UC Berkeley New Media Working Group

Happy New Year!

2012-01-16T15:17:00.000-08:00

Welcome back for the spring semester. We hope everyone had a restful break and a happy new year. Here is hoping that many of you will be able to join us for meetings this coming semester.

The following is a list of our upcoming events. Please join us in the 4th floor conference room of Sutardja Dai Hall Thursday, Jan 26 at 1pm for our first meeting.

Discussion of Henry Jenkins

26 January 2012, 1pm

4th Floor Conference Room, Sutardja Dai Hall UC Berkeley

Chris Goetz will present on works by Henry Jenkins. We will also remember back to Jenkins' November talk and include our reactions in the discussion.

"Break/ing Ground" Multi-field Working Group
13 March 2012, 5 - 7 pm
126 Dwinelle Annex

The TDPS annual Speaker Series invites working groups across multiple disciplines (Dance Studies, New Media Studies, Sound Studies, African American Literature Studies, and Critical Theory) to discuss key readings by our featured scholar-performers, Drs. Thomas Defrantz and Fred Moten, in preparation for their lecture-performance on Thursday, March 15.

Drs. Thomas DeFrantz and Fred Moten
15 March 2012, 4-7pm
Banatao Auditorium, Sutardja Dai Hall UC Berkeley

Stelarc
2 April 2012, 7:30pm
Banatao Auditorium, Sutardja Dai Hall, UC Berkeley

Professor Rita Raley on Tactical Media
26 April 2012, 5pm
370 Dwinelle Hall, UC Berkeley

End of the year NMWG party! For our last meeting, we will join up with Berkeley Center For New Media Designated Emphasis students for an end of the year celebration.

Bring On The Lumiere -- Ticket Requests!

2011-11-07T11:34:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,

Please send me an email -- aferromurray (at) berkeley (dot) edu -- by noon tomorrow (Tuesday) if you would like me to purchase a ticket for you to see Bring On The Lumiere. I will reserve tickets for the Saturday showing, November 12 at 8pm. Working group will pay for these tickets, but only if you let me know by noon tomorrow. It would be great to get a sizable group together to support local choreographer Katherine Galasso who came to working group last year to present on this piece.

Thanks and hope to hear from you.

Henry Jenkins: ROOM CORRECTIONS

2011-11-02T17:00:00.000-07:00

Dear NMWG followers,

I apologize that original Jenkins lecture announcement had the wrong location. The following information is correct:

5-6pm on Thursday, November 3
Geballe Room, Townsend Center, 220 Stephens Hall, UC Berkeley
Henry Jenkins (USC) speaks on Transmedia. This event is sponsored by the Berkeley Center for New Media as a part of their History and Theory of New Media series and is open to the public. If you would like to attend this talk please arrive early as seating is limited and BCNM expects to fill up. The event is free, but a box office will open at 4pm to reserve seats. Doors open at 4:30pm.

New Media in November!

2011-10-31T17:45:00.000-07:00

We have several exciting events planned for November, and two of them happen to be this week.

1-3pm on Tuesday, November 1
BCNM Commons, 340 Moffitt
Robert Alford will discuss Chapter 4, "Grainy Days and Mondays: Superstar and Bootleg Aesthetics," from Lucas Hilderbrand's book Inherent Vice: Bootleg Histories of Videotape and Copyright. Email aferromurray@berkeley.edu for the pdf.

5-6pm on Thursday, November 3
Geballe Room, Townsend Center, 220 Stephens Hall, UC Berkeley
Henry Jenkins (USC) speaks on Transmedia. This event is sponsored by the Berkeley Center for New Media as a part of their History and Theory of New Media series and is open to the public. If you would like to attend this talk please arrive early as seating is limited and BCNM expects to fill up. The event is free, but a box office will open at 4pm to reserve seats. Doors open at 4:30pm.

8pm on Friday, November 11
ODC Theater, San Francisco
We will purchase a block of tickets to attend local choreographer Catherine Galasso's new work, "Bring on the Lumiere." Galasso spoke to the working group last year, so we are excited to see the practical product of her historical and theoretical media research. Please email aferromurray@berkeley.edu if you are interested in attending.

More information at: http://odcdance.org/performance.php?param=78

1-3pm on Tuesday, November 29
BCNM Commons, 340 Moffitt
Chris Goetz will discuss scholarship by Henry Jenkins and will focus on the following article: “Complete Freedom of Movement: Videogames as Gendered Play Spaces"

http://web.mit.edu/cms/People/henry3/complete.html

Lars Jan & Paul Abacus Visit

2011-10-04T14:58:00.000-07:00

We had an excellent time hosting artist Lars Jan and collaborator Paul Abacus last week. Thanks to those who came out for Lars' talk last week! Here's Lars' abstract, belated...

Lars Jan, the artistic director of LA’s transmedia art lab Early Morning Opera (EMO) and Paul Abacus, the progressive thinker on national borders and the namesake of ABACUS — slated for 2012’s Sundance Film Festival — will be presenting their thoughts on presentations, the lingua franca of the world today. The pair will also discuss and share video excerpts from their diverse body of performance work, influenced by mega-church media design, aquariums, dance cinema, TED talks, suicide bombing and Japanese traditional puppetry.

EMO has recently received commissions from, and premiered new media-driven performance works at, the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (Troy, NY) and the Whitney Museum of American Art (NYC).

Sept. 13 - Reggie Royston on "The Tethered Self, Authenticity and Identity in Sherry Turkle's Work"

2011-09-07T13:16:00.001-07:00

I hope some of you were able to join for Sherry Turkle's lecture this evening.

Please join us for the next NMWG to discuss the talk and Turkle's work. Reggie Royston, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of African American Studies, will lead our discussion with his presentation, The Tethered Self, Authenticity and Identity in Sherry Turkle's Work. We will meet in room 340 Moffitt (BCNM Commons) at 1pm on Tuesday, September 13. Please read the attached article and come prepared to discuss! If you don't have time to prepare we would still love for you to join in the discussion.

NMWG-2011 Fall Schedule!

2011-09-01T14:12:00.001-07:00

Dear New Media Working Groupers,

Please mark your calendars for the following dates with the New Media Working Group.

Tentative Fall 2011 Schedule:

Tuesday, September 6, 2011, 5pm
Sherry Turkle (MIT) on "Technology and Intimacy"
Banatao Auditorium, Sutardja Dai Hall

Tuesday, September 13, 2011, 1pm
Reggie Royston leads a discussion on Sherry Turkle
BCNM Commons, 340 Moffitt

Tuesday, September 27, 2011, 1pm
Talk by artist-in-residence Lars Jan
BCNM Commons, 340 Moffitt

Tuesday, October TBD, 2011, 1pm
Robert Alford leads a discussion
BCNM Commons, 340 Moffitt

Tuesday, November 1, 2011, 1pm
TBD
BCNM Commons, 340 Moffitt

Friday, November 11, 2011, 8pm
Trip to performance by new media choreographer Catherine Galasso
"Bring on the Lumiere"
ODC Theater, San Francisco

First meeting!

2011-08-23T06:30:00.000-07:00

What: NEW MEDIA WORKING GROUP

When: Thursday, August 25 at Noon

Where: Berkeley Center for New Media Commons, 340 Moffitt Library (just outside of the Free Speech Cafe)

We hope you can join us for the first New Media Working Group meeting of the year. This meeting will be especially important for us to collectively decide on a convenient meeting time for the semester, plan a schedule, and catch up. Please come ready with ideas for meeting topics since the working group program will be most rich if some of you volunteer to lead a session or two.

Additionally, please email me directly at aferromurray@berkeley.edu if you are interested in the group but cannot attend the meeting.

New Media Working Group 1st Meeting Wednesday Septmber 1st!

2010-08-30T11:58:00.000-07:00

Welcome (back) to the 2010-2011 academic year! We'll hold our
first meeting this coming Wednesday, September 1 in the Berkeley Center for
New Media Commons (340 Moffitt, just outside the Free Speech Movement Cafe)
at 10 AM.
This is a chance for all of us to meet up, catch up, introduce
new faces, and plan out what we would like to do with the rest of the
semester.
We will have a short list of ideas for what we could do
throughout the semester, but we hope to start interdisciplinary
conversations that push us in new directions.

