November 2015

RESCHEDULED The Special Effects Business Is An Oxymoron: An Historical Perspective

Who makes the visual effects for contemporary blockbusters?

Employing analyses of industry discourse and global media structures, this talk reveals the historical traces of the smooth corporate rhetoric of “convergence,” “cooperation” and “synergy” that has led to a destabilization in the aesthetic, technology, and labor of these big-budget films.

Friday, November 20 | 1 PM
CJ 1.114 | Communication & Journalism Building
Loyola Campus, Concordia University, 7141 rue Sherbrooke Ouest

Julie Turnock is Assistant Professor of Media and Cinema Studies at the University of Illinois. She is the author of Plastic Reality: Special Effects, Art and Technology in 1970s US Filmmaking (Columbia UP) and has published research on the history of special effects and on digital cinema.

Can’t make it? Follow us at @MHRCCONCORDIA and follow the #MHRCTALKS hashtag as we live tweet the event.

MHRC asks, what is a Media Lab?

November 3, 2015 / Maggie MacDonald / No Comments

A conversation with Jussi Parikka, Lori Emerson, and Darren Wershler

Where did media labs come from and why do they occupy such an important role in contemporary discourse? What are practices and places in which media theory is produced? In the context of the humanities, why “lab,” and what sorts of claims follow from the use of this term? What are the “other places” of pedagogy in the era of networked digital media? How are media labs part of the specific institutional situation of the corporate university?
Join Jussi Parikka, Lori Emerson and Darren Wershler for a conversation on these questions, in the context of their new research project, THE LAB BOOK: SITUATED PRACTICES IN MEDIA STUDIES.

WHAT IS A MEDIA LAB? A CONVERSATION
Thursday, November 5 | 4:15-6 PM
CJ 1.114 | Communication and Journalism Building
Loyola Campus, Concordia University,
7141 rue Sherbrooke Ouest

Can’t make it? Follow us at @mhrcconcordia as we live tweet the event.