About
Jeff Watson is an artist, designer, and Assistant Professor of Interactive Media and Games at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts.
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Category Archives: Blog
Eighth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities
I will be presenting my paper, “Alternate Reality Scholarship,” at the Eighth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities. The conference runs from June 29th to July 2, 2010. Watch this space or consult the the program schedule for … Continue reading
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Tagged conferences, digital humanities, publishing, scholarship, shadow academy
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Code and Materiality: Strandbeest and mechanical computing
Johanna Drucker’s discussion of code and materiality (”Code is not an immaterial ideal“) got me thinking about Theo Jansen’s Strandbeest project… Continue reading
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Tagged analog computers, antikythera mechanism, charles babbage, ctcs-677, imap, johanna drucker, strandbeest, tara mcpherson, theo jansen
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David Golumbia, buzzkiller
I’m excited about all the new forms of politics, art and mischief that participatory technoculture seems to promise. I can get genuinely pumped-up about Kurzweilian “singularities,” the Planetary Society and the Long Now Foundation. Sometimes I actually think things could … Continue reading
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Tagged co-optation, ctcs-677, david golumbia, imap, pessimism, tara mcpherson
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Sid Sackson’s Acquire
Since its release in the early 1960s, Acquire has inspired generations of game designers and enthusiasts with its elegant and replayable design. Many game designers, including Ticket to Ride designer Alan R. Moon, cite Acquire as a seminal work in the evoution of tabletop gaming. This post provides designer-centric coverage of the game. Continue reading
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Tagged acquire, board games, ctin-541, game design, imap, sid sackson, tracy fullerton
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Online, Reading
Reading a novel is an intense experience. Even lowly grocery store thrillers are complex and multimodal textual-linguistic collaborations between authors, readers, and culture. That is, novels are awesome. Reading them is never going to be a thing of the past. … Continue reading
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Tagged comm-620, imap, literacy, motoko rich, nicholas carr, reading
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Annenberg Fellows Fall Reception
I will present a brief version of my talk, Transmedia Storytelling and Alternate Reality Games, at the 2009 Annenberg Fellows Fall Reception. Here are the details: Annenberg Fellows Fall Reception Wednesday, September 9, 2009, from 4:00-6:00 pm USC’s Town & … Continue reading
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Blackboard Kills
Blackboard is an impediment to scholarship, and the sooner universities stop using it, the better. Continue reading
Polyhedral Dice
When I was a kid, I played a lot of role-playing games. The Marshall brothers, Lucas, Paul and Jonas, and my neighborhood pal, Ryan Sullivan, were my primary playmates in this regard. I played intensively between the ages of about nine and fourteen. After that, rock and roll and movies took over. Continue reading
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Tagged ctin-541, dice, imap, rpgs, ryan sullivan, the marshall brothers, tracy fullerton
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David Bordwell on Transmedia Storytelling
Film scholar David Bordwell posts a terrific summary of multiplatform or transmedia storytelling, covering everything from key precedents in cinema and theory to the hope many of us have for the form to reach higher and do more: Continue reading
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Tagged david bordwell, future cinema, transmedia
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tldr – visualizing large-scale discussions
tldr is an application for navigating through large-scale online discussions. The application visualizes structures and patterns within ongoing conversations to let the user browse to content of most interest. In addition to visual overviews, it also incorporates features such as … Continue reading
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Tagged reddit, visualization
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