Bagels, juice, and vegan(!)
cinnamon rolls will be provided!

Please feel free to contact me at iramos@berkeley.edu with any questions.

New NMWG leadership!

2010-05-11T16:37:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everyone who came out to Eugene Thacker's talk on April 26th! We think it was a fitting end to a productive year of discussion and reflection.

Alas, Kris Trujillo will be away all of next year, doing research at Harvard, and Alenda will be going into somewhat hermetic seclusion to work on her dissertation, but the wonderful news is that Ashley Ferro-Murray (TDPS), Ivan Ramos (TDPS), and David Holstius (Public Health) will be taking over the administration of the group and seeing to it that this wonderful group of people and ideas keeps flourishing.

If you have ideas for next year, please contact Ashley, Ivan, and David!

4/5: Nicolas Provost and Erin Manning

2010-03-30T21:36:00.000-07:00

Our next meeting will feature guest Kevin Wynter, a Ph.D. student in Film Studies who is writing a dissertation on horror. Kevin has obtained a copy of Belgian filmmaker and visual artist Nicolas Provost's new short film, Long Live the New Flesh, which premiered in December 2009 in Antwerp. According to Kevin: "In Long Live the New Flesh, Nicolas Provost uses fragments of existing horror films to create a new film. The film uses a technique that makes the images seem to eat one other, as slowly the film rises to a visual climax of the horror experience. All ingredients that have made Nicolas Provost’s experimental art films into an international success are again present here."

Kevin will be screening the film, which is approximately 15 minutes long, and we are pairing the screening with a discussion of Chapter 3 from Erin Manning's Politics of Touch: Sense, Movement, Sovereignty (2007), entitled "Erring Toward Experience: Violence and Touch" (available electronically through our library system). We might post additional material from Manning's Relationscapes (2009), as well, since Manning is speaking on 4/6 as well.

Date: Monday, April 5th
Time: 2:30-4
Location: 4th floor conference room, Sutardja Dai Hall (CITRIS)

Questions? Contact Alenda or Kris.

Next meeting Monday 3/1: Media Effects and Sociological Approaches to New Media

2010-02-19T19:30:00.001-08:00

What are media effects? Do the media influence our attitudes, opinions, and even actions? Or are we active agents who interpret media content on our own terms and based on our existing knowledge and cultural background? How do new media technologies intersect with media effects and with society, in general? Join Jen Schradie, PhD student in the Department of Sociology, to discuss these issues in the context of Elihu Katz's “Lazarsfeld’s Map of Media Effects” and the Preface to the 2010 edition of Manuel Castell’s The Rise of the Network Society.

Date: Monday, March 1st
Time: 2:30 - 4:00
Location: 4th floor conference room, Sutardja Dai Hall (CITRIS building)

Last semester meeting 12/2

2009-11-28T13:27:00.001-08:00

Our final meeting of the semester will take place this Wednesday, December 2, from 3:00-4:30 in the BCNM Commons. Dilan Mahendran has graciously agreed to discuss his dissertation work on race and computation. He is a Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley's School of Information and a BCNM DE student. His academic areas of interest lie in Race Critical Theory, Postcolonial Studies, Philosophy of Technology, Philosophical Anthropology, and Phenomenology. He is also interested in the methodological problems of positivism and naturalism in technology studies and issues of constructivism in the social study of science and technology.

Please see http://nmwg.notlong.com for readings. We'll read Dilan's dissertation abstract, sections 1-6 of Edmund Husserl's Crisis of European Sciences, and Heidegger's "The Thing" (attached as .pdf). Optional for those with great stamina would be Husserl's Philosophy and the Crisis of European Man (the Vienna Lecture).

Fall 2009 Schedule / Next Meeting 10/7

2009-09-29T22:17:00.001-07:00

Thanks to all of you who have helped to identify speakers to bring to our working group, books to purchase for our library, and topics for future sessions! Amazingly, the fall semester's meetings have largely fallen into place and we're already spilling over with ideas for Spring. Special thanks to David Holstius and Ryan Shaw for bringing Carl and Dilan into our orbit.

Our next meeting will be October 7th. All meetings will take place in the BCNM Commons (340 Moffitt).

Wednesday 10/7, 3-4:30
Discuss McKenzie Wark’s A Hacker Manifesto (2004) and Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle (1967). Wark is Chair of Culture and Media at the Eugene Lang College of The New School and part of The New School for Social Research. In A Hacker Manifesto, Wark wields both Deleuze and Debord in relation to the issues of property, production, and information commodification in our era of globalized digital media. Championing the rise of a new hacker class, Wark takes on by now well-rehearsed debates over intellectual property and digital divides using Debord's aphoristic, French Marxist style.

From the Debord, we'll read sections I, II, and VIII ("Separation Perfected," "The Commodity as Spectacle," and "Negation and Consumption in the Cultural Sphere"). From the Wark, we'll read "Abstraction," "Class," "Education," "Hacking," "Information," "Revolt," and "Vector." Chapters will be scanned and posted at http://nmwg.notlong.com within the next couple of days.

Thursday 10/29, 4-5:30 (subject to change)
Guest Speaker: Carl DiSalvo
DiSalvo has worked at the intersection of design, technology and politics since 2000. From 2000 – 2005 he was a member of the tactical media collective Carbon Defense League, which engaged in designing software for activists, hacking electronics and information systems, and orchestrating oppositional media events to prompt public debate. In 2006 he received a Ph.D. in Design from Carnegie Mellon University. From 2006 – 2007 he was a post-doctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University with joint appointments in the Studio for Creative Inquiry and the Center for the Arts in Society, where he conducted scholarly and applied research into the use of robotics and sensing technologies in community contexts. In 2006 he also co-founded DeepLocal, a software and design consultancy that provides information design and location-based services to advocacy, journalism and municipal organizations. Since 2007 he has been an assistant professor of Digital Media in the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Wednesday 11/4, 3-4:30
**Our FIRST NMWG Tech Seminar**
Web Architecture Basics
Ryan Shaw, Ph.D. candidate, School of Information

Ryan will offer a conveniently condensed portion of his iSchool 190 course on Web Architecture and Information Management. That course focuses on understanding the Web as an information system, and how to use it for information management for personal and shared information. The Web is an open and constantly evolving system which can make it hard to understand how the different parts of the landscape fit together. This session will provide an overview of the Web as a whole, and how the individual parts fit together.

Wednesday 11/18, 3-4:30
TBA

Wednesday 12/2, 3-4:30
Guest Speaker: Dilan Mahendran, Ph.D. candidate, School of Information
Race and Computation

Dilan Mahendran is a Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley's School of Information and a BCNM DE student. His academic areas of interest lie in Race Critical Theory, Postcolonial Studies, Philosophy of Technology, Philosophical Anthropology, and Phenomenology. He is also interested in the methodological problems of positivism and naturalism in technology studies and issues of constructivism in the social study of science and technology. Dilan's research areas are centered around the impact of digital technology in hip-hop music making. He has conducted ethnographic fieldwork at the DJ Project, a hip-hop music production after-school program in the Mission district of San Francisco and in East Oakland, California. Dilan received his BA in Anthropology from Northeastern University and his MS from the School of Information, UC Berkeley.

For next semester, we're looking at basing sessions around the work of and visits by Erin Manning (Relationscapes; Concordia University, Montreal) and Frances Dyson (Sounding New Media:Immersion and Embodiment in the Arts and Culture; UC Davis Technocultural Studies). More to come!

http://ucbnewmedia.blogspot.com/
http://nmwg.notlong.com/

CFP: The Future of the Forum

2009-09-25T12:44:00.001-07:00

The Future of the Forum: Internet Communities and the Public Interest

Saturday, December 5, 2009 at the University of California, Berkeley

Keynote Speakers:

Jim Buckmaster, CEO of craigslist

Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia

Please send 300-word abstracts and a one-page C.V. to Professor Abigail De Kosnik at adekosnik@berkeley.edu by October 5, 2009.

Learn more about the Berkeley Center for New Media at http://bcnm.berkeley.edu/.

