INVITATION TO HEX DIGITAL CULTURES SEMINAR SERIES:

WHO Patrick T. Gavin and Ahmad M. Kamal, Faculty of Media and Information, University of Western Ontario, London, Kanada

WHAT: At the Confluence of Ideologies: Social Media, Sustained Critique

Abstract: Foucault argued that “the work of deep transformation can only be carried out in a free atmosphere, one constantly agitated by a permanent criticism” (1988, 155). This “permanent criticism” is necessary because a “transformation that remains within the same mode of thought, a transformation that is only a way of adjusting the same thought more closely to the reality of things can merely be a superficial transformation” (155). The potential to realize “deep transformation” through the use of social media therefore necessitates a permanent critique of the technology’s various underlying ideologies. In this paper, we focus our critique on three specific ideologies that converge in many studies – whether celebratory or critical – of social media and its political efficacy: information, civil society, and democracy. We chose these three because they respectively presuppose what social media is about, whom it is for, and what it might accomplish.

The work of Day (2001a; 2001b; 2008) and Peters (1988) on the ideology of information demonstrate how capitalist, epistemological, liberal, and technocratic values are mobilized through a historical notion of information that acts as a totalizing, self-legitimizing trope. Information becomes at once an extensive yet narrow imperative colonizing social interaction and individual cognition. Dunn’s work on the ideology of democracy (2005, 2010) raises critique above the perennial debate over democracy’s best model (e.g., direct, deliberative, republican) by recognizing that democracy’s recent ascendancy as a political and rhetorical prerogative is contingent on its highly equivocal nature. Given democracy’s ambiguity, Post (2006) has argued that democracy is too shallow an ideology to redress the many injustices its proponents expect it to resolve, while Wood (2006) contends that it serves as ideological weapon for neo-imperialism. The ideology of democracy is arguably a detour on the path to social welfare and equality. The ideology of civil society underwrites both information networks and genuine democracy. Ehrenberg (1999) demonstrates its convoluted history and shakes it free of many celebratory assumptions. Perhaps most significantly, Ehrenberg reveals civil society as complicit in liberal policy. Meanwhile, the work of Mansbridge (1980) suggests that an overestimation of civil society obscures local exercises of coercion and exploitation.

Despite the importance of the aforementioned studies, they suffer drawbacks we hope to rectify. First, these analyses are usually done in isolation despite the interconnectedness of the concepts. Second, these studies either predate or ignore the introduction of new media, raising the question whether social media has since transformed these ideologies so as to require re-evaluation of the critiques of Day, Dunn, or Ehrenberg. Third, despite posing powerful rebuttals to the vaunted power of information, democracy, and civil society, the studies we draw upon have received limited uptake in popular, academic, and critical discourse. Bringing together all of these critiques in the present discussion on social media’s socio-political possibilities is important. It allows us to begin systematically unpacking the ideals that are now interwoven in both the rhetoric of “Facebook Revolutions,” “Twitter Uprisings,” and “Democracy 2.0,” and the more nuanced evaluations of social media’s transformative efficacy. By revisiting the critical analyses above we endeavor to engage in Foucault’s permanent critique, and thereby continue to scrutinize the assumptions in political discourse in the 21st century.

WHEN? April 27, 13.15–15

WHERE? Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences, Lund. Room 202, 1st floor, in Kulturanatomen at Biskopsgatan 7.

If you have any questions conserning the seminar, please contact  hanna.carlsson@kultur.lu.se

Welcome!

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I torsdags besökte Syntjuntan Kulturanatomen och Institutionen för kulturvetenskaper. Syntjuntan är en ensemble kvinnliga tonsättare, musiker och instrumentbyggare som vill bidra till att öka kvinnors självförtroende och verka för att kvinnor tar den plats de behöver för att kunna genomföra sina idéer, utveckla sin musik och möta sin publik.

Workshopens deltagare fick sy ett instrument under sociala former, lära sig om teknik, elektronik och musik. HEXarna Jutta Haider, Robert Willim och Sara Kjellberg både deltog i och var med och anordnade workshopen.

Läs mer och kolla på bilder från torsdagens syntjunta

• Digitala-kulturer-bloggen: Workshop för att sy synt
• Institutionen för kulturvetenskaper: Syntjunta – hur syr man en synt och hur låter den?
• Sydsvenskans reportage: Syntmusik med nål och tråd
• Robert Willims blogg: Sewing circuits

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VAD: Pågående forskning

VEM: Max Liljefors, Associate prof., Ph.D.
 Dept of Arts and Cultural Sciences. I samarbete med konstnären Conny Blom

Projektet förenar medicinsk, humanistisk och konstnärlig forskning, och handlar om att utforma och genomföra ett experiment inom magnetresonanstomografi (Magnetic Resonance Imaging, MRI) vid Biomedicinskt Centrum (BMC) vid Lunds universitet, alternativt vid Norges Teknisk-Naturvetenskapliga Universitet, Trondheim, där vi har samarbete med projektet Picturing the Brain. Experimentet ska inte besvara någon medicinsk frågeställning, utan inriktas mot epistemologiska, estetiska och etiska implikationer av MRI och medicinsk MRI-forskning.

