Media Mutations 07

Bologna, Dipartimento delle Arti – May, 26th-27th, 2015

Organized by Riccardo Fassone, Paolo Noto, and Claudio Pires Franco

In the past years, digital games have progressively become more visible in the media ecosystem and now occupy a prominent position, economically and culturally, in the mediascape. As a consequence, scholars in TV and Film Studies have been incorporating the study of video games into their field of interests, working in particular on the aesthetic and narrative relationship between digital games and other media. Scholarly production has extensively focused, on the one hand, on issues such as intermediality, narrative aspects in digital games as well as on modes of representation and enunciation and, on the other hand, on playful aspects of the cinematic and televisual narration.
What seems to be nearly absent in this field of analysis is a more structured reflection on the impact of digital games in the contemporary media ecosystem. In particular, we would like to foster further exploration of the spaces traditionally occupied by cinema and television that have been significantly modified, both by the pervasiveness of digital games and by the design of gameful products. Moreover, we encourage an exploration of current and potential technological developments that determine interactions and convergences in the different aspects of production between video games and other media.

PROGRAMME
Tuesday, May 26
10.00 Greetings and introduction
10.30 AESVI4DEV at Media Mutations (in collaboration with the Italian Association of Game Publishers and Developers)
Ivan Venturi (IV Productions), Narrativa nei videogiochi in prima e terza persona: l’Inquisitore e gli Occhi dallo Spazio Profondo.
Luca Marchetti and Federico Semeraro (Studio Evil), RELIVE, quando video games, università e medici si incontrano.
Pietro Polsinelli (Design A Game), Videogiochi salvifici e diabolici.
Alain Bonati (alittleb.it), Gamified E-learning & Scenario-Based Learning anche per cambiare i comportamenti.
15.00 Keynote address
Tanya Krzywinska (University of Falmouth), Weird Invasions: Games and The Conspiracy Hermeneutic Affect.
16.30 Interactions between film and games
Nathan Hunt (University of Derby), Persistent aesthetics and utilitarian antagonists: the pleasures and uses of the zombie in digital games.
Federico Zecca (Università di Udine), The film game and the playful cinema.
Dom Holdaway (Università di Bologna), Generic Convergence: Humour and the Swashbuckler Experience in Pirates of the Caribbean and Monkey Island.
18.00 Journals and projects presentations
Wednesday, May 27
9.30 Keynote address
Geoffrey Long (Annenberg Innovation Lab, University of Southern California), 21st Century Storytelling: From Transmedia to the New Screens.
11.00 Playing games in the media ecosystems
Gabriele Baronio (Università di Bologna), TwitchPlays: invasione controllata di spazi digitali.
Andrea Giovannucci (Università di Bologna), Il LARP nel mondo digitale: contaminazione nei linguaggi ludici.
Alberto Sebastiani (Università di Bologna), Nicolas Eymerich inquisitore.
14.30 Studying games in the media ecosystems
Hartmut Koenitz (University of Georgia) and Gabriele Ferri (Indiana University), Mutations of narrative structures.
Lisa Patti (Hobart and William Smith Colleges), In(ter)activity and Identification: Video Games and Digital Portraiture.
Mattia Thibault (Università di Torino), From the periphery to the heart of thesemiosphere.
16.00 Playful marketing
Stephanie Janes (Royal Holloway), Gamification in Film Marketing.
Ed Vollans (University of Eaast Anglia), Games on screen: The videogame trailer as advert then trailer.
Giacomo Di Foggia (Università di Bologna), La gamification di sé.
17.45 Final remarks
Peppino Ortoleva (Università di Torino)