Stuart Moulthrop Public Lecture, Melbourne Oct 10

Professor Stuart Moulthrop Public Lecture

Make a Better Door: Or, How Does Digital Humanism Humanize?

An interesting image for 2011.
A player/character in the most recent Portal game is literally locked out of her workplace and replaced by a pair of robots. From this resonant image of the human-computer interface a discussion will emerge to do with broader understandings of the digital humanities, media scholarship, and electronic literature. The focus for this approach will be the question famously posed by Richard Lanham’s: “how do the humanities humanize?” Professor Darren Tofts (Swinburne University of Technology) will moderate a conversation with Professor Moulthrop following his presentation.

Date: Monday 10th October, 2011
Time: 6.30-8.30 pm.
Venue: Village Roadshow Theatrette
State Library of Victoria
179 La Trobe Street Melbourne (Conference Centre, Entry 3)
Cost: FREE

Stuart Moulthrop is Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is an electronic literature pioneer, both as a theoretician and as a writer, and has published many of articles on the topic of games, network literature and digital media theory. From 1995-99 he was co-editor of the online journal Postmodern Culture and he is a founding board member of the Electronic Literature Organization (ELO). His hypertext Victory Garden (1992) was featured on the front page of the New York Times Book Review in a (now famous) review by American literary critic Robert Coover. Moulthrop is also the author of the hypertext fiction works Reagan Library (1999), and Hegirascope (1995), amongst many others. His recent work engages with digital games and its interface with media theory, electronic writing and scandal. His current work in progress is “Sc4nda1 in New Media,” an Arcade Essay that converges philosophical meditation with an actual video game. It can be accessed at http://pantherfile.uwm.edu/moulthro/index.htm.

Professor Moulthrop is a Visiting Research Fellow in the Faculty of Life & Social Sciences, Swinburne University of Technology, in association with the School of Media and Communication, RMIT.

Please repost wherever you think people might be interested!

Bad housekeeping

My blog’s been hacked! Hahahah. I’m flattered some cute little bot has found the time. If you start getting popup ads for a new weight loss product or sex pill….it’s not me doing it, honestly.

What a waste of time. Have to update everything and change all the passwords again.

G’bye Nelson

Just deposited Ted Nelson and Marlene at the airport. Along with his boxes, sticky notes, holepunch, bags, notebooks, camera, laptop, pens, textas. Tools to connect things with. Hope we can bring him back, and good luck in Sydney :)

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Xanadu: the Musical

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Went to see Xanadu: the Musical with Ted Nelson, his partner Marlene and Andrew Pam (Nelson’s friend and longtime collaborator) last night. The performance was about a greek muse called Kira who inspires a young man to build an 80′s themed rollerskating rink that “contains all the arts”. This big disco skatepark would house singing, dancing, music and all the “inspiration that left the arts in the 80′s”. The big business bloke who is meant to fund the skating rink hesitates though as it wouldn’t make money. Then Kira the Greek muse appears and he decides to realise the dream. It’s like they wrote this play specifically for Nelson – it even had a recitation of Coleridge’s Kubla Khan at the end. I think Nelson got a bit teary at the end but it could have just been the light.

Ted in Melbourne

Ted and Marlene will be staying here for couple of days while he is in Melbourne and I’ll be posting some photos and interview material and blogging about it here. Will share any interesting quotes.

The Institute for Social Research in conjunction with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries & Innovation are bringing him over here so remember to book with them: isradmin@swin.edu.au

Ted Nelson in Australia

Nelson is coming to Australia! He’ll be speaking in Melb, Syd and at QUT. See below for details.

Melbourne:

The Institute for Social Research in conjunction with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries & Innovation are delighted to present a public lecture from information technology pioneer and visionary Ted Nelson.

Monday, 4 April
Time: 7.00 – 9.00 pm
Venue: State Library of Victoria, Village Roadshow Theatrette

This is a free event but Bookings are essential. Contact isradmin@swin.edu.auindicating the number of tickets required.

Nelson will also be speaking at the University of Sydney on the 6th of April and at QUT on the 12th of April.