Beskrivning

Projektet har sprungit ur Max Liljefors VR-finansierade project ”Anatomy in the Expanded Field: Epistemology, Aesthetics, and Ethics in Contemporary Medical Imaging” (2011-2013). Hjärnskanningsbilder utgör en viktig del av medicinsk bildproduktion idag, och är dessutom det slags bilder som har rönt störst intresse utanför ett vetenskapligt sammanhang. Exempel är böcker som neurobiologen Carl Schoonovers Portraits of the Brain (2010), en populärvetenskaplig bilderbok av ”coffeetable-format” med MRI, PET och andra hjärnscanningsbilder, Youtube-kanaler dedikerade för hjärnfilmer från medicinska laboratorier, etc. Samtidigt ställer hjärnbilder och den medicinska forskning de används i grundläggande frågor om människan: hur definieras individualitet och frihet om all mental aktivitet beskrivs som synapser? Vilka former av genetisk och kemisk manipulation av individen är acceptabel och önskvärd? Hur regleras detta ekonomiskt och juridiskt? Står vi inför slutet av ”själens era”, och i början av ”hjärnans epok”? Nutida visualiseringar av hjärnan utgör del av dessa problematiseringar av människans väsen.

Projektets syfte är att applicera humanistiska och konstnärliga frågeställningar på MRI-teknologin. Konstnären Conny Blom har fått i uppdrag att studera MRI-apparaturens tekniska möjligheter och begränsningar och att sätta sig in i dess epistemologiska förutsättningar samt erforderliga forskningsmetodik.Syftet är att studera och perspektivera MRI-forskningens experimentdesign och metodologi såväl som de förutsättningar och begränsningar för forskningsfrågor som denna teknologi uppställer, från konstnärliga och humanistiska utgångspunkter.

Från att initialt haft MRI generellt som studieobjekt, har projektet nu fokuserat in på MRI-forskning om seendet, närmare bestämt forskning som syftar till att med MRI mäta hjärnaktiviteten under en seendeakt och att utifrån de uppmätta data rekonstruera de faktiska bilder som en person tittar på och upplever. (t.ex. Stanley, Li & Dan, 1999; Thirion, Duchesnay, Hubbard, Dubois, Poline & Dehaene, 2006; Naselaris, Prenger, Kay, Oliver & Gallant, 2009; Nishimoto, Vu, Naselaris, Benjamini, Yu, Gallant, 2011.) I korthet handlar det alltså om att överbrygga klyftan mellan objektivt registrerbar neural aktivitet och den subjektiva synupplevelsen, så att en dator ska kunna programmeras att skapa en ”avbild” av den specifika synupplevelse som ett visst mönster av hjärnaktivitet representerar. Intressant nog utgörs en vetenskaplig strategi för att uppnå detta av att försökspersonen först får se ett antal bilder (upp till tusentals) medan hans hjärnaktivitet registreras, så att en ”bank” av bilder med tillhörande hjärnmönster byggs upp i datorn, ibland tillsammans med en semantisk kategorisering av bildernas motiviska innehåll. Sedan matchar datorn det neurala mönster som en ny synupplevelse ger upphov till mot den i förväg upprättade ”bildbanken”, för att rekonstruera en så korrekt avbild av den nya synupplevelsen som möjligt. Vårt projekt inriktar sig på att undersöka och visa hur teknologiska, neurologiska, kulturella och estetiska aspekter inverkar på varandra i denna typ av MRI-forskning, t.ex. hur den teknologiska apparaturen styr hur seendeakten kan utformas; de arbiträra inslagen i tröskelnivån för vad som utgör ”matchning” mellan data; samt de subjektiva och kulturella faktorerna som spelar in i urvalet av bilder i bildbanken, deras motiv, beskärning, etc, samt i den semantiska kategoriseringen av bildmotiv – förutsättningar i strävan att uppnå en objektiv, neurologisk förståelse av mänskligt seende.

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WHAT: Ongoing research projects

WHO: Robert Willim, Researcher and teacher in European Ethnology

The aim of the project is to further develop my (Robert Willim) work combining art with ethnographic cultural analysis, and to explore the interzone between art and science. Since 2003 I’ve worked parallel as an artist in order to find connections and disjunctures between art and science, between ethnography, cultural analysis and art. Working with Art Probes is an attempt to develop methods and theoretical understanding of themes that are closely connected to my ongoing research on cultural economy and postindustrial transformations of place, landscape and environment.

In three conference presentations during the spring I will take my point of departure in a number of my artworks, using them as art probes, relating them to my research. The probes are there to give inspiration, to provoke questions and to simultaneously and paradoxically instill framings and evoke new associations, to inspire me to continuously search for patterns as well as gaps and aporias.

The works/probes in question are Surreal Scania (2006), Elsewhereness (2008-) and Close to Nature (2011). The first two works were made together with video artist Anders Weberg. As part of the project Working with Art Probes I will also write a chapter for a coming book edited by anthropologists Arnd Schneider and Christopher Wright. Working with Art Probes is a supplement to the research project Transformations of Ethnography, in which I work together with Tom O’Dell.

The conferences and the themes of the presentations are:

Designing and Transforming Capitalism, Aarhus University, February 9-10 2012.
Title of presentation: Coming Close? -Techno-Nature and The Longings for Intimacy.

Helsinki Photo Media, Aalto University Helsinki, March 29-30 2012
Title of presentation: In and out of Focus -The Cultural Dynamics of Mediation and Landscape.

Public Ethnography conference, Victoria, BC, Canada, June 1-2, 2012.
Title of presentation: Elsewhereness_ Evoking The Ethnographic and The Surreal.

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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

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.

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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

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?”

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.

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

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

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

Plats: Sal 109, Kulturanatomen,

Institutionen för kulturvetenskaper, Biskopsg. 7, Lund

Varmt välkommen! 

                                                   Prof. Annette Hill 

Posted under Aktuellt, Nyheter

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