Stanford Humanities Lab: March 2005

Stanford Humanities Lab: March 2005


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The Metaverse U conference held on February 16-17 at Stanford University explored the cultural, technological, legal, and economic issues surrounding virtual worlds. A full video transcript of the conference will be made permanently available on the web, archived to become part of a global conversation on virtual worlds. Sites for viewing and download will be announced both here and on the Metaverse U site as soon as they are available.

We cordially invite you to extend the conversation begun at the conference, and solicit your participation in the post-conference exchange of ideas on the Metaverse U wiki. To all our speakers, to our esteemed colleagues and friends in attendance both at Stanford and in Second Life, and to the many individuals who worked to ensure the success of this event, we offer our heartfelt thanks.

The Stanford Humanities Lab is a Center for Transdiciplinary/Post-Disciplinary Study. We discover fascinating futures to be explored in ignoring and crossing disciplinary borders.

SHL believes that some crucial questions — about what it is to be human, about experience in a connected world, about the boundaries of culture and nature — transcend old divisions between the arts, sciences and humanities; between the academy, industry and the cultural sphere.

We engage in experimental projects with a "laboratory" ethos — collaborative, co-creative, team-based — involving a triangulation of arts practice, commentary/critique, and outreach, merging research, pedagogy, publication and practice. Beyond commentary and discussion, we build: new media, interactive archives, predictive models of social change, collaborative research workshops, art exhibitions.

The SHL agenda encompasses

• animating archives - regenerating, bringing to life, and fostering new modes of interaction with the storehouses of human, cultural, artistic, scientific achievement - our focus is on the question of the relationship of the human past to efforts at conservation and preservation

• building bigger pictures - putting specialized in-depth research into the context of big human questions; questions, for example, of rapid social change and innovation, the ethical implications of information technology, the character of distributed digital communities, the politics of digital citizenship, the past, present, and future of intellectual property

• enabling co-creative collaboration - developing successful models of teamwork, learner-centered models of training (thinking through doing), and collaborative authoring tools and processes

• building bridges - establishing innovative partnerships between industry, museums, foundations, and high-level university-based research

HTGG2 team covering GDC for Gamespot

Galen, Waynn, and Doug, of the How They Got Game 2 team are covering the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco for Gamespot this week. Check out their articles (look for articles tagged 'games') in our "What we are reading" list..

Matt Adams of Blast Theory speaking Tuesday, 6pm

Matt Adams of Blast Theory will be speaking on Tuesday, March 8, at 6pm. Matt is in the bay area in order to accept the Maverick Award, being awarded to Blast Theory, at this year's Game Developers Choice Awards.

Jeff Schnapp to interview Merce Cunningham

Prof. Schnapp will be talking with Merce Cunningham on March 8, at 6pm, at the Cantor Arts Center, as part of the "Encountering Merce" event. On the agenda:

Black Mountain College: An Experiment in Art
Cunningham and friends join in a panel discussion about the teaching philosophy of Black Mountain College, where faculty included Cunningham, Buckminster Fuller and John Cage.

Designing the Future, HUM203

The Lab will be sponsoring a new course along with I.D. Studies for spring 2005, Designing the Future. Visit the website for more information!