Digital
Media
Workshop
The Digital Media Workshop is a forum for students and faculty who work on digital media across the humanities, social sciences, STEM, computer and information science, and the arts. Because digital media span theoretical scholarship, scientific inquiry, and artistic practice, this workshop gathers an interdisciplinary community to engage the political, aesthetic, social, cultural, historical, and technical dimensions of digital media across its many formats. The workshop sponsors presentations of all topics that explore aspects of the contemporary and historical study of digital media, new media, and emergent media with non-digital elements. This includes, but is by no means limited to, digital cinema, television, and animation, CGI and digital effects, video games, short-form video and social media platforms, streaming services, virtual and augmented reality, machine learning and artificial intelligence, coding and programming, climate models and global warming, contemporary art and design, and experimental print media.
2024–25 Coordinators:
Jiyoon Kim
jiyoonkim@uchicago.edu
Hugo Ljungbäck
hmal@uchicago.edu
Email Jiyoon or Hugo to subscribe to our listserv for updates about the workshop!
Upcoming Events
Digital Media Workshop Autumn 2024 Schedule
Friday, November 8th, 3:00–5:00 PM
Shiqi Lin (Klarman Postdoctoral Fellow, Asian Studies, Cornell University)
“Digital Soundscapes of In-Betweenness: Crisis Documentation Through Global Chinese Podcasting”
Discussant: Lilian Kong (PhD Student, EALC/CMS, University of Chicago)
Location: Center for East Asian Studies 319 (1155 E. 60th St.)
Monday, November 18th, 5:00–6:30 PM
Lilian Kong (PhD Student, EALC/CMS, University of Chicago)
“Micro-Dispersed Selves: Diasporic Healing Vlogs and Transregional Landscapes of Crisis”
Discussant: Patrick Jagoda (William Rainey Harper Professor, CMS/English/Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Chicago)
Location: Cobb Hall 311
Friday, November 22nd, 3:30–5:00 PM
“State of Digital Media Studies” Faculty Roundtable
Katherine Buse (Assistant Professor, CMS, University of Chicago)
Cassandra Guan (Assistant Professor, CMS, University of Chicago)
AE Stevenson (Assistant Professor, CMS, University of Chicago)
Location: Cobb Hall 311
Friday, December 6th
TBA – We are still accepting proposals
Past Events
2023-2024
- May 16, 2024. “Channels and Characters.” Presenter: Shunsuke Nozawa, Associate Professor, Modern Japanese Studies, Hokkaido University. Discussant: Jiarui Sun, PhD Student, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago. Co-hosted by the Semiotics Workshop.
- May 10, 2024. “The Losers of Tomorrow: Prisoners of Childhood in the Worlds of Hertzfeldt, Spielberg, & Schulz.” Presenter: Tien-Tien Jong, PhD Candidate, Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago. Discussant: Daniel Morgan, Professor, Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago.
- April 29, 2024. “Pirate Streaming and Sovereignty.” Presenter: Patrick Gwillim-Thomas, PhD Student in East Asian Languages and Culture, University of Chicago. Discussant: Thomas Lamarre, Gordon J Laing Distinguished Service Professor, Cinema and Media Studies & East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago.
- March 29, 2024. “Play, Rewind, and Swipe Forward: The Emergence of Horizontal Flow in the Age of Streaming Media.” Presenter: Jianqing Chen, Assistant Professor, Film and Media Studies & East Asian Languages and Cultures, Washington University of St. Louis. Discussant: Thomas Lamarre, Gordon J Laing Distinguished Service Professor, Cinema and Media Studies & East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago.
- February 2, 2024. “East Asian TV Dramas: Brainstorming Methods and Stakes.” Presenters: Steve Choe, Associate Professor, Critical Studies, School of Cinema, San Francisco State University; Xueping Zhong, Professor, Chinese Literature and Culture, International Literary and Cultural Studies, Tufts University; Hang Wu, PhD student, Cinema and Media Studies & East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago.
- January 19, 2024. “Being a Nüzhubo (Female Live streamer) in China: Invisible Labor and Sexual Exploitation.” Presenter: Dahlia Deng, MAPSS Student, University of Chicago. Discussant: Jiarui Sun, PhD Student, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago.
- January 5, 2024. “Every N*gga Is A Star?: Reading ‘The Shade Room’ through Black Feminist Care.” Presenter: AE Stevenson, Assistant Professor, Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago. Discussant: Tiya Bolton, PhD Student, Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago.