Jürgen Habermas’'s treatise on “the public sphere” locates the seeds of the French Revolution in the 18^th century rise of new media, newspapers and journals, in coffee houses and reading clubs, that facilitated the rapid exchange of ideas among educated citizens outside the state’s control. In contrast, Søren Kierkegaard attributed the inertia of the mid 18^th century to the public’s superficial engagement with media: “[T]he public comes into existence because all its participants become third parties….[T]his public gallery seeks some distraction, and soon gives itself over to the idea that everything which someone does, or achieves, has been done to provide the public something to gossip about….”

Internet forums – participatory and collaboratively authored online communities, discussion boards, blogs, and social networking sites – are rapidly changing the modes and norms of public communication. Will our new media age be a revolutionary one, similar to that analyzed by Habermas? Or will it be a period of widespread passivity, as Kierkegaard lamented of his own time?

This one-day symposium will explore the question, How are Internet communities re-configuring and re-constituting common conceptions of the public, the public good, the public interest, and civic responsibility? What new forms of dialogue are emerging with our new media? When do the pleasures of interacting with digital technologies coincide with, and facilitate, progressive social action?

Are the protocols of Internet affinity groups fragmenting the public into increasingly narrower niches, thus undermining opportunities for productive debates amongst individuals with diverse opinions? Or are contemporary Web users more often than not forging alliances and finding overlaps with strangers who are radically different from them in the “real world?”

The symposium will take place at the University of California, Berkeley. As a public university that has itself served as a medium for the emergence of new forms of public activism, UC Berkeley will provide an ideal setting for scholars to present pioneering research on new media and the public interest.

The symposium organizers invite proposals for papers addressing novel aspects of online participation, the formation of new publics, and the public good. Papers may be specific, focusing on case studies of particular Internet groups, or more theoretical and general in their approach.

Paper topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:

Historical analyses of how earlier forms of “new” media impacted the public sphere and the public interest (e.g., the printing press, the telephone, the radio, the cinema, ’zine culture).

The impact of political blogs, “Tweets,” YouTube vids, MoveOn.org, candidate fan sites, “smart mob” technologies (Howard Rheingold), and other attempts to use new media for political organization, and their effects on “real-world” politics (e.g., the 2008 U.S. presidential elections, the 2009 “green revolution” in Iran).

“Participatory cultures” (Henry Jenkins) such as Internet fan communities, Wikipedia pages, and YouTube, which lower the barriers to entering – thereby presumably democratizing – the field of cultural production.

The concepts of “free” and/or “open” applying to a vast array of contemporary collectives/initiatives, not just to software development (e.g., open access journals, Christopher Kelty’s theory of “recursive publics” – self-governing communities that constantly make/modify/maintain their own infrastructure).

Citizen journalism, participatory journalism, and other models for publishing news online that have eroded or re-invented traditional print news publishing models (e.g., Drudge Report, local community blogs, ad-free news Web sites).

The establishment of alternate economies on the Internet, including reputation economies and “cycles of credit” (Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar), gift economies, and the attention economy. The intersection of these economies and issues of labor and leisure (e.g., creating popular online content for fame/praise rather than for compensation, eBay and Amazon.com sellers’ reputation linked to their income), and the question of whether the Internet is altering the structure of capitalism.

Issues of reputation and representation. The importance of authorship, authority, and identity in Internet communities, the uncertainties of ascertaining who is “speaking” online, and whether open dialogue and trust between strangers is possible on the Internet (e.g., the anonymity of participation permitting flaming and censorship in Internet exchanges, plagiarism from online sources).

New forms of public personae, public performance, and public broadcasting being founded via new media, and whether or how they provide the kind of entertainment-based “social glue” that mass broadcast media used to offer (e.g., “best-of-craigslist” posts, Yelp recommendations, Perez Hilton, Howcast.com).

9/16 Paul Virilio: Then and Now

2009-09-10T19:11:00.001-07:00

For the last thirty years, Paul Virilio has been at the forefront of thinking through the connections between such seemingly disparate forces as optics, warfare, information, media, architecture, and the science of speed, or what he refers to as 'dromology'. This week's reading looks to chart two separate but interrelated vectors in relation to his thought. The first is the transformation in his work over the twenty plus years that separate the publication of his seminal "Speed and Politics" and the later "The Information Bomb." Simply put, our aim here will be to see how the prescience often cited in the earlier work has matured and transformed in the later work. The second question we'll consider is the extent to which Virilio's observations on New Media from a pre-crash, pre 9/11 era dominated by Dolly the sheep and Jennicam hold-up a decade later.

Discussion Leader: Kris Fallon
Readings: nmwg.notlong.com

Note: NMWG meets the first and third Wednesdays of each month in Fall 2009. Meetings are located in the Berkeley Center for New Media Commons (340 Moffitt), next to the Free Speech Movement Cafe.

First Meeting WEDNESDAY 9/2 @ 3:30 in the BCNM Commons

2009-08-27T14:10:00.000-07:00

Welcome (back) to the 2009-2010 academic year! We'll hold our first meeting this coming Wednesday, September 2 in the Berkeley Center for New Media Commons (340 Moffitt, just outside the Free Speech Movement Cafe) at 3:30.

If you have questions, please email Kris Trujillo (kris.j.trujillo@gmail.com) or Alenda Chang (alenda@gmail.com).

5/7 Biophilosophy, Biopolitics, & the Viral

2009-05-01T18:49:00.000-07:00

Discussion Leader: Zach Blas
Time: 1 - 2:30 PM
Location: BCNM Commons at Moffitt Library

At our final meeting on May 7 we'll take a gander at Eugene Thacker's essay "Biophilosophy for the 21st Century," in which he discusses how the interfacing of biology with computers has transformed the concept of life itself. To accompany this, we will also look at Thierry Bardini's "Hypervirus: A Clinical Report" to consider how the virus, as a central being/trope in our digital future, operates beyond the biological and computational into realms of the social, cultural, and political. Seems all too appropriate right now.

Reading selections and directions to the BCNM Commons are at
http://nmwg.notlong.com

4/23 Knowledge Work and the Information Economy

2009-04-19T22:30:00.000-07:00

Our next meeting will give us the opportunity to discuss Alan Liu's The Laws of Cool: Knowledge Work and the Culture of Information (2004), a surprising amalgam of academic and business savvy as applied to technology's influence on knowledge practices and the ever ineffable quality of "coolness."

Discussion Leader: Ryan Shaw

4/9 Virtualities of Movement

2009-04-02T14:07:00.000-07:00

Our next meeting will take place on Thursday, April 9, from 2:30-3:30 pm in the Berkeley Center for New Media Commons (340 Moffit). Note the change in our usual time (a meeting with Electronic Arts is taking place beforehand)... Kris was kind enough to let us overlap the New Media Tea.

We'll be discussing Brian Massumi’s latest book, Parables for the Virtual, where he considers virtuality as it relates to movement. Pay particular attention to “The Bleed: Where Body Meets Image” and Massumi’s description of virtual affect in relation to Ronald Reagan’s account of watching himself move on television.

Discussion leader: Ashley Ferro-Murray, Theater, Dance & Performance Studies

Reading at http://nmwg.notlong.com/

3/12 Full of Sound and Theory

2009-03-04T23:11:00.000-08:00

When: Thursday, March 12, 1-2:30PM
Where: 340 Moffitt (Center for New Media Commons)

Our next meeting will center on radio and digital recording. We will discuss one essay about the very early days of radio (Denis Hollier, “The Death of Paper: A Radio Play”), and one essay about the cultural impact of mp3 technology (Jonathan Sterne, “The mp3 as Cultural Artifact”). Among other issues, we might want to consider the different temporal and ontological modes that distinguish radio and mp3 podcasting, the changing structure of address available to each medium, the shifting terrain of copyright concerns in the move from radio broadcasting to file sharing, and how an emphasis on sound might reconfigure some of the basic assumptions in the often visually dominated field of new media studies.

Readings: http://nmwg.notlong.com/
Discussion Leader: Tom McEnaney, Comparative Literature

Reading Change

2009-02-23T22:56:00.000-08:00

We have the opportunity to read a chapter from Rita Raley's forthcoming book Tactical Media, entitled "Border Hacks: Electronic Civil Disobedience and the Politics of Immigration" (reading available at http://nmwg.notlong.com/).

