Lunds universitet | Humanistiska fakulteten

How are computer games experienced as meaningful? Playability and Experienced Significance.

INVITATION TO HEX DIGITAL CULTURES AND GAMES LECTURE AND LAB:

WHO: Dr. Olli Tapio Leino, City University of Hong Kong.

WHAT: How are computer games experienced as meaningful?  Playability and Experienced Significance.

Why are in-game monsters frightening? What is erotic about erotic Tetris? Are the decorative stickers with which the players can decorate their virtual cars in Need for Speed: Undercover (2008) a waste of (in-game) money? In short, how does significance emerge in computer game play? Furthermore, what is the role of technology in this signification, and, how do computer games compare to other forms of new media in this regard? While the answers to these kinds of questions related to interpretation and experience are presupposed by critique and analysis of computer games and other playable new media forms, they are seldom explicated in detail. In this lecture, I discuss the ways in which meaning emerges in interactions with playable media forms. I will discuss also the challenges these forms of signification pose to the paradigmatic methods of interpretation, analysis, and critique of new media.

Conceptualizing computer games through the traditional “game” metaphor has been at the heart of the emerging tradition of game studies for the past decade. Computer games have been described using concepts like “rules”, “winning” and “losing”. In this lecture, however, I argue that for understanding how significance emerges in computer game play, i.e. how and why players find details in computer games meaningful, the game metaphor is slightly problematic. This is because computer game play, more than “traditional” game play, is underpinned by the involvement of technology. Admittedly, computer game play, too, is a human practice, but it is a practice defined by the involvement of technological artefacts rather than rules governing human behavior. These technological artefacts, are not simply at the service of human players like pawns on a Monopoly board, but assume an active role alongside the human subject in co-shaping and transforming the experience of play.

To complement the game metaphor, I identify “playability” as an affordance of a kind of audience engagement characterized by a duality of freedom and responsibility. By introducing themes from existentialism and post-phenomenological philosophy into a game studies framework, I focus on the ways in which playable technological artefacts, like computer games, social media applications and electronic artworks offer themselves to be experienced as significant. Contrasting playability with “playfulness”, considered as a set of aesthetic strategies, constitutes a position from which contemporary computer games and other playable artefacts, and our attempts at making sense of them, can be related to preceding forms of art and culture like participatory and performative art on the one hand, and to the contemporary forms of interactive, perhaps playful but not necessarily playable, art and media on the other.  The ensuing lab session, led by Dr. Hanna Wirman and Dr. Olli Leino, we will look at examples that illustrate the themes of the lecture in more detail.

WHEN: Nov 15, 2011. 15 – 18

15.15-16.45 Lecture + Q & A
** small break **
17.00-18.00 Exercises in the computer lab

WHERE: Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences, Lund. Room 109, ground floor, to the left, in Kulturanatomen at Biskopsgatan 7 . The ensuing lab will be held at Biskopsgatan 7, in basement game labs 022 and 019. We’ll lead you there.

HOW: Drop in. It is not mandatory to announce your participation ahead of time, but it is much appreciated! Please email: jessica.enevold@kultur.lu.se

Welcome!

Jessica Enevold
Seminar coordinator HEX Digital Cultures and Games Series

Posted under Aktiviteter

This post was written by sakj on November 3, 2011

Sveriges andra Science Slam avgjord

Ett halvår efter att HEX arrangerade Sveriges första Science Slam var det i går kväll dags för ett andra tillfälle, även det inför en engagerad publik på restaurang Carlssons trädgård. Fem forskare inom området Humaniora och Teologi mötte utmaningen att på kort tid och på ett engagerande, underhållande och inte minst tydligt och begripligt sätt förklara sina egna forskningsfrågor för publiken. I ännu högre grad än vid premiären utnyttjade forskarna möjligheten att använda valfri rekvisita, hjälpmedel och interaktion med publiken. Förutom olikheterna i själva presentationerna, bidrog även deltagarnas vitt skilda ämnesområden till en berikande variation:

