I see most of the posts I have been preparing are but links or short news, with very little commentary - thing is, I am living underwater because of a series of paper deadlines (WHY, but WHY, did they conjure to put 6 deadlines in two months, even for conferences due in November?!) and will re-emerge only mid-March.
As an independent scholar (god, how I hate that term) looking for a suitable institution I need publications to back up my applications, and I am working on it, yes-siree.
So, during this period, I will try to keep up with the blog, which is still the only proof that I actually do research in my free and unpaid time, but posts will be shorter. Apologies.

The Italian translation of Jenkins’ Convergence Culture (”Cultura Convergente”) is published, with preface by Wu Ming (link in Italian). Check also the related post on the Aca/Fan blog.

“Faith Fighter is the ultimate fighting game for these dark times. Choose your belief and kick the shit out of your enemies. Give vent to your intolerance! Religious hate has never been so much fun”

Not cross media at all, but one of my favorite indie game developers, MolleIndustria, presented its last creature, after Operation Pedopriest, McDonald’s Videogame, the Tam-Atypic and many others.

/news courtesy of MBF Tod@y

A recent and rather shocking law from Minister Rutelli in Italy forbid the digital representation of art on the Internet, virtually cutting the Italian art market out from the rest of the world, promoting ignorance in art history, and sabotaging student researches.
In Italy there is a saying: “Fatta la legge, trovato l’ inganno” (as the law’s made, the trick is found); this time the trick was in the law itself, that at some point states: “The publishing of low resolution or degraded versions of protected images and sounds is allowed in the Internet Network, free of charge, for scientific and educational use, as long as this use is not aimed at profit”.
The key word now is “degrade” (like Italy hadn’t been degrading enough lately): the art group DegradArte is calling out for “degraded” versions of art works, here is a funny one of a Van Gogh degraded by junk (you must have read about the junk tragedy in Naples…).

While the purpose of these sort of laws would be to hold change back, they simply accelerate the process of remediation and cultural renewal. At the price of “degrading” masterpieces. Good degrading to all.

Technorati Tags: educational, Italy, participatory, remediation, Web 2.0

FROG (future and reality of gaming), otherwise called Vienna Games Conference, is due in Vienna, October 17-19, almost the same days of the AoIR, but I think I ll submit something anyway; if nothing else, the frog is my totem animal. The call for papers seems particularly interested in alternate reality games.

The call for SHORT (not long) papers for EuroITV 2008, happening in Saltzburg, July 3/4, is still open, deadline February 29.

E/C, the e-journal of the Italian Association for Semiotic Studies is publishing a special issue entirely dedicated to computer games.

This is the call for papers, deadline also February 29.

I wish I could write more on the blog, and that deadlines weren’t grouped in the months of January and February.

Who said leap years bring bad luck? You have one day more to work. Such luck, uh?

Technorati Tags: Call for papers

KateModern’s second season launched this week on Bebo.com, too bad I received the news only today; the first episode was two days ago, January 16. For whose who tuned in just now, KateModern is the British spinoff of brilliant cross media creation (how I need a decent genre definition!!! what is this stuff? “narrative”? “experience”? “franchise”? “participatory fiction”? “interactive online TV”?) LonelyGirl15, web soap, ARG, community, and whatnot. Some definitions from the press: “a new form of online TV entertainment that combines bite-size 1-4 minute show episodes with live interaction”. And Bebo.com is called “the world’s only global Social Media Network”. Anyway, enjoy. I was glad the average age shifted from the 16 of LonelyGirl15 to KateModern’s 20-something, so I feel less of a voyeur.

Sorry for the many short posts, this is a bad month with regards to deadlines, February will be better - the videocast of the Portland Conference Convergence are available on YouTube here, still the guys from the Convergence Culture Consortium, but also much more..

Finally one cross media event in Italy, organized by More Than Zero in Milan. There will be workshops, keynote talks by BBC executives, and even more interesting a competition for cross media projects, deadline for submissions February 29.
Thank you Zen for the link!

Technorati Tags: cross media, event, Italy

I wish I could say I have known and followed this artist since his beginnings, unfortunately the discovery dates only from last week. For all game art fans.
www.rgbproject.com

A very interesting debate is ping-ponging back and forth between the two blogs Personalize Media and FuturePresent, representing the views of respectively Gary Hayes and Claudia Marques Vieira, which I both met at the Cross Media Storytelling Conference in Mechelen; it is a heated debate with many crucial points and I wanted to throw in my humble personal opinion.

Everything started with a remark from Gary who made a distinction between “forward thinking practitioners, catch-up heritage media representatives and theoretical, reflective academics”.
Soon the argument degenerated into something like: what is more relevant to cultural evolution, industry or academia? Why academics will always be behind in the study of new/cross media (Greg) and why this isn’t true (Claudia)? And, I might add, why such an abyss separating practitioners and academics?

The extremely interesting times we live in are witness to a Digital Renaissance, and as we all know this destroyed, or is destroying, OK, maybe it “will” destroy eventually the separation between theory and practice.

All these new media forms and media languages are still in the making, thus it is (it should be) impossible to write about something without getting your hands dirty somehow (like I believe Claudia has done at various points), and on the other hand it is impossible to participate in the creation of these new forms without some reflection.

That is, for those who haven’t been completely brainwashed by this “theory is different from practice, and practice is dirty and we are pure thinkers” line of thought. Greg is a great example of “renaissance” attitude, and I wish industry put on its agenda new ways to stimulate reflective thoughts in their employees, that would be good for everybody.

Critical theory, the way it has become in the last 30 years, is often a byproduct of (popular?) culture, and even more often a style exercise involving always the same references (to know more about the standard references and authors of (bad) postmodernist theory, check out the “Postmodernist essay generator”, a must to all those interested in academia, theory, or really weird writing); THAT attitude towards theory, I agree, can be pretty useless and even misleading.

BUT there is some other kind of theory, a type of intellectual labor, honest, slow, robust and forceful, perhaps completely out of date, whose methods have been lost somewhere between the seventies and the eighties, some say because of new employment policies in academia that force researchers to focus on the short term and don’t allow broader scopes as before.

Call me deluded, but I sort of believe that THAT theory is just as creative as production-related activities, and should not indeed fall for the seductions of the 6 months deadline Greg at some point hints to, because exactly that is the problem with academia (NOT with Claudia, I repeat): on one side lack of contact with ongoing events but on the other side lack of broader scopes to pursue (and broader time frames to pursue them), and over-specialization that cuts creative thinking at the knees.

Although THAT kind of theory (can we call it Renaissance thought? Although I had in mind the great sociologists and anthropologists of the last century) has been drowned by other approaches, sometimes more unscrupulous, to theory, something that has become the norm in recent years, this doesn’t mean it’s not going to come back now, if we want to believe that Digital Renaissance is going to happen.

Suggested reading for everybody: Michael J Gelb, How to think like Leonardo, with plenty of tutorials about how to become a Renaissance man or woman.

Thanks for bearing my two cents, and my delusions for a better future. Hopefully, this blog is still pretty much unknown, so I can write whatever I want without bothering anyone.

Technorati Tags: educational, personal