- December 8, 2023. “Luminous Media: From Apollo to Edison.” Presenter: Frank Ming, PhD Student, Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago. Discussant: Kendra Lee Sanders, PhD Candidate, Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago.
- November 17, 2023. “Caring beyond the Screen.” Presenter: Jiyoon Kim, PhD Student, Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago. Discussant: Bret Hart, PhD Student and Neubauer Fellow in Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago.
- November 10, 2023. “A City is a Cluster of Pixels: No No Nooky TV and Post-Sex Porn.” Presenter: Erin Nunoda, Teaching Faculty, English and Film studies, Wilfrid Laurier University. Discussant: Basil Dababneh, PhD Candidiate and Neubauer Fellow in Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago.
- October 20, 2023. “Landscapes After Modernity: The Place of the Universal Human in the (Digital) Art of Xu Bing & Japan.” Presenter: Thomas Looser, Associate Professor, East Asian Studies, New York University. Discussant: Thomas Lamarre, Gordon J Laing Distinguished Service Professor, Cinema and Media Studies & East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago.
- October 13, 2023. “Six Theses on an Aesthetics of Always-on Computing.” Presenter: James Hodge, Associate Professor, English, Northwestern University. Discussant: Patrick Jagoda, William Rainey Harper Professor, Cinema and Media Studies & English, University of Chicago.
2022-2023
- May 25, 2023. “What is the meta?”: The Semiotics of Optimization in Virtual Communities from League of Legends to TikTok.” Presenter: Wee Yang Soh. PhD student, Anthropology, University of Chicago. Discussant: Jon Clindaniel. Assistant Senior Instructional Professor in the Masters in Computational Social Science program, University of Chicago. Co-sponsor with the Semiotics Workshop.
- May 4, 2023. “Character Creation: An Actor’s Panel on Performing in Digital Games.” Moderator: Chris Carloy. Assistant Instructional Professor in Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago. Participants: Lia Montelongo. Emily Marso, Rom Barkhordar.
- April 20, 2023. “When AI Paints: Ekphrastic Engine and Arithmetic History.” Presenter: Zina Wang. PhD student, Rhetoric Department, UC Berkeley. Discussant: Thomas Lamarre. Professor in Cinema and Media Studies and East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago.
- April 6, 2023. SCMS practice panel. Bret Hart & Cooper Long & Zach Yost. PhD students, Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago. Co-sponsor with the Mass Culture Workshop.
- March 30, 2023. “Simulating Collaboration: A Feminist Media Play Along on Digital Platforms & Co-Authorship.” Presenter: Christine H. Tran (PhD Candidate, Faculty of Information, University of Toronto.) & Nelanthi Hewa (PhD Candidate, Faculty of Information, University of Toronto).
- March 9, 2023. Land Animation: Wonder and Geomedia in David O’Reilly’s Mountain. Presenter: Yangqiao Lu. PhD Student, Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago. Discussant: Katherine Buse. Postdoctoral Researcher in the Stevanovich Institute, University of Chicago
- February 17, 2023. “The Crisis and the Rise of the Non-Linear Alphabet: The Cultural Technique of Hangul Only Writing in the Age of Information.” Presenter: Dahye Kim. Assistant Professor, Asian Languages and Cultures, Northwestern University. Discussant: Thomas Lamarre. Professor in Cinema and Media Studies and East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago. Co-sponsor with APEA.
- February 2, 2023. “Reconstructing the experience of scratch-and-sniff media from public olfactory nostalgia.” Presenter: Jas Brooks. PhD student, Computer Science, University of Chicago. Discussant: Marc Downie. Lecturer in Cinema and Media Studies and Media Arts and Design.
- January 19, 2023. “Geopolitical Teleportation in Digital Maps: The Gamic Tactic of Location Spoofing for Chinese Players of Pokémon GO.” Presenter: Ziyi Lin. PhD student, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago. Discussant: Patrick Jagoda . Professor in English, Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago
- December 1, 2022. “Playing House: TWICE and the Jouissance of Transnational Female Spectatorship.” Presenter: Rita Rongyi. PhD Candidate, Screen Cultures, Northwestern University. Discussant: Aurore Spiers. Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago.
- November 17, 2022. “Chinese Social Realistic Games—Using Proceduralism and Magical Realism to Analyze Women-Trafficking Game Comedy Funeral.” Presenter: Meixu Zhang. MAPH Student, Cinema and Media Studies Track, University of Chicago. Discussant: Ziyi Lin. PhD Student, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago.
- November 3, 2022. “Queer Archiveography.” Presenter: Hugo Ljungbäck. PhD Student, Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago.
