Author: frans

Professor of Information Studies and Interactive Media, esp. Digital Culture and Game Studies in the Tampere University, Finland. Occasional photographer and gardener.

SF & Fantasy researcher meeting in Finncon

Thursday to Jyväskylä: I think this is eight time we have a national science fiction and fantasy researcher meeting at Finncon (starting from year 2000, if I remember correctly). This year’s program is below, with the names of the paper authors and commentators:

UNIEMME ULKOPUOLELLA
SEARCHING THE OUTSIDERS OF THE FANTASTIC
VIII SCIFI- JA FANTASIATUTKIJATAPAAMINEN
12.-13.7. 2007 Jyväskylän yliopistossa

A-rakennuksen seminaarihuone, 3 krs

TORSTAINA 11:30-13:00

 

1 Paavo Toivanen FRANS
Keskiaika, alluusiot ja Narnia

2 Jyrki Korpua FRANS & MARKKU
Ulkopuolisuus Tolkienin legendaariossa

14:30-16:00

3 Päivi Väätänen LIISA
Afroamerikkalainen tieteiskirjallisuus, erit. Delany

4 Anni Nupponen FRANS
Tove Jansson ja Toiseus

5 Eliisa Pitkäsalo, MARKKU
Traaginen sankari Sinisalon romaanissa Sankarit

PERJANTAINA

10:15 – 11:30

6 Sanna Lehtonen MARKKU
“Discourses of Femininity and Power in Children’s Fantasy”

7 Saara Fraktman LIISA
Feministiset utopiat

13:00 – 14:00


8 Leila Soikkonen LIISA
Empowerment, Female other & C.L. Moore

MUUTA TIEDEPERJANTAIN OHJELMAA:

14.30 -15.15 Joe Haldeman ja Cheryl Morgan: Revealing sociological
science fiction
15.15 – 16.30 Elizabeth Hand ja John Clute: Technology as a monster:
hard core sf

PYÖREÄN PÖYDÄN KESKUSTELU 17-18

A-rakennuksen seminaarihuone, 3 krs

Keskustelun pohjana Frans Mäyrän väitöskirjan kappale scifin ja kauhukulttuurin kosketuskohdista

http://www.uta.fi/~frans.mayra/Demon_2005/Chapter_09.pdf

The makkara summer

The makkara summer
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

Remaining true to the summer holiday spirit, I try to concentrate on the essentials, like taking photos of makkara.

Black-n-white summer

Black-n-white summer: a black tulip
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

As my holidays started this week, I was on high hopes. After all, this is my first proper holiday in … I guess pretty much ever. When you are in the status of a student, you spend all your summers on a summer work, and later, when I started working, I always was pushing some publication or other project until the summer, when I could actually start working (these days, academics’ working hours are all taken up by project meetings and admin work during the “working” season). This summer it will be different: I will have a proper, long summer holiday. And the first week looks already promising: it never stops raining. 🙂 Well, that is good time to do some housekeeping work, and particularly good time to go through your photo collections and do some editing stuff. I have intention to pick up some of the suitable shots, transfer them into monochrome and work with black-and-white photography for a while. There are already some samples (like this tulip) in my Flickr account.

Summertime Pong

This must be the ultimate way to play Pong the Midsummer Festival style: have the controllers integrated in your underwear. See: Master’s Student Demonstrates Thesis Project in Her Underwear.

Golf Plus TSI

Golf Plus TSI
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

Yesterday we got the new car, VW Golf Plus TSI. It should have enough room for us for a while at least, and it is compact enough for city traffic and parking. TSI motor is small, yet quite powerful due to the double turbo/compressor solution. I particularly like the high seats and good views — also at nights: we ordered bi-xenon lights. This is also the first day of my (long overdue) holidays. Still some phone conferences and article writing stuff though, so “soft landing” into the unknown that way. Weather looks fine in Finland and tomorrow is the Midsummer festival: great!

Backup Ubuntu

My old (well, almost two years old at least) external hard disk stopped responding, and it looks like its the time to find another backup solution. Since I have a small, personal server running Ubuntu, regular full system mirrors on an external USB 2.0 hard disk should be enough, but I also need to learn more about the various backup procedures. Here are couple of links to pages that I should probably read with care: “Backing Up Ubuntu“, “Howto: Backup and restore your system“. Any further resources are also most welcome.

Article on digital culture

Tarkemmin katsoenMy article discussing the character and development of digital culture has now been published in a new anthology that is focused on visual culture, titled Toisin katsoen, visuaalisen kulttuurin lukukirja (Gaudeamus, 2007). More on the book here. You can read a draft version of my piece “Viesti, kuva, peli: virtuaaliutopioista pelikulttuurien syntyyn” (in Finnish) here; if you quote, please access the final, printed version though.

Discussing the Sacred and the digital games

The age-old battle between church authority and domains of the popular, the secular and the art takes new forms: the Catholic Church of England is apparently considering of suing Sony Computer Entertainment for use of the likeness of the Manchester Cathedral as a backdrop for a scifi-horror style fantastic battle. See more discussion on this topic in Matteo Bittanti’s blog here: http://www.videoludica.com/news.php?news=639

Mythical: Mobile Awakening is coming

Mythical day cycleRemember, this is where you heard it first (playing my mighty ‘insider blogger’ card here): the massively mobile multiplayer game the IPerG consortium is preparing for research has now a news website that you can use to access and follow its progress towards launch (upcoming next fall). Name? Mythical: Mobile Awakening. More: http://www.mythicalmobile.com/

Music for the masses

Listening and watching music yesterday evening in my ‘media cave’, I started again thinking about the value of ‘content’ and the current distribution models of music. According to some sources, already 95 % of CD sales in China are pirated, and the online distribution (legal and not-so) continues to grow in popularity (see references as http://cyberextazy.wordpress.com/tag/research-statistics/ http://www.bpi.co.uk/pdf/BPI_UK_Commercial_Music_Piracy.pdf http://www.riaa.com/news/marketingdata/facts.asp etc.). Looking at the ubiquity of mp3 players, the problems people are having with various copy “protected” legal disks and the hassle-free, cross-device use that is associated with non-protected digital music, it is easy to foresee that the strongly protective DRM road is problematic. If, on the other hand, a CD or a media file is more like an advertisement for the artist in the future, than the actual product people are willing to pay for, where the income is going to come from? Clicking through my collection with the Vista Media Centre, one alternative quickly became obvious: the added value of lyrics, high-resolution album cover art, additional media such as music videos and photo slideshows are surely something that would provide rich experiences for those who really become interested in the artist, after listening the music. There are multiple physical services and products that provide additional value to digital music, such as concerts and large-format printed materials, high-quality archive copies in well-produced DVD/Blueray formats that would still provide revenue for the industry and the artists, even if the business models are definitely going to undergo a transition.