Christer Eldh (Service management)

Kerstin Gidlöf (Kognitionsvetenskap)

Johanna Rosenqvist (Konsthistoria och visuella studier)

Olof Sundin (Biblioteks- och informationsvetenskap)

Anna Clara Törnqvist (Litteraturvetenskap)

Även om det centrala i Science Slam är att erbjuda publiken levande och spännande inblickar i en rad nya ämnen och aktuella forskningsprojekt, så ingår det ju också ett tävlingsmoment i en Science Slam. Igår var det Kerstin Gidlöf, doktorand vid Filosofiska institutionen, som segrade efter att ha gett åhörarna en tankeställare kring hur vi ställs inför en oss ofta övermäktig mängd information, när vi ska lösa en så vardaglig och viktig uppgift som att inhandla livsmedel på ett sätt som motsvarar våra ambitioner om att finna bästa pris, kvalitet etc. Vi hoppas inom kort kunna presentera bilder från presentationen på HEX YouTube-kanal.

HEX-gruppen välkomnar synpunkter och önskemål som kan vara värdefulla inför kommande Science Slam-arrangemang.

Posted under Aktuellt

This post was written by hex on May 17, 2011

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Nu är det dags för det 2:a svenska Science Slam

Den svenska premiären för Science Slam i Lund den 30 november 2010 blev mycket uppskattad och väckte genast önskemål om en uppföljning. Nu bjuder HEX-gruppen vid Lunds universitet (område HT) in till nästa Science Slam, som äger rum på Carlssons Trädgård måndagen den 16 maj klockan 17.30.

Inom Science Slam presenteras egen forskning i ett populärvetenskapligt föredrag om högst tio minuter. Precis som hos förebilden Poetry Slam är arrangemanget upplagt som en tävling där deltagarna får använda alla medel i syfte att låta publiken komma forskningsuppgiften riktigt nära, och att presentera den på ett informativt och samtidigt underhållande sätt. Liksom vid premiären presenteras forskning med anknytning till olika områden inom humaniora och teologi.

Läs mer om science slam-premiären och på Lunds universitets nyhetssida kan du se en video med Sven Strömqvists vinnande bidrag.

Passa även på att se HEX egna filmer från slammet på HEX youtubekanal - HEXILUND

Plats: Carlssons Trädgård, Mårtenstorget 6
Tid: kl 17.30 måndagen den 16 maj (restaurang och bar öppnar 17.00)
Du är välkommen med frågor om Science Slam till:
Anders Marklund, anders.marklund@litt.lu.se

Posted under Aktiviteter, Nyheter, Okategoriserade, Projekt

This post was written by sakj on May 6, 2011

HEX TV: a project and a kick off [Annette Hill]

Today we can watch TV in many different ways, we make use of TV in many different ways: traditionally broadcasted in televison, buying or hiring DVD-boxes, or watching TV directly on the web, etc. We look at, and we listen to, and we experience televised communication and – in a broad sense – storytelling in many different ways, when we want to and where ever we want to. And when we speak of TV-series these days, much is different compared to the situation just a cople of decades ago, also concerning the status of TV. With the contemporary manifold of TV dramas we speak of yes, TV DRAMA! TV-series are today more popular than ever, and has become more and more regarded as something more than just entertainment for the moment. TV fiction has become an artform.

This has served as an intriguing starting point for HEX, and the upcoming project HEX TV. During the fall 2011 we will arrange a couple of open seminars and lectures dealing with TV fiction from different perspectives, with different critics and scholars invited to give presentations and lead discussions. In Spring 2012, a mini conference will take place, probably in april.

With the session led by professor Annette Hill, on the 15th of April, HEX started up the above mentioned project about television and storytelling, about modern TV-series and TV drama and its many implications and functions in todays intermedial and multimedial landscape of culture, media, and storytelling.

