Special Events

Marina Bers is author of Blocks to Robots: Learning with Technology in the Early Childhood Classroom (Teachers College Press, 2007) and creator of the system Zora. She is associate professor in the Department of Child Development and adjunct professor in the department of computer sciences at Tufts University.

D. Fox Harrell is the creator of the GRIOT system for computational narrative and author of several works in this system, including Loss, Undersea and The Girl with Skin of Haints and Seraphs. He is assistant professor of digital media in the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Mary Flanagan is author of Critical Play: Radical Game Design (MIT Press, 2009), creator of [giantJoystick], and author of [theHouse] (among other digitial writing works). She is Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Professor in Digital Humanities at Dartmouth.

Noah Wardrip-Fruin is author of Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies (MIT Press, 2009), co-creator of Screen (among other works of digital writing), and assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

This year's speaker is transmedia creator J. Michael Straczynski, who has most recently entered the motion picture arena, writing the period drama Changeling for Clint Eastwood and Angelina Jolie, adapting such books as Lensman for Ron Howard, World War Z for Brad Pitt’s company, and They Marched Into Sunlight for Tom Hanks and Paul Greengrass, as well as reviving Forbidden Planet for Warner Bros. and selling two new original movies, The Flickering Light and Proving Ground to Universal and Tom Cruise's United Artists, respetively. He has also begun work on Last Words, a pilot for a new TV series for the TNT network.

Previously known best for his role as the creator of the cult science fiction series Babylon 5 and its various spin-off films and series. Straczynski wrote 92 out of the 110 Babylon 5 episodes, notably including an unbroken 59-episode run through all of the third and fourth seasons, and all but one episode of the fifth season.

An honored tradition returns on April 27th at 7PM when CMS presents the eleventh annual Media Spectacle. The event, founded by Chris Pomiecko, celebrates his love for filmmaking by showcasing the finest video projects created by MIT students, staff and faculty.

Historically, the event has received submissions of every genre from experimental to documentary to narrative works created on every conceivable platform and device (mobisode anyone?). Since the dawning of YouTube and other user-generated video websites, the number of submissions has increased substantially.

The event is hosted by Professor Henry Jenkins and judged by esteemed members of the CMS community as well as Cathy Pomiecko, the sister of the late CMS program administrator Chris Pomieicko. After all of this year's selected pieces are screened, the undergraduate winner for best film will receive a cash prize and the Chris Pomiecko Trophy followed by the Claude Berry Award for the best non-undergraduate entry.

Submissions will be accepted until April 22nd in any format with a maximum running time of 30 minutes. We also ask if you could indicate your MIT affiliation when entering. All entries may be sent to Generoso Fierro, MIT, NE25-385, 77 Masssachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139. Please direct all questions to generoso [at] mit [dot] edu.

Interactive fiction (often called "IF") is a venerable, well-defined category of computer programs that includes the canonical Adventure and Zork as well as some work by established literary authors and recent independent developers. These programs are often correctly referred to as games, but they can also be rich forms of text-based computer simulation, dialog systems, and examples of literary art.

Unlike many other new media forms, interactive fiction computationally simulates a world underlying the textual exchange between computer and user. Theorists of narrative have long distinguished between the level of underlying content or story (which can usefully be seen as corresponding to the simulated world in interactive fiction) and that of expression or discourse (corresponding to the textual exchange between computer and user).

While IF development systems have offered a great deal of power and flexibility to author/programmers, they have not systematically distinguished between the telling and what is told. Developers have not been able to use separate modules to control the content and expression levels independently, so there has been no easy, general way to control narrative style and create variation in the narrative discourse.

Nick Montfort will discuss a new interactive fiction system, called Curveship, which draws on narrative theory and computational linguistics to allow the transformation of the narrating.

Nick Montfort is Assistant Professor of Digital Media in the Program in Writing & Humanistic Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Nick is on leave Spring 2009. More information at http://nickm.com

Joel Hodgson and Trace Beaulieu created the phenomenon that is Mystery Science Theater 3000. On Saturday January 17, 2009 at 7PM they come to MIT to speak with Generoso Fierro and Jason Begy of MIT's Comparative Media Studies Program about the their legendary show and their new venture, Cinematic Titanic! Rare clips, selected episodes and dialog fill what should be an extremely entertaining evening. A SUGGESTED DONATION OF $5 IS ASKED AT THE DOOR TO DEFRAY THE COST OF TRAVEL. NO ADVANCED TICKETS WILL BE SOLD.

Feel free to RSVP on the event's Facebook page.

Why are we doing this?....Because he used those special parts, to make his robot friends.

