Announcing the 2013-2014 History and Theory in New Media Lecture Series
The History and Theory of New Media Lecture Series brings to campus leading humanities scholars working on issues of media transition and technological emergence. The series promotes new, interdisciplinary approaches to questions about the uses, meanings, causes, and effects of rapid or dramatic shifts in techno-infrastructure, information management, and forms of mediated expression.
The History and Theory of New Media Lecture Series is produced by the Berkeley Center for New Media with support from CITRIS (The Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society).
Peter Lunenfeld – “Generative Humanities”
Thursday Sept. 19 | 5 pm | 370 Dwinelle Hall
Co Sponsored by the Program in Critical Theory
Peter Lunenfeld’s books include the co-authored Digital_Humanities (MIT, 2012), The Secret War Between Downloading and Uploading: Tales of the Computer as Culture Machine (MIT, 2011), USER (MIT, 2005), Snap to Grid (MIT, 2000), and The Digital Dialectic (editor, MIT, 1999). As creator and editorial director of the Mediawork project, he produced a pamphlet series for the MIT Press that redefined the relationship between serious academic discourse and graphic design, and between book publishing and the World Wide Web. He is a professor in the Design Media Arts department at UCLA and a steering committee member of the campus-wide, interdisciplinary Digital Humanities undergraduate minor and graduate concentration. http://www.peterlunenfeld.com
Eyal Weizman – “Forensic Architecture”
Monday Oct 28 | 4 pm | Geballe Room, Townsend Center
Co-sponsored by the Human Rights Program
Eyal Weizman is an architect, Professor of Visual Cultures and director of the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London. Since 2011 he has also directed the European Research Council funded project, Forensic Architecture, an institute that focuses on the place of architecture in international humanitarian law. He is also a founding member of the architectural collective DAAR in Beit Sahour/Palestine. His most recent books include include Mengele's Skull (with Thomas Keenan at Sterenberg Press 2012), Forensic Architecture (dOCUMENTA13 notebook, 2012), and The Least of all Possible Evils (Nottetempo 2009, Verso 2011). He has worked with a variety of NGOs worldwide and was member of the B'Tselem board of directors. He also serves on the advisory boards of the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London, and the Human Rights Project at Bard in NY.
Lisa Parks – “Media Infrastructures”
Thursday Nov. 7 | 4 pm | 470 Stephens Hall
Co-sponsored by the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine and Society
Lisa Parks is a Professor and former Department Chair of Film and Media Studies at UC Santa Barbara and serves as the director for UCSB’s Center for Information Technology and Society. Parks has conducted research on the uses of satellite, computer, and television technologies in different national contexts. Her work is highly interdisciplinary and engages with fields such as geography, art, international relations, and communication studies. She has published on topics ranging from secret satellites to drones, from the mapping of orbital space to political uses of Google Earth, from mobile phone use in post-communist countries to the visualization of communication infrastructures. She is the author of Cultures in Orbit: Satellites and the Televisual, and Coverage: Aero-Orbital Media After 911 (forthcoming). Parks is currently a co-PI with Elizabeth Belding on a $1.2 million research grant from the National Science Foundation that involves collaborating with people in the Southern Province of Zambia to create wireless network solutions for rural communities. (For more information see: http://moment.cs.ucsb.edu/?q=content/villagenet)
Lisa Nakamura – “Indigenous Circuits”
Thursday Feb 6 | 5 pm | Banatao Auditorium, Sutardja Dai Hall
Lisa Nakamura is a Professor in the Department of American Cultures and the Department of Screen Arts and Cultures at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her research interrogates both the performance of and assumptions embedded in representations of race and ethnicity in digital media, particularly within gaming cultures. These issues are at the forefront of her books “Race After the Internet” (co-edited with Peter Chow-White), “Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet,” and “Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet.” Nakamura is currently investigating transnational racialized labor and avatarial capital in a “postracial” world through the lens of Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games. http://lisanakamura.net/
Alex Galloway – “The Cybernetic Hypothesis”
Thursday March 6 | 5 pm | Banatao Auditorium, Sutardja Dai Hall
Co-sponsored by the Department of Film and Media
Alexander R. Galloway is a writer and computer programmer working on issues in philosophy, technology, and theories of mediation. He is a founding member of the software collective RSG (Radical Software Group), and creator of the Carnivore and Kriegspeil projects. Currently, he is an Associate Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. He is the author or co-author of five books on digital media and critical theory, including The Interface Effect (Polity, 2012), Les Nouveaux Réalistes: Philosophie et postfordisme (Léo Scheer, 2012), and The Exploit: A Theory of Networks (Minnesota, 2007). Galloway has received numerous awards including a Creative Capital grant (2006) and a Golden Nica in the 2002 Prix Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria). The New York Times has described his practice as “conceptually sharp, visually compelling and completely attuned to the political moment.”
BCNM critically analyzes and helps shape developments in new media from cross-disciplinary and global perspectives that emphasize humanities and the public interest. As a center actively engaged at the intersection between art/design, humanities, and information technology, BCNM serves as a focal point for unconventional thinking from a diverse community of over 100 affiliated faculty, advisers, and scholars from over 30 UC Berkeley departments.
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