As time permits, we suggest reading/skimming at least one of the other already suggested pieces as a knowledge of them would add dimension to our discussion.

2/26 Meeting on Rita Raley

2009-02-18T17:25:00.000-08:00

Please join the New Media Working Group for its next meeting on Thursday, February 26th, from 1-2:30PM in the Berkeley Center for New Media Commons (340 Moffitt). We will discuss a sampling of work by Rita Raley, Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara, concerning new media art, "Global English," and the practices and politics of "reading" code. Raley's book Tactical Media is forthcoming in April.

Readings available at http://nmwg.notlong.com/ and via the following links:

1) "Code.surface || Code.depth"
http://www.dichtung-digital.org/2006/1-Raley.htm

2) "Machine Translation and Global English"

3) "Reveal Codes: Hypertext & Performance"
http://www.iath.virginia.edu/pmc/text-only/issue.901/12.1raley.txt

Given time constraints, we recommend selecting one essay for perusal (whichever strikes you as the most interesting or relevant to your work) and skimming the remainder for discussion.

Contacts:
Alenda Chang (alenda@berkeley.edu)
Ryan Shaw (ryanshaw@ischool.berkeley.edu)

2/12 Meeting on Archive Fever

2009-02-05T14:52:00.000-08:00

What: New Media Working Group
When: 1-2PM, Thursday 2/12
Where: BCNM Commons next to the Free Speech Cafe
Discussion Leader: Kris Trujillo

Readings:
http://nmwg.notlong.com/

Announcements:
http://ucbnewmedia.blogspot.com/

Please join the New Media Working Group to discuss Jacques Derrida's Archive Fever, a lecture delivered on June 5, 1994, at the Freud Museum in London. We will look closely at the unnamed introduction, "Exergue," and "Preamble" (pages 1-31), paying special attention to Derrida's meditations on the psychical archive's relation to memory and the death drive, on the future of psychoanalytic inscription and historiography in light of electronic media, and on the filiation of digital archives.

Stick around after the meeting for another Berkeley Center for New Media Tea... good food and conversation!

Questions? Comments?
Contact Alenda Chang, Rhetoric (alenda@berkeley.edu) or Ryan Shaw, School of Information (ryanshaw@ischool.berkeley.edu).

12/4: Virtual Worlds and Second Lives

2008-12-01T20:11:00.000-08:00

During the final meeting of the semester we will discuss Chapter 7, "Community," of Tom Boellstorff's Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human (2008). Also included as optional is Chapter 3, "Method."

The meeting will take place, as usual, in the New Media Commons next to the Free Speech Movement Cafe. Start time: 5PM.

11/20: Textuality, Storage, and Computer Forensics

2008-11-12T15:09:00.000-08:00

At the 11/20 meeting of the New Media Working Group we will discuss chapter 3 of Matthew Kirschenbaum's Mechanisms (MIT Press, 2008). "'An Old House with Many Rooms': The Textual Forensics of Mystery_House.dsk" is an investigation of a floppy disk containing the 1980 Apple II game Mystery House. You can download a PDF of the chapter from the NMWG website.

Kirschenbaum is a rising star in new media and digital humanities. His latest book is an exploration of the materiality of digital media, and as such presents a much-needed counterpoint to theories of new media which focus on its supposed immateriality and mutability. This chapter will be of interest to people studying games, as he does a "close reading" (with hex editor!) of the first story-based adventure game to feature graphics. But it also happens to be very readable and generally interesting, as Kirschenbaum pulls together everything from William Blake to Aphex Twin to make a coherent case for why we should pay attention to the mechanical minutiae of digital media.

Nov. 6 Meeting: New Media & Law

2008-10-29T08:08:00.000-07:00

The next meeting of the New Media Working Group will be on Nov 6 at 5pm in the BCNM commons. In conjunction with Takeovers and Makeovers, the BCNM-sponsored conference planned by Kris Paulsen and other new media students, we will be reading a piece by Rebecca Tushnet called "Payment in Credit: Copyright Law and Subcultural Creativity." The conference is among the first to bring together artists and art scholars, lawyers and legal scholars, and technology professionals all together to discuss the issues around appropriation and fair use.

The full paper is up on the NMWG reading list here:
http://nmwg.notlong.com/

Takeovers and Makeovers: Artistic Appropriation, Fair Use, and Copyright in the Digital Age:
http://bcnm.berkeley.edu/takeovers/

Next Meeting THU 10/16: Stanford Bound

2008-10-07T12:51:00.000-07:00

Our next meeting is scheduled for Thursday, October 16th but will be nontraditional in two respects: 1) We'll be traveling across the bay to Stanford and 2) We'll probably leave from Berkeley around 12:15 and head back around 3, so it will involve a longer time commitment than usual.

Why, you might ask, is it worth your time to visit our historic rival, and on a weekday no less? Because Henry Lowood, Curator for History of Science & Technology Collections and Film & Media Collections at Stanford (http://www.stanford.edu/~lowood/) as well as current co-director of the Stanford Humanities Lab (http://shl.stanford.edu/), has very graciously offered to speak to us and even show us around (with our very own Eric Kaltman's help).

Lowood's current research interests include the following areas:

* History of computer game design
* Creation and curation of digital archives
* Computer games as a medium of performance
* History of military simulation

Most recently, Lowood has helped develop a gaming collection/archive at Stanford and is part of a new multi-institution initiative for "Preserving Virtual Worlds," funded by the National Digital Information Infrastructure Preservation Program of the Library of Congress.

Please let Alenda Chang (alenda@berkeley.edu) or Ryan (ryanshaw@ischool.berkeley.edu) know if you would like to come on the 16th, and if so, whether or not you need a ride, can drive others, or would prefer to get there/leave on your own.

Next Meeting THU 10/2, 5-6PM (340 Moffitt)

2008-09-25T02:13:00.000-07:00

Join us for a special visit from Abigail De Kosnik, the Berkeley Center for New Media's most recent faculty addition and a new assistant professor in the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies.

We will be discussing a short piece, "Performing Transnational Anti-Fandom: Filipinos Protesting The Daily Show and Desperate Housewives Online," available at the following URL: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dg8xmf5b_80gd57qsp2.

Next Meeting THU 9/18, 5-6PM (340 Moffitt)

2008-09-03T13:11:00.000-07:00

We will be meeting to discuss the last chapter from Lisa Nakamura's most recent book, Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet (2008), entitled "Measuring Race on the Internet: Users, Identity, and Cultural Difference in the United States."

Please note that we will NOT be meeting in the Rhetoric/Film library. The new location for our meetings is the recently opened Berkeley Center for New Media (BCNM) Commons, 340 Moffitt Library, right next to the Free Speech Movement Cafe (http://bcnm.berkeley.edu/commons/moffitt). We will be meeting twice a month, on Thursdays, for the remainder of the semester.

For NMWG announcements:
http://ucbnewmedia.blogspot.com/

For our schedule and links to our readings:
http://nmwg.notlong.com/

First Meeting TUESDAY 9/2: 5-6PM

2008-08-26T11:34:00.000-07:00

Please join the New Media Working Group for its first meeting of the year on Tuesday, September 2, from 5-6PM in the Rhetoric and Film Library (7337 Dwinelle Hall). We have an exciting semester planned on a broad field of topics, ranging from "Virtual Worlds and Second Lives" to "Textuality, Storage, and Computer Forensics." In October, new TDPS/BCNM assistant professor Abigail De Kosnik will meet with us to share some of her work on new media, race, and minority discourse, and Henry Lowood, Curator for History of Science & Technology Collections and Film & Media Collections at Stanford, has agreed to host us for a visit to the new gaming collection at Stanford with an opportunity to discuss his work on Preserving Virtual Worlds.

We welcome all those interested to join us for a discussion of the proposed schedule, and participants will be encouraged to contribute their own ideas about readings, speakers, and activities, with the potential to lead sessions on subjects close to their research interests.

Hope to see you there!

Big Bang and 01SJ

2008-05-01T20:31:00.000-07:00

Join us at the Berkeley Big Bang Symposium and the San Jose ZeroOne digital arts festival. E-mail for tickets and rides...

