Transcriptions/Literature.Culture.Media

Thursday, November 12
3:00 p.m.
South Hall 2635

Readings for talk available here: http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/3/3/000065.html

Dr. Patrick Svensson will explore the current landscape of digital humanities, starting out with an overview and discussion of digital humanities and digital humanists. Dr. Svensson draws on three case studies and distinguishes between the paradigmatic modes of engagement of the humanities and information technology: information technology as a tool, an object of study, an exploratory laboratory, an expressive medium, and an activist venue. This paper is partly based on the second in a series of four articles on the digital humanities, and Dr. Svensson will sketch out the goals of the whole project and his work at HUMlab at Umeå  University.  The first essay in the four-part series is available at the link above.

Patrik Svensson is the director of HUMlab at Umeå University and a docent in the humanities and information technology. His research concerns digital humanities as a field, learning and information technology, cyberinfrastructure for the humanities and new media studies. He currently leads the DH3P project (Digital Humanities as Paradigm, Practice and Projection), YouTube as a Performative Arena and a major initiative to strengthen research in the humanities and information technology at Umeå University. In 2008 he published Language Education in a Digital World: Information Technology, Communication and Learning (Norstedts: 2008, in Swedish).

Cocktail Hour
LCM Center (SH 2509)
Friday, October 23rd, 4:00 PM
Please join graduate students and faculty for a social hour and an opportunity for introductions all around.

If you plan to attend, please email msatris@umail.ucsb.edu by October 20th

“Meaning What We Play”
Talk by Noah Wardrip-Fruin
Author of Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies
SH 2635; Thursday, October 29; 3:00 PM
Today’s games have well-developed models of spatial movement, combat, and economics. But their models of fiction barely deserve the name. Even those supporting the most ambitious games are burdensome and bug-prone for authors – while providing the player quite limited ranges of meaningful choice. This talk discusses examples of more dynamic approaches to fiction, considering lessons past work presents for designers wishing to craft models that express their visions for playable fiction. At the same time, the talk argues that critics need to begin to interpret the computational processes of computer games (and digital media generally) and connect them to an understanding of audience experience. http://www.noahwf.com/expressive-processing. Light refreshments.

“The Landscape of Digital Humanities”
Talk by Patrik Svensson
SH 2635; Thursday, November 12th; 3:00 PM
Patrik Svensson is the director of HUMlab at Umeå University, a digital humanities center started in 1998. He writes: In this presentation, I explore the current landscape of digital humanities starting out from a provisional territorial fly-through and discussion of digital humanities and digital humanists. I draw on three case studies as well as a distinction between paradigmatic modes of engagement between the humanities and information technology: information technology as a tool, an object of study, an exploratory laboratory, an expressive medium and an activist venue. This paper is the second in a series of four articles on the digital humanities, and I will give an overview of the whole project. Furthermore, I will briefly present HUMlab at Umeå University (through photos and film clips). Light refreshments.

LCM Graduate Student Event
LCM Center:  Thursday, November 19th
Details to be announced

Literature.Culture.Media Center Research Slam
Where poster session meets poetry slam!

Friday, May 22, 2009

1:00 – 5:00 pm
Department of English, South Hall Second Floor

1:00 – 1:10 Opening Remarks, SH 2635

1:15 – 2:00 Session I, SH 2635

Nick Alward – Special Content
Hypertext-based project exploring forced simulated torture and our perception of war through both a narrative structured around a hypothetical CIA black site in New Mexico and an essay discussing World of Warcraft.

Salman Bakht – _object.soundingspace.textfield
Sound installation designed for an academic conference setting exploring dichotomies found in language: speech/text, semantics/phonology, sense/nonsense, etc.

Jenna Frazier – Sitt-Marie Rose: The Deaf-Mute Perspective
Using web design and text-analysis tools to explore the significance of the deaf-mute sections in Etel Adnan’s Sitt Marie-Rose.

Bola C. King – Pedagogical Affordances and Opportunities in Second Life
Discussing general teaching possibilities and a look at UCSB Lane and its possibilities and limitations.

Julia Panko – Literature on the Record: Mourning, Memory, and Information Storage in The Raw Shark Texts
Exploring how Hall’s print novel performs crucial digital humanities work by situating these themes within the intersections between narrative, storage technologies, print, and contemporary information culture.

2:10 – 2:55 Session II, SH 2509

Anne Cong-Huyen – CouchSurfing Toward Self: Identity in Literary and Virtual Space
Exploring contemporary identities that are continually constructed and evolving within digital spaces and communities.

Kim Knight – Describing the Viral
Tag clouds that are drawn from the descriptive labels applied to a sampling of content on YouTube.

Richard Lau – Sacco on Sacco
Analyzing the role of authorial self-insertion in Joe Sacco’s landmark works of New Journalism, graphic novels /Safe Area: Gorazde /and /Palestine/.

