Colloquia and Forums

Ethan Gilsdorf will discuss some of the themes of his new book, Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms, a blend of travelogue, pop culture analysis, and memoir as forty-year-old former D&D addict Gilsdorf crisscrosses America, the world, and other worlds—from Boston to Wisconsin, France to New Zealand, and Planet Earth to the realm of Aggramar. He asks: Who are these gamers and fantasy fans? What explains the irresistible appeal of such "escapist" adventures? How do the players balance their escapist urges with the kingdom of adulthood?

Gilsdorf will talk about the culture's discomfort with the geek/nerd/gamer stereotype and will look at society's ambivalent relationship with gaming and fantasy play, and the origins of that prejudice, as well as the author's own past misgivings and final acceptance of his "geek" identity.

Hanna Rose Shell, a historian and media artist, is as Assistant Professor in the Program on Science, Technology and Society at MIT. This is a talk about camouflage framed by the question of “how not to be seen”--in film, on film, as film. In the first part, Shell introduces “how not to be seen” in terms of the aspiration for, and actualization of concealment in both filmic and natural ecologies through mixed-media practices that simultaneously incorporate and subvert the photographic media of reconnaissance. In the second part, Shell screens and discusses her film-in-progress, called Blind, about the phenomenology of camouflage. Blind as in blindness, and blind as in that actively constructed structure intended for the concealment of a hunter from her game. Shell’s book Hide and Seek: Camouflage and the Media of Reconnaissance will be published by Zone Books.

09.29.09 | 5-7 PM | NE25-373 (Gambit Game Lab)

CMS Town Meeting

NOTE CHANGED DATE. Restricted to CMS faculty and students. What is the state of the CMS program as a whole? Who are we? What are we doing? Where are we headed? CMS director William Uricchio will lead the department's semiannual Town Meeting.

The election of an African-American president in November 2008 has been hailed as a transforming event. But has Obama's ascension transformed anything? Many people’s answer to that question changed this summer when a famous Harvard professor was arrested at his home in Cambridge. Are the harsh realities of race and class in the U.S. clearer now or murkier, following the media tsunami of Gatesgate? And has this polarizing event given greater visibility to racial minorities in the media's coverage of politics? How are race issues and racial politics covered in our national media, and what are the implications of the demise of major city newspapers for the coverage of race and politics?

Juan Williams of NPR and Fox News will discuss these and related questions in a candid conversation with Phillip Thompson, associate professor of urban politics in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT, and David Thorburn, Professor of Literature and Director of the MIT Communications Forum. This forum is the first of two this term in our ongoing civic media series, a collaboration of the Communications Forum and the Media Lab’s Center for Future Civic Media.

Remixers are on the front lines of the battle between new media technologies and impeding copyright laws that threaten to obstruct the public discursive space for critiquing popular culture. These spaces are abundant with meticulously crafted and articulate video remixes that deconstruct social myths, challenge dominant media messages and form powerful arguments reflecting the participatory nature of both pop and remix cultures. We’ll deconstruct these videos, honor the history of female fan vidders and the influences of African-American hip-hop cultures and debate the remix's ability to effect actual change.

Elisa Kreisinger is a video remix artist, hacktivst and writer. She co-edits the blog, PoliticalRemixVideo.com, teaches new media to Cambridge teens and is currently working on her first screenplay.

In 1897, the year The Invisible Man was published, Marconi filed his patent and established the first station for wireless telegraphy, what would become radio. H.G. Wells's novel reads as if it were an instruction manual for the uses and abuses of the nascent radio voice. Picker will begin to argue that, in conjunction with the racist basis of much fin-de-siecle anxiety, the acousmatic status of Wells's protagonist allows for a conspicuous if incoherent racial performance. This performance tests the limits of Wells's sympathetic imagination even as it further amplifies the voice of Griffin, the Invisible Man. Picker begins with Wells's story and goes on to show how, when one attends to questions of voice and sound technologies in several different media, the racial and ethnic dimensions that become audible forge invisible connections among modes of art that we have been taught to keep distinct. Tracing a transatlantic route from fiction to radio and sound film back to fiction, this approach offers a new way to characterize a crucial period of change from the late Victorian to the modern world.

