THE PROCEDURAL GENERATION JAM 2015

[Mike Cook]

Hey CC folks! 

It's been a long time since we met in Park City. You might remember I gave a talk about an event I organised last year called PROCJAM - The Procedural Generation Jam. Here's that talk:

https://youtu.be/I1XdzGXAYYA?t=9267

The 'jam' is actually a very laid back week of making things that make other things. It's a way for artists, programmers, researchers, game designers and more to come together and share their ideas, inspiration and techniques for generating things. You can make a game, or a tool, or a library, or a little script, or a twitterbot, or a bit of digital art, or anything you want. You can even bring existing code or projects, and extend them with new generative features for the jam. You can find more info about the jam here:

http://www.procjam.com/

itch.io/jam/procjam

I would be honoured if members of the CC community took part this year. Here are some ways you can be a part of the community:

Take Part In The Jam

Take a week off from your research projects (or just a day) and sit down and make something new that you've been wanting to do for ages. Maybe you use it to learn how to make Twitterbots? Maybe you prototype some system you've been dreaming about for ages. Make it, tell everyone about it, and submit it to the jam (the easiest way is to do it here: itch.io/jam/procjam - it requires registering though)

Open Up Your Research

I try to use PROCJAM to promote unusual experimentation in generative tech, especially for games. Last year, someone generated a text adventure using ConceptNet to randomly connect actions to new game content, for example. If you have an API or a library that people can use for something cool, why not write a blog post or a tutorial on how to use it, and link me to it? I'll promote it as best I can and try and get people to use it. You never know what someone might do with it!

Set Your Students On It

Last year we had a few classes use PROCJAM as a weekly project, and this year there's even more joining in. They get to experiment with something practical for a week, as well as taking advantage of our live expert talks (streaming on Saturday 7th November and on YouTube afterwards) and chatting to other jam entrants on Twitter too. It's a really nice environment to do a student project in for a week.

If you have any questions, or want suggestions or help or info or anything, please don't hesitate to reply here or email me: mi...@gamesbyangelina.org

Mike