Annette Hill is professor in media studies at the Dept. of Communication and Media, at Lund University. She was earlier Professor of Media at the Communication and Media Research Institute, University of Westminster, in England. Annette has written and edited many books about TV. The Television Studies Reader (published on Routledge in 2004) is one title to mention here, and her latest contributions to the field is Paranormal Media: Audiences, Spirits and Magic in Popular Culture (Routledge, 2010). In this study Annette Hill takes a closer look at paranormal phenomena in popular culture and television. Annette Hill means that we today are experiencing “a paranormal turn in popular culture”.

In her presentation the 15th of April, Professor Annette Hill described and discussed how the paranormal takes place and functions in our televised culture. Hill mapped out some of the dominating charateristics of paranormal activity as it has been depicted and put in focus in popular culture in general as well as in TV fiction and reality TV shows specifically. The paranormal and its history is by many researchers – Hill included – pointed out as something closely connected to communication and media history in itself; just think about the word “medium”… Hill rounded off her session by trying to answer the question “What is an audience?”

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Professor Annette Hill after her session at The Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences, Lund University; discussing with one of the interested listeners in the audience.


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To get in the right mood for dealing with parnormal themes, the room where the seminar took place was darkened (this sunny day).


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The audience, here listening to Professor Annette Hill and her presentation, not only listened, but also came up with lots of interesting questions, for Annette Hill to answer.

(Photos by Mikael Askander)

Posted under Aktivitet, Aktuellt, Nyheter, Projekt

This post was written by mikael on April 18, 2011

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HEXTV 15/4 - STARTSKOTT för seminarieserie om TV-serier

annette-hill-book2Den 15 april arrangerar HEX en öppen föreläsning med tillhörande workshop, och det handlar om TV:

 

 

Professor Annette Hill, Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap, Lunds universitet, diskuterar moderna TV-fiktioner på temat vanligt-ovanligt. Efter Hills föreläsning följer en kortare workshop med diskussion utifrån föreläsningen.

Professor Annette Hill har skrivit och varit redaktör för flera studier om berättande i och upplevelser på TV och på film. I sin senaste bok – Paranormal Media: Audiences, Spirits and Magic in Popular Culture (2010) – problematiserar hon paranormala fenomen så som de skildras i TV-serier och upplevs av TV-tittare. I sin HEX-föreläsning tar hon sin utgångspunkt i resonemangen i nämnda studie.

Kaffe och bulle serveras under eftermiddagen.

Detta är startskottet för ett nytt projekt i regi HEX, som ska vrida och vända på TV-mediet i det samtida medielandskapet. I fokus står moderna TV-fiktioner och TV-mediets berättelser och berättande. Under 2011 kommer en serie med spännande gästföreläsningar och workshops att löpa, med 2-3 tillfällen under vår och höst. I april 2012 planerar HEX att arrangera en endagskonferens under nämnda tema.

Tid: 15 april kl. 13.15-16.00 ca prof Anette Hill

Plats: Sal 109, Kulturanatomen,

Institutionen för kulturvetenskaper, Biskopsg. 7, Lund

Varmt välkommen! 

                                                   Prof. Annette Hill 

 

 

 

 

Posted under Aktuellt, Nyheter

This post was written by hex on March 31, 2011

How to Preserve Digital Games (and How Not To)

WHO: Dr Dan Pinchbeck, University of Portsmouth, UK.
Dan Pinchbeck plays, studies and makes first-person games. He is a senior lecturer at the University of Portsmouth where he teaches game studies and game design. His research covers experimental game design, story and content, player behaviour, and first-person gaming. He also runs thechineseroom, an award-winning independent game development team. More information about his development work can be found at www.thechineseroom.co.uk

As a preservationist, Dan is part of the KEEP consortium, running under the European Commission’s FP7 program. Within the project, his focus is on the specific issues surrounding game preservation, media transfer and graphical user interfaces. More information about the KEEP project can be found at www.keep-project.eu

