Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism

Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. 2004. New York. Penguin Books. 448 pages. ISBN: 0143035592 (paper).

Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

ARTS 1316 (ARTS 1316) Drawing Foundations (3 semester credit hours) This course provides a foundation for advancement to Drawing II and III, figure drawing and printmaking classes. Emphasis will be placed on the process of charcoal, graphite and ink in relation to design concerns such as light, space, form and composition. The class will stress the importance of drawing as a method to make visual form out of conceptualized ideas as well as provide the manual skills to describe reality. (0-3) S

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/j.1939-4640.2004.tb02794.x

What Is “ART”?

contemplate where we go from here. In the end, the historical focus of the beginning of the book provides a strong context for some of the more thematic work done toward the end. If I had any complaint about Fade to Gray, it would be that, at times, Shary and McVittie seem to let themselves off the hook of doing deeper critical analysis. In chapter five, Shary laments that “it is heartening that Hollywood has been increasing that quantity of elder romances, but the quality of those romantic depictions deserves further scrutiny by the elder audience” (p. 173). In the conclusion, Shary and McVittie acknowledge:

(Not) getting paid to do what you love: Gender, social media, and aspirational work

This paper is a study of consumer resistance among active abstainers of the Facebook social network site. I analyze the discourses invoked by individuals who consciously choose to abstain from participation on the ubiquitous Facebook platform. This discourse analysis draws from approximately 100 web and print publications from 2006 to early 2012, as well as personal interviews conducted with 20 Facebook abstainers. I conceptualize Facebook abstention as a performative mode of resistance, which must be understood within the context of a neoliberal consumer culture, in which subjects are empowered to act through consumption choices - or in this case non-consumption choices - and through the public display of those choices. I argue that such public displays are always at risk of misinterpretation due to the dominant discursive frameworks through which abstention is given meaning. This paper gives particular attention to the ways in which connotations of taste and distinction are invoked by refusers through their conspicuous displays of non-consumption. This has the effect of framing refusal as a performance of elitism, which may work against observers interpreting conscientious refusal as a persuasive and emulable practice of critique. The implication of this is that refusal is a limited tactic of political engagement where media platforms are concerned.

Media refusal and conspicuous non-consumption: The performative and political dimensions of Facebook abstention:

LEGITIMATING TELEVISION: MEDIA CONVERGENCE AND CULTURAL STATUS By Michael Z. Newman and Elana Levine New York: Routledge, 2012, 232 pp.Traditional hierarchies of taste and cultural value have broken down over the course of the twentieth century, allowing movies to become cinema, comic books to become graphic novels, video games to become artgames, and the idiot box to become Quality TV. But this familiar notion doesn't quite capture the complex social, political, economic, and historical processes that drive the elevation of popular cultural forms, or the many ways in which distinction, cultural hierarchy, and distributions of material and symbolic capital are inscribed in these processes. In the past decade or so, there has been a proliferation of academic work that tackles precisely this complexity, and Michael Z. Newman and Elana Levine's Legitimating Television: Media Convergence and Cultural Status is a notable recent example. In this short but comprehensive volume, the authors set out to critically account for the high cultural status achieved by certain kinds of TV shows, and the apparent legitimation of the television medium.Newman and Levine's goal is to document and denaturalize the logic of this process, and reveal the underlying social and political implications of television's shifting status. Their argument is that some kinds of television have achieved legitimacy only through the exclusion and denigration of other kinds of television. This process has reinforced rather than challenged established social and cultural hierarchies of class and gender. Soap operas and reality TV, as well as most older shows, continue to be scoffed at as feminized mass culture while contemporary, masculinized primetime or premium cable dramas like The Sopranos are elevated to the status of art. Crucial to Newman and Levine's analysis is that in the era of media convergence, this problematic distinction extends not only to different genres of television programming, but also to different modes of engaging with television. They argue that video-on-demand (VOD), digital video recorders (DVR), DVD box sets, streaming, and illegal downloading (generally associated with elite, young, tech-savvy, middleand upper-middle-class viewers) are seen to be objectively better than watching broadcast TV with commercials (which, they argue, is generally associated with a lower-class or luddite audience who "don't know any better"). It's Deal or No Deal and The Big Bang Theory on the networks for the masses, Mad Men and Arrested Development on Netflix for the classes. For those invested in television as an art form, this newfound respect and status is a long-awaited victory, but Newman and Levine point out that these distinctions are precisely those that denigrated television for so long in the first place, associating it with the "bad" qualities of passivity, feminine domesticity, and juvenile, crassly commercial (even dangerous) mass entertainment. The medium itself has become something base and limiting that needs to be transcended, as evidenced by the slogan "It's not TV, it's HBO" and the familiar TV-downloader's refrain of "I don't have TV." The idea, then, that all cultural distinctions have collapsed into an omnivorous and egalitarian free-for-all belies an ongoing reaffirmation of the ideological status quo.Each chapter of the book works as a self-contained analysis of a particular dimension of television's legitimation, contributing to and expanding this core argument (a modularity that makes it useful for teaching). Newman and Levine trace the history of the current so-called "Golden Age" of television, finding its roots in 1970s Quality Television, 1990s programs like Hvin Peaks that combined cult fandom with mass appeal, and the rise of premium cable channels like HBO. A particularly strong chapter examines the construction of the "showrunner" (an individual acting as producer and lead writer, and often the series creator) as television auteur. …

