3ones

A few weeks ago, I sat down for a conversation with Steven Lisberger, director of the original Tron, to discuss our shared passions for science fiction cinema and transmedia entertainment. Mike Bonifer was along for the ride, camera in hand, ready to film this exchange, and has gradually been rolling it out in short three to four minute chunks via YouTube ever since.

I have to say that it was thrilling to me to meet Lisberger -- having long admired how far forward the thinking behind Tron had been about t...

show all

Eno seems to have been interested in cybernetics from a very early age. How did this interest impact his work?

Many artists, particularly in Britain, were interested in cybernetics. A lot of this can be traced to Roy Ascott's infamous "Groundcourse" at various art schools in Britain in the 1960s. Pete Townshend of The Who underwent the "Groundcourse," and so did Eno, and so did many others who would go on to be major names in their fields. Ascott's curriculum was a systems-based approach to learning, in...

show all

I don't write much on this blog about popular music. I have always said music and sports were my real blind spots when it comes to researching contemporary popular culture. So, I have the utmost respect when I find a writer who can take me inside the music and help me understand why a particular album matters for the culture. I am all the more delighted to find such a person in my own backyard. In this case, I do mean this more less literally -- in my own backyard.

More acurately, I discovered that Geeta D...

show all

From time to time, I use this space to showcase the global dimensions of the kinds of participatory culture which so often concern us here. When I first started to write about fan culture, for example, the circuit along which fan produced works traveled did not extend much beyond the borders of the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and perhaps Australia. American fans knew little about fan culture in other parts of the world and indeed, there was often speculation about why fandom was such a distin...

show all

From time to time, I use this space to showcase the global dimensions of the kinds of participatory culture which so often concern us here. When I first started to write about fan culture, for example, the circuit along which fan produced works traveled did not extend much beyond the borders of the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and perhaps Australia. American fans knew little about fan culture in other parts of the world and indeed, there was often speculation about why fandom was such a distin...

show all

In the second part of the interview, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Jonathan Gray talks about his new book, Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts. Don't know what a Paratext is -- you will soon, as Gray explains how everything from "Oscar Buzz" to action figures help to shape the meanings and emotional experiences we have in relation to the films and television shows we watch. There was not an Oscar given last night for best paratext -- as long as the evening was and a...

show all

Transmedia, Hollywood: S/Telling the Story is a one-day public symposium exploring the role of transmedia franchises in today's entertainment industries. Transmedia, Hollywood turns the spotlight on media creators, producers and executives and places them in critical dialogue with top researchers from across a wide spectrum of film, media and cultural studies to provide an interdisciplinary summit for the free interchange of insights about how transmedia works and what it means.

Co-hosted by Denise Mann...

show all

You found that adults and teens had different understandings of the identity play which occurs online. Where do these differences come from?

GOODPLAY: In the dialogues, we asked what the participants saw as acceptable, and what they viewed as the risks and benefits of experimenting with and exploring one's identity online. Both adults and teens cited the ability to test out an "ideal self" as one of the primary benefits of online identity play. The two groups also identified common risks associated with id...

show all

Transcript of a panel discussion between Henry Jenkins and Camille Bacon-Smith, moderated by Shoshanna, at Gaylaxicon 92, a science fiction convention by and for gay fandom and its friends, on 18 July 1992. At that time Henry was about to publish Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (Routledge, 1992); Camille had published Enterprising Women: Television Fandom and Popular Culture (U. of Penn. Press, 1992). Shoshanna is a fan. All fans identified here are identified with the name/pseud...

show all

This week, I am continuing to share a second piece from the historic archives of the Aca-Fan world: an exchange between Camille Bacon-Smith and myself at Gaylaxicon 1992. You should know that both Enterprising Women and Textual Poachers were very new books at the time this exchange took place, having appeared just a few months apart, and that the fan world was still trying to process what it meant to be the object of academic study. I would later, in fact, write an essay on the Gaylaxians themselves which a...

show all

Next week, I will be joining Constance Penley and Shoshana Green at Escapade, a long-running Southern California slash convention, for a discussion of fandom and academia. The event marks the 17th anniversary of a public conversation the three of us, along with Meg Garrett, had held at the same convention shortly after my book, Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture was published. As we have been preparing for this reunion (I'm bummed that Meg is not going to be able to join us), Green ...

show all