UCLA Professors Ursula Heise in the department of English and John Christensen of the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability in the Department of History and editor of the journal Boom: A California Journal, gave presentations at the Digital Environmental Humanities workshop that took place Sept. 7-8th in Montreal.
One of my favorite programs at UCLA is the UCLA Game Lab started by game theorist and designer Eddo Stern of UCLA’s Design and Media Art department. They do a fabulous yearly games festival at the Hammer Museum which is not to be missed.
“We are an experimental research and development lab that fosters the production of computer games and game-related research. The lab supports exploration of these areas of focus: Game Aesthetics through experimentation in the look, sound, language and tactility of games; Game Context through development of games that involve the body, new interfaces, physical space and performance in new ways; and Game Genres through examination of the socio-historic-political discourse around games and the development of new game genres that challenge the presently accepted boundaries of what games are about.
The UCLA Game Lab differs from more traditional game development contexts through an emphasis on conceptual risk-taking and development of new modes of expression and form through gaming. The lab supports projects that will establish new paradigms for gaming that emphasize the self-reliance and personal expression of the gaming artist.
The UCLA Game Lab’s primary function is as a research and production space for collaborative teams to pursue focused work on gaming projects, while benefiting from the technological infrastructure and expertise provided by the lab staff and faculty. This type of incubation space creates a context of community, interdisciplinary exchange, privacy, focus and continuity that is vitally conducive toward the completion of ambitious game projects.”