MST3K WEBSITE: http://www.mst3k.com/

Katie Jacobs is co-showrunner of the hit FBC series House, M.D., nominated for two consecutive seasons for the Emmy Award for Best Drama Series. Among the show's many awards have been a Peabody Award and a Humanitas Prize. Previously, Jacobs served as co-showrunner on the critically-acclaimed ABC series Gideon's Crossing, starring Andre Braugher, as well as the futuristic CBS legal drama Century City, and she produced the Emmy-nominated telefilm A Father for Charlie, starring Louis Gossett, Jr. Jacobs made her directorial debut this past season on House, helming the episodes "Half-Wit" with guest star Dave Matthews as well as the season finale, "Human Error". Before turning her focus to television, Jacobs produced several films, including Alan J. Pakula's thriller Consenting Adults and the Carl Reiner comedy Fatal Instinct. Jacobs is a product of the graduate film school at NYU.

Event open only to the MIT Community.

The CMS Class of 2008 will be giving their thesis presentations on Friday, March 21, 2008 from 11AM to 6PM in room 35-225. The event is open to the public; CMS students, faculty, associates and friends of the program are all warmly welcomed to attend.

10:30-11:00 AM
Coffee and Pastries

11:00-11:45 AM
Information Visualization for the People
Michael Danziger
An analysis of the field of information visualization focusing on the theoretical and methodological challenges associated with conceptualizing and designing visualization as a mass medium.

11:45 AM - 12:30 PM
New Potentials for 'DIY' Music Making: Social Networks, Old and New, and the Ongoing Struggles to Reshape the Music Industry
Evan Wendel
An historical and comparative exploration of "independent" music scenes and their associated social networks during both the post-punk period of the late-1970s and early 1980s, as well as the current music climate which is increasingly defined by online networks. The larger contention is that the potentials for ÒindependentÓ musicians to maintain viability, and even achieve success, outside of a terrain traditionally structured by the mainstream recording industry are greater today than ever before, especially when informed by an understanding of the successes and shortcomings of past practices.

12:30-1:15 PM
Targeting Digital Youth in Web 2.0 China
Liwen Jin
A recent Netpop survey reports that Chinese Internet users are much more likely to use user-generated content to make purchasing decisions than Americans (58% to 19%). They also are much more likely to participate in forum discussions and blogs. Web 2.0 technologies originate in the United States. But why does this East Asian society embrace more of the web 2.0 activities than its Western counterpart? This thesis will examine this question from societal, cultural and psychological perspectives in order to discuss new marketing strategies to target the young and dynamic population in China's cyber communities.

1:15-2:00 PM
Lunch

2:00-2:45 PM
Underground Tunnels, Neon Signs, and Asian-American Identity: The Many Dimensions of Visual Chinatown
Debora Lui
What is Chinatown? Is it an imaginary construct, a real location, or a community? Is it an ethnic enclave only available to insiders, or a fabricated environment designed specifically for tourists? This thesis attempts to reconcile the multiple ways in which Chinatowns in the U.S. are conceived, understood, and used by both insiders and outsiders of the community.

2:45-3:30 PM
Public Interest in the Broadband Age: Media Policy for the Network Society
Stephen Schultze
What does "public interest" media policy mean in the broadband age? Using a three-pronged set of methods consisting of historical survey, contemporary case study, and immediate policy recommendations, this thesis seeks to distill a unified theory of the public interest in media policy.

3:30-3:45 PM
Coffee Break

3:45-4:30 PM
The Modular, Mechanical and Wacky World of Slapstick: Sound/Image Relationships in the Looney Tunes
Andres Lombana
A comparative and multimedia analysis of the sound/image relationships developed by the Warner Brothers animation studio in its Looney Tunes series. This thesis focuses on two theatrical animated cartoons: "Porky in Wackyland" (1938) and "Dough for the Do-Do" (1948).

4:30-5:15 PM
Tactical Cities: Negotiating Violence in Karachi
Huma Yusuf
This thesis uses the theories of Henri Lefebvre and Michel de Certeau to examine how everyday practices help the residents of Karachi, Pakistan, negotiate the violence that is endemic to their city. In this construction, remembering, blogging, and navigating heavily trafficked roads become 'tactics' that create 'representational spaces' symbolically free of violence.

5:15-6:00 PM
Reception

Wu Ming 1 is a founding member and representative of the Wu Ming Foundation, a collective of writers from Italy. Most members of the collective were deeply involved in the Luther Blissett Project, an international experiment in culture jamming, radical pranksterism and guerrilla mythology that ran from 1994 to 1999. During that time, a group of LBP activists wrote a controversial novel titled Q, which was published to much acclaim in 1999. In January 2000 the authors of Q founded the Wu Ming Foundation, which takes its name from a Chinese word meaning either "anonymous" or "five names" depending on how the first syllable is pronounced. The name is meant both as a tribute to dissidents ("Wu Ming" is a common byline among Chinese citizens demanding democracy and freedom of speech) and as a refusal of the celebrity-making machine which turns authors into stars.