+++San Jose ZeroOne++++
http://www.01sj.org/
The 2nd Biennial 01SJ Global Festival of Art on the Edge is North America’s newest and largest festival of digital arts, and a great deal more. From a hip hop, multi-media meditation on Antarctica to robot art, from conversations with artificial intelligence to operatic performances of Google headlines about the environment, from avant-garde cinema to new musical forms - well over 100 artworks, performances, screenings, talks, and workshops will be featured at 01SJ. Festival organizers expect it to be a perspective-altering experience that entertains, enlightens, educates and involves attendees in a new understanding of our changing world.

++++Berkeley Big Bang 08 New Media Symposium and Art Festival++++ http://bampfa.berkeley.edu/bigbang

Join us for Berkeley Big Bang 08, three days of new media and art hosted by BAM/PFA and the Berkeley Center for New Media, timed to link with 01SJ: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge, a new media art biennial taking place June 4–8 in San Jose. Occurring together for the first time, these two events combine to create one of the nation’s
largest gatherings of new media art, a virtual “big bang” of innovation and creativity.

The Berkeley Big Bang program will include a two-day symposium on new media, art, science, and the body in partnership with Berkeley Center for New Media and Leonardo: The International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology; a campus media lab demonstration and open house; and an alternate reality game. Berkeley Big Bang is presented in tandem with BAM/PFA exhibitions of work by media artists Trevor
Paglen, Jim Campbell, Lynn Hershman Leeson, and Scott Snibbe.

SFIFF new media events

2008-05-01T20:29:00.000-07:00

Join us at the following new media events at the San Francisco International Film Festival (e-mail to arrange tickets and rides)

Generator Thu, May 1 / 1:45 / Kabuki / GENE01K and Sun, May 4 / 8:30 / Kabuki / GENE04K
The 20 short videos in this program run quickly between intensely complicated structures and achingly beautiful abstractions. These works use computers and software design as a bridge between traditional media like film and sculpture. Each of these animated works, presenting finely crafted visions and sounds, is an example of “generative art.” The term defines artistic production generated through algorithms or other computational processes. In essence, an animator, engineer, designer or group produces parameters within which particular works materialize randomly. It is as if the artist produced her own counterpart—the artist she wishes existed—and had her make the video you will watch in this program. Another unique aspect of generative work is that the media produced through specific virtual algorithms or processes can in many cases vary wildly. The algorithms that generate the videos could just as easily make sculptures, music, drawings, paintings or poems the form of the finished works. In this program, SFIFF will present single-channel video work only. The bulk of the program was assembled by Lia and Miguel Carvalhais for a Generative Art program presented at the 2006 Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria. Three other works were taken from the forthcoming DVD Advanced Beauty, assembled by Matt Pyke of Universal Everything and Freeform.

Scott Arford: Static Life Wed, May 7 / 7:15 / Kabuki / SCOT07K
Over the last decade-plus, Scott Arford has quietly been shaping the Bay Area’s new media culture, producing video and musical works, developing exhibition spaces and engineering at (among other places) Recombinant Media Labs. This program presents Arford’s artistic practice through both a retrospective and his latest multimedia performance, Still Life (almost) Another Day in Three Acts. One trope reworked throughout Arford’s artistic career is that of “static.” Arford’s incredibly soothing, ethereal pieces conjure stillness and contemplation. But Arford also visualizes the intense dance of minute structures like electrical static that appears when objects are closely examined. His works tend to oscillate between the poles of movement and stasis, and Still Life is no different in this regard. In it Arford edits and condenses a classic Italian horror film, Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (directed by genre master Jorge Grau), into a super slo-mo series of stills. He transforms the violent epic into a rich visual feast, while composing a new soundtrack for it live and onstage. The zombie film is a perfect vehicle for Arford’s interests, as he kills the film and brings it back to life—the undead being both a little more still and intense.

Mon 5/5: Christiane Paul on Curating New Media Art

2008-04-22T16:26:00.000-07:00

Please join the New Media Working Group for our last official meeting of the semester, a discussion on new media curating with visiting professor Christiane Paul, Adjunct Curator of New Media Arts at the Whitney Museum. At the Whitney Museum, Paul directs artport, the museum's online portal to net art. (http://artport.whitney.org/)

"Curating New Media Art" with Christiane Paul
Monday, May 5th, 2008
3117B Etcheverry Hall
5:30-6:30pm

We will be reading two of Paul's essays on new media curatorial practice in preparation:

Christiane Paul, "The Myth of Immateriality: Presenting and Preserving New Media," Media Art Histories, ed. Oliver Grau (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007)

Christiane Paul, "Flexible Contexts, Democratic Filtering and Computer Aided Curating," Curating Immateriality: the Work of the Curator in the Age of Network Systems, ed. Joasia Krysa (Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 2006)

Our NMWG meeting w/ Paul will be combined with a CNM201 class of mostly architecture grad students, which should make for an interesting discussion!

Writing New Media Syllabi, Part 1 -- Examples

2007-12-06T16:26:00.000-08:00

One little task before you head off...

To kick off our syllabus-writing project, we'd like to collect some existing examples of new media syllabi, for humanities courses taught at the college or graduate level either here or at another institution.

So, in lieu of meeting in person before we leave for the semester break, please help us 'gather' here by posting (as a comment below) a syllabus or link to a syllabus for a general new media course.

You can interpret this however you find helpful; the goal is to provide a list of models that we can collectively use to take stock of what seems to be taught and how. Over the time from now until the new semester in January, please look at what everyone has posted, and begin to prepare your own new media syllabus. Try to think carefully about how to organize the reading, examples, units, and assignments. While the course will obviously be inflected by your background and interests, try to produce a syllabi that 'takes a stand,' offering a conceptual, historical, and disciplinary (or interdisciplinary) model for framing this elusive field.

We'll solicit your syllabi at the start of the new semester, and circulate them to the group. Our first meeting in January will be a discussion of these syllabi and the challenges of producing them.

Thank you for a fantastic semester...hope to see you all back for more in the Spring!

P.S. If you want to put a link in your comment, use an anchor tag so it will be clickable
(what??)

Photos & Video from ParaSite Symposium

2007-11-27T11:38:00.000-08:00

Check out these photos by Andrew Moisey from the ParaSite Symposium (Oct 26 2007).

Jennifer Johung, Claudia Salamanca, Dan Perkel, & Ryan Shaw in Panel 3, Distributed Participation: Art, architecture, and the live event.

Jeffrey Skoller asking a question.

Also see this video "To Watch While Holding Your Breath" created by Greg Niemeyer that charts the carbon dioxide emissions in the Nestrick Room throughout the day of the symposium:

November 30th

2007-11-19T23:49:00.000-08:00

At 12 noon, interested students may join Jeffrey Skoller's seminar at SF MOMA for a guided tour. Current media exhibitions include Jeff Wall, Olafur Ealiasson, and Douglas Gordon. Please comment here (or email brooke) if you plan to attend. (Remember we're meeting to discuss digital special effects with Kristen Whissel at 4pm that day!)

Fri Nov 30th: SFMOMA & Digital Special Effects

2007-11-19T06:45:00.000-08:00

Please join the New Media Working Group on Friday, Nov. 30th for two special events:

1) SFMOMA field trip w/ curators.

2) Discussion of digital special effects with professor Kristen Whissel (Film Studies, UCB)
4-5:15pm, Rhetoric/Film Library, 7337 Dwinelle Hall

We will primarily be discussing an article by Kristen Whissel, "Tales of Upward Mobility: The New Verticality and Digital Special Effects," Film Quarterly 59:4 (Summer 2006), 23-34.

As well as the intro and an article in a special issue of Film Criticism on digital visual effects:

Kristen Whissel, "Digital Visual Effects and Popular Cinema: An Introduction," Film Criticism 32:1 (Fall 2007), 2-4.

Lisa Purse, "Digital Heroes in Contemporary Hollywood: Exertion, Identification, and the Virtual Action Body," Film Criticism 32:1 (Fall 2007), 5-25.

Fri Nov 16: Discussion of New Media/ Old Media

2007-11-14T00:09:00.001-08:00

Please join the New Media Working Group THIS Friday, Nov. 16th, from 1-2:30pm in the Rhetoric Library (7337 Dwinelle Hall).

