(Co)Figurations of Future: Ecocritical Approaches to Virtual Worlds

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Virtual environments proliferate within the flatness of our screens, a flatness spatially structured by layers of hardware and code. From hypertext and social networks to the 3D worlds of video games and virtual reality, we wander and explore realities paralleling — and mirroring — our own. Often this engagement occurs through frameworks of interaction and play. Digitally-rendered worlds, whether constructed of text, images, video, or other interfaces, have the potential to reorient the relationship we have to our own planet in crisis.  How do we relate virtual environments to non-virtual ones, particularly in our time of ecological devastation and climate change?

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Wednesday, March 23rd: Experiencing Virtual Reality (VR)

When: 1:00 p.m. and 2:00 p.m. Eastern (two one-hour long “screenings”)

Where: The Dreamery (bottom floor of the Shields Building, Penn State University Park campus)

What: With the Dreamery and Teaching & Learning with Technology department, we are co-hosting two one-hour long VR/360-degree video “screenings.” Using Oculus Quest headsets, experience Notes on Blindness and Traveling While Black, followed by a 30-minute open discussion about the technology and its uses.

Thursday, March 24th: Virtual Roundtable

When: 12:00 – 1:30 p.m. Eastern

Where: via Zoom

What: One of our principal events this spring, this roundtable will explore the ecocritical dimensions of digital and virtual environments.  We invited speakers of different disciplines and professional backgrounds to discuss how digital media forms are being used in response to ongoing ecological crises and the role of the human in virtual worlds. Through an interdisciplinary approach to video games, software, and contemporary art, we hope to (re)imagine digitized sociality as going beyond computers and humans to the environment more broadly.  What are the possible future(s) envisioned by and through the experience of virtual worlds?  Some entry points to this discussion may include:

  • Constructing digitally-rendered environments and ecologies
  • Defining the digital, the virtual, and the natural
  • Reflections on simulation and simulacra
  • Environmental impact of digital technologies
  • Virtual reality, accessibility, and pedagogy
  • The role of play in critical engagement

Listen here:

Our Speakers:

Alenda Y. Chang

Alenda's headshotAlenda Y. Chang is an Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Chang’s work has appeared in numerous journals, among them Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, Qui Parle, electronic book review, Feminist Media Histories, and Resilience. Her 2019 book, Playing Nature: Ecology in Video Games (University of Minnesota Press), develops environmentally informed frameworks for understanding and designing digital games. At UCSB, Chang co-directs Wireframe, a studio promoting collaborative theoretical and creative media practice with investments in global social and environmental justice. She is also a founding co-editor of the UC Press open-access journal, Media+Environment.

Abstract: The future of games is uncertain. Playing in the twenty-first century will be contingent on many matters outside of our control, from outside temperatures to the supply chains for electronic devices and components. Yet conventional wisdom about games runs something like this: games grant players limited agency over a bounded situation; play is consequence-free, almost prophylactic, a way to experiment with identities and scenarios without fear of repercussion. How, then, might thinking the climate-disrupted future through games remind us of the vulnerability and risk that is also at the heart of the play experience? And as youth-led environmental movements draw attention to the inertia of adults and their governing bodies, often by pointing to the untimely end of their childhoods, how do we make the case that games are still a relevant discourse for the Anthropocene, and not just its impending relics?

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Jonathan Correa

Jonathan's headshotJonathan Correa is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature at Penn State, and a Pre-Doctoral Fellow of the Ford Foundation. Generally, Jon’s research focuses on the construction of race in the medieval literature of England, Iberia, and Scandinavia. He has experience teaching a wide variety of undergraduate courses at Penn State: The Arthurian Legend, Myth and Mythologies, Introduction to Video Game Culture, Rhetoric and Composition, and Basic and Intermediate levels of Intensive Summer Latin. Additionally, as a volunteer with the Restorative Justice Initiative at Penn State, he has taught Creative Writing classes at the SCI-Benner Township and at the Centre County Correctional Facility. As a member of the Medieval Academy of America, Jon currently serves as the Chair of the Graduate Student Committee. He has presented his research at meetings of the Medieval Academy, the Society for Classical Studies, the American Comparative Literature Association, and the International Congress in Medieval Studies. Besides his work in medieval literature, Jonathan has a growing interest in video game culture and the affordances of this exciting medium.

Abstract: For all the problems the Covid-19 pandemic brought with it, my pedagogical praxis is actually stronger for it. Holding teaching diverse teaching responsibilities both at Penn State (Rhetoric and Composition, Arthurian Legend, and Introduction to Video Game Culture) and at the Centre County Correctional Facility (Creative Writing) through the pandemic forced me to broaden my repertoire in order to secure a meaningful learning experience for my students (and myself). I believe I met with success through the incorporation of alternative and immersive forms of media (such as podcasting, video games, and other types of open access software) in in-class activities and assignments.

Technology affords us myriads of benefits as teachers, helps us diversify our repertoires, can exponentially help us increase accessibility to course content, and has the potential of moving us away from instruction models that ultimately reinforce oppression. In this presentation, I will talk about best practices for incorporating the use of technology in the undergraduate Humanities classroom activities and bring attention to some of the learning benefits students experience from more technologically-minded assignments.

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Kathryn Hamilton & Deniz Tortum

Kathryn's headshotKathryn Karaoglu Hamilton, aka Sister Sylvester, is an artist and performance-maker. As Sister Sylvester she creates essayistic performances that use first hand research, found documents, animals and technology to make cross-species collaborations and cyborg theater. She is a current resident at ONX studio, a new media workspace created by the Onassis foundation and The New Museum in NYC; a 2019 Macdowell Fellow; an alumnus of the Public Theater Devised Theater Working Group, and Public Theater New Works program. Her most recent film, Our Ark, co-directed with Deniz Tortum, premiered at IDFA in November 2021. Recent work includes ARK: Shadowtime, at Kıraathane Istanbul, as part of Protocinema’s multi-city exhibition, A Few In Many Places; The Eagle and The Tortoise, at National Sawdust, NYC; The Fall, Yale University, and Under The Radar, NYC. Find out more about her work on her website: https://sistersylvester.org/

Deniz's headshotDeniz Tortum works in film and new media. His work has screened internationally, including at the Venice Film Festival, IFFR, SxSW, Sheffield, True/False and Dokufest. He has worked as a research assistant at the MIT Open Documentary Lab, where his research focused on virtual reality. In 2017-2018, he was a fellow at Harvard Film Study Center, working on Phases of Matter, which premiered at International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2020 and received the Best Documentary awards at Istanbul and Antalya Film Festivals. His film If Only There Were Peace (co-dir. Carmine Grimaldi) received the best short documentary award at Dokufest and his latest VR film Floodplain premiered in Venice Film Festival. In 2019, he was featured in Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film.” Find out more about his work on his website: https://deniztortum.com/

Abstract: Our research looks at efforts to create virtual replicas of reality in the midst of real-world ecological crisis. While drawing parallels between the climate crisis and the history of VR, we explore observations of a nascent 3D archive of the real world, and how virtual reality technology stands in for and distracts from loss and absence in the physical world.

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Moderator:

Hannah A. Matangos is a dual-title PhD candidate in German Literature & Culture and Visual Studies.  She is also the President of the Liberal Arts Collective (LAC). Her research interests fall at the intersection of art and technology in the German context and beyond. Her dissertation, entitled “Technologies of Illumination,” surveys the aesthetic, artistic, and socio-political potential and trajectory of light-based media, highlighting the work of artists associated with the Bauhaus, Group ZERO, Austrian avant-garde film, and from today, while grappling with questions of modernity, futurity, and technological experience.