WHAT:
Games are a vital part of contemporary culture and the most important emerging media form of the early 21st century. The rapid development of the medium and proliferation of artifacts, coupled with the rate of obsolescence of technological platforms presents unique challenges for digital preservation. Libraries, museums and other cultural heritage organizations have been slow to respond to these challenges, and there is still a profound lack of preservation of these important objects outside fan communities. A hugely significant part of contemporary culture, caught between a lack of strategic preservation and substantial technical challenges, is extremely vulnerable and risks being lost for future generations.
This lecture presents a state of play in international game preservation and the challenges facing us as game scholars, preservationists, developers and players. How do we ensure we capture this fragile history, overcome the issues of copyright, user-generated content, obsolescence of preservation platforms, hardware interfaces and the impossibility of capturing player experience?

Dan Pichbeck will focus particularly on how games, as a representative type of complex digital object, challenge the traditional preservationist focus on migration from obsolete technologies. Attempting to hold onto migration as a strategy for anything resembling a modern game almost guarantees failure. Whilst the debate over emulation continues to rage in digital preservation communities, retrogamers have been developing community-led emulation solutions to preservation, although these are not without their problems. I will introduce and discuss the KEEP project, an emulation-orientated new approach to the preservation of digital objects, particularly games, and show how this may go some way to addressing the problems. I will also discuss practical issues and solutions, and focus upon what preservationists – whether institutional or individual – can be doing, right now, to protect our gaming history.

The following lab will be an opportunity to explore some of these themes and issues in more detail: taking a variety of game objects through the preservation process to practically demonstrate the work involved, and exploring best practice and challenges. We will also look at current emulation solutions and discuss their strengths and weaknesses, and discuss practical implementation of an emulation-orientated preservation strategy.

WHEN: April 7, 2011. 15 – 18
15.15-16.45 Lecture + discussion
** small break **
17.00-18.00 Exercises in the computer lab

WHERE: Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences, Lund. Room 109, ground floor, to the left, in Kulturanatomen at Biskopsgatan 7 . The ensuing lab will be held at Biskopsgatan 7, in basement game labs 022 and 019. We’ll lead you there.

HOW: Drop in. It is not mandatory to announce your participation ahead of time, but it is much appreciated!
Please email: jessica.enevold@kultur.lu.se

PREVIOUS EVENTS IN THE SERIES, see:
http://hyphoff.kult.lu.se/hex/?p=464
http://hyphoff.kult.lu.se/hex/?p=461
http://hyphoff.kult.lu.se/hex/?p=378
http://hyphoff.kult.lu.se/hex/?p=393
http://hyphoff.kult.lu.se/hex/?p=398
http://hyphoff.kult.lu.se/hex/?p=418
http://www.lu.se/o.o.i.s?id=10081&list_mode=id&calendar_id=7218

Posted under Aktiviteter

This post was written by sakj on March 30, 2011

Remix Ethnography: Qualitative Research for Lived Experience of Media in a Mobile, Fragmented, and Global Epoch

HEX- Digital Cultures and Games Lecture and Lab
This time a joint seminar for HEX; the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies sections for Ethnology, Library and information Science; and the Master of Applied Cultural Analysis

“Remix Ethnography: Qualitative Research for Lived Experience of Media in a Mobile, Fragmented, and Global Epoch”

WHO: Dr. J. Annette Markham, Guest Professor, Centre for Internet Research, Aarhus Universitet, Denmark.

