December 30, 2024

EagleEye

A Newsletter for UMW Faculty and Staff

Whalen Appointed to Board of Directors for Electronic Literature Organization

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Associate Professor in the Department of English, Linguistics and Communication

Zach Whalen has been appointed to the Board of Directors for the Electronic Literature Organization, an international organization dedicated to the investigation of literature produced for digital media. This large community of scholars and practitioners working with “born digital” literature hosts an annual convention, maintains a network of scholarly archives and databases, and has published four anthologies of electronic literature. Read more.

Whalen Shares Thoughts on ‘Last of Us’ With ‘Wired’

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Associate Professor of Digital Studies Zach Whalen

Associate Professor of Digital Studies Zach Whalen

Associate Professor Zach Whalen in the Department of Communication and Digital Studies contributed to a piece titled “The Last of Us: The Musical Transposition in the Series is a Revolution.” Whalen suggested that for both the game world and its characters to be as believable as the cinematic, they need distinct theme music attributed to locations and different characters within the game, the so-called sound theme or leitmotif, capable of recalling the narrated character through the chanting of short and impalpable notes. Read more in Wired and on Blog Flavio Perrone.

Whalen Traces History of Video Games on ‘With Good Reason’

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Associate Professor of Digital Studies Zach Whalen

Associate Professor of Digital Studies Zach Whalen

Associate Professor of Digital Studies Zach Whalen spoke on an encore presentation of With Good Reason Radio titled “The Wide World of Video Games.” On the segment, Whalen told the show’s host Sarah McConnell: “Even the idea of coin-operated amusement devices goes back into the 19th century … One interesting perspective to think about is that these are opportunities for kids to be direct consumers for possibly the first time in their life.” Listen to the episode.

Whalen Presents Research on Computer-Generated Comics

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Associate Professor of Digital Studies Zach Whalen

Associate Professor of Digital Studies Zach Whalen

Associate Professor of Digital Studies Zach Whalen travelled to Purdue University on Oct. 6 to present research on current approaches to using computational approaches to create comics. The paper is an attempt to show affinities between current research generative neural networks on one hand and comics theorists on the other, and to analyze the ways that computational creators (including Whalen) are attempting to overcome the medium-specific challenges that computational approaches and theoretical interpretations still have not accounted for.

Whalen Appeared on ‘With Good Reason’

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Associate Professor Zach Whalen

Associate Professor Zach Whalen

Associate Professor of Digital Studies Zach Whalen was interviewed on With Good Reason, which airs Sundays at 2 p.m. on Fredericksburg’s Radio IQ 88.3 Digital and at various times throughout the week on stations across Virginia and the United States. Check the website for show times.

Beating The Game, airing Sept. 11 

For decades, video games have inspired hit songs and have been adapted into countless movies. Boris Willis (George Mason University) says the next horizon for video games is the stage. He uses cutting-edge video game technology to turn his performances into interactive experiences. And: Arcades defined pop culture in the 1980’s and 90’s. But today, they’re almost extinct. Zach Whalen (University of Mary Washington) charts the rise and fall of one of America’s most nostalgic institutions: the arcade.

Later in the Show: Gamergate sent shockwaves throughout the gaming community back in 2014. But Bruce Williams (University of Virginia) says we’re still dealing with the social and political fallout from the Gamergate scandal. Plus: Over the years, Politicians and pundits have been quick to blame violent video games for mass shootings. But Jimmy Ivory (Virginia Tech) says there’s no evidence to suggest video games lead to violent behavior.

Audio files of the full program and its companion news feature are posted on the WGR website: https://www.withgoodreasonradio.org.

Whalen to Appear on ‘With Good Reason’

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Associate Professor Zach Whalen

Associate Professor Zach Whalen

Associate Professor of Digital Studies Zach Whalen was interviewed on With Good Reason, which airs Sundays at 2 p.m. on Fredericksburg’s Radio IQ 88.3 Digital and at various times throughout the week on stations across Virginia and the United States. Check the website for show times.

Beating The Game, airing Sept. 11 

For decades, video games have inspired hit songs and have been adapted into countless movies. Boris Willis (George Mason University) says the next horizon for video games is the stage. He uses cutting-edge video game technology to turn his performances into interactive experiences. And: Arcades defined pop culture in the 1980’s and 90’s. But today, they’re almost extinct. Zach Whalen (University of Mary Washington) charts the rise and fall of one of America’s most nostalgic institutions: the arcade.

Later in the Show: Gamergate sent shockwaves throughout the gaming community back in 2014. But Bruce Williams (University of Virginia) says we’re still dealing with the social and political fallout from the Gamergate scandal. Plus: Over the years, Politicians and pundits have been quick to blame violent video games for mass shootings. But Jimmy Ivory (Virginia Tech) says there’s no evidence to suggest video games lead to violent behavior.

Audio files of the full program and its companion news feature will be posted the week of the show to our website: https://www.withgoodreasonradio.org.

Whalen Publishes Digital Poem

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A screenshot of a digital poem showing rows of dark gray letters arranged around a five-sided blank space in the center of the screen.

Screenshot of Whalen’s digital poem “pent house”

Zach Whalen, Associate Professor in Communication and Digital Studies, has published a digital poem titled “pent house” in the journal Taper. Submissions for this issue were meant to address the theme “pent up” as a way of thinking about life in a pandemic, and works are constrained to no more than 2KB of code with no external libraries. “pent house” excerpts letters from the gene sequence of SARS-Cov-2 and arranges them in a five-sided spiral.