That leave just a handful of tickets available for Day 1. If you're still (inexplicably!) on the fence about attending a conference whose first day alone will feature Wired's Frank Rose, the head of the BBC's Fiction & Entertainment Multiplatform Commissioning, NYU's Stephen Duncombe, and our old friend Henry Jenkins, register for Day 1 today!
Futures of Entertainment 4
November 20 and 21 (Friday and Saturday)
This year's Julius Schwartz Lecture speaker was 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, respectively. He has also begun work on Last Words, a pilot for a new TV series for the TNT network.
Kick-off to the 6th Annual Media in Transition Conference
This panel will explored theoretical, methodological, and practical issues surrounding the study of media circulation in an age of increasing global connectivity. "Global media" often serves as a placeholder for media outside Anglo-American academic settings, with "global" gesturing towards "Other" media ecologies. This panel brought together scholars and practitioners who wrestle with the simultaneous indispensability and inadequacy of Anglo-American paradigms--both for media practitioners and scholars--in Asian, African, and Latin American contexts. In what ways can we move away from the "national" as the pre-eminent analytic frame? How do media producers in the global south grapple with the challenges and opportunities of globalization? What role are audiences playing in shaping media circuits? In tackling these and other questions, panelists Jonathan Gray, Communication and Media Studies, Fordham University; Carolina Acosta-Alzuru, Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Georgia; African filmmaker Abderrahamane Sissako; and CMS alum Aswin Punathambekar SM '03, Communication Studies, University of Michigan explored ways in which recent developments in diverse settings worldwide might inform and revitalize our understanding of how media circulates. Henry Jenkins moderated this forum, which kicked off the sixth Media in Transition conference at MIT.
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September 11, 2008
Henry Jenkins at the Aspen Institute, Forum on Communications and Society
CMS Co-Director Henry Jenkins last month joined the likes of Madeleine Albright, Craig Newmark, and Former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson for a panel on how public policy and private initiatives can better meet the public's information needs.
Jenkins participated in a similar panel at Aspen last year on media and values and blogged about the experience:
As I found myself making small talk with everyone from the heads of major media companies to former members of the Bush administration, the one topic which seemed to have captured everyone's interest was Harry Potter. Almost everyone had stories to tell about the experience of reading the final book in the series. In Convergence Culture, I suggested that fan communities might offer us better chances to talk about shared values across the ideological divides that currently shape American politics because they offer us shared fantasies and common reference points. Well, this was a pretty dramatic illustration of that principle at work.
William Uricchio to present learned lessons from GAMBIT at GLS 4.0
William Uricchio, the co-director of Comparative Media Studies and a lead principal investigator for the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab, will present a selection of lessons learned from the lab's first year in existence at the fourth Games, Learning and Society Conference July 10-11 in Madison, Wisconsin. From the conference's website:
Can we make a game that can be played equally by sighted and sightless players (AudiOdyssey)? How do we make a multiplayer game where the collective behavior of the players shapes the simulation (Backflow)? These are some of the research challenges presented by the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab in their 5-year initiative to bridge the cultures of engineering and humanities. GAMBIT Game Lab incorporates academic researchers into the process of game development, and provides a space for researchers to work across and learn from both Eastern and Western cultures. In this fireside chat, William Uricchio, a lead principal investigator of GAMBIT Game Lab, will share the techniques and strategies that have been particularly effective... and those that were not. How does this project compare with other cross-disciplinary game development initiatives, like the Dutch GATE project? Where are they going from here?
William Uricchio to give keynote at European Network for Cinema and Media Studies conference
William Uricchio will speak about new directions in archiving-- social tagging, access, recycling
and the broader implications for the interaction between history and memory-- in his opening keynote for European Network for Cinema and Media Studies in Budapest, Hungary. Founded in February of 2006, NECS brings together scholars and researchers in the field of cinema, film and media studies with archivists and film and media professionals who share a common interest in academic film study and the preservation, distribution and programming of film and media art and the film heritage. Click here for more information.
The CMS Class of 2008 will be giving their thesis presentations today, 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 "independent" 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.
Boston Games Salon - February 26th Meeting Announcement
Games for Change (G4C), the international nonprofit dedicated to supporting research & development of digital gaming for positive social change, announces their very first Boston Games Salon, which will serve as the local adjunct to the national umbrella organization of Games for Change.
The first meeting will serve as an organizing event designed to support the Boston-based community of folks interested in digital games for social change, whether you are a researcher, developer, non-profit rep. or just plan interested in our movement. Along with this special focus on how to shape G4C's Boston activities and outreach, the evening will also highlight a game by Kent Quirk, founder CogniToy - focused on environmental issues/global warming.
Kent Quirk is a software architect, game designer and entrepreneur with 25 years of software development experience who has been working in computer games and educational software since the mid-1990s. He has led the development of several commercial games, including MindRover, 5 Card Dash, and Cosmic Blobs. He is the founder and CTO of CogniToy, and is currently working on a game about global warming.