Annette Markham is Guest Professor at Institut for Informations- og Medievidenskab and Centre for Internet Research, Aarhus Universitet, Denmark.  Annette has studied identity and meaning in everyday life and has published ethnographies in journals including Qualitative Inquiry and Management Communication Quarterly. Her sociological work of online lived experience is well represented in the book Life Online: Researching Real Experience in Virtual Space (Sage, 1998). Her more recent research focuses on emergent qualitative methods in internet studies.  Works have been published in a range of journals, handbooks, and book collections, as well as her recent publication: Internet Inquiry: Dialogue Among Scholars (co-edited with Nancy Baym, Sage 2009). She is currently working on a book manuscript entitled: The Ethics of Fabrication. Annette can be reached at amarkham [at] gmail [dot] com; http://markham.internetinquiry.org/

WHAT: The internet—with all its capacities, interfaces, uses, and underlying technologies—both epitomizes and enables a seemingly constant barrage of reality-altering, globe-shifting changes. Technologies that were once separate and physically located now converge and move with the user to create individualized experiences of media. At the same time, social media and web 2.0 technologies facilitate complex networks of connection among people both locally and globally, across any media form imaginable, disrupting our traditional understandings of producer and consumer, user and object.  Materiality in this mobile epoch is better understood as connection, process, and relationship.

Conducting qualitative research in mobile, global, and fragmented media environments can be profoundly challenging. What and where is the object of analysis? How can we draw boundaries around the field when it is discursively constructed and never stable? Interestingly, perhaps, these challenges may have always been present in traditional research contexts, but the internet brings many invisible assumptions about qualitative inquiry to the foreground. Nonetheless, in mediated contexts, qualitative researchers must grapple with the problem of how to distinguish subject, object, and phenomenon when convergence of media intertwines them together. To deal with the challenges offered by complex contexts, do we cling to tradition, hoping for steady grounding? Or do we continually experiment?

Thinking about ethnographic practice through the framework of remix culture offers a means of reflecting on the premises ethnography but reconfiguring some of the practices associated with fieldwork, interviewing, and participant observation. A remix approach to ethnography focuses attention on the disjunctive and fragmented ‘moments’ of fieldwork; the impossible challenge of filtering potentially huge amounts of ‘data;’ and the complexity of creating an account that is both true to the lived experience of networked, multiphrenic participants and also readable as a somewhat coherent research report. Rather than relying on disciplinary and disciplined research methods, a remix approach considers seriously the notion that every choice made throughout the course of a project is a methodological decision with practical, epistemological, and ethical consequences.

This lecture addresses some methodological and ethical challenges and also offers some emergent methods for conducting qualitative research that is both creative and rigorous.

In the ensuing lab session we will illustrate and discuss in more depth some of the issues brought up in the lecture. More detailed description to follow.

WHEN: March 24, 2011. 15 – 18
15.15-16.45 Lecture + discussion
** small break **
17.00-18.00 Exercises in the computer lab

WHERE: Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences, Lund. Room 109, ground floor, to the left, in Kulturanatomen at Biskopsgatan 7 . The ensuing lab will be held at Biskopsgatan 7, in basement game labs 022 and 019. We’ll lead you there.

HOW: Drop in. It is not mandatory to announce your participation ahead of time, but it is much appreciated! Please email: jessica.enevold@kultur.lu.se

Welcome!

Jessica Enevold
Seminar coordinator HEX Digital Cultures and Games Series

PREVIOUS LECTURES IN THE SERIES, see:
http://hyphoff.kult.lu.se/hex/?p=461
http://hyphoff.kult.lu.se/hex/?p=378
http://hyphoff.kult.lu.se/hex/?p=393
http://hyphoff.kult.lu.se/hex/?p=398 and
http://hyphoff.kult.lu.se/hex/?p=418
http://hyphoff.kult.lu.se/hex/?p=437

Dan Pinchbeck will return in April - his seminar last year was cancelled due to volcano ashes!

Posted under Aktiviteter

This post was written by sakj on March 9, 2011

INVITATION to HEX Digital Cultures and Games Seminar Series - January 31, 2011.

