Military Training and Compelling Experience

MIT Building E51, Room 095 70 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA

Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi will talk about the various meanings of what counts as a "compelling experience" for military simulation -- and how this phrase โ€œcompelling experienceโ€ can be used as a thematic marker for differentiating the present moment from cold war-era immersive simulations.

Lev Manovich

MIT Building 2, Room 105 182 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA

Lev Manovich is the author of The Language of New Media, which is hailed as "the most suggestive and broad ranging media history since Marshall McLuhan."

Gendering Robots: Posthuman Sexism in Japan

MIT Building 32 (Stata Center), Room 155 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge, MA

Jennifer Roberston explores and interrogates the gendering of humanoid robots manufactured today in Japan for use in the home and workplace.

Chris Claremont: “Opening Doors, Building Worlds”

MIT Building 2, Room 105 182 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA

Chris Claremont of X-Men fame will address thoughts and considerations that go into building a world that can support years of use.

The Discipline of Political Messages in an Unruly Era

MIT Building 2, Room 105 182 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA

Tucker Eskew explores the permanent campaign(s) of the last ten years. What is "message discipline" in an era of atomized opinion leadership -- a necessity or a fool's errand?

Ralph Baer, Baer Consultants

MIT Building 2, Room 105 182 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA

Ralph Baer on the continuum of invention, development, and marketing novel product ideas.

Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks

MIT Building 4, Room 231 Cambridge, MA

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.

How Not to Be Seen

MIT Building 4, Room 231 Cambridge, MA

Hannah Rose Shell screens and discusses her film-in-progress, called Blind, about the phenomenology of camouflage.

Richard Rouse, “Cinematic Games”

MIT Building 4, Room 231 Cambridge, MA

Richard Rouse on the ways cinematic techniques can be used in gameplay to create even more stimulating experiences for gamers.

Old-fashioned Futures and Re-fashionable Media

MIT Media Lab, Room 633 75 Amherst St., Cambridge, MA

Joel Burges and Wayne Marshall will contribute to the rethinking of media studies at MIT by taking up the shared metaphor of fashion.

Code and Platform in Computational Media

MIT Media Lab, Room 633 75 Amherst St., Cambridge, MA

This talk will describe how looking at the code and platform levels can enhance our comparative media studies of computational works.