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Acknowledgments
- University of Minnesota Press
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS when i arrived at UC Irvine in 2004, I had the good fortune to connect with a number of like-minded faculty members and students who joined me in exploring digital culture. Above all, I should mention the core lectures on new technologies I have offered every spring in the film and media studies major; the pioneering, writing-intensive, First Year Integrated Program in Computer Games as Art, Culture, and Technology I co-taught with Bill Tomlinson and Dan Frost of the Department of Informatics for three years in a row, sponsored by the Division of Undergraduate Education; and my two upper-division seminars on machinima that resulted in a lot of highly watchable computer game puppeteering on various hard drives. Without them, chapters 4 and 5 would not have been written. I should also mention my graduate seminars on archives, on the media history of secrecy, and on models and simulations, as opportunities to discuss material that went into this book. At Bard College, Tom Keenan deserves a cross-continental wave for including an earlier version of chapter 1 in an edited collection he put together with Wendy Chun: New Media, Old Media: A History and Theory Reader (New York: Routledge, 2006). Before leaving Irvine, Felicity Scott and Branden Joseph gave me significant feedback on an earlier version of chapter 2, which first appeared in the journal Grey Room 21 (MIT Press, 2006). Completion of the rest of this book project was delayed by a cascade of onerous commitments to academic shared governance, in the School of Humanities, then on the Irvine campus, and then at the UC headquarters in Oakland. Without naming the many colleagues from all ten UC campuses whom I had the pleasure to meet through theAcademic Senate, I acknowledge my debt to their contagious idealism, work ethic, and institutional memory. vii viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thanks also to everyone who invited me to present my work. Parts of this project were discussed at the University of Aberdeen, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Universität Basel, UC Berkeley, Freie Universität Berlin, Brown University, University of Cape Town, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Georgetown University, University of Melbourne, Northwestern University, Parsons The New School for Design, Universit ät Potsdam, Princeton University, Tainan National University of the Arts, Europa-Universität Viadrina in Frankfurt/Oder, and the University of the Witwatersrand, as well as at annual conventions of the National Communication Association and the Popular Culture Association and American Culture Association in Chicago, San Diego, and New Orleans, respectively. Without Mark Poster as a seminal figure in media studies, I doubt I would be able to do what I do at UC Irvine, and I was inspired by guest speakers at events I organized here: John Seely Brown, Wendy Chun, Daniel Clancy, Rosemary Coombe, Chris Csikszentmihalyi, Marc Davis, James DerDerian, Mark Dimunation, Cory Doctorow, Alex Galloway, Mark Hansen, Andrew Herman, Eva Horn, Erkki Huhtamo, Natalie Jeremijenko, Markus Krajewski, Henry Lowood, Peter Lunenfeld, Lev Manovich, Trevor Paglen, Claus Pias, Rita Raley, Stefan Rieger, David Rosenthal, Jeffrey Schnapp, Erhard Schüttpelz, Eugene Thacker, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, McKenzie Wark, and Samuel Weber. At the University of Minnesota Press, I thank Doug Armato, the Electronic Mediations series editors, and the external reviewers for their help in getting this book out. Since I conceived this project, I have derived pleasure from six framed glitch photo prints by Ant Scott; they serve as reminders that some glitches can be recuperated, and I am glad to see one of his works on the cover of this book. My wife is my most insightful colleague and companion; last but not least, I continue to learn about videogames from playing with my son Leo, and I dedicate this book to him. ...