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Last weekend, I was in Barcelona and two friends of mine happened to be there as well, one from New York, the other from Vancouver. Just by chance, I was able to meet one of them, but it made me think about what applications might be out there to assist with promoting 'coincident' meetings. So, I emailed Boris Mann (the one i missed) and he told me about Dopplr. Seems to be doing that kind of job. So that's one of my new 2.0 environments!
New Journal.. This new scientific, international, peer reviewed online journal deals with everything ludic and looks at digital games from a multitude of perspectives. Its approach is deliberately broad to accommodate the rapid changes and constant growth of this highly transdisciplinary field.
The journal is organized in sections with the first issue containing an in-depth introduction, articles and game reviews. You can already enjoy this kick-off publication at http://www.eludamos.org
More sections are possible in later issues, and we are looking forward to your suggestions. We also invite you to submit ideas for special issues.
Our goal is a biannual appearance, and the next publication is intended for February 2008. Please see official call for papers below.
Call for Papers The call for papers for the new, international, peer-reviewed online journal "Eludamos. Journal for Computer Game Culture" is now open. Submissions are expected to be in English and to include full papers plus abstracts. Please note that we can only consider papers which have not been previously published and which are not under consideration for another journal (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor). For further specification of submission guidelines please consult http://www.eludamos.org
The next issue is due to appear in February 2008. Submissions can be made throughout the year; however, articles for the February edition must be submitted by Dec. 15th 2007. Submissions that reach us after that date will be considered for the summer issue.
She Got GameSaturday, September 8, 2007 11 am to 5 pm
Located at the Austin Convention Center—Austin, TX
Keynote Speaker: Dona C. Bailey, creator of the Centipede video game, one of the first video games to incorporate artificial intelligence.
Games Now and Then From her early days on Centipede to her current work with students at the University of Arkansas—Little Rock, Dona C. Bailey takes a look at where video games have been, where they are now and where she'd like to see them go in the future.
Panels Diversity Equals Dollars: Why Having a Diverse Development Team is Good for Your Bottom Line
Her Virtual Life: Women and Online Games
Roundtables Attracting Women into Games; Being "You" Online; Get in the Game; Meet the Frag Dolls Captain; Planning for the Long-term Career; Quality of Life—A Perspective from Managers, HR and Legal
Speakers Brenda Brathwaite, Professor, Savannah College of Art & Design; Torrie Dorrell, Senior Vice President of Marketing, Sony Online Entertainment; Lori Durham, Vice President of Operations, Aspyr Media, Inc.; Denise Fulton, Head of Studio, Midway-Austin; Sheri Graner Ray, Executive Chair, WIGI; Jeb Havens, Lead Designer, 1st Playable Productions; Joye McBurnett, Senior Producer, Amaze Entertainment; Mike McShaffry, Mr. Mike Consulting; Morgan Romine, Frag Doll Team Captain, Ubisoft Entertainment; Steve Wartofsky, Senior Producer, NCsoft; Gordon Walton, Co-Studio Director, BioWare; DebySue Wolfcale, Senior Brand Manager, Sony Online Entertainment
Register today!
General Attendees - $55, WIGI Members - $40, Students - $30, AGDC Passholders - FREE
Want a $25 discount for a full Austin GDC Conferece pass? Visit www.austingdc.net and use code WIGI2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Blake
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Qw_CAXzGFU]
Now published by Emerald
The TCS conference is just about to begin its final plenary, which includes an author of personal interest to me, N. Katherine Hayles. Her book, Becoming Posthuman, has been a central reference point for my own ideas on posthumanism over the last few years. It's also relevant for my forthcoming, co-authored book 'The Medicalization of Cyberspace'. This is my first TCS conference and it's been a rich mix of ideas and presentations. It's also a good excuse to visit Tokyo for the first time, where we've already had a typhoon and an earthquake!
I would like to inform you of an advertisement for a PhD studentship.A stipend is attached to the studentship. Please feel welcome to contact me directly in relation to this [preferably by email].
Please note that the deadline for applications is 27 July 2007, but the formal advertisement does not appear until Monday 9th July, so there will be no other information on the University website until then. However, application documents are available. Please also note that applications can be sent electronically.
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New Media at the Beijing Olympics School of Media, Language & Music, University of Paisley, Scotland, UK. Closing date: 27 July, 2007.
