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CMS News Archives
CMS Director Henry Jenkins delivered the keynote speech at the Serious Games Summit on Monday October 30th, and David Ewalt of Forbes covered the event. Jenkins spoke on such topics as convergence culture, The Education Arcade and their project "Revolution," and the ramifications of the "Super Mario Brothers Generation" coming of age. Ewalt's article discusses more about the goings on at the summit, and includes excerpts from Jenkins's speech.
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Beth Coleman, assistant professor in Comparative Media Studies and the Writing Program has assembled a group of student researchers to look at Machinima, (the art of using 3D gaming engines to produce original cinematic pieces). The MIT News Office has been following their progress.
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Featured speakers included Lauren Cornell, director of Rhizome.org; Jon Ippolito, media artist, curator, author; and our own Beth Coleman, Assistant Professor of Comparative Media Studies and of Writing and Humanistic Studies, co-founder of the SoundLab Cultural Alchemy project.
Thanks, Mike Danzinger, for recording this and Stephen Schultze, for mixing and post-production!
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Continue reading "Podcast: "New Media and Art roundtable"" »
In collaboration with game design luminaries Jane McGonigal (42 Entertainment) and Ian Bogost (Watercooler Games), MIT's Comparative Media Studies program will be sponsoring the Boston-Cambridge premiere of the new public street-game, Cruel 2 B Kind.
When? October 31, 2006 / 6:30 - 8:30 PM
Where? Several blocks near Harvard Square
What? A free game of benevolent assassins, complete with prizes and costume contest!
...What? For more information, go to cruelgame.com!
How? Sign up online, right here.
Continue reading "CMS Sponsors Local Premiere of "Cruel 2 B Kind"" »
The John D. and Catherine T. Mac Arthur Foundation launched it's five-year, $50 million initiative yesterday to determine how digital technologies are affecting the way our youth learn, play, socialize and participate in civic life. The launch was held at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and attended by CMS Director Henry Jenkins who published the white paper; Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century . To find out more you can read about the event as reported on by Business Wire, or check out the Mac Arthur Foundation's new Digital Media and Learning site to read the paper by Jenkins.
Read the article
Mac Arthur's Digital Media and Learning Site
Scott Donaton, editorial director of the Ad Age Group, explored how digital culture's empowerment of end-users is impacting advertising and marketing.
Donaton's aptly entitled talk at the Oct. 12 CMS colloquium, "Out of Control," referenced the power shift towards a consumer-dictated market. Looking at advertising from the perspective of the ad journalist, he shared some interesting trends in the industry: 1) As ad dollars are increasingly spent in online and new media markets, properties are forced to relinquish the control over their brand and brand image; 2) thanks to remix culture, brand purity is no longer safe on the Internet; and consumers are free to express their opinions on services and products and distribute them as widely as the advertisers themselves.
During the Q&A, Donaton was asked how much it would take to actually kill a brand.
"Brand equity built up over time is a pretty powerful thing," he said. Saying it would be quite difficult to take down an established brand with a few critical commercial mashups, he pointed out that even though tobacco is known to kill people, it is still a billion dollar business. "The only real way brands kill themselves is not delivering on the promise they make to the consumer," Donaton said.
Donaton chronicled successful and not-so-successful attempts to ride this rapid and radical business change. He finds that the better campaigns are not afraid to address their consumers directly, are shifting towards premium pricing to sell "fewer products for more money," and are respectful of the consumer.
Scott Donaton, associate publisher and editorial director of the Ad Age Group and author of Madison & Vine talked about why user-empowerment is the key trend in business, and the ways marketers are adapting to it, including the rise of branded entertainment.
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Continue reading "Podcast: Scott Donaton, "Marketing in the Age of Consumer Empowerment"" »
The Convergence Culture Consortium, in conjunction with the Comparative Media Studies program, will host the Futures of Entertainment Conference at MIT on Nov. 17 and 18.
Free and open to the public, the event brings together forward-thinking scholars, critics and industry executives to discuss issues regarding media convergence, transmedia storytelling, user-generated content and participatory culture.
