Georgia Tech presents the second annual Living Game Worlds Symposium on Thursday, February 16 featuring digital media experts from industry and academia including a key note address by Will Wright, original designer of the two best-selling computer games SimCity and The Sims. Living Game Worlds 2006 focuses on digital media including interactive design, games, digital art, mobile technologies and more. The theme of this year's symposium is "Design Processes and the Future of Expressive Computing."

"At Georgia Tech we teach digital design at the graduate and undergraduate level and are preparing our students to be innovators in the digital revolution," says Janet Murray, professor and director of the graduate Program in Digital Media in Tech's School of Literature, Communication and Culture. "We are pleased to bring together some of the leaders in industry and academia to discuss the challenges facing the field."

"Georgia Tech is at the cutting edge of innovation in multimedia, gaming and interactive technologies," says Elizabeth Mynatt, associate professor in the College of Computing and director of the GVU Center at Georgia Tech. "The Living Game Worlds symposium offers a multidisciplinary look at these converging technologies."

Georgia Tech's Digital Media Graduate Program in the School of Literature, Communication and Culture and the GVU Center in the College of Computing at Georgia Tech have organized Living Game Worlds 2006 as a follow up to last year's successful inaugural event initiated by Georgia Tech's Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts and the School of Literature, Communication and Culture celebrating the tenth anniversary of digital media degree programs at Georgia Tech.

Living Game Worlds 2006 also includes a keynote by three-time Emmy winner Dale Herigstad, who has more than a decade of experience in interactive television and broadband environments. Panel discussions will feature experts from industry and academia discussing issues in digital media including design process, interactive design, games, digital art, mixed reality and convergence. The day closes with demos and exhibits. The detailed agenda is available online at http://gameworlds.gatech.edu/.

Participants include:
* Will Wright, co-founder of Maxis and the original designer of the two best-selling computer games SimCity and The Sims. In 2005 he received the Ivan Allen Jr. Prize for Progress and Service from Georgia Tech's Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.
* Dale Herigstad, creative director of Schematic and three time Emmy winner, has 25 years experience as a graphic designer in television and over a decade of experience in interactive television and broadband environments.
* Christopher Klaus, founder and CEO of Kaneva Inc., a digital entertainment marketplace where people can watch, play, create and self-publish films and games. Klaus is also founder and chief security advisor of Internet Security Systems (ISS) headquartered in Atlanta.
* Raph Koster, chief creative officer at Sony Online Entertainment, builds massively multi-player online worlds, including Star Wars Galaxies, an online version of the Star Wars universe.
* Karen Lennon is president/CEO, Beyond Z Interactive Media, a leading iTV development company. With over 15 years experience in new media, marketing and management, Lennon launched her Emmy Award winning iTV company in 2000.
* Michael Mateas, assistant professor in Georgia Tech's School of Literature, Communication and Culture and College of Computing, recently won the Grand Jury Prize for Façade at the Slamdance Guerilla Gamemaker Competition at the independent Slamdance 2006 Film Festival.
* Rick Sanchez, vice president for content for GameTap, Turner Broadcasting's first-of-its-kind broadband games and entertainment network, which launched to consumers last October.
* And more

About the Digital Media Graduate Program
The Georgia Tech Digital Media Graduate Program in the School of Literature, Communication and Culture (LCC) in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at Georgia Tech provides both the theoretical and the practical foundation for careers as digital media researchers and designers in academia and industry. The advent of a new medium of human communication and representation is a significant event in human social and cultural history, and introduces the possibility of new genres of artistic expression as well as new forms of information and knowledge transmission. The study of these new forms-from the point of view of the creators and the analysts-is an emerging field, one that requires a convergence of the methodologies of several traditional disciplines, and one that is also defining its own methodologies of research and practice.
idt.gatech.edu

About the GVU Center
The GVU (Graphics, Visualization and Usability) Center is a university-wide, interdisciplinary research center that spans the Georgia Tech campus and includes many outside collaborators. Its faculty and students are drawn from disciplines in science, engineering, the humanities and design. The Center enables collaborative research that is often difficult to achieve in traditional academic and industrial settings. The unique combinations of research interests and expertise are the catalyst for significant insights into the rapidly evolving landscape of people and computation. The GVU Center conducts research in crucial areas of human experiences with computing including health care, education, work and home life, and entertainment. The Center consistently leads the forefront of research in fields such as human-computer interaction, ubiquitous computing, mixed and augmented reality, animation and graphics, wearable computing, information visualization, educational technologies, new media and communications, intelligent systems and robotics. www.gvu.gatech.edu