This project investigates the development of new media within China, in association with the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. In so doing, it responds to new agendas in media research in three areas: studies of the media in China, studies of new media, and the role of the media in the construction of the Olympic Games to an international audience. In combining these areas, the student will focus on media discourses surrounding the Beijing Olympic Games. The aim will be to consider the ‘external’ impression of the Beijing Olympics, by studying the cultural and political dimensions of the Games. This work will draw on key theoretical insights into international media events and digital culture. It will also theorize the transformation of journalism as a profession in the context of new media publishing and broadcasting.
Key concepts: citizen journalism, social software, media event, Olympics.
This research will draw on collaborative research projects undertaken by Dr Miah with the London School of Economics and the University of East London. Partner institutions also include various Beijing Universities, particularly the Communication University of China, a leading provider of broadcasting expertise in Beijing and China. Collaborations are also underway with the Annenberg School of Communication, various new media organisations and the student will be assisted to attend the Beijing Olympics in August 2008. The student will support the teaching of ‘Sport & Spectacle’, a course directed by Dr Miah focusing on the media, cultural and political aspects of the Olympic Movement. The project also benefits from an External Adviser Charlie Beckett, Director of POLIS at the London School of Economics. There will also be an opportunity to provide Editorial Assistance to the academic magazine ‘Culture at the Olympics’ http://www.culturalolympics.org.uk
Kember, S. (1998). Virtual Anxiety: Photography, New Technologies, and Subjectivity. Manchester, Manchester University Press.
"...the raising of the undead in technoscientific discourse signifies not only the validation of difference but the desire to effect new and illicit kinds of connection within and across academic and disciplinary boundaries as well as organic and inorganic realsm. Vampires in this context are about difference, technology and writing linked by the possibilities of 'as if'. They are a facet of feminist figurative writing in academic discourse which, tied to specific and declared investments, help to keep the monsters out of the closets and divert us from our virtual anxieties."
Mitchell, W. J. (1995). City of Bits: Space, Place, and the Infobahn. Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press.
'The uncertainties and dangers of the bitsphere frontier are great, but it is a place of new opportunity and hope. So forget the global couch-potato patches that Marshall McLuhan surveyed back in the sixties. This will be the place for a global village.'
Message sent around by Charles Ess announcing a new journal.... Announcing the release of the International Journal of Internet Research Ethics
Call for Papers for the Premier Issue of IJIRE
Description and Scope: The IJIRE is the first peer-reviewed online journal, dedicated specifically to cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural research on Internet Research Ethics. All disciplinary perspectives, from those in the arts and humanities, to the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences, are reflected in the journal.
With the emergence of Internet use as a research locale and tool throughout the 1990s, researchers from disparate disciplines, ranging from the social sciences to humanities to the sciences, have found a new fertile ground for research opportunities that differ greatly from their traditional biomedical counterparts. As such, "populations," locales, and spaces that had no corresponding physical environment became a focal point, or site of research activity. Human subjects protections questions then began to arise, acros disciplines and over time: What about privacy? How is informed consent obtained? What about research on minors? What are "harms" in an online environment? Is this really human subjects work? More broadly, are the ethical obligations of researchers conducting research online somehow different from other forms of research ethics practices?
As Internet Research Ethics has developed as its own field and discipline, additional questions have emerged: How do diverse methodological approaches result in distinctive ethical conflicts and, possibly, distinctive ethical resolutions? How do diverse cultural and legal traditions shape what are perceived as ethical conflicts and permissible resolutions? How do researchers collaborating across diverse ethical and legal domains recognize and resolve ethical issues in ways that recognize and incorporate often markedly different ethical understandings?
Finally, as "the Internet" continues to transform and diffuse, new research ethics questions arise e.g., in the areas of blogging, social network spaces, etc. Such questions are at the heart of IRE scholarship, and such general areas as anonymity, privacy, ownership, authorial ethics, legal issues, research ethics principles (justice, beneficence, respect for persons), and consent are appropriate areas for consideration.
The IJIRE will publish articles of both theoretical and practical nature to scholars from all disciplines who are pursuing‹or reviewing‹IRE work. Case studies of online research, theoretical analyses, and practitioner-oriented scholarship that promote understanding of IRE at ethics and institutional review boards, for instance, are encouraged. Methodological differences are embraced.
Publication Schedule: The IJIRE is published twice annually, March 1, and October 15. Submissions are accepted on a rolling basis, and are subject to Editorial and Peer Review.