We will be discussing two chapters in the anthology New Media, Old Media: A History and Theory Reader edited by Wendy Chun and Thomas Keenan (Routledge, 2005): "Introduction: Did Somebody Say New Media?" by Wendy Chun and the essay "Dis/continuities: Does the Archive Become Metaphorical in Multi-Media Space?" by Wolfgang Ernst. Discussion will be led by John Lurz and Alenda Chang.

Hard copies of the chapters are available in the Rhetoric Library and in Brooke Belisle's mailbox in the Rhetoric/Film Studies office (7408 Dwinelle Hall). A pdf of the reading is also available for download (16MB) here:

http://webfiles.berkeley.edu/~ichien/NewMediaOldMedia.pdf

Fri Oct 26: ParaSite New Media Symposium

2007-10-26T00:00:00.000-07:00

ParaSite New Media Symposium
Friday, October 26, 2007
Nestrick Room, 142 Dwinelle Hall
UC Berkeley
http://filmstudies.berkeley.edu/parasite/

A UCB graduate student symposium on new media and its relationship to other arts and disciplines. Is new media "parasitic" upon the strategies of other media or something like a "para-site" for their exploration? How does new media appropriate, absorb, diminish, further, reinvent, or exist side-by-side with the forms that it inherits?

10:00 - 10:15
Introduction and Welcome
Brooke Belisle (Rhetoric), Irene Chien (Film Studies), Ken Goldberg (IEOR & EECS, UC Berkeley)

10:15 - 11:00
Opening Keynote: "The Logos of the New: Medium Specificity and Convergence," Anne Friedberg (Cinematic Arts, USC)

11:00 - 12:00
Visualizing Time and Space:
Photography, digital video, and data design
Andrew Moisey (Film Studies), Brooke Belisle (Rhetoric), Meredith Hoy (Film Studies)
Respondent: Jeffrey Skoller (Film Studies, UC Berkeley)

12:15 - 1:15
Mediated Bodies:
Spectatorship and interaction in cinema, installation, and sexual practices
Ashley White-Stern (Film Studies), Kelly Rafferty (Performance Studies), Kevin Wynter (Film Studies)
Respondent: Jennifer Bean (Cinema Studies, University of Washington)

2:15 - 3:30
Distributed Participation:
Art, architecture, and the live event
Dan Perkel (School of Information), Jennifer Johung (Performance Studies), Claudia Salamanca (Rhetoric), Ryan Shaw (School of Information)
Respondent: Shannon Jackson (Theater, Dance, & Performance Studies, UC Berkeley)

3:45 - 4:45
Materiality of Language:
Orality, literature, and communication
Alenda Chang (Rhetoric), John Lurz (English), Christo Sims (School of Information)
Respondent: Peter Krapp (Visual Studies, UC Irvine)

5:00 - 5:15
Artist's Presentation: "To Watch While Holding Your Breath," Greg Niemeyer (Art Practice, UC Berkeley)

5:15 - 6:00
Closing Keynote: "Disobedient Machines: Autonomy and Animation,"
Scott Bukatman (Art History, Stanford)

Followed by a reception and live music mash-up & art performance at the Berkeley Art Museum RIP.MIX.BURN.BAM.PFA. exhibition, 7-10pm. Taking its cue from the open-source tradition, this exhibit introduces third-party recodings and reworkings of digital pieces in the museum's collection, including Ken Goldberg's Ouija 2000.

Organized by the New Media Working Group. Sponsored by Film Studies, Consortium for the Arts, Townsend Center for the Humanities, Berkeley Center for New Media, and Berkeley Art Museum.

Oct 12: Builder's Association, Continuous Cities

2007-09-28T17:11:00.000-07:00

We'll be attending the Builder's Association "Continuous Cities" performance on October 12th at 8pm. Post a comment here indicating whether you'd like to attend with us, so we know how many tickets to purchase. Here is a link to information about the performance and the all day panels and discussions before and after the event: http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/bca/images/contbodsymp.jpg

9/27 Anne Friedberg, The Virtual WIndow

2007-09-26T13:55:00.000-07:00

For 9/27 we're discussing:

Below is a response and some discussion questions, just to get us started on Thursday. Please feel free to post your own responses and questions, both before and after we meet, as comments to this post.

A representative passage:
If we follow Panofsky's assertion that perspective was "symbolic form"—a way of apprehending the world through a mental apparatus—then the representational postulates of perspective have met their end on the computer screen. And, if we accept Panofsky's further argument that perception is conditioned by representational habits, then our new mode of perception is multiple and fractured. It's "postperspectival"—no longer framed in a single image with fixed centrality; "postcinematic"—no longer projected onto a screen surface as were the camera obscura or magic lantern; "post–televisual"—no longer unidirectional in the model of sender and receiver. (p.194)

Synopsis of the chapter:
In this chapter, Friedberg argues that the "dominant screen practice" consolidated by film—single screen, serial images—is being challenged by an alternative screen practice characterized by multiple, simultaneous, and adjacent images. She admits that this alternative practice is not "new," tracing examples from early film through television, video art, and contemporary media. But, she argues that these examples have, until now, been exceptions, experiments associated with new formats and technical standards. The aesthetic of the "multiple" emerges at what she calls "crossroads" in the history of moving image technology, visible in retrospect as a path repeatedly not taken when new technical possibilities were folded into established aesthetic and narrative modes. For Friedberg, the new centrality of this aesthetic marks a deeper shift that correlates with the rise of digital media, a change in "symbolic form" as a "way of apprehending the world through a mental apparatus."

Friedberg suggests that the aesthetic of the multiple may become dominant because it correlates with, and helps us respond to, an increasingly fractured experience of space and time. As Friedberg takes up the "symbolic form" of the MS "windows" interface, one could feel nostalgic for Crary's camera obscura. Throwing some Sherry Turkle in with her Panofsky, Friedberg claims that the "windows" computer interface splinters, multiplies, and dislocates not only perception but psychological identity, encouraging a multitasking and investment in "elsweheres" that verges on schizophrenia. She sketches a pattern in which technical possibilities and material conditions change faster than we can quite adapt, requiring the rise of a new symbolic form adequate to our altered perceptual experiences and ideological constructions. Quoting Julie Talen, she suggests that the format of the multiple meets this need, soliciting art produced for the "glimpse" rather than the gaze, and thereby advancing our ability to tell "stories" rather than just broadcast "stock tickers" in "a fractured post-Cartesian cyberspace, cybertime." (p219, 235) Recalling Walter Benjamin's distinction between story and information, as well as his notion of sensorial adaptation, this seems to view the role of art as recuperative. In other words, it seems to ask how, since we are already living in the era of microsoft windows, we can find ways to creatively reframe our experience rather than just being enframed by its mode of representation as well as everything it represents.

Questions for discussion:
On page 202 Friedberg quickly suggests that the aesthetic of the split screen offers an alternative to the theory of suture. How could we elaborate this and would it hold up if we tried? Would this point to reasons why the "multiple" remains a marginal practice? Could it suggest psychological or ideological implications that Friedberg doesn't quite get into (or which are de-emphasized by her focus on the economy of attention/distraction in her discussion of the computer-screen aesthetic)?

At the end of this chapter, Friedberg seems ambivalent about the notion of convergence, opposing the medium specificity implicit in McLuhan's "medium is the message" with Negroponte's argument that "the medium is not the message in the digital age." She notes evidence (as seen in her description of digital projection on p214) of the "inevitable convergence" that Negroponte and Kittler assume, but also asks whether all our media screens "have really lost their apparatical distinctions" and whether we inhabit, as Krauss claims, a "post-medium condition." This seems like a genuine question for her, as she is currently teaching a graduate course on the topic of convergence and medium specificity. Is this a compelling framework, and does it adequately orient the book's research and insights?

While Panofsky obviously inspires this chapter, McLuhan also emerges as a touchstone for Friedberg (see p210 ,236). She recalls his arguments that "the electric" media return us from optical perspectivalism to a "primitive" dimensionality, and that new media produce "new ratios" between our own multiple perceptual faculties and also between multiple media formats. She even dubs him the "first apparatus theorist." What can we make of this use or revival of McLuhan?

