Digital IDEAS showcased

Digital art has continued to invade human life since its inception. Saturday, this creativity will convene on Bloomington.\nThe Indiana IDEAS Festival offers students the opportunity to showcase their Interactive Digital Environments Arts and Storytelling or IDEAS and win money for it. They will also get to exhibit their work from noon to 4 p.m. in the Lee Norvelle Theatre and Drama Center and the Wells-Metz Theatre during the event. Gordon Walton, executive producer at Sony Entertainment, will speak at 5 p.m. \nThis year, 60 entries were submitted and 35 entered the juried festival, vying for 11 categories attached to cash prizes of $300, which will be awarded following the speech. \n"We want to provide a forum for people of all ages and from all walks of life to show how they are using digital media creatively," said Elena Bertozzi, coordinator of the event and clinical assistant professor of telecommunications. "The festival allows the public to see work that would otherwise not be seen."\nBertozzi said the festival will include pieces with Virtual Reality Environments, still graphics, animation, narrative, interactive conversation and music.\n"The goal of the festival is to be as broad and inclusive as possible so that people will submit any kind of interesting, creative, digitally mediated work," she said.\nBertozzi teaches and researches game and interactive media design. She said it is a rapidly growing field of study.\n"Sometimes it is hard for people to take me seriously when I say that I study digital games," she said. "But games are our century's art form. Games are the place where film, audio, narrative and underactivity all come together to create new, incredibly immersive media."\nBertozzi works with some students who play these games 40 to 50 hours a week. \n"No other media is capable of attracting and holding attention the way these games do," she said. "They are an increasingly important part of our culture and we need to understand them and their effects on our behavior."\nPeople in attendance at the festival will have the opportunity to interact with the exhibits themselves.\nLast year, IU students received awards for their work. The competition this year is open to other college students in Indiana as well as those in surrounding states and at Big Ten schools, according to the events Web site at www.ideasfest.org.\nBertozzi said one major goal of the festival is to discover and share new ideas about this art form, that has been expanding.\n"It is becoming a more important part of everyday life," he said. "Look at your cellphone, your handheld, your laptop, your car ... all of these machines have digital interfaces and we are working hard to make them interesting"