mbf tod@y

The Italian Ivory Tower: Oldest Professors in Europe

"UNIVERSITA' italiana da svecchiare? Volgendo lo sguardo all'estero, sembra proprio di sì. I professori che insegnano negli atenei del nostro Paese sono i più vecchi d'Europa. L'impietoso panorama anagrafico è stato fornito dallo stesso ministero dell'Università che qualche settimana fa ha aggiornato i numeri relativi al personale docente. Il corpo accademico italiano, nell'ultimo decennio, non è mai stato così anziano come nel 2007. E il confronto internazionale ancora una volta ci colloca in coda alla classifica: siamo i più vecchi d'Europa.  [...] Nel nostro Paese, solo 4 docenti universitari su cento possono vantare meno di 34 anni. La percentuale di giovani schizza letteralmente in su oltralpe (il 21% di under 34 in Francia), Germania (32%) e Finlandia, dove le probabilità di stare "in cattedra" da giovanissimi è alta: 28%. Anche il Regno Unito dà molte chance (il 27% di docenti universitari con meno di 34 anni) ai propri giovani di intraprendere la carriera universitaria" (Salvo Intravaia, La Repubblica)

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Wu Ming 1 at MIT: The full lecture

"Slightly More Than Expected from a Band of Novelists: On How and Why a Group of Writers Called Wu Ming Set to Disrupt Italian (nay, European) Literature and Popular Culture (and then Came to Boston to Brag About It)

Wu Ming 1 is a founding member and representative of the Wu Ming Foundation, a collective of writers from Italy. Most members of the collective were deeply involved in the Luther Blissett Project, an international experiment in culture jamming, radical pranksterism and guerrilla mythology that ran from 1994 to 1999. During that time, a group of LBP activists wrote a controversial novel titled Q, which was published to much acclaim in 1999. In January 2000 the authors of Q founded the Wu Ming Foundation, which takes its name from a Chinese word meaning either "anonymous" or "five names" depending on how the first syllable is pronounced. The name is meant both as a tribute to dissidents ("Wu Ming" is a common byline among Chinese citizens demanding democracy and freedom of speech) and as a refusal of the celebrity-making machine which turns authors into stars" (MIT)

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Folding @ Home presentation @ Stanford (April, 25)

"Using the CPU power and communications abilities of unattended desktop computers throughout the world, the Folding @ Home project studies protein folding and misfolding. In this method of computer processing, known as distributed computing, different parts of a computer program run simultaneously on two or more computers that are communicating with each other over a network. By harnessing the power of many machines, researchers are able to analyze far more data than they might have been able to do so otherwise. Indeed, Folding@home has recently been acknowledged as the most powerful computer cluster on earth, exceeding a petaflop in performance. The Folding @ Home project runs on any modern computer, including Playstation 3s, and runs only when the computer is otherwise not being used. Join Professor Vijay S. Pande (Chemistry and Structural Biology) as he details the general history and methodology behind the distributed computing model, how this is a paradigm shift from the mainframe/supercomputer model, and how the Folding @ Home project utilizes this novel technique."
Stanford University Friday, April 25, 2008.  2:00 PM.

Location: Turing Auditorium (Polya Hall, Room 111)  [Map]

 

This is a fascinating project. I wrote about Folding @ Home for Rolling Stone Italy, suggesting that this is the true killer app for the PS3 (unsurprisingly, I received tons of hate mail from Sony's fanboys ;-). Stay tuned for a write up of the presentation!

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Cool Product Expo 2008 - today @ Stanford!

      Stanford University 650 Serra Mall, Palo Alto, CA, 94305  map       

"Stanford University's Cool Product Expo (CPX) is a showcase of products at the intersection of manufacturing, design, and cool. This year will feature radically innovative products from over 35 firms and the folks behind them. Admission is free to the public. This year’s CPX will feature advanced clean technology from BMW’s hydrogen 7, a solar car, the all-electric Tesla Roadster, and Wrightspeed X1 (an electric car that goes 0-60 in 3 seconds) to portable fuel cells and wind generators. Guests can check out what’s trailblazing in green, or explore a personal sport aircraft, a 3D immersive vest, an online game economics engine, DNA screening, a lighting solution for millions of people in developing countries, a neural interface for consumer electronics, … and a lot more diverse, innovative products all connected by cool design. Stanford's goal in organizing the event is to help enrich the community’s appreciation for product design and technology, so admission is free and open to everyone." (SFSTATION)

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Schermi interattivi. Il cinema nei videogiochi

Siamo felici ci annunciare un nuovo progetto editoriale intitolato Schermi interattivi. Il cinema nei videogiochi, interamente dedicato al rapporto tra videogame e cinema. Il nuovo volume, pubblicato da Meltemi Editore, inaugura una nuova serie di ricerche di natura trans-mediale, che prenderanno forma sulla carta e sullo schermo. Schermi interattivi. Il cinema nei videogiochi sara' infatti arricchito da un blog che offrira' risorse bibliografiche, saggi e articoli dedicati al tema del dialogo intermediale.