Subscription: Free
Editors- in- Chief: Elizabeth A. Buchanan, Ph.D. Director, Center for Information Policy Research School of Information Studies University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee elizabeth.buchanan@gmail.com
Charles M. Ess, Ph.D. Distinguished Research Professor Drury University cmess@drury.edu <mailto:cmess@drury.edu>
Editorial Board: Andrea Baker, Ohio University, USA Heidi Campbell, Texas A&M University, USA Radhika Gajjala, Bowling Green State University, USA Jeremy Hunsinger, Virginia Tech, USA Mark Johns, Luther College, USA Leslie M. Tkach-Kawasaki, University of Tsukuba, Japan Tomas Lipinski, JD, Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA Ulf-Dietrich Reips, Universität Zürich, Switzerland Susannah Stern, San Diego State University, USA Malin Sveningsson, Ph.D., Karlstad University, Sweden
Style Guidelines: Manuscripts should be submitted to ijire@sois.uwm.edu <mailto:ijire@sois.uwm.edu> ; articles should be double-spaced, and in the range of 5000-15,000 words, though announcements of IRE scholarship, case studies, and book reviews of any length can be submitted for review. Please ensure that your manuscript is received in good format (proper English language usage, grammatical structure, spelling, punctuation, and compliance with APA reference style). The IJIRE follows the American Psychological Association's 5th edition. Articles should include an abstract no longer than 100 words, full names and contact information of all authors, and an author's biography of 100 words or less.
Copyright: In the spirit of open access, IJIRE authors maintain copyright control of their work. Any subsequent publications related to the IJIRE work must reference the IJIRE and the original publication date and url.
I've just been taking a look at the new Routledge Journal titled 'Mobilities'. Currently working on a chapter for The Medicalization of Cyberspace that draws extensively on this notion, I'm struck by how wide the concept might apply. Much of the journal so far focuses on automobiles, which reminds me of some of the work I've read in the philosophy of technology literature. Nevertheless, I'm sure this journal will become influential as this term becomes all the more intriguing by the prevasive movement of data. My interest is particularly from the perspective of urban mobility. The work I've done at the various Olympic Games has been interested to examine how both screens and hand held technology become an integral part of the development of community. This draws on the work by William J. Mitchell whose 'City of Bits' has informed a lot of my ideas in this area, along with Paul Virilio's various works..
Next month, I jet across to Brisbane to give a keynote by the title: New Media Futures: The Challenge from Posthumanity.
The emerging technologies of new media are changing the way people work, enjoy leisure and communicate. This paper will explore the challenge raised from the convergence of technology platforms and scope the scene for what lies ahead for sports involvement. The paper identifies two crucial trends in development, the process towards ‘immersion’ (bringing audiences closer to the arena) and ‘abstraction’ (bringing athletes closer to simulated arenas) and discusses the collapse of bodies and technology as distinct categories, which raises prospects of the posthuman performer in competition. The discussion considers what tomorrow’s people will expect from the mediatisation of sports and explores some of the implications this has for the organisation of society and the role of technology within it. While dominant cultural narratives portray such futures as inhuman or dehuman, I argue that these transformations offer rich variation to contemporary life by appealing to imaginative ways of communication and embodiment.
I will also take part in a debate about the role of science in the contribution of winning medals. It looks to be an exciting event and it's nearly 7 years since I've been to Australia. I just wish I was there for longer!
I just read the Chronicle article (From YouTube to YouNiversity, Feb 16, 2007) by Henry Jenkins on what might be learned by universities from the current buzz surrounding Web 2.0. It's a great piecce that reminds academics to get up to speed with the new social spaces online or face a new kind of redundancy! He raises the importance of comparative work in media studies to accommodate this new componenent of global culture. I think it particularly difficult for publicly funded bodies to develop tools that are truly cutting edge unless they find ways of utilising open source platforms. I have worked with so many new platforms for teaching that either fail to materialise due to funding changes or just simply were not competitive, that it's hard to see how universities can continue to innovate with online platforms without acknowledging the limitations of a top-down system.
I particularly like his final claim:
The modern university should work not by defining fields of study but by removin obstacles so that knowledge can circulate and be reconfigured in new ways.