"This conference is intended to create a space where representatives from across all forms of media can sit down together and talk about some of the core concerns reshaping the future of entertainment," said Henry Jenkins, CMS director. "Many of these conversations right now occur in commercially run conferences which are very expensive and not open to the public."
Speakers include The Long Tail's Chris Anderson, DC Comics' Paul Levitz, Flickr's Caterina Fake, Warner Brothers' Diane Nelson, Big Spaceship's Michael Lebowitz, television scholar Jason Mittell, social networking researcher danah boyd and representatives from MTV Networks, the Cartoon Network, Bioware and others.
According to C3 Research Director Joshua Green, the conference registration has been swift since opening as word has spread about the event.
"I think this will draw a wide and fairly diverse audience," he said. "We've received some interesting queries from industry folks, so I would anticipate the audience being a mixed academic and industry crowd."
Continue reading "November Conference To Explore Entertainment's Future" »
Director William Uricchio is quoted in this post by Stephanie Olsen on CNET's Media Blog. Also quoted is Michael Yap of the Singapore Media Development Authority, regarding the exchange of talent;
"Over the next five years, we expect some 300 of our best talents from the industry and academia to take advantage of this unique opportunity to work closely with the best research minds at MIT."
Read both the post, and the comments thus far here.
A spotlight on the web.mit.edu revolving frontpage, as well as within the MIT news office, MIT has announced a joint-project with Singapore to explore and work within the videogame industry. CMS Directors Henry Jenkins and William Uricchio will both co-direct and serve as Principal Investigators in this project.
The SMIGL initiative will enable students and researchers from Singapore to collaborate with MIT researchers and game industry professionals in international research projects. Beyond technology development, SMIGL will also conduct research on the artistic, creative, business and social aspects of games. The new initiative will also provide Singapore game researchers and professionals with access to cutting-edge technologies, the latest conceptual developments and links to international game development and research communities.
See the MIT news office to read the full article.
By Amanda Finkelberg '07
Podcasting may not be the newest technology on the block, but it continues to generate a powerful impact on both grassroots and large-scale content production and distribution. This impact was explored during "Re-Inventing Television: Podcasting and the Future of Media," a colloquium held on Sept. 28. The speaker was Chris Boebel, MIT's manager of multimedia development for Academic Media Production Services (AMPS). A podcast of "Re-Inventing Television: Podcasting and the Future of Media" is available from the CMS Web site.
Boebel, a graduate of NYU's film program, considers himself to be more of a "content producer than a technologist." He explained that asynchronous delivery and low-production costs have created a media landscape in which almost anyone can produce podcast-quality material and distribute it easily to a wide range of subscribers.
Boebel then introduced ZigZag, MIT's new video and audio podcasting service. Asking CMS graduate students to consider submitting video and audio to the site, he stressed the need for more student-generated content that represents the diverse voices of the MIT community.
A question and answer period struggled with the question of the future of television. It seems that ABC's full-length show streams and software like Apple's Front Row are rapidly changing the way we access visual media, but no one seems to be able to explain what that means for the future of the medium. Concerns centered on the abundance of information and how to navigate it, how structural changes will affect content, and the financial implications of those changes.
Chris Boebel and David Tamés gave us an overview of the production of ZigZag, MIT's new video podcast/magazine, as well as a look into the future of media production, distribution, and consumption.
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Continue reading "Podcast: "MIT's ZigZag on Podcasting and the Future of Media"" »
Registration is now open to the public for Futures of Entertainment, a free conference hosted by MIT, CMS, and the Convergence Culture Consortium, November 17th and 18th, 2006. Register today!
Speakers currently scheduled include: Chris Anderson (The Long Tail), Caterina Fake (Flickr), Michael Lebowitz (Big Spaceship), Paul Levitz (DC Comics), Diane Nelson (Warner Bros. Fan Relations), and Robert Tercek (Multimedia Networks).
CMS Director Henry Jenkins discusses Convergence Culture, the phenomena and the book in this interview with Wisconsin Public Radio. Here, Jenkins tells Jim Fleming that "The Matrix" is a good example of what we can expect from a convergence culture - a story that is told in more than one medium. Listen in on the interview here. The Jenkins portion of the interview begins at the 22:00 mark.
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