to compliment the informational content of the film.
As Real as Your Life is a multi-media film project I began in 2004 as a short pseudo-narrative documentary on my ‘addiction’ to video games. The film as an eye-opener for many viewers. Despite the widespread popularity of video games, the majority of people don’t realize that what looks like fantasy to them, to another can seem as meaningful (and as real) as his or her real life. Video games are extremely powerful tools, capable of shaping individuals and society; however, until more people come to understand this potential, we will continue to produce and consume video games blindly, as frivolous entertainment products. My goal is to help shift cultural perspectives about the nature of virtual experience and open the door for video games to catalyze personal and societal growth.
The next phase of As Real as Your Life, the 'Archive', will be a web portal where gamers can submit their own stories in video format. Content will center around a set a core questions about the nature of virtual experience. Every contributor will be profiled for age, locality, game usage, favorite genres, etc. This data in combination with the repository of content will serve as an ever-growing resource to parents, educators, researchers, or anyone looking to better understand the inner experiences of gamers. I'll be taking all of the user generatted video and editing it into new content such as webisodes or a feature documentary.
MY ROLE:I am the creator of As Real as Your Life, and the project lead for the Archive.
NOTES: Part documentary, part narrative, and part animation, As Real as Your Life chronicles my experiences with video game addiction and explores the personal and social repercussions of spending more time playing in the virtual world than in the real one. The film brings to light the enormous potential for video games to change our society, and aims to start conversations about the role video games play in our lives.
The film has been screened to wide acclaim at TED2006, the Game Developers Conference, America's Video Game Expo, as well as in a short film section at the Cannes film festival. We are currently scheduling public screenings, and DVDs of the full 22 minute film, along with special features are availible for sale on the website.
NOTES: The Digital Diptych was my original portfolio site and a first attempt at enaging visitors in a creative process. The site was linked to a large database of images from my life which would be randomly shuffled and presented in pairs as unique diptychs. Visitors were invited to name given pairings with creative titles. The floating links in the background of the this site come entirely from that interactive process.
PERFECT HUMAN REDUX
TITLE:PERFECT HUMAN REDUX (Short Film)
YEAR: 2008
NOTES: In collaboration with Nick Salvatore I produced and directed this short film as an homage to Jorgen Leth's 1967 classic art house short 'Det Perfekte Menneske'. In the original film the dining scene is very sparse, almost meager. I wanted to take the documentation of eating to the other extreme. Nick acutally ate most of the food, and threw up immeadiately after we finished shooting.
NOTES: Covering Fire was the culminating project for an Installation/Photography I took my last year of school. The piece involved my composing one hundred cover letters to possible job contacts from my life. I made 100 copies of each letter for a total of 10,000 letters. Over the duration of the performance, every ten minutes I fired a bundle of letters out of a canon situated in a makeshift bunker. The performance was set to a soundtrack of warfare and O'Fortuna.
TITLE:Communicating Spiritual Experience with Video Game Technology (Journal Article)
NOTES: I developed WinWin as a prototype for charitable gambiling. The concept was 'greedy generosity'. It seems like an oxymoron, but what better way to motivate people to give charitably than to combine that action with something that directly benefits the giver. The more you give, the greater your chances of winning a whole lot more back. Everyone likes winning money and nobody likes losing it, but if you're going to lose sometimes why shouldn't that loss be a gift to a worthwhile cause. I found out shortly after launching the prototype that gambling is a very controlled activity, even if you're intentions are pure.
NOTES:The Timeline is a conceptual website built to grow with the user. Every day the site grows 5 pixels in height - making room for additional content. Past events are displayed on the day they happened giving visitors a bird's eye view of an individual's life. This prototype (setup for my own life) has not been updated in a while, but still functions as a proof of concept.
"WALKEN USSR" still the Giferator
TITLE:Giferator (Automated Animation Based Subliminal Content Absorption System)
NOTES: The Giferator was a simple web app I developed for my own ammusement. Given a search term is would perform a google image search and then crop, resize and compress all of the images into an animated gif. The result was a rapidly flashing hyponotic impression of a given person, place, thing or concept. The app spiked in popularity shortly after launching, but unfortunately Google modifed their rules so that it can no longer function. A gallery of randomly selected pairings is still availible for viewing.
NOTES:Flipslide was my senior design project, and the first interactive website I designed and built. The concept was to create a new way for exploring fine art work on the web. I developed a 'genome' system so that each piece of art in the database would have a unique fingerprint based on the subjective qualities of the work. This allowed me to create a slide show interface that operated much like Pandora Radio. A seed image, or desired qualities were chosen, and other works with similar qualities are displayed.
APPENDIX A LOVE Love given and love taken, digitally
COMING SOON
people
keith, kevin, nick, artie, robin, dan g, mel, nick ritz, sarah j
places
philadelphia (apartment?)
waterville valley
things
earphones
snow crash
shinzen young
ted
APPENDIX B BIO A breif summary of the man
For as long as I can remember I’ve been experimenting in the arts and with computers. From an early age, my parents provided me with tools (like the family camcorder) to exercise my creativity. In 2003, during a turbulent freshman year at the University of Pennsylvania, my life long love of video games bloomed into a full-on dependence. As part of my degree is Digital Media Design, I wound up making a short multi-media film about this dependence entitled As Real as Your Life. The film explored my experiences as a video game ‘addict’, someone for whom the line between fantasy and reality had begun to blur. At the time, I had no idea at the time of where it would take me. Just over a year later David Perry, a veteran of the video game industry, screened a newly edited version of the film at the TED conference.
Since creating the original film, I had entered and screened at some festivals, received some positive press, moved to L.A. for a summer to team up with veteran producer Scot Rubin, and completely rewrote, re-shot and edited a longer (22 minute) version of the original film. Having seen this version, David asked to use the film to showcase the inner experiences of a gamer in his TED talk on the future of video games.
Getting invited to TED opened a lot of doors, from getting to work as a game designer in Hong Kong, to collaborating with leading researchers investigating virtual experience. I now see video games as potential tools of personal and societal growth. My short film illuminated the emotional power of my own virtual experiences. I’m now moved to facilitate the widespread realization that virtual experience is already a formative force in many people’s lives. It’s time we begin to take video games seriously, so that serious good may be done with them.
I currently live in Philadelphia, PA, where I work as a freelance filmmaker, game designer, web developer and writer.
APPENDIX C FAQ Freely Associated Queries
COMING SOON
APPENDIX D CONTACT See Me / Feel Me / Touch Me / E-Mail Me