Amanda Phillips – The Uncanny Abyss: Reflections on Anxiety, Robots, and Intersubjective Relations
Reworking Masahiro Mori’s Uncanny Valley, theorizing the anxiety induced by robots, realistic CGI, and artificial intelligence.

3:10 – 3:40 Discussion, SH 2635
Led by Anne Cong-Huyen, Julia Panko, and Amanda Phillips

3:40 – 3:50 Closing Remarks

3:50 – 5:00 Reception

The LCM’s Film.Literature.Software presentation this quarter will be the anime film Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence. This film explores the question of humanity and its relation to machines, especially cyborgs and androids. An urban adventure that probes philosophical, moral, and aesthetic issues, this is one of a small number of animated films to become a finalist for the famed Palme D’Or Award at the Cannes Film Festival. Join us on Thursday, February 26, at 6pm in SH 2635 for movie and discussion – all are welcome!

“Interactive Narrative: What It Can Do & What It Can’t”
Facilitated by Porter Abbott (UCSB) with special guest Marie-Laure Ryan (University of Colorado)
Thursday, February 26 / 3:30 PM
English Department Seminar Room, South Hall 2635
A discussion keyed to two texts by Dr. Ryan, “Peeling the Onion: Layers of Interactivity in Digital Narrative Texts” and “Interactive Narrative, Plot Types, and Interpersonal relations” (latter available shortly on ERES).

TALK: “What Has the Computer Done for the Word?”
Marie-Laure Ryan (English, University of Colorado)
Friday, February 27 / 4:00
English Department Seminar Room, SH 2635
Sponsored by the Department of English, Literature.Culture.Media, the Program in Literature and the Mind, and the Department of Film and Media Studies.

“When Geeks Go Camping: Cyberspace and the Outdoor Life”

English Department / Literature.Culture.Media Center Talk
Tuesday, Feb. 24th, 3:30-5
SH 2635

This talk examines the evolution of nature metaphors in computing and cyberspace via some examples of the influence of Californian outdoor life on computer culture in Silicon Valley and beyond.  It is drawn from research for a book-length study, The Wild Surmise: Nature and Cyberspace, which discusses the many ways in which we use our experiences of nature to situate and comprehend our experiences of cyberspace.

Sue Thomas is a Research Professor based at De Montfort University, UK, and works in both the Institute of Creative Technologies and the Faculty of Humanities.  She is currently a Visiting Scholar in the Department of English, UCSB, funded by the British Academy to research the California section of The Wild Surmise project.  More information about Prof. Thomas is available at http://www.suethomas.net

Discussion:  Ivanhoe (literary interpretation game)
Thursday, February 19
SH 2509
10:30-11:30

Talk:  “I.nterpret”
Thursday, February 19
SH 2635
3:30-5:00

DATE: Friday, January 30, 2009
TIME: 10am-Noon
ROOM: Literature.Culture.Media Center (2509 South Hall, formerly the Transcriptions Studio)

Our campus has seen technologies such as course mangement systems, Facebook, blogs, and wikis utilized in both graduate and undergraduate courses; there has been recent interest in how these work and what they’re good for. Join us for a panel and roundtable discussion on incorporating these and other technologies into a humanities or cultural-studies classroom. Our panel includes faculty and graduate students from the English department who will share their success stories as well as suggestions and advice on what different applications can do, how you can get your students engaged, and how easy some of this stuff really is.

Monday, December 1, 12:00-2:00p.m., South Hall 2509

Guest speaker: Aaron McLeran, MAT

The LCM’s Film.Literature.Software series is pleased to present a software demo of the recently-released Spore. This newest game from the makers of SimCity and The Sims is perhaps the most sweeping simulation ever, starting from a cellular organism and ending with a spacefaring civilization.

MAT graduate student Aaron McLeran, who worked on the game’s generative music during software development, will be on hand to discuss his work. The Creature Creator program will also be available to allow for a hands-on experience with this unique content-authoring software.

LCM is pleased to co-sponsor a lecture by John Durham Peters, Wendell Miller Distinguished Professor of Media History and Social Theory, University of Iowa

Tuesday, November 25, 2008
1:00-3:00 p.m.
McCune Conference Room, HSSB 6220

Peters works in media and cultural history, communication and social theory, and understanding communication in its broad historical, legal, philosophical, religious, and technological context. He is the author of Courting the Abyss: Free Speech and the Liberal Tradition (U Chicago Press, 2005) and Speaking Into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication (U Chicago Press, 1999)

The Literature.Culture.Media (LCM) Center continues the work in digital humanities and new media begun in 1998 by the Transcriptions project. Our overall goal is “to build a working paradigm of a humanities department of the future that takes the information revolution to its heart as something to be seriously learned from, wrestled with, and otherwise [...]