frans

Rhetoric of Death

I was happy to work as a pre-examiner for an interesting PhD thesis which will now be publicly defended in the University of Turku. Titled “Rhetoric of Death and Generic Addressing of Viewers in American Living Dead Films”, Outi Hakola’s thesis is an interesting exploration of “Living Dead” phenomena and its significance in the American culture and cinema tradition. You can download the full thesis from this page. More in Finnish:

Väitös kauhuelokuvista ja kuolemasta 28.5.2011

FM Outi Hakola väittelee lauantaina 28. toukokuuta 2011 kello 12 Turun yliopistossa (Tauno Nurmela -sali, päärakennus, Yliopistonmäki) aiheesta “Rhetoric of Death and Generic Addressing of Viewers in American Living Dead Films” (Kuoleman retoriikka ja katsojien geneerinen puhuttelu amerikkalaisissa elävä kuollut -elokuvissa).

Virallisena vastaväittäjänä toimii professori Kendall Phillips Syracusen yliopistosta (New York, USA) ja kustoksena professori Jukka Sihvonen.

Elävä kuollut -elokuvat ovat eri vuosikymmeninä tarjonneet uusille sukupolville mahdollisuuden käsitellä kuoleman ajatusta ja kuolemaan liittyviä tunteita ja käsityksiä fantasioinnin kautta. FM Outi Hakolan väitöstutkimus nostaa esille, miten Hollywoodin vampyyri-, muumio- ja zombielokuvat 1930-luvulta 2000-luvun taitteeseen keskustelevat modernin länsimaisen kuolemakäsityksen kanssa.

Väitös on julkaistu Turun yliopiston sähköisessä julkaisuarkistossa: https://www.doria.fi/handle/10024/69580

Online Gaming in Context book

We have a new publication date for Online Gaming in Context: The Social and Cultural Significance of Online Games book, edited by Garry Crawford, Victoria K. Gosling and Ben Light (published by Routledge). My own piece is titled: “Games in the Mobile Internet: Understanding Contextual Play in Flickr and Facebook”. The new date is in September. You should be able to get discount if you order in advance. Link: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415556194/

Edit: here is a link to a form that you can use to get 20% discount.

VanderMeer on Finnish SF and Fantasy

Jeff VanderMeer and his wife Ann made recently a visit to Finland and talked with the members of SF/speculative fiction community/fandom members around here. The results are documented in a highly interesting series of blog posts, well worth checking out:

http://www.omnivoracious.com/2011/05/finnish-sf-and-fantasy-an-established-community-a-surge-of-talent.html

http://www.omnivoracious.com/2011/05/finnish-science-fiction-and-fantasy-johanna-sinisalo-hannu-rajaniemi-and-moomins.html

http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/2011/05/05/the-finnish-sffantasy-community-an-interview-with-tero-ykspetaja/

http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/2011/05/07/finnish-fiction-viivi-hyvonen-on-the-monkey-and-the-new-moon/

http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/2011/05/09/finnish-fiction-an-interview-with-anne-leinonen/

http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/2011/05/12/finnish-fiction-saara-henrikssons-cool-concept-moby-doll/

Great stuff!

Role-Playing Journal, issue 2 is out

If you have not noticed it, the International Journal of Role-Playing has published their second issue: http://marinkacopier.nl/ijrp/?page_id=226

Also, the call for papers for the third issue is out, you can find the full text here: http://marinkacopier.nl/ijrp/?p=38

Tikkurila games discussion

Looking at my calendar, in Friday 13/5 this week there is a games discussion in the Tikkurila Library, with me and Markku Eskelinen talking about games culture / game studies. More information: http://kirjastossakohtaus.net/

Garden working

Garden working, a photo by FransBadger on Flickr.

Sure sign of summer: our garden work has begun again. I have e.g. operated our overgrown apple trees with a chain saw, washed away old paint and repainted (a bit hastily) all our wooden garden furniture, plus the terrace, then delivered sand, gravel and flagstones required by various paths and other constructions that look like becoming the main garden project of this summer. Here the foundation for a swing.

CloudMagic, with offline search

Another interesting tool/service: CloudMagic is a Chrome/Firefox browser plugin that provides enhanced search functionality in Gmail, Google Docs and Contacts. With the latest release they also added the ability to do searches offline, which is a great benefit if you rely on Google services a lot, and also travel. I have not tested the offline side yet, but the search seems to work fine, even though it might take some time to do the indexing, if you have massive amounts of mail. Download from the main page: http://cloudmagic.com/. The release details: http://blog.cloudmagic.com/category/releases/.

Wuala, a Dropbox alternative

There is an interesting alternative to do cross-platform / cloud file syncing, Wuala. I haven’t used it myself, would love to hear comments of its positive sides and potential weaknesses. Here is a story: http://lifehacker.com/#!5798179/wuala-is-a-powerful-cross+platform-file-syncer-with-lots-of-tricks-for-extra-free-space

What is media?

There was an interesting seminar today in the University of Tampere where a number of media, communications, film and also one games scholar met to discuss ‘media’ as a “crossroads term” in academia. The multiple interesting presentations and discussions can not be adequately paraphrased by myself, here, but it was interesting to note how e.g. ‘digital media’ was related to convergence developments, and also to the ubiquity or pervasiveness of media – it was becoming difficult to say what was not media any more. This was philosophically linked to the question of mediation and presence; e.g. Jacques Derrida for one has emphasised that there is no access to ‘original’, or authenticity – our human existence is to exist within systems of signification that are always also systems of ‘re-presentation’ (when we become conscious of something, we already have some, even minute reflexive distance to that thought or sensation). Ok, maybe in some extreme experiences (strong pain, pleasure, intoxication) that sense of reflexiveness is in marginal position, but you get the idea. Even having a body means that we have that (“first person”) media always with us.

I presented some views of media as seen from Interactive Media / New Media perspective(s) and from those of Game Studies: e.g. the sometimes tensed relations and borderlines between game/narrative and game/media. Where I did not have time to go, however, was the growing interest in the rhetorics of games, and the study and application of games not to communicate direct messages, but to create conditions for expressive action. The posthuman views on the complexity of human agency I did mention, as well as the application of Game Studies into the study of everyday life (should have gone both to Goffman, and to gamification debates there, but did not have time). Great seminar, thanks for the organisers (Seija Ridell, Taisto Hujanen)!

Link: http://www.uta.fi/cmt/tutkimus/seminaarit/mika_ihmeen_media.html

Updates in Articles

I decided to let go of the idea of using the Articles page as a work-in-progress writing platform (I never seemed to find that extra time to work on those article drafts). Instead, I have now included links to some recent published articles by myself and those co-authored with others in to this page (https://fransmayra.fi/articles/). There is a longer list available here: http://www.uta.fi/~frans.mayra/publications.html