New publications (June 2015-January 2016)
Publications sometimes seem to come in bursts and always with considerable time lag. I have been working on some large projects and I have had a few years with fewer publications. This is not a problem and there are many types of “deliverables” in academic work, but it is nice to…
Program for Critical Making Event Dec 1
Digging Deep: Ecosystems, Institutions and Processes for Critical Making December 1, 2015. CUNY Graduate Center Session 1, 12:30-2:30 pm Designing Institutions of Critical Thinking and Material Making General introduction Patrik Svensson and others Important issues and challenges (based on participant input) Four introductions/statements Anne Balsamo, New School Matt Ratto, University…
Presentation|Tech (IV): Curating events
Presentation, presentation technology and presentation culture all depend on curation and curatorial practice. In a sense, any presentation and presentation environment is curated. A number of choices have been made to create the environment even if it is a default type of setup with a screen upfront and rows of…
Being (digital) humans Nov 17
I am very happy to be part of the Being Human Festival (a festival of the humanities) in November in London. Lorna Hughes and I have been working with Sally-Jane Norman and Todd Presner to put together a panel on Being (digital) humans – a great group of collaborators and an…
Presentation|Tech (III): Angled Screens
One thing I noticed in the concept drawing of the lab (HUMlab, second section of the main campus lab) I discussed in the first part of this series is that there is an angled screen there. I use ‘angled screen’ (or ‘screens’) to refer to two or more adjacent screens set at…
Digging Deep – Critical Making Event on December 1, 2015
Digging Deep: Ecosystems, Institutions and Processes for Critical Making December 1, 2015 #critmaking Rooms C201 and C202 , CUNY Graduate Center (on 5th Avenue at 34th Street), New York City. Dec 1 update: Very welcome to today’s event! The full program is available here. Description “Making” has gained new currency through…
Presentation|Tech (II): Performing Scholarship
This second post on presentation technology and presentation culture addresses some personal reflections on the role of presentations and performance in scholarly life. The first post can be found here. Academic work and performance Most of us know the challenges and fun of doing job talks, asking questions at a conference, defending…
Higher Education and Space – recent examples
Higher education has a curious and contentious relationship with space and buildings. I am involved in several projects looking at the connection between the intellectual/operational mission of the university and its architectural materiality – the largest project looking at “interactive spaces” together with architect Anna Misharina and others. I will not go into…
Presentation|Tech (I): Preamble
This is the first installation in a short series of posts on presentations, presentation technology (software and infrastructure) and presentation culture (mostly within the academic setting). This first post gives some background to my personal interest in presentation technology and uses HUMlab as a key example of presentation infrastructure. I take…
Close Reading PowerPoint
Erica Robles-Anderson (NYU) and I have spent some dedicated time over the last year thinking about presentation technology and presentation culture. The first result of this collaborative work is an article on the history and critical context of PowerPoint and presentation software/culture (under review). We also thought that it would be…