Interactive Media and the Politics of Fun
Kiki Benzon, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of the Practice of Cinematic Arts
October 3, 3:00-4:30pm
Ahmanson Lab | LVL 301
We are surrounded by opportunities to interact—with each other, our environments, and systems both concrete and intangible. Digital media have opened the door to an array of new interactive experiences, where virtual and online spaces become new domains for communication, collaboration, and creative expression. Augmented reality technology invites us to interact with a palimpsest of virtual and physical worlds; digital games provide vast arenas for world-building, social development, and unfettered play; and cinema and television divert us from sequential, single-platform storytelling to collectively authored weaves of narratives that extend across multiple media platforms. Indeed, interactive media may be generative, instructive, entertaining, or activating—but are there costs? Who is included in these interactions, and who is excluded? How might virtual exchange impact our sense of civic responsibility? This lecture will offer both an exploration of emerging practices and technologies in interactive media and, importantly, a provocation to critically analyze the political and cultural implications of these practices and technologies.
Introduction to Digital Writing with Scalar
October 24, 3:00-4:30pm
Ahmanson Lab | LVL 301
In this workshop, participants will learn about use cases and emerging genres in digital scholarship. Participants will then work with Scalar, an open-source, multimedia authoring platform developed at USC. The session will introduce the platform, showcase the various ways it has been used to create online student research projects, scholarly publications, exhibits, and games, and lead participants through a hands-on workshop.
Introduction to Interactive Timelines
November 14, 3:00-4:30pm
Ahmanson Lab | LVL 301
In this workshop participants will get an overview of research-based use cases for interactive timelines; using timelines for documentation, collection building, analysis, and argumentation. Participants will then get hands-on training with online, interactive timelines including TimelineJS, Timeline Currator, and Tiki-Toki.
Introduction to Digital Scholarship + Hands-on with Scalar
January 31, 4:00-5:30pm
Ahmanson Lab | LVL 301
In this workshop, participants will learn about use cases and emerging genres in digital scholarship. Participants will then work with Scalar, an open-source, multimedia authoring platform developed at USC. The session will introduce the platform, showcase the various ways it has been used to create online student research projects, scholarly publications, exhibits, and games, and lead participants through a hands-on workshop.
Using Online Digital Collections
February 27, 3:00-4:30pm
Ahmanson Lab | LVL 301
Participamts at this workshop will learn about the nature of digital archival collections, a critical starting point for much digital scholarship. Workshop coordinators will introduce participants to metadata and best practices for searching scholarly databases and archives. Participants will also get a comprehensive online tour of our own USC Digital Library as well as an introduction to Calisphere, a collection of 925,000 online images, texts, and recordings at California libraries and of the Digital Public Library of America, an aggregator of 20 million archival holdings across the United States.
Getting Started with Data Visualizations
March 8, 4:00-5:30pm
Ahmanson Lab | LVL 301
This workshop will center on the use of information visualization in scholarship from a rhetorical, design and cultural perspective. The workshop will include an overview of datasets, design principles for their presentation, and a survey of tools for the creation of both standard and novel visualizations. The workshop will end with a brief hands-on exercise for creating a basic visualization.
Introduction to Digital Mapping and GIS
April 25, 4:00-5:30pm
Ahmanson Lab | LVL 301
Participants will learn the basic functionality of leading mapping platforms CARTO and MapBox and will walk away with a basic digital infrastructure in which they can plug-in thier own research project. During the workshop participants will work with prepared data and maps featuring the GreenBook, HOLC maps, and other materials specific to Los Angeles.