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Transcriptions Events

 

Transcriptions Events

The Transcriptions Studio, sponsored by the UCSB Department of English, organizes many events throughout the year in conjunction with its Literature & Culture of Information (LCI) curricular specialization.

The Film.Literature.Software series, launched in 2005, brings together undergrads, graduate students and faculty to discuss film, fiction, poetry, games, software, and other works related to new media and new technology. Past events include a yearly colloquium series and other special events.


Upcoming Transcriptions (and LCI) Events



LCI Film.Literature.Software Series

Important Website Update!

For upcoming events, please visit the

"Transcriptions Wordpress Blog"

(http://www.transcriptions.wordpress.com)

 

As of the Fall, Transcriptions has begun the lengthy process of updating and redesigning the entire structure of its current website. As a part of this gradual transition, upcoming Transcriptions events for the 2006-2007 year will no longer be posted on this page, but, for the time being, on the Transcriptions wordpress blog.

Please visit this blog at the address listed above, or link to it here.






Past Transcriptions (and LCI Events)

LCI Film.Literature.Software Series

Short Stories of Robert A. Heinlein: "Life Line" and "All You Zombies"

Discussion
Mon. May 22, 2006, 4:30-6:30 pm, SH 2509

Moderator: Robin Chin

In "Life Line" (1939), Heinlein's first short story, man invents a
machine that can tell when a person is going to die. At the opposite end of his career, in 1959, Heinlein wrote "All You Zombies" in which a man is his own father, mother, and mysterious recruiter. Join us for a discussion of the relationship between the body, time, and technology in these works.

The stories will be available at the English Department Front Desk one week in advance.

 

LCI Film.Literature.Software Series

Second Life

Discussion
Thu. May 11, 2006, 4:30-6:30 pm, SH 2509

Moderator: Kim Knight

Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by nearly 100,000 people from around the globe.

To prepare for the discussion, visit http://secondlife.com. Register for a free account and explore the world. Please note: you are not required to provide a credit card for verification purposes; you may supply a cell phone number instead.

Supplemental articles will be available for photocopying one week in advance at the English Department front desk.

LCI Film.Literature.Software Series

bodysong

Screening and Discussion
Mon. Feb 13, 2006, 6:30-8:30 pm, SH 1415

Moderator: James Hodge

Attend the screening of bodysong (2003, dir. Simon Pummell, 78 minutes), named Best Documentary Feature for 2004 by the British Independent Film Awards. A paradigmatic example of the archival film genre, bodysong weaves together images from over 100 years of history into an epic story of love, sex, violence, death, and dreams. Incorporating digital media, black and white and color photography, the film is accompanied by a remarkable score by Radiohead's Johnny Greenwood.

LCI Film.Literature.Software Series

The Agrippa Files

Exhibition, Panel, Reception
Thu. Dec 1, 2005, 4:00-8:00 pm, Library 3591


View archival materials and an original copy of William Gibson and Dennis Ashbaugh’s Agrippa (a book of the dead). Tour The Agrippa Files online.

Discussion with Alan Liu and James Hodge of the English Department, and Harry Reese and Brian Springer of the Art Department.

Refreshments will be served.

LCI Film.Literature.Software Series

Gattaca

Screening and Discussion
Tue. Nov 22, 2005, 5:30-7:30 pm, SH 2509

Moderators:
Yanoula Athanassakis & Kim Knight

Vincent is one of the last "natural" babies born into a sterile, genetically-enhanced world, where life expectancy and disease likelihood are ascertained at birth. Myopic and due to die at 30, he is automatically denied the opportunity to pursue a career as an astronaut. When he assumes the identity of Jerome, a man who is genetically perfect yet crippled, things begin to look up. Vincent is close to his dream of space flight and the beautiful Irene has entered his life, adding some much needed variety. However, things start to fall apart when the mission director at Gattaca Corp is murdered. Not knowing whom he can trust, Vincent’s life is thrown into chaos as he tries to avoid suspicion and maintain his identity.

