Join us Thursday\, March 22 from 12:30 unt il 2:00 in the lab (room 7388.01) for presentations by:

Stefano Morello\, Eng lish\, "East Bay Punk Digital Archive"
The East Bay Digital Punk Archi ve is an open access archive that aims to preserve free and democratic acce ss to the subjugated knowledge produced by several subcultural formations t hat emerged in the San Francisco Bay Area between the late 1970s and the mi d 1990s. Lawrence Livermore’s Lookout! zine (1984-1995)\, yet to b e collected in its entirety in any institutional archive\, plays a central role in this project\, as it represents an extraordinary\, previously unear thed\, document of punk’s alternative modes of existence and access to know ledge.

Join us Tuesday\, April 17 from 12:30 until 2:00 in the lab (room 7388.01) for presentations by:

Sheehan M oore\, Anthropology:

This project examines images that claim repr esentational authority over future landscapes in southern Louisiana. These images include maps and digital renderings of disappeared coastlines\, subs iding lands\, and underwater Main Streets – topog raphies that do not yet exist but that nevertheless demand action in the pr esent. They enter circulation in urgent news stories and fifty year urban m aster plans\, and they are magnets for words like ‘resilience’ and ‘retreat .’ At public planning meetings\, predictive maps that stage the parish land scape over coming decades are important guides for community decision-makin g. In order to better understand these risky images\, the futures they purp ort to represent\, and their effects in the present\, this project asks aft er the kinds of data sets and attendant assumptions that go into mapping th ese not-yet-existent landscapes. What inclusions and omissions make them po ssible? What contingencies or uncertainties are elided? These questions can help us understand how representations of climate futures set the paramete rs for action and imagination.

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Federico Di Pasqua\, Classics:

Introduction to Classical Cultures is a video-podcast series about the Classics that features motion graphic design to provide a smart and enjoyab le overview of Greek and Latin literature. The series is aimed to update th e teaching approach of the classics\, bringing it closer to the rest of the humanities. Subjects of the podcast-series will be the works of the most i mportant Classical authors\, which largely coincide with the course “Classi cal Cultures” offered in most universities in the United States. The six vi deos—three about Greek authors\, three about Latin authors—will cover the major literary genres of antiquity and will be in chronological order\, so as to offer a general overview on Classical culture.

Join us Wednesday\, May 2 from 12:30 until 2:00 in the lab (room 7388.01) for p resentations by:

Dr. Lev Manovich\ , Ph.D. Program in Computer Science:

Dr. Lev Manovich is one the lead ing theorists of digital culture worldwide\, and a pioneer in application o f data science for analysis of contemporary culture. Manovich is the author and editor of 13 books including AI Aesthetics (forthcoming 2018)\, Theories of Software Culture\, Instagram and Contemporary Image\, Data Drift\, Software Takes Command\ , Soft Cinema: Navigating the Database and The Language of New Media which was described as "the m ost suggestive and broad ranging media history since Marshall McLuhan." He was included in the list of "25 People Sha ping the Future of Design" in 2013 and the list of "50 Most Inter esting People Building the Future" in 2014. Manovich is a Professor of Computer Science at The Graduate Center\, CUNY\, and a Director of the Cultur al Analytics Lab that pioneered analysis of visual culture using comput ational methods. The lab created projects for Museum of Modern Art (NYC)\, New York Public Library\, Google and other clients.

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Anders Alex Wallace\, Anthropology:

Fro m Berlin to Beijing\, men are joining seduction communities (charm schools) to learn skills in dating women. These communities raise questions of inti macy\, consent\, and authenticity as problems for men who learn techniques of social persuasion as they seek to attract women and transform their pers onal identities. By displacing sexual inhibitions\, these communities focus on developing forms of social capital through “weak ties” (Putnam 2000) th at allow men to feel a sense of belonging in impersonal urban environments. This project uses digital software for text mining and topic modeling of b ig data to find out how men are developing an embodied sense of masculine i dentity through standardized training in seduction skills. Conducting stati stical analyses and comparisons among prescriptive texts (ebooks and seduct ion manuals) with descriptive accounts (digitally published diaries) of use rs’ experiences and mishaps in striving to embody so-called “alpha masculin ity\,” this project aims to discover what kinds of social intimacies follow from the labor of dating consultants\, and what happens to those men who b uild social communities—both online and in real life—around their practices . For which men do seduction skills come to be thought of as integral to th eir self-fashioning? How does rationalizing intimacy create new forms of po wer and dependency between men? What do seduction communities reveal about the vulnerabilities and frailties of masculinity today? This research is be ing developed for public view using Scalar\, a multimedia storytelling plat form. Please visit the website for more information.