A great video sent to me by Thomas Connolly, former Cyberculture student at Paisley.... [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE&eurl=]
After having been in Beijing and Kuala Lumpur in the last 6 months, the Asian bug is hard to resist (obviously, I don't mean avian flu). This looks like a good event and I'm in the middle of reviewing another article for Theory, Culture & Society as I write this! Ubiquitous Media: Asian Transformations IIIS Tokyo University / Theory, Culture & Society 25th Anniversary Conference
http://www.u-mat.org/
Tokyo University Hongo Campus 13-16 July 2007
Abstract Submission Deadline : 31st March 2007
Conference Outline
Today media are increasingly ubiquitous: more and more people live in a world of Internet pop-ups and streaming television, mobile phone texting and video clips, MP3 players and pod-casting. The media mobility means greater connectivity via smart wireless environments in the office, the car and airport. It also offers greater possibilities for recording, storage and archiving of media content. This provides not just the potential for greater choice and flexibility in re-working content (tv programmes, movies, music, images, textual data), but also great surveillance (CCTV cameras, computer spyware, credit data checking and biometrics). The media, then, can no longer be considered to be a monolithic structure producing uniform media effects. Terminology such as 'multi-media,' and 'new media,' fail to adequately capture the proliferation of media forms. Indeed, as media become ubiquitous they become increasingly embedded in material objects and environments, bodies and clothing, zones of transmission and reception. Media pervade out bodies, cultures and societies.
These ubiquitous media constitute our consumer and brand environment. Their interfaces and codes pervade our bodies and our biology. They pervade our urban spaces. They are ubiquitous in art, religion and our use of language. Yet from another angle art and language are, and have immemorially been, media. Media are about the physical, algorithm and generative code; but they are also immaterial and metaphysical. Communication is about channels and hardware/software; but communication is also about communion and community. Media deal in images: that is in the material; but their idiom is also symbols and the transcendental.
To theorize about today's world, we evidently need to theorize media. Yet to theorize media also means we need to focus on how technological media are used in everyday practices. Not least, we need to address the question of the relationship of media practices to politics. This opens up questions about the formation of informed publics, new social movements and media events, not just the alleged need to combat media terrorism, nationalism and crime. Suggesting further questions about the power and influence of transnational media, intellectual property rights and openness of access. Raising issues of generativity, creativity and critical intervention.
Asia - East Asia, South Asia, and increasingly crucial, the Middle East - are becoming sites for these processes. Global geopolitics has been restructured by the 'rise' of China and India and the turbulence of the Middle East. With concomitant transformations of the role of the West and Japan, this conference becomes also a question of 'ubiquitous Asia.' These transformations are producing new trans-Asian culture industries, social movements and activism. At stake are a set of transformations of Asian culture(s) itself - of language, and modes of cultural thought and being. We will seek to address these questions of media transformations and their relation to social and cultural processes in a number of plenary sessions, paper sessions, round tables and events.
Plenary Speakers
will include:
Rem Koolhaas (OMA Rotterdam) Mark B. N. Hansen (University of Chicago) Katherine Hayles (UCLA) Ken Sakamura (Tokyo University) Barbara Stafford (University of Chicago) Friedrich Kittler (Humboldt University) Akira Asada (Kyoto University) Bernard Stiegler (Centre Georges-Pompidou)
About Theory, Culture & Society
http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journals... (Sage Publication) http://ntu.ac.uk/research/... (Nottingham Trent University)
About IIIS Tokyo University
Today, I rediscoverd this journal (Journal of Electronic Publishing), which I was reading a few years ago. I learned that it re-launched in 2006, which is good news indeed! It was instrumental to my writing on this subject in 2003, which led to the article in Culture Machine. Miah, A. (2003) (e)text: Error…404 Not Found!, or the Disappearance of History, Culture Machine: The E-Issue, 5, [Available from: http://culturemachine.tees.ac.uk/Cmach/Backissues/j005/Articles/AMiah.htm]
SEMINAR with STANZA MONDAY 15 JANUARY, 4-5pm, Digital Studios Space, Ben Pimlott building, ground floor left. Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross, SE14 6NW
FREE, ALL ARE WELCOME
Stanza is AHRC Creative and Performing Arts Fellow, GDS (2006-2009). He is a London-based artist, who specialises in net art, multimedia, and electronic sounds. The research he is undertaking as part of his AHRC Fellowship with GDS is around The Emergent City, an exploration of data within cities and how this can be represented visualized and interpreted. Data from security tracking, traffic data, and sensor data for environmental monitoring can all be interpreted as a medium to make process led artworks. The underlying theme or main research question is concerned with the organic emergence of the =93city=94. Cities clearly have a character, but do they have a 'soul'? If so, then what can be determined about the validity of the city experience in relation to its 'character', or 'soul', or spirit'?