John Picker is Visiting Associate Professor of Literature at MIT, where he arrived this fall after several years as Associate Professor of English at Harvard. He is the author of Victorian Soundscapes and has ongoing interests in sound studies, media history, and the literature and culture of the Victorian era. His many articles and book chapters include, most recently, an essay on "Yankee Doodle" and "The Star-Spangled Banner" in A New Literary History of America, edited by Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors and out this September from Harvard University Press.

Many people talk about "cinematic" games, but what does this really mean? Over their century of existence, films have been using a range of techniques to create specific emotional responses in their audience. Instead of simply using more cut-scenes, better script writers, or making more heavily scripted game experiences, game designers can look to film techniques as an inspiration for new techniques that accentuate what games do well. This lecture will present film clips from a number of classic movies, analyze how they work from a cinematic standpoint, and then suggest ways these techniques can be used in gameplay to create even more stimulating experiences for gamers, including examples from games that have successfully bridged the gap.

Richard Rouse III is a game designer and writer, best known for The Suffering horror games and his book Game Design: Theory & Practice. He is currently the Lead Single Player Designer on the story-driven FPS Homefront at Kaos Studios in New York City.

Newspapers and magazines are reducing their critical coverage of the arts, but the human appetite to evaluate culture, to debate reactions and opinions, remains as vibrant as ever. Panelists Doug McLennan (editor of ArtsJournal.com) and Bill Marx (editor of TheArtsFuse.com) will discuss how cyberspace is transforming arts journalism, in some cases radically redefining its form and content. The forum will debate what critical values from the traditional media should survive, explore how digital media is changing the ways we articulate our responses to the arts, and point to promising contemporary business models and experiments in cultural coverage.

Fictional experiments in emerging media like Twitter and Facebook are influencing traditional printed novels and stories in interesting ways, but another intriguing new narrative is also emerging: the rise of "artifacts" that, although they support a writer's career, have their own intrinsic creative value. What are the benefits and dangers of a confusion between the private creativity and the public career elements of a writer's life caused by new media and a proliferation of "open channels"? What protective measures must a writer take to preserve his or her "self" in this environment? In addition to the guerilla tactics implicit in storytelling through social media and other unconventional platforms, in what ways is a writer's life now itself a story irrespective of intentional fictive storytelling? Examining these issues leads naturally to a discussion on the tension and cross-pollination between the private and public lives of writers in our transmedia age, including the strategies and tactics that best serve those who want to survive and flourish in this new environment. What are we losing in the emerging new paradigm, and what do we stand to gain?

A writer for the New York Times Book Review, Huffington Post, and Washington Post, Jeff VanderMeer is also the award-winning author of the metafictional City of Saints & Madmen, the noir fantasy Finch, and Booklife: Strategies & Survival Tips for 21st-Century Writers. His website can be found at jeffvandermeer.com.

Kevin Smokler is the editor of Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times (Basic Books) which was a San Francisco Chronicle Notable Book of 2005. His writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Fast Company and on National Public Radio. He lives in San Francisco, blogs for the Huffington Post and at kevinsmokler.com, and is the CEO of BookTour.com.

Presented in conjunction with Futures of Entertainment 4

From Nintendo's first Famicom system, Japanese consoles and videogames have played a central role in the development and expansion of the digital game industry. Players globally have consumed and enjoyed Japanese games for many reasons, and in a variety of contexts. This study examines one particular subset of videogame players, for whom the consumption of Japanese videogames in particular is of great value, in addition to their related activities consuming anime and manga from Japan. Through in-depth interviews with such players, this study investigates how transnational fandom operates in the realm of videogame culture, and how a particular group of videogame players interprets their gameplay experience in terms of a global, if hybrid, industry.

Mia Consalvo is visiting associate professor in the Comparative Media Studies program at MIT. She is the author of Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Videogames and is co-editor of the forthcoming Blackwell Handbook of Internet Studies.