Seed Grant Report — Emma Fraser on Media in Ruins & the Strong Museum of Play
Emma Fraser received a BCNM Faculty Seed Grant for exploring the form and aesthetics of new media and digital technologies. Read about the progress of the project below!
My 2022 seed grant proposal was directed toward two aims: completing a monograph, and developing my teaching in new media and media technology through archival research. The seed grant support research toward an existing project exploring the form and aesthetics of new media and emerging digital media technologies. Historically contextualized, the project is directed toward two aims: completing a monograph, and developing my teaching in new media and media technology through archival research.
This form of research demands in-personal engagement with particular sites and materials – specifically: the expansion of my existing fieldwork in cities that are represented as spatial and navigable environments in games (Denver and Seattle); and a visit to the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York. The funds for my 2022 BCNM seed grant were initially allocated for travel during Fall 2022, but some of the travel had to be postponed due to extreme weather events. These were rescheduled for Spring 2023. I made trips to Denver, Rochester, and Seattle in
March-April 2023.
I have delayed the reporting on this grant as I have been working on some outcomes that are significant. Specifically, the trip to the Strong Museum enabled me to apply for a Strong Research Fellowship to build on my scoping visit in 2023. I was recently notified that this was successful. I recently received notice that I was successful in my application,
and will be visiting the museum as a fellow in August 2024. At the same time, the visit to the Strong in 2023 led to conversations about a research collaboration with colleagues from The Netherlands, and we are in discussion about a possible NEH grant on the history of play in 2025, also centered around the Strong Museum collections. This also delayed my 2023 reporting due to time constraints on their end – we had hoped to submit the grant in this current cycle, but will aim for the next cycle.
The field work in Denver and Seattle included detailed field notes and photographs, and the material has been written into sections of my monograph The Digital is a Ruin, and also used to inform recent and forthcoming publications, including a planned publication in the Annals of the American Association of Geographers, as part of a special issue on
new media (due for submission in Fall 2024). My monograph proposal is due for submission to publishers in late Summer 2024.