Legitimating Television: Media Convergence and Cultural Status

This article draws on over 60 interviews and 120 surveys with indie game developers to illustrate relational labour and entrepreneurship practices in cultural industries and their relationship to ‘...

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1367549418810082

The Missing Producer: Rethinking indie cultural production in terms of entrepreneurship, relational labour, and sustainability.

This article considers the history, practices and impact of the Indie Megabooth and its founders in terms of their role as a 'cultural intermediary' in promoting and supporting independent or 'indie' game development. The Megabooth is a crucial broker, gatekeeper and orchestrator of not only perceptions of and markets for indie games but also the socio-material possibility of indie game making itself. In its highly publicized outward-facing role, the Megabooth ascribes legitimacy and value to specific games and developers, but its behind-the-scenes logistical and brokerage activities are of equal if not greater importance. The Megabooth mediates between a diverse set of actors and stakeholders with multiple (often conflicting) needs and goals and in doing so helps constitute the field of production, distribution, reception and consumption for indie games. 'Indie-ness' and independence are actively performed in and through intermediaries such as the Megabooth.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1461444817711403

Megabooth: The cultural intermediation of indie games.

Background  Independent or “indie” games play a significant role in the contemporary game industry, and Canada is home to several prominent hubs of indie gaming activity. Analysis  Drawing on 34 interviews with developers and community organizers across the country, this article examines how Canadian indie game developers construct their identities and communities on three levels: global, national, and local. Conclusions and Implications While online and local indie gaming communities provide a variety of material and symbolic benefits to participation, national identification is conspicuously absent, except in certain contexts tied to cultural policy and government support. This article argues that the intersection of the global and the local is the primary site of indie identity and community and considers the implications for Canadian cultural industries more generally. Keywords  New media; Globalization; Cultural industries policy; Arts policy; Production/co-production RESUME Contexte  De nos jours, les jeux en ligne independants occupent une place significative dans l’industrie du jeu video, et il y a plusieurs centres de jeux independants au Canada. Analyse  Cet article se fonde sur 34 entrevues avec des createurs et des organisateurs communautaires partout au pays afin d’examiner comment les createurs de jeux video independants au Canada construisent leurs identites et leurs communautes a trois niveaux : mondial, national et local. Conclusions et implications  Au niveau local, les communautes de jeux independants en ligne ont beau offrir un eventail de benefices materiaux et symboliques aux participants, l’identification nationale brille par son absence, sauf dans quelques contextes etablis grâce a certaines politiques culturelles et a un appui de la part du gouvernement. Cet article soutient que l’intersection du mondial et du local est le site primaire de l’identite et de la communaute independantes et il considere plus generalement les implications des jeux independants pour les industries culturelles canadiennes. Mots cles  Nouveaux medias; Mondialisation; Politiques sur les industries culturelles; Politiques sur les arts; Production/coproduction

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Canadian Indie Games Between the Global and the Local

Bringing together the insights of assemblage theory, pragmatist aesthetics, and the sociology of art, this paper examines the cultural legitimation of ‘artgames’ as a category of indie games with particularly high cultural status. Passage (PC, Mac, Linux, iOS, 2007) serves as a case study, demonstrating how a diverse range of factors and processes, including a conducive ‘opportunity space,’ changes in production, distribution, and reception, and the emergence of a critical discourse, collectively constitute an assemblage or ‘art world’ that establishes artgames as legitimate art (Baumann, 2007a; 2007b).

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Felan Parker

Papers

Legitimating Television: Media Convergence and Cultural Status

The Missing Producer: Rethinking indie cultural production in terms of entrepreneurship, relational labour, and sustainability.

Megabooth: The cultural intermediation of indie games.

Canadian Indie Games Between the Global and the Local

An Art World for Artgames