Power Up

The Play Research Group, UWE, Bristol
studying the technologies and cultures of games and play

posted by: roboludologists at 09:40 | link | comments |

cyberman hed!

posted by: roboludologists at 14:35 | link | comments |

Slash 3: DMU fanfiction day

Clephan Building,
Faculty of Humanities, De Montfort University,
Leicester, UK

Monday 25 February 2008, 10.00 am – 6.00 pm

With Slash 3, De Montfort University once again offers a slash-friendly forum for discussion of the most exciting developments in fanfic. The main focus will be on slash fiction, a category of fan stories, almost exclusively by women, mostly about homoerotic affairs between male characters in popular films and TV series. Proposals are invited, however, for papers on all fanfic and fan film topics and controversies.

Please send an abstract of 200 words for a 20 minute paper to Ian Hunter at iqhunter@dmu.ac.uk.

DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS: 1 December 2007

All readers, writers and academic researchers of fan fiction, as well as interested members of the public, are welcome to participate.

Please contact Ian Hunter at iqhunter@dmu.ac.uk to reserve a place. An attendance fee of £20 / £12 concessions will be payable on the day.

posted by: sethgiddings at 13:53 | link | comments |

Nam June Paik, you're our wife now

posted by: roboludologists at 14:20 | link | comments |

the music of the tubes

Helen's Game Culture session last week hosted a fascinating talk by Jason Wilson on technoaesthetic resonances between videogames (Pong) and media art (Nam June Paik's Participation TV). In the Q&A session and the pub afterwards the question of what the nature of the connection between such ostensibly distinct realms might be was raised. The notion of the technological imaginary was discussed (something I've kicked around before). So, in this historical context, there seemed to be a sense, across computer science and commerce and art that the television had untapped, non-broadcast, 'interactive' potential and a kind of material / magnetic plasticity. Jason made an essential point about the technological developments (transistors) necessary to underpin this imaginary. Cultural and media studies makes much of the fantasmagorical discourses around new popular media devices, but not so much of either the technological realities of these devices and their affordances, or of material / imaginary connections with science and art.

Any thoughts?

In the meantime, here's a bit of Deleuze that sprung to mind:

'What interests me are the relations between the arts, science and philosophy. There is no order of priority among these disciplines. Each is creative. The true object of science is to create functions, the true object of art is to create sensory aggregates and the true object of philosophy is to create concepts. From this viewpoint, given these general heads, however sketchy, of function, aggregate and concept, we can pose the question of echoes and resonances between them. How is it possible--in their completely different lines of development, with quite different rhythms and movements of production--how is it possible for a concept, an aggregate and a function to interact?'
He then gives some examples: relating space in Reimannian maths to space in Bresson's cinema, and transformation in Prigogine and Stenger's physics to Resnais....
'So I don't feel it's outrageous to say that Resnais comes close to Prigogine, or that Godard, for different reasons, come close to Rene Thom. I'm not saying that Resnais and Prigogine, or Godard and Thom, are doing the same thing. I'm pointing out, rather, that there are remarkable similarities between scientific creators of functions and cinematic creators of images [...] Thus, philosophy, art and science come into relations of mutual resonance and exchange, but always for internal reasons. The way they impinge on one another depends on their own evolution. In this sense, then, we really have to see philosophy, art and science as separate melodic lines in constant interplay with one another [...] What we must recognise it that the interplay between the different lines is not a matter of mutual monitoring or reflection. A discipline that set out to follow a creative movement coming from outside would itself relinquish any creative role. What counts has never been to go along with some related movement, but to make one's own movement. If no one starts, no one will move. Nor is interplay an exchange: everything happens by giving and taking'. Gilles Deleuze 1992 'Mediators', in Jonathan Crary & Sandford Kwinter (eds) Zone 6: Incorporations, NY: Zone Books, pp.281-294

posted by: sethgiddings at 14:14 | link | comments |

media studies 2.0

An interesting debate on the future of media studies and its engagement with new media technologies kicked off on the MeCCSA email list and has transferred to a dedicated blog.

posted by: sethgiddings at 13:36 | link | comments |

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