Writing

This evening we began the Art History of Games symposium here in Atlanta, organized by Savannah College of Art and Design – Atlanta and Georgia Tech. After introductions, myself and my co-organizers John Sharp and Michael Nitsche presented a discussion of the concept of an art history of games. Then John Romero presented his keynote “Masters among Us,” about learning… read more

My colleague Carl DiSalvo, who will participate in this April’s OOO Symposium, has started up a blog: Objects & Things. The site will offer another perspective on objects, that of design. I’ve added it to the SR Aggregator.

I’m happy to announce that we’ll be hosting the first Object-Oriented Ontology Symposium at Georgia Tech, on Friday April 23, 2010. Speakers include myself, Levi Bryant, Graham Harman, and Steven Shaviro, with respondents from the local Atlanta area: my Georgia Tech colleagues Hugh Crawford, Carl DiSalvo, and Eugene Thacker, and John Johnston from Emory. I’m really looking forward to it.… read more

I swore I wasn’t going to write anything about Apple’s newly announced iPad, but I suppose it’s unavoidable. Instead of its benefits or flaws, however, what’s interested me the most about the gadget is the public reaction to its name. It seems that back in 2007, MadTV wrote a spoof of Apple’s raging devicitude, in the form of a parodic… read more

The Atlantan just put out their annual Best of Atlanta issue, and it includes a “design” section which features a handful of Georgia Tech researchers, myself among them. You can read it online; you’ll just have to navigate to page 34-35, where the article begins. There are some zingers. As a preview, behold the start of the spread:

Today I listened to NPR On Point on the ride home. The topic was “A big year for Hollywood women?”, with film critics Manohla Dargis and Nicole LaPorte discussing (and deflating) recent buzz about the “Year of the Woman” in movies. If you listen to the show online, you’ll be struck by how much the conversation about women in film… read more

Via Peter Gratton, I’ve just read Slate’s detailed review of Louis Menand’s new book The Marketplace of Ideas, about the state of the university and the anxiety of the professoriate. Given that my own feelings about such matters are far less measured and far more informal than Menand’s, I’ll look forward to reading the book, since he clearly covers many… read more

Yet another high-profile slate of objects to report. The BBC and the British Museum are collaborating on a set of radio programs detailing a history of the world in 100 objects. The objects are drawn from the collection of the British Museum, and the radio program begins tomorrow (18 January). The BBC has also produced a multimedia explorer that allows… read more

The object-oriented uprising continues. This time, it can be found in a sizable article in the November/December 2009 issue Art Papers Magazine. The piece stretches across eight pages or so (alas, only in print), covering contemporary sculpture and its relation to object-oriented philosophy. Often incorporating the detritus of everyday life, that is, appropriated bits and pieces in loosely-cobbled arrangements, such… read more

Over at the Digital Media and Learning blog, Liz Losh writes a nice introduction to the “emerging theory” of object-oriented philosophy. Her post discusses the surprise popularity of objects at last month’s Digital Arts and Cultures conference, including very prominent mention in Kate Hayles opening plenary. Losh then asks how object-oriented teaching might work at a practical level, offering some… read more