Stanza's award winning online projects have been invited for exhibition in digital festivals around the world, and Stanza also travels extensively to present his net art, lecturing and giving performances of his audiovisual interactions. His works explore artistic and technical opportunities to enable new aesthetic perspectives, experiences and perceptions within the context of architecture, data spaces and online environments.
He was a NESTA Dreamtime Fellow (2003-2005) and has received many Awards including the following, all peer reviewed and awarded by internaltional juries.
http://www.stanza.co.uk.
Other on-line artworks can be viewed at: other online artworks.
www.amorphoscapes.com www.soundcities.com www.thecentralcity.co.uk www.genomixer.com www.theemergentcity.com www.soundtoys.net
Maria Chatzichristodoulou [aka maria x] PhD Art and Computational Technologies Goldsmiths Digital Studios www.cybertheater.org
Last weekend, Beatriz and I were in Philadelphia, having been invited to contribute to the second meeting of the project developed by Monroe Price and Daniel Dayan exploring the Beijing Olympics. This was another excellent meeting with some great presentations and discussions. It was also my first time in Philadelphia and I really warmed to the place. We were located in the city centre on Chestnut Street, which is a great location, especially for shopping and cultural activity.
In the meeting, our contribution was to discuss the role of new and alternative media platforms at an Olympic Games, which develops our research from the last four Olympics. Beijing looks like an exciting and intriguing case study in this respect.
This was an excellent meeting, which is devloping into a book publication. Beatriz Garcia and I were brought in to this collaboration between the Communication University of China and the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania by Professor Tian (Tina) Zhihui, star blogger and expert on all that is the Web. At this meeting, Beatriz and I gave a paper titled 'The New Media at the Olympics: Citizen Journalists and the Non-Accredited Media'.
Call for Papers Special Issue on Convergence CultureVol 14 no 1. February 2008
Guest editors: Mark Deuze, Indiana University (mdeuze@indiana.edu) Henry Jenkins, MIT (henry3@mit.edu)
This call invites submissions for a special issue on Convergence Culture: the worldwide emergence of increasingly collaborative practices between media producers and consumers. Examples are television fan sites, game modifications (mods) and machinema, citizen journalism, interactive advertising and word-of-mouth marketing, transmedia storytelling (for example using games, movies, television, websites and comics), and so on. Convergence culture is both a top-down corporate-driven process and a bottom-up consumer-driven process. Media companies are learning how to accelerate the flow of media content across delivery channels to expand revenue opportunities, broaden markets and reinforce viewer commitments. Consumers are learning how to use these different media technologies to bring the flow of media more fully under their control and to interact with other users. We welcome submissions from a variety of disciplinary, theoretical and methodological backgrounds exploring the changing role and organization of work and productivity in the cultural and creative industries under the influence of convergence culture, as well as on creative processes initiated by or involving the people formerly known as the audience.
Specific topics and issues to be covered in this special issue for example are:
Case studies of media companies adopting convergence culture; Case studies of specific fan communities and their relationships with media producers; explorations of transmedia storytelling, viral marketing, and Alternate Reality; Gaming as forms that tap the emerging relations between media producers and consumers; Mapping of ethical, political, economical and cultural changes and challenges in an emerging convergence culture; Quantitative and/or qualitative empirical work on the production, content, and/or consumption of media messages in the context of convergence culture; Research focusing on convergence culture in the context of specific media industries (such as: computer and video games, advertising, journalism, television); International comparative work on convergence culture in media production.
Submissions addressing the special issue theme are invited to the following sections: Debates which are short polemics (usually 1000-3000 words); Articles which are refereed case study research articles (7000-11,000 words); Feature Reports which offer a critical overview of current research by reviewing a conference, exhibition or festival (4000-8000 words). Any inquiries concerning the Reviews section (which covers books, exhibitions, conferences, CD-ROMs, websites etc) should be directed to the regular reviews editor Jason Wilson (jason.wilson@luton.ac.uk). Submissions should be formatted using the Harvard reference method. Full details of referencing style and guidelines can be found on the journal website at http://convergence.luton.ac.uk/.
Proposals for papers should be directed to the editors. The deadline for submission of research articles is February 1st, 2007. The special issue will be published (by SAGE) in February 2008.
Jason Wilson
Reviews Editor - Convergence
School of Media, Art and Design University of Luton Park Square Luton Bedfordshire LU1 3JU United Kingdom
T +44 (0)1582 489114 F +44 (0)1582 489212 M 07886508141 jason.wilson@luton.ac.uk
