MA Media and Creative Cultures is pleased to announce that the media scholar Dr. Stefan Höltgen will be its 2018-2019 Theorist-in-Residence.
A post-doctoral scholar for Media Sciences at the Berlin Humboldt-University where he is preparing his second dissertation in computer science about “The archaeology of early home computers and their programming”, Dr. Stefan Höltgen is working on the topics of computer archaeology and archaeology of digital media, game studies, audio-visual computing, the history of computers, programming languages, and computer didactics.
As part of his tenure as Theorist in Residence, Höltgen will deliver a public lecture and lead a special seminar series across January-February 2019:
Monday, 14 January 5pm: From Bugs to Features. A Computer Archaeology of Errors and/in/as Games
Computer games are meant to disperse the player’s sense for reality with their aesthetics of immersion. This process is interrupted when a computer error occurs. Instead of just stop playing the gamer could use the focus his/her attention to the erroneos process and try to transgress the black boxes borders by starting to play with the game (instead of just playing the game), searching for the game’s inner rules and trying to modify them. The talk will take a look at different forms of computer errors (glitches and bugs in hardware and software), show their historical and epistemological roots by focussing on early computer games of the 1970s and 1980s. Back in the day bugs were common and hacking practices were used to debug and modify game codes. The connection between the real world (on our side of the computer’s surface) and the world of media technology on the subfaces of the machine will be shown by a comparison of the languages spoken, the errors made on both sides, and de/bugging hacks as transgressions of this border.
Please RSVP to secure your place: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/from-bugs-to-features-a-computer-archaeology-of-errors-andinas-games-tickets-53246132616
Special Seminar: ArtWare. Hands-on Archaeology of Early Computer Graphic Arts
Block I: 15-18 January 2019
Block II: 20-26 February 2019
The seminar will focus on early German and British computer graphic arts from the 1960s – the so called „Cybernetic Art“. After a theoretical section about the cybernetic paradigms (information theory, information aesthetics, computer graphics hardware and software) the students will visit exhibitions in London to examine original artworks. In the February slots, students will learn a historic programming language to re-enact some of the historic art words on their own computers to get an idea about the algorithmic processes and formal languages which made this kind of art „cybernetic“.
No previous knowledge in mathematics nor in programming is needed.
The seminar is free, but places are limited, and will be allocated on first come first serve basis. All events will take place at 10 Stockwell Street.
For more information, exact times and venues and to sign up please email Dr. Maria Korolkova m.korolkova@gre.ac.uk