Wu Ming's works include 54, a novel with dozens of characters (including Cary Grant and Marshall Tito) set in 1954; the screenplay for Guido Chiesa's movie Radio Alice (2004); and numerous "solo" novels, including Wu Ming 1's New Thing (2004). They have also collaborated with musicians, actors, comic authors, playwrights, film-makers, graphic artists and academics in a plethora of multimedia and transmedia projects.

The group's most recent novel, Manituana, was published in Italy in March of 2007. It is the first episode of an 18th-century pan-Atlantic trilogy which will keep them writing at least until 2012. Manituana reached as high as #4 in the Italian bestseller charts, and translation rights have been purchased by French and Spanish publishers. Manituana is also at the center of a complex transmedia project which is briefly described at http://www.wumingfoundation.com/english/giap/giapdigest36.htm. All of their books are freely downloadable from their website, http://www.wumingfoundation.com.

Event open only to the MIT Community.

Funded (in part) by a Director's Grant from the Council for the Arts at MIT.

In the mid-1950s at Bell Labs, America's wealthiest and most influential industrial research center, mathematician Claude Shannon began theorizing, writing about, and building automata. Initially conceived as laboratory playthings and thought experiments, these devices emerged as minor celebrities in 1950s science and popular culture. In this lecture, Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan (Northwestern University, MIT Visiting Scholar) situates these artifacts within postwar exhibition and publicity practices at Bell Labs, which regularly re-constructed specialized research as sensual theaters for scientific play and the popular imagination. Tracing these artifacts' migration from the laboratory to postwar television and popular press, and borrowing from the work of Bertolt Brecht, Geoghegan develops a concept of theatrical science that bridges research methods in the history of science and media studies.

Co-presented with the Program in Science, Technology and Society.

MIT's 4th European Short Film Festival offers a unique glimpse into the most recent short-film productions from Europe, with a special focus on productions from European film schools and award-winning films from recent Festivals in Europe.

The MIT European Short Film Festival caters to a diverse audience drawn from many local universities and a rich mix of international communities from the larger Boston area. The festival is co-sponsored by a variety of MIT departments and European cultural institutions located in Boston.

Topics for this year's festival include: Migration, Anxiety, Media Culture, Food (Culture), Toys and Games.

All films will be shown in Room 32-123 (Stata Center), all programs start at 7:00 pm.

Free Admission – All films with English subtitles.

The Festival is co-sponsored by:

• The Foreign Languages and Literatures Section (MIT)
• The Comparative Media Studies Program (MIT)
• The Goethe-Institute, Boston

The Festival is presented in conjunction with Dr. Kurt Fendt's course "20th/21st Century German Literature - Grenzgänge" (21F.416)

For further information please visit http://web.mit.edu/shortfilm/ or contact the Festival Team: <mitshortfilmmit.edu>

An honored tradition returns on April 28th at 7PM when CMS presents the tenth annual Media Spectacle. The event, founded by Chris Pomiecko, celebrates his love for filmmaking by showcasing the finest video projects created by MIT students, staff and faculty.

Historically, the event has received submissions of every genre from experimental to documentary to narrative works created on every conceivable platform and device (mobisode anyone?). Since the dawning of YouTube and other user-generated video websites, the number of submissions has increased substantially. This endeavor has also been aided by Campus Movie Fest, a corporate-sponsored organization which invades universities internationally to teach students how to make films and supply them with the equipment to do so, all free of charge. That effort, combined with the fine video courses offered here at MIT through course 4, will certainly provide a wide array of choices to select from this year.

The event is hosted by Professor Henry Jenkins and judged by esteemed members of the CMS community as well as Cathy Pomiecko, the sister of the late CMS program administrator Chris Pomieicko. After all of this year's selected pieces are screened, the undergraduate winner for best film will receive a cash prize and the Chris Pomiecko Trophy followed by the Michaelangelo Antonioni Award for the best non-undergraduate entry.

Submissions will be accepted until April 10th in any format (DVD preferred) with a maximum running time of 30 minutes. We also ask if you could indicate your MIT affiliation when entering. All entries may be sent to Generoso Fierro, MIT, NE25-385, 77 Masssachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139. Please direct all questions to generoso [at] mit [dot] edu.

New York Times bestselling author, screenwriter and comics luminary Neil Gaiman (The Sandman, Beowulf, Stardust) is scheduled to present the first Julius Schwartz Lecture in Kresge Auditorium at 7PM on May 23rd, 2008.

Tickets are currently SOLD OUT. Seating is GENERAL ADMISSION, NO RESERVATIONS. The doors open at 6PM, rain or shine/

For more information on the event, including where to buy tickets, please visit http://cms.mit.edu/juliusschwartz.