- October 27, 2022. “Hopeless Futures: From Afrofuturist toward Afropessimist Media.” Presenter: Patrick Jagoda and Ashlyn Sparrow. Cinema and Media Studies & Media Arts and Design, University of Chicago. Discussant: Jiyoon Kim. PhD Student, Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago.
2021 – 2022
- May 26, 2022. “Russia Today in America: Testing the Mechanisms of Foreign Interference.” Presenter: Evgenia Olimpieva, Ipek Çinar, and Geneva Cole. PhD Candidates in Political Science.
- May 19, 2022. “To Believe, Breathe AromaRama: Cinema’s Aerosol Age.” Presenter: Jas Brooks. PhD Student in Department of Computer Science at the University of Chicago’s Human-Computer Integration Lab.
- Apr 15, 2022, “Information Processing: On Asian Cyberscapes in the Cyberpunk New Wave.” Hang Wu. PhD Student in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies and the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations.Co-sponsored with the VMPEA Workshop.
- Apr 14, 2022. “Privacy in a Public Ledger: Theory & Practice of Bitcoin” Presenter: Andrew M. Bailey (Associate Professor of Humanities at Yale-NUS College) & Bradley Rettler (Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wyoming),
- Mar 7, 2022. “Collision Detection, Interpretation, and Sexuality in Video Games,” Presenter: Arianna Gass. PhD Candidate in English, University of Chicago. Respondent: Amanda Phillips, Associate Professor in English and Film and Media Studies at Georgetown University . Co-sponsored with the 20th/21st Century workshop.
- Mar 2, 2022. “The Archipelago: Reflecting on Game Design in the Age of YouTube.” Presenter: Kaelan Doyle Myerscough. PhD Student in CMS and Game Designer.
- Mar 1, 2022. “Healing Media: Aestheticizing Calm and Romanticizing the Good Life on Online Video Platforms.” Presenter: Lilian Kong, (PhD student in EALC and CMS), & Yuqian Yan (Associate researcher at Zhejiang University, PhD in EALC and CMS).
- Feb 23, 2022. “Casual in the Time of Covid: Animal Crossing, Gender, and the Importance of Care.” Presenter: Riss Ballard. Media Arts and Design Administrator and MAPH Alumni.
- Jan 19, 2022. “‘I Do My Own Research’: Scientization as an Epistemological and Political Transition Strategy amongst COVID-19 Containment Measure Protestors.” Anna Berg, PhD Candidate in Sociology. Respondent: Caterina Fugazzola, Assistant Senior Instructional Professor in Global Studies, UChicago.
- Canceled – Dec 2, 2021. “A Body Language Exploration of Colonial Gender & Race Formation: The Lens of Dance.” Presenter: Presenter: Natalia Khosla, M.D. candidate and multimedia artist, The University of Chicago.
- Nov 11, 2021. “Join the Fold: Video Games, Science Fiction, and the Refolding of Citizen Science.” Presenter: Katherine Buse, SIFK postdoctoral researcher, The University of Chicago.
- Oct 7, 2021. “Enabling Creativity with Data Science and Machine Learning for Techno-Fluent” Presenter: Ted Moore, Research Fellow in Creative Coding at the University of Huddersfield.
2020 – 2021
- May 24, 2021. “White Supremacy, Affect, And Digital Culture.” Presenters: Christine Goding Doty, Visiting Assistant Professor, Africana Studies, Hobart And William Smith Colleges; Tara Mcpherson, Professor And Chair, Cinema & Media Studies, University Of Southern California; Moderator: Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Canada 150 Research Chair In New Media, Simon Fraser University
- May 17, 2021. “Machine Imagination: Text To Image Generation With Neural Networks.” Presenter: Robert Twomey, Assistant Professor, Carson Center For Emerging Media Arts, Unl & Visiting Scholar, Clarke Center For Human Imagination, UCSD.
- May 10, 2021. “Skin And Surface: Race Beyond Representation.” Presenter: Arianna Gass, PhD Candidate, English & Theater And Performance Studies, University Of Chicago. Respondent: Kaelan Doyle Myerscough, PhD Student, Cinema & Media Studies, University Of Chicago.
- May 5, 2021. “Virtual Ethnography: Ethnographic Methods For A Pandemic.” Presenters: Benjamin Fogarty-Valenzuela, Mansueto Fellow and Postdoctoral Scholar, Sociology, University of Chicago; Peter Forberg, Sociology and Digital Studies in Language, Culture, and History, University of Chicago.