June 17-18, 2005, McCune Room (6020 HSSB), UCSB

Transliteracies Project Inaugural Event:

UCSB Conversation Roundtables on Online Reading

Kevin C. Almeroth * Anne Balsamo * Walter Bender * Bruce Bimber * John Seely Brown * Nicholas Dames * N. Katherine Hayles * Yunte Huang * Adrian Johns * George Legrady * Cynthia Lewis * Alan Liu * Peter Lyman * Jerome J. McGann * Tara McPherson * J. Hillis Miller * John Mohr * Christopher Newfield * Lisa Parks * Carol Braun Pasternack * Christiane Paul * Leah Price * Rita Raley * Ronald E. Rice * Warren Sack * Schoenerwissen/OfCD (Anne Pascual & Marcus Hauer) * Brigitte Steinheider * Matthew Turk * William B. Warner * Curtis Wong.

How are people today “reading” in digital, networked environments? For example, what is the relation between reading and browsing, or searching? Or between reading and multimedia? Can innovations in technologies or interfaces increase the productivity, variety, and pleasure of these new kinds of reading? How can the historical diversity of human reading practices help us gauge the robustness of the new digital practices; and, inversely, how can contemporary practices provide new ways to understand the technical, social, and cultural dimensions of historical reading?

This conference marks the start of the University of California Transliteracies research initiative. Transliteracies brings together teams of researchers from the humanities and arts, the social sciences, and computer science to study the practices of online reading in both historical and contemporary contexts. (See the conference site for more information).

LCI Film.Literature.Software Series

Serial Experiments Lain

Screening and Discussion
Thur. May 26, 2005, 5:30-7:30 pm, SH 1415

Moderator: Mike Frangos

Lain is an ordinary school girl. She doesn't question her surroundings, yet she picks up things others don't. She accepts them as they are. That is, until her classmate throws herself off a building, and everybody around school starts receiving emails from her.

LCI Film.Literature.Software Series

The Thirteenth Floor

Screening of the Thirteenth Floor
Thur. Feb. 24, 7-9 pm, SH 1415
Discussion of the Thirteenth Floor
Tue. March 1, 5-6:15 pm, SH 1415

Moderator: Melissa Stevenson

"Computer scientist Hannon Fuller has discovered something extremely important. He's about to tell the discovery to his colleague, Douglas Hall, but knowing someone is after him, the old man leaves a letter in his computer generated parallel world that's just like the 30's with seemingly real people with real emotions. Fuller is murdered in our "real" world the same night, and his colleague is suspected. Douglas discovers a bloody shirt in his bathroom and he cannot recall what he was doing the night Fuller was murdered. He logs into the system in order to find the letter, but has to confront the unexpected. The truth is harsher than he could ever imagine . . ."
-(Plot summary from Internet Movie Database)


LCI Film.Literature.Software Series

Re-reading the Gendered Cyborg: Technology and the Body in Feminist Science Fiction

Tuesday, February 1st , 3:00PM-4:30 South Hall 2617

"No Woman Born" by C.L. Moore

"The Girl Who Was Plugged In" by James Tiptree, Jr.

Moderator: Mike Frangos

This event focuses on the work of two foundational feminist science fiction writers: C.L. Moore and James Tiptree, Jr. (Alice Sheldon). Recent critical work has analyzed the image of the female cyborg in primarily male-written cyberpunk work such as by William Gibson, yet the indebtedness of cyberpunk writers to earlier feminist science fiction has gone largely unnoticed. This event re-considers the figure of the female cyborg from the point of view of feminist science fiction. C.L. Moore's "No Woman Born" (1944) describes a singer who is placed in an artificial body by her managers after a devastating fire. In Tiptree's "The Girl Who Was Plugged In" (1973), a suicidal seventeen year old girl has a chance at a new, perfect body. In these stories, the stakes of gender as performance, spectacle and artifice emerge against the potential of the post-human, cyborg body to transform the conditions that enable and constrain it.

The two short stories are available for reading in the English department reading room.

(See also Transcriptions Colloquium Series: Index)

 

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