What people do in Fantasy Gameworlds and How They Do It: How the User Interface Brings People Together in Massively-multiplayer Online Games

WHO: Dr. J. Patrick Williams, Division of Sociology, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Patrick Williams is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, where he teaches courses in social psychology, culture, and media. Patrick’s research on games and new media has been published in several journals including Symbolic Interaction, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography and Qualitative Sociology Review. He is the editor of Gaming as Culture (2006) and The Players’ Realm (2007) and is currently studying the motivational and immersive experiences of World of Warcraft players.

WHAT: Some of the biggest developments in video games over the last decade have been the growth of infrastructures that allow people to play together in visually-rich, persistent online gameworlds. With these developments (and coinciding with the success in fantasy films such as The Lord of the Rings trilogy), the classic fantasy genre that has long been popular among table-top role-playing gamers has become a backdrop to the leisurely pursuits of tens of millions of people. In Europe and North America especially, The World of Warcraft (WoW) has become the exemplar of the fantasy massively-multiplayer online game (MMOG), with more than 12 million current players.

Along with the growth in MMOG popularity has come the voices of moral entrepreneurs who see time spent online as idle and wasteful if not downright dangerous to one’s physical and mental health. One of the reasons I began studying online games like WoW was to provide some academic insight into the social aspects of motivation and immersion–why do people play games and what do they find pleasurable about their experiences. The questions I have been considering most recently are both about what people do in fantasy gameworlds and how they go about doing it. In this talk I will share some of my research on advanced players of WoW with a particular focus on how they utilize different technological tools in the User Interface (UI) to maximize their ability to play with other people.

WIlliams will focus on three aspects of WoW’s UI–visual, textual, and aural–in order to help think about the following kinds of questions:

–how does the game communicate with the player, and vice versa?

–what are players able to see as they play and what do they learn to see as important?

–how do players make sense of their existence in the game, of their behaviors, and the behaviors of others?

–what visual cues do they rely on as they play with others?

The ensuing lab session gets users to engage in two games with very different user interfaces in order to promote a discussion about player-to-UI interaction.

WHEN: Jan 31, 2011. 15 – 18
15.15-16.45 Lecture + discussion
** small break **
17.00-18.00 Exercises in the computer lab

WHERE: Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences, Lund. Room 109, ground floor, to the left, in Kulturanatomen at Biskopsgatan 7 . The ensuing lab will be held at Biskopsgatan 7, in basement game labs 022 and 019. We’ll lead you there.

HOW: Drop in. It is not mandatory to announce your participation ahead of time, but it is much appreciated! Please email: jessica.enevold@kultur.lu.se

Welcome!

Jessica Enevold
Seminar coordinator HEX Digital Cultures and Games Series

PREVIOUS LECTURES IN THE SERIES, see:
http://hyphoff.kult.lu.se/hex/?p=378
http://hyphoff.kult.lu.se/hex/?p=393
http://hyphoff.kult.lu.se/hex/?p=398 and
http://hyphoff.kult.lu.se/hex/?p=418
http://hyphoff.kult.lu.se/hex/?p=437
Dan Pinchbeck will return in April - his seminar was cancelled due to volcano ashes!

Posted under Okategoriserade

This post was written by sakj on January 10, 2011

Sveriges första Science Slam avgjord

HEX Science Slam vinnare 29 november 2010 - prisutdelning och tacktal!

Se Lunds universitets Youtube kanal och inslag.

Besök HEX egen youtube kanal och se fler inslag från slammet

Sveriges första Science Slam avgjordes igår på restaurang Carlssons trädgård. Att på kort tid presentera egen forskning så att åhörarna får nya kunskaper om den aktuella forskningsfronten i ett ämne, och samtidigt blir både roade och engagerade är för många forskare en ovanlig utmaning. Igår visade sex forskare inom området Humaniora och Teologi hur väl det kan fungera:

Lovisa Brännstedt (Antikens kultur- och samhällsliv)

Kristina Lundblad (Bokhistoria)

Joel Parthemore (Filosofi/Kognitionsvetenskap)

Anders Sigrell (Retorik)

Sven Strömqvist (Lingvistik)

Paul Tenngart (Litteraturvetenskap)

Största vinnaren igår var sannolikt publiken, som fick koncisa och livliga inblickar i nya ämnen och aktuella forskningsprojekt. I själva tävlingen segrade Sven Strömqvist som presenterade ett komparativt projekt om språk och kognition, och visade vilken betydelse modern utrustning och nya forskningsmetoder har. Äran att vara Sveriges första Science Slam-segrare är därmed Sven Strömqvists.

