News/Research

BCNM Around the Web February 2021

08 Feb, 2021

BCNM Around the Web February 2021

Check out the amazing work of our faculty, students, and alumni around the web this February!

Abigail De Kosnik

Gail was recently featured in a Explica article discussing the rise in piracy occurring concurrently with the increase in streaming premieres, calling 2021 "the beginning of the Platinum Age of Piracy.”

Check out the article here!

Gail is also set to give a keynote lecture at the FanLIS 2021: Building Bridges Programme Conference in May. Her lecture is titled "Memory, Archiving, and Futurity Among Fans and Pirates."

Learn more about the FanLIS conference here!

Alenda Chang

Alenda recently hosted a talk with Whaaat!? on nature and videogames.

From the description:

Alenda will discuss the critical role of video games in response to our burgeoning ecological crisis, and then lead us in some play-based activites that will delve into the surprising connections between games and nature.

Learn more about Alenda's talk and Whaaat!? here!

Noura Howell

Noura is a featured speaker for an ongoing series at North Carolina State University titled "Coffee & Viz: Designing for Emotional Meaning-Making with Data."

From the event description:

How might interactive data visualizations invite more social, emotional meaning making with data? How can sensor technologies allow space for human differences, uncertainty, and the irreducible complexity of human experiences? Howell will present her design research exploring different ways of knowing with biosensory data - data about people’s bodies, behaviors, thoughts, and feelings. Combining critical making, speculative design, and participatory experiences, her work challenges dominant techno-logics of data and explores alternatives. She makes with code, circuits, wood, e-textiles, and sound.

Learn more about this event and Noura's work here.

Bo Ruberg

Bo recently gave a talk titled "The Queer Games Avant-Garde" as a part of Exceptional Norm's Public Lecture Series Critical Perspectives on Technology.

From the talk description:

The queer games avant-garde is a vibrant network of independent video game developers whose radical, experimental, and deeply queer work is driving a momentous shift in the medium of video games. This talk draws from interviews with these innovative game-makers, tracing patterns and tensions across networks of contemporary queer and trans game development. Their insights go beyond typical conversations about LGBTQ representation in video games, however. What emerges from these conversations is an exploration of queer game-making practices, the politics of queer independent video games, queer aesthetics, and the future of queer video games and technology. Even as they wrestle with these topics, LGBTQ game makers subvert and redefine the medium of video games by placing queerness front and center.

Read more about Bo's work and the lecture series here!

Jen Schradie

Jen's work looking at the impact of COVID-19 and lockdowns in France was recently highlighted and featured in French newspaper La Dépêche.

From the article, roughly translated into English:

"We have seen an overall increase in the well-being of the population," summarizes Jen Schradie, an American sociologist who led the study. "People were finally able to find their families, they philosophized on the meaning of their life and were able to slow down their lifestyle. They organized virtual 'aperitifs' and were able to establish relationships with their neighbors", explains the researcher. .

She attributes this phase to a "paradox linked to a great shock in everyday life, which has already been observed with other crises" and which accentuates the sense of solidarity. “Remember the applause for the caregivers at 8 pm,” she notes.

Read the rest of the article here!

Jen also recently gave a lecture titled "The Revolution That Wasn’t: How Digital Activism Favors Conservatives" at Canada's The Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship, going over her work and book.

Learn more here.

Tiffany Ng

Tiffany released an album of Carillon lullabies, available for music download from the Ann Arbor District Library.

Check out Tiffany's music here!