- April 26, 2021. “What’s The Value Of An Economic Metaphor?” On Cryptocurrencies And Proof Of Work. Presenter: Zach Yost, PhD student, Cinema & Media Studies, The University of Chicago. Respondent: Thomas Patrick Pringle, Postdoctoral Fellow, Stevanovich Institute on the Formation of Knowledge, UChicago.
- March 8, 2021. “Call Me Obama?”: The Perils Of Lip Sync In A “Call Me Maybe” Mashup And Jordan Peele Deepfake. Presenter: Amy Skjerseth, Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago and co-organizer of the Great Lakes Association for Sound Studies
- March 1, 2021. The Digital Media Workshop Goes To Scms (Practice Panel). Presenters: Arianna Gass, PhD Candidate, English & Theater and Performance Studies, “Clipping and Interpenetration: Embodiment and Sexuality Beyond Representation.” Tien-Tien Jong Zhang, PhD Candidate, Cinema & Media Studies, “Practice, Torture, and the Desire to Become Black: Whiplash (Chazelle, 2014) and Black Swan (Aronofsky, 2010).” Hang Wu, PhD Student, Cinema & Media Studies, University of Chicago, “Monster Hunt and the Affective Human-Monster Communication.”
- February 22, 2021. Pokémon, No? Genes, Memes, And Digital Culture In The Sixth Extinction. Presenter: Thomas Patrick Pringle, Postdoctoral Fellow, Stevanovich Institute on the Formation of Knowledge, University of Chicago.
- February, 8, 2021. “Gaming Borders: Flow, Failure, and National Belonging in Papers, Please.” Presenter: Gary Kafer, PhD candidate, Department of Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago.
- January 25, 2021. “Sequence and Connection: Two Paradigms of Digital Literature and the Need for a Critique of AI Works.” Presenter: Hannes Bajohr, Postdoc, Basel University. Co-sponsored with the Poetry and Poetics Workshop.
- January 11, 2021. “Machine Learning for the Web with Teachable Machine, P5.js, and ML5.js.” Presenters: Teodora Szasz, Computational Scientist at the Research Computing Center of the University of Chicago. Luis Ibanez, Senior Software Engineer, Google.
- November 6, 2020. “On Not Getting Over It: Interpretation, Delay, And Queer Modes Of Play.” Co-sponsored with the Mass Culture Workshop. Presenter: Daniel Lipson, Interaction designer and independent scholar, University of Chicago.
- Canceled – November 2, 2020. “Are Drum Triggers Cheating? Death Metal, Schizophrenia, and Indigestible Digitization.” Presenter: Florian Walch, PhD candidate, Music History & Theory, University of Chicago.
- October 26, 2020. “At Home: A short Animated Video on Pandemic Lifestyle Fantasies. Presenter: Lily Scherlis, Video artist and PhD student, English, University of Chicago.
- October 19, 2020. “Logos: Exploring Law, Society, and the Power of Rhetoric Through Interactive Narrative.” Presenter: John Buterbaugh, Game designer and student in the College. Discussant: Patrick Jagoda, Professor, English and Cinema & Media Studies, University of Chicago.
2019-2020
- December 5, 2019. “Data Visualization for Storytellers.” Presenter: Teodora Szasz, Computational Scientist, Research Computing Center, University of Chicago.
- November 21, 2019. “Aesthetic Milieus to access Subjective Experience.” Presenter: Desiree Foerster, PhD candidate in Philosophy, Institute for Arts and Media, Potsdam, Germany & Visiting Scholar at the Department for Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago.
- November 8, 2019. Virtual Reality Faculty Roundtable. Presenters: Snow Yunxue Fu, Assistant Arts Professor in the Department of Photography and Imaging, Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. Pedro Lopes, Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science, University of Chicago. Lisa Zaher, Adjunct Assistant Professor in Art History, Theory and Criticism, School of the Art Institute of Chicago & Visiting Lecturer in Art History, University of Chicago.
- October 31, 2019. “Sensing Landscape.” Presenter: Saadia Mirza, PhD Candidate in Anthropology, University of Chicago.
- October 10, 2019. “Machine Learning Applications for Live Computer Music Performance.” Presenter: Ted Moore, PhD Candidate in Music Composition, University of Chicago.
2024-25
Call For Proposals
Call for presentations: Digital Media Workshop 2024–25
Workshop Coordinators: Jiyoon Kim and Hugo Ljungbäck
Faculty Sponsors: Katherine Buse and Patrick Jagoda
We are happy to announce the return of the Digital Media Workshop for the 2024–25 academic year! We are currently accepting proposals for the entire year, but are particularly eager for students willing to present in Autumn 2024. Please submit your proposals by Sunday, October 20. Early submission is encouraged.