Friedberg seems to directly take up Lev Manovich's argument in The Language of New Media about "spatial montage" and to follow some of his references, most notably to Eisenstein. So, why is Manovich so notably absent from this chapter?

What do we think about how the Vector's project "translates" the book? I'm particularly interested in the way the editorial intro describes the "playfulness" of the project as a perceived "threat" to scholarly modes of research, and thanks Friedberg for being so brave as to give up control. Is this format as "experiential, remixable and fluid" as they describe and is this really in opposition to an "intention" of the author/creator that otherwise dominates?

Proposed meeting schedule for Fall 2007

2007-09-21T06:45:00.001-07:00

How about this line-up draft for the rest of the semester? Included are the topics people seemed to respond to most in our first meeting. Please note that meetings are tentatively scheduled for Wednesday or Thursday evenings, the days that seemed most agreeable to most people. Please chime in via comments or emails to Brooke and Irene (if you haven't already) if there's a day of the week/time that absolutely does not work for you.

Sept 27
Historicizing New Media:
Anne Friedberg, The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft
(Brooke)

Oct 5, 6, or 7
Attend The Builders Association "Continuous City"

Oct 10 or 11
New Media and Performance:
discuss Continuous Cities
(Ryan and Kelley)

October 26th ParaSite New Media Symposium

Nov 1
Games: play some!
(Irene and ?)
or
Media Archeology:
discuss Wendy Chun's New Media Old Media

Nov 14 or 15
New Media and Film:
Presentation by Professor Kristen Whissel on digital special effects

Nov 28 or 29
Professionalization workshop:
writing syllabi

Dec 12 0r 13
Interactive Art:
OliverGrau's Media Art Histories (2007)

Th 9/27 5:30pm: Anne Friedberg's "The Virtual Window"

2007-09-21T06:41:00.000-07:00

The New Media Working Group will hold its second meeting on Thursday, September 27th at 5:30pm in the Rhetoric and Film library, 7337 Dwinelle.

In addition to planning for the upcoming Oct. 26th ParaSite new media symposium, we will be discussing "Chapter 5: The Multiple" from Anne Friedberg's new book "The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft" (MIT 2006) and the accompanying, interactive project produced for "Vectors," an online journal.

The Multiple chapter (plus the Introduction for perusing) is available for photocopying from Brooke Belisle's box in the Rhetoric/Film office (7408 Dwinelle Hall, open M-F 9-5pm), and in pdf form (14 MB) here:
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~ichien/ucbnewmedia/friedberg_virtualwindows.pdf

The online project can be viewed at the Vectors site:
http://www.vectorsjournal.org/index.php?page=7&projectId=79

Professor Friedberg teaches Critical Studies in the School of Cinema-Television at the University of Southern California. Her new book "The Virtual Window" traces the window as a conceptual metaphor and material interface that extends from at least the fifteenth century through today's digital media. She is also the author of "Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern."

9/13: Fall 07 New Media Working Group Kick-Off Meeting

2007-09-14T06:54:00.000-07:00

Thank you to everyone who attended the first new media working group meeting of the semester, and to all who expressed interest in participating but couldn't make the meeting. It's great to have such a diverse group of people interested in the contentious but exciting field of new media.

Below is a prospectus of potential readings and events around which to organize our meetings for the academic year. There is a list of different frameworks through which to interrogate new media paired with specific readings that we might be interested in working through together. And there is also a list of bay area exhibitions/events that we might be interested in collectively attending.

The idea is for each of us to take up the presentation and discussion of a reading/event that reflects our interests, practices, or disciplinary framework. So please review the prospectus for themes and readings for which you might want to lead a discussion. (We could have 1-2 seminar leaders per meeting.) And if you don't see anything that you could take up, please offer feedback and ideas for other frameworks, themes, readings, and events that should be represented. We can then work to schedule meetings organized around the readings/events that we are most interested in pursuing.

READINGS

New Media and Visuality
discuss Anne Friedberg, The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft

New Media and Gaming
discuss Alexander Galloway, "Cinematic Origins of the First-Person Shooter" in Games: Essays on Algorithmic Culture

October 26 ParaSite New Media Symposium

Media Archeology
discuss Wendy Chun's New Media Old Media

Professionalization workshop
discuss developing new media syllabi

New Media and Cinema
discuss Kristen Whissel, "The New Verticality: Upward Mobility and Digital Special Effects"

Digital Interactivity and Interactive Media
discuss Claire Bishop's Participation

Literature and New Media
discuss Adelaide Morris's New Media Poetics

Digital Media and Post-Photography
discuss Geoffrey Batchen's Ectoplasm

Professionalization workshop
discuss the job market and strategies for getting hired to teach new media

New Media and Visual Studies
discuss Whitney Davis, "How to Make Analogies in a Digital Age"

New Media and Cultural Studies
discuss Mark Hansen, "Digitizing Race" from Bodies in Code

New Media and Philosophy/Cognitive Science
discuss Alva Noe's Action in Perception

New Media and Performance
discuss reading TBA

New Media and Music
discuss reading TBA

EVENTS & EXHIBITIONS

"Continuous City" by The Builders Association, Oct. 5, 6, 12, 13 at 8pm, Oct. 7, 14 at 2pm, Zellerbach Playhouse, UCB

"Dark Matters: Artists See the Impossible" group exhibition, including Listening Post by Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin, at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts through Sunday, Nov. 11, 2007

Jeff Wall retrospective, at SFMOMA Saturday, Oct. 27, 2007 - Sunday, Jan. 27, 2008

Olafur Eliasson, "Take Your Time" immersive installation, at SFMOMA through Sunday, Feb. 24th, 2008

Douglas Gordon retrospective, at SFMOMA Saturday, Oct. 11, 2007 - Sunday, Feb. 24, 2007

April 20 & 21: Jim Campbell exhibition and gallery talk

2007-04-21T11:06:00.000-07:00

April 20
Jim Campbell exhibition "Home Movies" at Hosfelt Gallery in San Francisco

April 21
Jim Campbell gallery talk at Berkeley Art Museum

The New Media Working Group attended the Jim Campbell exhibition in SF and talk at BAM. Jim Campbell was born in Chicago in 1956 and lives in San Francisco. He received degrees in Mathematics and Engineering from MIT in 1978. He transitioned from filmmaking to interactive video installations in the mid 1980s. His custom electronic sculptures and installations have made
him a leading figure in the use of computer technology as an art form.

Thurs 2/22: Mark Hansen's Bodies in Code

2007-03-27T16:13:00.000-07:00

Please join the New Media Working Group...
Thursday February 22nd at 2pm in the Rhetoric library (7337 Dwinelle)
to discuss Mark Hansen's book "Bodies in Code: Interfaces with Digital Media"

Feel free to join the conversation without having read the whole book.

Read the Table of Contents and a short excerpt here.

Publisher's Description:
Bodies in Code explores how our bodies experience and adapt to digital environments. Cyberculture theorists tend to overlook biological reality when talking about virtual reality, and Mark B. N. Hansen's book shows what they've been missing. Cyberspace is anchored in the body, he argues, and it's the body--not high-tech computer graphics-- that allows a person to feel like they are really moving through virtual reality. Of course these virtual experiences are also profoundly affecting our very understanding of what it means to live as embodied beings. Hansen draws upon recent work in visual culture, cognitive science, and new media studies, as well as examples of computer graphics, websites, and new media art, to show how our bodies are in some ways already becoming virtual.

Post-Resonance Project Game Demo

2007-03-27T14:53:00.000-07:00

Brooke, Deniz, Greg, and Medina watch Deniz's brother play the game-in-progress "Joint Balance" in the BID Lab, 12/8/2006

Radical Software photo

2007-03-27T14:46:00.000-07:00

Meredith and Kris at the CCA Radical Software exhibition opening, 11/28/2006

Friday, Dec. 8th: The Resonance Project performance

2006-12-05T15:26:00.000-08:00

For December, the NEW MEDIA WORKING GROUP will attend the tele-immersive dance performance "Reception" by The Resonance Project, and follow it up with a discussion of a chapter from Mark Hansen's book Bodies in Code: Interfaces with Digital Media.