Äran att ha introducerat Science Slam till Sverige och att visa hur man kan möta en publiks intresse för aktuell forskning delar dock alla gårdagskvällens deltagare.

HEX-gruppen som stod för arrangemanget välkomnar kommentarer och synpunkter som kan vara värdefulla om det blir aktuellt med ännu en Science Slam till våren.

Posted under Aktiviteter

This post was written by hex on November 30, 2010

Science Slam

HEX anordnar Science Slam

I slutet av november kommer HEX-gruppen att arrangera Sveriges första Science Slam (se separat inbjudan under aktuellt).

Science Slam är en ny form av kommunikation av vetenskap till en publik som inte är specialister i ämnet. Inspirationen kommer från Poetry Slam, där originaltexter presenteras av poeten själv inför en publik som även utgör jury och röstar fram det segrande bidraget/poeten. I Science Slam är det i stället för poesi egna vetenskapliga resultat som presenteras av forskaren själv. Liksom hos Poetry Slam finns det en tidsbegränsning (som här är maximalt 10 minuter), men däremot finns inga hinder för att använda sig av hjälpmedel. Det är vanligt att presentatörer har en power-point, men även föremål, filmklipp och White boards får lov att utnyttjas. Juryn har inte i uppdrag att bedöma hur banbrytande själva forskningsresultaten är, utan juryns bedömning ska i stället, utöver förmågan att förmedla fakta om forskningen på ett informativt sätt, ta hänsyn till faktorer som kan rör hur forskningsresultatens betydelse åskådliggörs och, inte minst, hur underhållande själva framställningen är.

Science Slam startade i Tyskland, första gången vid TU Darmstadt (2006), senare av exempelvis Braunschweig (2008), Hamburg (2009) och Berlin (2010). Sammanlagt har tävlingar ägt rum i över femton tyska universitetsstäder.

Den information som finns om Science Slam är på tyska. Inte minst via organisatörerna vid de tyska universiteten, men även via medierapportering. Såväl lokala dagstidningar som ledande nationella tidningar, vetenskapsmagasin, radio-och tvprogram har rapporterat om tävlingarna. Ett par exempel:

Spiegel: „Willkommen auf der Uni-Showbühne“ om Science Slams Hamburgs-premiär i maj 2009.

Die Zeit: ”Show macht schlau”, om Berlins första Science Slam i januari 2010.

GEO: ”Science Slam: Fröhliche Wissenschaft” i anslutning till en Science Slam i Hamburg i oktober 2010.

3Sat: ”Zehn Minuten für das eigene Forschungsfeld”, ett tv-reportage kring ett arrangemang i Hamburg i februari 2010. (Även med tv-inslag som kann ses online.)

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: „Die Sendung mit der Maus für Erwachsene“, om en Braunschweig-Slam i november 2009.

I rapporteringen kring Science Slams brukar ett par saker genomgående lyftas fram, bland annat behovet av att kommunicera forskningsresultat utanför akademin, att publiken är delaktig och intresserad men även om att populariseringen innebär att detaljer inom forskningen utelämnas till förmån för det underhållande inslaget.

Lunds första Science Slam äger rum den 29 november i regi av HEX-gruppen inom HT-området. Till premiären kommer forskare från just HT-området att presentera egen forskning, men avsikten är att det framöver även ska anordnas Science Slams för hela Lunds universitet.

Posted under Aktiviteter

This post was written by hex on November 15, 2010