The Digital Media Workshop is a forum for students and faculty who work on digital media across the humanities, social sciences, STEM, computer and information science, and the arts. Because digital media span theoretical scholarship, scientific inquiry, and artistic practice, this workshop gathers an interdisciplinary community to engage the political, aesthetic, social, cultural, historical, and technical dimensions of digital media across its many formats.
The workshop sponsors presentations of all topics that explore aspects of the contemporary and historical study of digital media, new media, and emergent media with non-digital elements. This includes, but is by no means limited to, digital cinema, television, and animation, CGI and digital effects, video games, short-form video and social media platforms, streaming services, virtual and augmented reality, machine learning and artificial intelligence, coding and programming, climate models and global warming, contemporary art and design, and experimental print media.
We welcome traditional as well as experimental presentation formats from students, faculty, visiting scholars, and non-UChicago-based researchers and artists. These include discussing in-progress articles or chapters, roundtables or industry panels on relevant topics, game prototypes or group gameplay sessions, live interviews with digital media practitioners, performances of electronic music, presentations of scientific research for an interdisciplinary audience, and exhibitions of digital humanities projects.
If you would like to propose a presentation, please submit a brief proposal to both Jiyoon Kim (jiyoonkim@uchicago.edu) and Hugo Ljungbäck (hmal@uchicago.edu).
Proposals should be 150–200 words in length and include the following:
- A working title;
- A short description of the content and/or argument;
- A short bio;
- The proposed presentation format (e.g. dissertation chapter, article in progress, research findings, collaborative session, game or teaching demo, roundtable);
- Any specific technical and/or A/V needs; and
- Your preferred quarter and any other scheduling information.
In the interests of accessibility and in building bridges across institutions, the workshop will continue to follow a hybrid format. Whether you choose to organize a remote or in-person workshop, please indicate this in your proposal and offer concrete reasons for your choice. We are especially interested in workshop formats that experiment with a combination of remote and in-person elements.
Land Acknowledgement
Land acknowledgements serve as an occasion to reflect on the practices of displacement and dispossession that have produced the conditions in which we gather. At the University of Chicago, such practices continue to guide institutional conduct.
The Digital Media Workshop is typically held at the Media, Arts, Data, and Design Center at the University of Chicago on the homelands of the Council of Three Fires—the Odawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi. Nations including the Ho-Chunk, Miami, Menominee, and Sac and Fox also stewarded these lands and waterways for generations. Despite centuries of ongoing colonial violence, tens of thousands of Indigenous people continue to call this territory home.
Yet as we gather remotely this year, it becomes more difficult to pinpoint the specific histories in which we are implicated and the treaties and legal orders we are obliged to uphold. In addition to the many locations from which each of you join us, we now depend more than ever on infrastructures so vastly distributed that they call the entire global history of colonization into play.
The fiber-optic cables transmitting us to one another as data are buried along the same routes as the telegraph lines and railroads that sustained colonial conquest. In the nineteenth century, those railroads directly enabled John D. Rockefeller and Silas Cobb to extract the wealth that was combined with a founding endowment financed by enslaved people’s labour to establish the modern University of Chicago. The British Empire’s telegraph network exploited native lands and labour as indispensable resources supporting imperial connectivity while excluding those labourers from its benefits. Likewise, today’s digital connections are secured by infrastructures built on stolen lands while Indigenous peoples across Turtle Island are disproportionately deprived of access to the high-speed connections that have become increasingly vital to survival.
The platform hosting our meetings, Zoom, depends on a global network of high-emissions data centers, including the Digital Realty Data Center located four miles from the university—one of the largest data centers in the world. The cloud computing economy values territory in this region because it is thought to be relatively insulated from the environmental risks to which it contributes. Those risks are distributed unevenly, concentrated on frontline communities that are overwhelmingly Black and Indigenous. The same is true of the natural resource extraction that allows us to gather remotely. For example, Indigenous peoples in Bolivia, Argentina, and Chile have seen their freshwater supplies diverted to support lithium mining, resulting in economic and ecological devastation.
Land acknowledgements run the risk of becoming prophylactic housekeeping items. But done properly, they ask: now that we know this in common, what does it commit us to doing? How shall we respond to these circumstances?
If you would like to help us begin to answer these questions, please contact the workshop coordinators and/or join our sessions.