***
THIS FRIDAY December 8th, 6pm;
Hearst Memorial Mining Building front lobby, UC Berkeley.
Attend free performance of "Reception" by The Resonance Project
http://www.citris-uc.org/Dec8-2006-Dance

The Resonance Project is a team of choreographers, computer engineers, and visual and sound artists who are investigating concepts of presence/remote presence and corporeal and code interactivity within live and media based performance. Unique to the project is the use of a 'performance as research' model, within which scientists and artists collaborate to explore a re-visioning of cyber culture and corporeal presence.

***
Wednesday, Dec. 13th, 5:00 to 6:30 pm;
226 Dwinelle, UC Berkeley.
Meet to discuss the Introduction and Chapter 1 excerpt from Mark Hansen's book Bodies in Code: Interfaces with Digital Media (Routledge, 2006). Copies will be made available this week.

Mark Hansen teaches cultural theory and comparative media studies at the University of Chicago. He is author of Embodying Technesis: Technology Beyond Writing (Michigan 2000), New Philosophy for New Media (MIT 2004), and Bodies in Code, as well as numerous essays on cultural theory, contemporary literature, and media. His essay, The Time of Affect, or Bearing Witness to Life appeared in Critical Inquiry in Spring 2004. He has co-edited (with Taylor Carman) The Cambridge Companion to Merleau-Ponty and is currently co-editing two volumes: Critical Terms for Media Studies (with W.J.T. Mitchell) and Neocybernetic Emergence (with Bruce Clarke). He is currently at work on three projects: The Politics of Presence, a study of embodied human agency in the context of realtime media and computing, Becoming-Human,
an ethics of the posthuman, and Fiction After Television, a study of the novel in the age of digital convergence.

Tues, Nov 28th: Radical Software exhibition opening

2006-12-02T18:47:00.000-08:00

This Tuesday, the NEW MEDIA WORKING GROUP will visit the exhibition opening of "Radical Software: Art, Technology and the Bay Area Underground" at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco.

Tuesday, Nov. 28th, 7:30 to 9:00 pm;
California College of the Arts, Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, SF;
1111 Eighth Street (at 16th and Wisconsin), 2nd Floor.
Attend opening of "Radical Software" exhibition:
http://www.wattis.org/exhibitions/2006/
Map/directions:
http://www.cca.edu/about/directions.php
The space is relatively small, so let's just find each other in the gallery.

*****
Radical Software: Art, Technology, and the Bay Area Underground

At the first Hackers' Conference in 1984, Stewart Brand—former Merry Prankster, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, the Global Business Network, and the Long Now Foundation—made his often-quoted claim that "information wants to be free."

Radical Software, which is cosponsored by Wired, will combine artworks, experimental film and video, documentary material, and artifacts that trace the (counter)cultural discourse that made Brand's assertion possible: from its early manifestations in the postwar bohemian underground to its adoption as a basic principle by a new generation of artists, hackers, and activists.

Charting previously unexplored connections between art, technology, radical politics, and the psychedelic underground, the exhibition will bring together radical and experimental work by internationally known and emerging artists, plus commissioned projects, public works, historical artifacts, and new research.
*****

Fri, Nov 17th: Wendy Chun on Software

2006-12-02T18:45:00.000-08:00

For November, the NEW MEDIA WORKING GROUP will be meeting with Wendy Chun and discussing her article, "On Software, or the Persistence of Visual Knowledge," as a framework for visiting the new exhibition "Radical Software: Art, Technology and the Bay Area Underground" at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco.

** Note new date/time/location! **
THIS FRIDAY November 17th
12:00 to 1:00 pm -- meet to discuss essay by Wendy Chun, linked below
1:00 to 2:30 pm -- meet Wendy Chun
Rhetoric Lounge, 7th floor (F/G) Dwinelle Hall, UC Berkeley

Wendy Chun is Associate Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. She has studied both systems design engineering and English literature, which she combines and mutates in her current work on digital media. The NMWG will convene to discuss "On Software, or the Persistence of Visual Knowledge" by Wendy Chun (grey room 18,
winter 2005, 27-52) preceding a grad student meeting with her:

http://www.brown.edu/Departments/MCM/people/chun/papers/software.pdf

Tuesday, Nov. 28th, 7:30 to 9:00 pm;
California College of the Arts, Wattis Institute for Contemporary
Arts, SF. Attend opening of "Radical Software" exhibition:
http://www.wattis.org/exhibitions/2006/software/

Fri, Oct 20: SFAI talk by Beth Coleman

2006-12-02T18:40:00.000-08:00

October 20, 5pm

The New Media Working Group will attend a talk by media artist and scholar Beth Coleman at San Francisco Art Institute:
http://www.sfai.edu/Event/Event.aspx?eventID=1638&navID=261&sectionID=7

* * *

about Beth Coleman, from her faculty page at MIT:
(http://web.mit.edu/cms/People/coleman.html)

Beth Coleman is Assistant Professor of Writing and New Media in the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies and Comparative Media Studies. She is faculty director of the C3 game culture and mobile media initiative. Her fields of research interest include new media, contemporary aesthetics, electronic music, critical theory and literature, and race theory. Under the name M. Singe, she co-founded the SoundLab Cultural Alchemy project, established in 1995.

Her scholarly and literary writings have been published by the British pavilion for the Venice Bienale, 2003; Broadway/Random House; Gagosian Gallery; Sammlung Goetz Collection; and New York University Press, as well as in journals including Artforum, Artbyte, and Nka: Journal for African Art. Coleman is a 2003-4 Rockefeller New Media Fellow and a 2004 Ford
Foundation fellow. Her artwork has been exhibited internationally at P.S.1 Museum of Contemporary Art, Mirror's Edge exhibition, ARC/Musee d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, Massachusetts Institute of Technology List Gallery, among other venues. She has been working internationally as a sound artist since 1997, with her music appearing on various electronic music labels including SoundLab Records.

Coleman received the BA from Yale University in 1991, and the Ph.D. in comparative literature from NYU in 2004. Before arriving at MIT, she was a 2004 artist-in-residence at the Waag Society for Old and New Media, Amsterdam where she completed the art and architectural installation, Music Box. She is currently working on a mongraph entitled Difference Engines:
Race as Technology.

Tues, Oct 3rd: First Meeting

2006-12-02T18:39:00.000-08:00

This year's New Media Working Group will meet twice each month--once to discuss readings and share work, and once to attend an event or exhibition in the Bay Area. For October we have chosen Jay Bolter's "Windows and Mirrors" and a talk by Beth Coleman in San Francisco (see below). At our first meeting we will set a course for the rest of the fall, so please bring your ideas for events and readings. Overall, our theme this year is "Temporality"--chosen to coordinate with the year-long Measure of Time exhibitions and screenings. We hope such a broad theme will allow graduate students from multiple departments to collaborate around a shared interest in the social, political, aesthetic, and philosophical implications of digital media. Our work together over the year will be geared toward hosting a New Media conference and art exhibition at Berkeley in Fall 2007.

First Meeting:
Tuesday October 3rd, 6pm, Rhetoric Library

First Reading:
At our first meeting on October 3rd we will discuss the Introduction and Chapter 1 of "Windows and Mirrors," a book by Jay Bolter and Diane Gromala published in MIT's New Media series. You can download these excerpts here:
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=9906&mode=toc

First Event:
Friday October 20th, 5pm, SFAI Lecture Hall, 800 Chestnut Street
Talk by media artist and scholar Beth Coleman at San Francisco Art Institute:
http://www.sfai.edu/Event/Event.aspx?eventID=1638&navID=261&sectionID=7

Welcome to the UC Berkeley New Media Working Group

2006-12-02T18:20:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the UC Berkeley New Media Working Group blog. This is the place where we will document and reflect on each semester's meetings and events.

The NEW MEDIA WORKING GROUP invites graduate students and faculty from multiple departments to collaborate around a shared interest in the social, political, aesthetic, and philosophical implications of digital media. We will meet twice each month--once to discuss readings and share work, and once to attend an event or exhibition in the Bay Area.

Organizers: Irene Chien (Film & New Media), Brooke Belisle (Rhetoric & Film)
Sponsored by the UC Berkeley Townsend Center for the Humanities