La scheda del volume: "Che tipo di relazione esiste tra cinema e videogiochi? Come cambia la narrazione nel passaggio dal grande schermo al monitor e alla televisione? Qual è il legame tra Hollywood e la Silicon Valley? Che differenza c'è tra guardare un film e giocarlo, tra il ruolo dello spettatore e quello del giocatore? Quali sono le conseguenze estetiche, commerciali e produttive del crescente interscambio mediale? Questo volume risponde a queste e ad altre domande attraverso i contributi di studiosi di fama internazionale nell'ambito dei game studies e della critica cinematografica: Barry Atkins, Matteo Bittanti, Alexis Blanchet, David Bordwell, Luca Castiglioni, Galen Davis, Mark Grimshaw, Rune Klevjer, Henry Lowood, Bernard Perron, Judd Ethan Ruggill. L'approccio è comparativo e multidisciplinare: gli autori esaminano il fenomeno da molteplici angolazioni."

Il volume sara' in vendita nelle migliori librerie ad aprile, nella collana Melusine.

Qui potete leggere l'indice.Il sito internet dedicato e accessibile qui. Il nostro obiettivo e' di proporre a livello settimanale nuovi contenuti dedicati al rapporto tra videogiochi e cinema ed offrire a studenti, ricercatori ed appassionati delle risorse utili per esplorare questa affascinante interazione, un database in continua espansione. Come per videoludica, saremo felici di esaminare possibili proposte di collaborazione. Per ulteriori informazioni, cliccate qui. Buona lettura e buona visione.
 

Link: Schermi interattivi. il sito ufficiale

Interactive screens coming near you

I am delighted to announce the imminent release of a new book on videogames. Titled Schermi interattivi. Il cinema nei videogiochi, (Interactive Screens. Cinema in games), this anthology of essays published by Meltemi Editore, in Italy focuses on the complex, and often contradictory relationship between videogames and film, between Hollywood and the Silicon Valley, between the act of watching a movie and playing a game. It has been a fun project - a very long one -  that involved a bunch of researchers scattered across the globe: Barry Atkins, Alexis Blanchet, David Bordwell, Luca Castiglioni, Galen Davis, Mark Grimshaw, Rune Klevjer, Henry Lowood, Bernard Perron, and Judd Ethan Ruggill. When we started this long journey, I was engaging tangos in Vegas with my buddies. Now that we reached our destination, I am still engaging tangos, but in different parts of the city - mostly rooftops and warehouses, 24 style. That is to say, the point of arrival is basically a new departure. During the process, Alexis and Rune had kids, others got new jobs. Some moved to a different country and others discovered new virtual realms . Everybody, as far as I know, is still manipulating images on the screen. Schermi interattivi. Il cinema nei videogiochi, will be on sale shortly (read: first week of April) in Meltemi's Melusine series (that features words of wisdom from gamers like Slavoj Zizek, Terry Eagleton, Judith Butler, and Iain Chambers among the others). In conjunction with the release of the book, I am launching a blog that offers additional information, essays, news, the inevitable glossary, and bibliographic resources. The content is entirely in Italian, but I might translate something into English for videoludica. Actually, that's a promise. And, yeah, the book cover art is by my hero Brandon Bird.

Link: Schermi interattivi. the official site

The Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium: Kota Ezawa

April 7, 2008 | 7:30pm | 160 Kroeber Hall UC Berkeley, California

 

Text, Slides and Videotapes 

 

Kota Ezawa, Artist, California College of the Arts

 

The Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium of the Berkeley Center for New Media presents a talk by the artist Kota Ezawa. Kota Ezawa's practice re-considers images from art-history and popular culture in animated videos, slide projections, lightboxes, collages and prints. His work has been shown is solo exhibitions at Hayward Gallery in London, Artpace in San Antonio, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Murray Guy Gallery in New York and Haines Gallery in San Francisco. He participated in exhibitions at Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, SF MoMA, the Andy Warhol Museum and Musie d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Ezawa is an Assistant Professor of Media Arts at the California College of the Arts.

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Metaverse U videos hit the web!

Hewnrik Bennetsen has been transcoding and uploading all the Metaverse U videos on the web. The Metaverse U blip.tv channel is here, four videos up there for now, but there will be blood, pardon, more. Henrik writes: "The premiere video is our own Vladlen Koltun of the Stanford Virtual Worlds Group who outlines a vision for how we may improve the content creation tools for the metaverse. As a specific example he demoes and explains Dryad, a tool for intuitively intuitively creating beautiful trees". Kudos to Henrik and Brandon for the amazing job!

"French students shy of real world", says the BBC

"But despite the nationwide passion for education, surprisingly, not a single French university makes it into the world's top 40. France may be a global leader in high technology, but employers complain that today there are far too few students studying science and technology and there are far too many studying "soft subjects" which leaves them ill-prepared to join the real world of work. " (Jane Kirby, BBC News)

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Mechademia

Frenchy Lunning is editing a wonderful book series called Mechademia for University of Minnesota Press. Issue 1 (The Emerging World of Anime and Manga) includes, among other things, "Assessing Interactivity in Video Game Design", a brilliant essay by J.P. Wolf, the author of a monograph on Myst for the videoludica book series. The recently released issue 2 of Mechademia,  subtitled Networks of Desire, "illuminates the techno-carnal fantasies, animalistic consumption, political nostalgia, and existential hunger underlying the most popular and influential expressions of Japanese popular culture today.". Highly recommended.

The official Mechademia website