Demos will be exhibited during the networking hour
Open Invitation to First MIT Videogame Theorists Colloquium session this Monday!
It's our pleasure to announce the start of the MIT Videogame Theorists Colloquium, a series of short, informal (noncredit) classes and discussions about videogames and their relationship to academic study . This is truly an interdisciplinary group intended for people of all ages and experience whose interests span the sciences, social sciences and humanities.
The first meeting is this coming Monday, 2/12, 7pm-8:30pm in room 32-124 on the MIT campus. Please contact Kenny Peng <pengk(at)mit.edu> if you cannot attend and would like to be added to the mailing list to be notified of our upcoming sessions.
What do Yahoo!, Shakespeare, GPS, Bullet time, Spacewar and MIT have in common?
CMS!
Yahoo! ... along with MTV, GSDM, Turner Broadcasting and Fidelity with the Convergence Culture Consortium respond to the demands of a new media landscape and an empowered client base;
Shakespeare ... early comics, modern dance and the citizens of Berlin are among the many topics explored in the rich multi-media data bases of MetaMedia and Repertory
GPS ... is one of many technologies that we us in handheld gaming applications, all part of our exploration of computer games for education in the Education Arcade
Bullet time... and other special film effects, comic book production, dj-ing, graffiti, and other media expressions come into focus in Project New Media Literacies.
Spacewar ... is where computer gaming all began at MIT, and now it moves into a new generation with the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab
Join us to explore the many facets of research on cutting-edge digital games, media literacy, innovative humanities databases, and redefined corporate/consumer relations now underway in MIT's Comparative Media Studies program. Faculty, staff and students will be on hand to showcase their work and answer questions about their latest findings. Refreshments will be served.
"A Piece of Cake" and "Amnion" Awarded at CMS Media Spectacle
CMS Undergraduate Coordinator Gene Fierro sends along the following report from the CMS Media Spectacle 2006:
Last night, a great crowd turned out for the CMS Media Spectacle in honor of Chris Pomiecko, the former program administrator here at CMS. The Media Spectacle was held at Stata and was a huge success both in the quality of submissions and in audience response. Cathy Pomiecko, Chris' sister and his mother were in attendance, and Cathy served as one of the judges. The other judges were Professor Junot Diaz, Dr. Laura Ceia-Minjares, Dr. Doris Rusch, Dr. Joern Ahrens, and myself. The event was filmed and aired on MIT cable.
There were two awards given last night, one for the best undergraduate submission (The Chris Pomiecko Award) and another for the best graduate submission.
The winning undergraduate submission was A Piece of Cake, by Anna Wexler (Brain & Cog Sci) and Nadja Oertelt (Brain & Cog Sci), who were awarded the Chris Pomiecko Prize for their work. Both Anna and Nadja were unable to attend as they are in the Cambridge-MIT Program. Cake is a very funny film with monotone dialogue showing a very mismatched date.
The winning graduate film submission was Amnion, by Rajesh Kottamasu (Urban Planning). Amnion was an ambitious experimental film set within a womb, where a pair of twins was recreated using a light table and fabric. A voice-over narrative chronicles the experiences they would share in their lifetimes.
CMS congratulates the winners on their excellent work, and everyone who attended for coming together to make the Media Spectacle 2006 a memorable experience.
We hope to make streaming versions of the award-winning videos available here on the CMS website in the next few weeks, so check back soon!
Claudia Hart is an artist, curator and critic, working in the contemporary context since 1988. She creates virtual paintings that take the form of 3D imagery integrated into photography, animated loops, and interactive screen-based installations. At MIT, she will talk about the different roles she has taken on in her career and her views on the themes of popularity, populism and interactivity in the digital arts.
Take a look at her website, get excited and join us!
CMS is looking for films, videos, video podcasts and mobisodes produced by MIT and Wellesley students, faculty, staff and affiliates for its 2006 Media Spectacle.
The deadline for submission is April 10.
Screenings will begin at 7 pm on Wednesday, April 26 in 32-123 (the Stata Center). All formats, styles, lengths and subjects are acceptable. Works-in-progress are welcomed.
The Chris Pomiecko Prize will be awarded to the most outstanding undergraduate media submission. The prize is named for the CMS administrator who died in a car accident last year.
To submit a work, send title, format, description and running time to Gene Fierro at generoso@mit.edu or contact CMS at 617.253.3599.
Doug Lowenstein, president of the Entertainment Software Association, was the speaker for a CMS Colloquium entitled "What Will it Take for Video Games To Emerge as the 21st Century's Dominant Entertainment Form?". David Edery has a detailed report.
The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs Web site is in French, but has links to videos, including opening remarks by CMS Director Henry Jenkins, that are in English.
