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'Alexa, Improvise' is a comedy show that uses AI fails for laughs
It was 7:55 p.m. on a Saturday night, and I had just arrived at a small improv workshop and stage space in San Francisco's Mission District. Mere moments after I sat down, someone placed a stool in front of the stage, draped a red cloth over it and placed what would turn out to be an integral part of the evening's performance: an Amazon Echo. It wasn't there to tell jokes -- it's notably not a very good comedian. Instead, it was both prop and participant in a unique improv show called "Alexa, Improvise."
Bot Party asks: Are robots the future of comedy?
"You're so ugly, you scared the crap out of the toilet." That joke was delivered by a robot called Annabel wearing a sparkly blue prom dress. This is peak SXSW. The reason why Annabel is telling terrible one-liners is simple, if a little odd. Years ago, Arthur Simone, co-founder of Coldtowne Theater in Austin, started an improv show with his dog for a bet. It was a chain of events that would lead him to wonder if you could do improv comedy with a robot. Working with Martin Triplett, founder of Red Sky Robotics, they created "Bot Party" to find out. Annabel's toilet humor might not have Saturday Night Live worried, but it's proof that it's possible. She's also available for weddings.
Live improv saves the day when Witcher 3 SDCC panel goes awry
Pop quiz, hotshot. You're at the San Diego Comic-Con panel for The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt. A demo showing live gameplay has started, but none of the characters' voices are working. You've got a packed room full of fans who want to see the game in presentable condition, and not enough time to start over and try again. What do you do? What do you do? Well, if you're Doug Cockle, voice actor behind Witcher series hero Geralt of Rivia, you start performing your lines live. Despite the potentially embarrassing circumstances, Witcher 3 developer CD Projekt RED has taken its technologically-challenged SDCC panel and made it available for viewing in a video showing Cockle's live improv outtakes. If you've ever wanted to hear Geralt call a big, burly bald man "cute," well ... now's your chance. [Image: CD Projekt RED]
Join Joystiq at GaymerX2 this weekend
What are you doing this weekend? If you have some spare time and live around San Francisco, you're invited to hang out with Joystiq Editor-in-chief Ludwig Kietzmann and Managing Editor Susan Arendt at GaymerX2! Our dashing managerial duo is hosting and speaking on a panel called "Yes, and? An improvised approach to inclusion," which introduces a classic improv technique as a way to better communicate about difficult subjects within our existing social structures. As comedy writer and actress Tina Fey breaks down in Bossypants, saying "yes, and" is a trick to make sure an improv scene doesn't fall flat. First, you have to accept the given situation – say "yes" – and second, you have to add to it, or the conversation stalls out. For our purposes, if someone says an aspect of a game or story makes them uncomfortable, we don't need to debate that feeling – we can say yes, and then add our own perspectives to the conversation. GaymerX2 takes over the InterContinental Hotel in San Francisco from July 11 - 13 – this Friday, Saturday and Sunday. GaymerX2 has a host of guests and panels lined up, including appearances by WWE star Darren Young, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian and BioWare writer David Gaider (who'll be joining Ludwig and Susan). This is the final installment of the GaymerX conference series, but as President Toni Rocca told us earlier this year, GaymerX isn't dead. [Image: GaymerX]
No Comment: Inneract provides antidote to restrictive social norms
If you've ever felt the urge to chest-bump a stranger or dance the cha-cha on a city street, you're probably a fan of the antics of Improv Everywhere. The NYC-based 'prank collective' executes missions large and small, defying the expectations of passersby with group freezes, flash musicals and the occasional Imperial arrest on a subway. Of course, for most of us the logistical and artistic challenge of creating a surreal and transgressive experience for ourselves and others is... well... just too much darn work. Now, thanks to the efforts of artist Lauren McCarthy, there's Inneract. This free app lets you post your location and your desired interaction so that other users of the app can find you and do unto you as you would have them. Want to create a drum circle? Splash in a public fountain? Have a tickle battle? If you can imagine it, you can put it into Inneract and let the world fulfill your wildest need for novelty. See the video below for some relatively staid examples. Sure, we could point out all the ways this concept could go very, very wrong. We could ponder the possibility that an evil companion might put your picture into the app along with a rather personal request, and then sit next to you to watch the fun. We could suggest some ideas for in-app purchases ($0.99 to enable Fight Club Mode, "I want someone to come over and kick my ass"), or muse on the irony of a location-based app that exposes your deepest fetish to everyone around you. Instead, though, we'll let this app stand as today's truly wacky No Comment. Thanks to Wilson for the tip.
The Tattered Notebook: Roleplaying advice for veterans and newbies alike
Hello there adventurers! Seccia has taken the week off to go visit the remainder of her family in Neriak so I'm stepping in to help out with her column! This week in The Tattered Notebook, I thought it would be a good time to talk about roleplaying a character. Roleplaying isn't just jumping into a game world and talking in a funny accent. It's also not just making up a character and spamming a scene with emotes. Good roleplaying skills take both time and practice to learn. And while I can't teach you everything in the space of a single column, I can give roleplayers, both veterans of the craft and newbies, a few tips to polish up your roleplaying skills and enhance the power of a scene.
Pranksters invade Starbucks with desktop computers
We've already seen the confusion and hilarity some so-called "portable" computers can cause when taken out into public, but those shenanigans are nothing compared to the scene stirred up when the folks from Improv Everywhere lugged some ancient desktop computers (replete with CRT monitors) into a Starbucks. As you can see in the video after the break, they surprisingly weren't kicked out, but they did manage to attract a fair bit of attention, including from a few folks that thought the computers were set up for public use. Be sure to head up the read link below for the full report, as well as another video with the team relishing in their accomplishment.[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
All the World's a Stage: Yes, and...?
All the World's a Stage is brought to you by David Bowers every Sunday evening, investigating the mysterious art of roleplaying in the World of Warcraft.Roleplaying is, at its heart, a form of improv. Of course there are many differences between improv and roleplaying, but when you look at the actual practice of each, you can see that they both live and breathe by the same basic principles, and they both crash and die when these principles are ignored."Improv" is an interactive performance art that requires a certain level of training and rigor. The audience pays the actors to appear on stage, and the actors shape their performance around cues from the audience. It's entirely spontaneous, and as you can imagine, it can be quite crazy for an actor, not knowing what's going to happen next. To help with this, they use a special technique they call "Yes, and...?" which lets them handle whatever sorts of situations that might come up without getting thrown off-guard. Basically it means that each actor always accepts what the others say is true, and modifies the performance to go with whatever comes up. For example, if one actor says "hello mother" to another actor, now the one he spoke to is his mother for the duration of this scene. The "mother" accepts this new reality and offers something of her own in response, such as "Where have you been all night? Your father and I have been worried sick!" Alternatively if any actor denies what another actor just said or did, that's called "blocking," (as in, "No, I'm not your mother!") and it tends to stop the scene right there unless the initial actor can roll with it and accept it in his turn (as in, "Oh. I'm sorry... My mother was standing there a moment ago... I'm blind, you see...").
