Toronto Metropolitan University
Centre for Digital Humanities
October Offerings
2024
- CDH events are open to the TMU community and beyond.
- Also, check out the workshops hosted by the Collaboratory!
The Centre for Digital Humanities (CDH) is temporarily located on the 4th floor of the Podium (POD) building (where the School of Law is currently situated) and is planning to have a permanent home in the Library building (LIB) in the future. CDH events are held virtually (on Zoom) and in-person in the TMU Libraries’ Collaboratory.
Join us! If you have an idea for a CDH-hosted event or a question, please contact CDH Director Jason Boyd (jason.boyd@torontomu.ca) or CDH Manager Reg Beatty (rbeatty@torontomu.ca).
DH@TMU
Noon-1:00pm EDT
on Zoom
Tuesday October 8
noon-1:00pm EDT
“Retro Resonance: The Hauntological Power of Post-Retro Aesthetics in Video Games”
Presented by Patrick R. Dolan
As the mainstream game industry is starting to collapse under its unsustainable push for ever more hyperrealist graphics and complex gameplay, there has been a boom of smaller games bucking these trends by revisiting the past through the use of ‘retro’ pixel graphics. While the appeal of this aesthetic has been identified as nostalgic, Dr. Dolan argues that there is a more progressive and political force at work: the hauntologic. Using the popular indie game Celeste (Maddy Makes Games, 2018) and the DIY gamemaking platform, Bitsy (Adam LeDoux, 2017) as examples, Dolan applies theories of affect and aesthetics to explore how retro-style games can reach beyond nostalgia to create a better gaming culture.
CDH Virtual
Drop-Ins
on Zoom
Each month, weekly drop-ins will be dedicated to a specific theme. Tiny Tools Tour and DH Workbench are explorations of a digital resource or tool for research, creativity, and/or teaching. Stories in Play features discussion of entries in the Playable Stories Archive and episodes of the Playable Stories: Unarchived podcast, both of which are focused on storytelling in games. Reading Bytes is a reading group for discussion of published digital humanities scholarship. DH@TMU Talks feature CDH members presenting their research.
READING BYTES
Tuesday October 1
noon-1:00pm EDT
Moral Codes: Designing Alternatives to AI, Chapter 2: “Would You Like Me to Do the Rest? When AI Makes Code,” and Chapter 3: “Why is Code Not Like AI?” (pp. 22-45)
In 2024-25, Reading Bytes will discuss Alan F. Blackwell’s Moral Codes: Designing Alternatives to AI (MIT Press, 2024).
Moral Codes: Designing Alternatives to AI focuses on a timely topic that is causing a great deal of concern and anxiety in higher learning and in society more broadly: recent developments in AI (artificial intelligence). Blackwell’s book provides an opportunity to discuss the possibility of a more equitable and beneficial approach to the design and use of AI.
Each month we will read and discuss one or more chapters of Moral Codes. Participants are free to join discussions any month without having attended earlier Reading Bytes.
Moral Codes is available in open access through MIT Press Direct.
TINY TOOLS TOUR
noon-1:00pm EDT
Glyph Drawing Club
Reg Beatty
This as another Tiny Tools Tour where we draw from Everest Pipkin’s https://tinytools.directory/. The “Glyph Drawing Club” is a playful online tool created by Finnish designer Heikki Lotvonen and developer Ian Tuomi in 2018. Reg will show how GDC can be used to explore patterns, concrete and visual poetry, ASCII text art, and modular design.
DAY OF TINY TOOLS
Friday October 25
10am-4:00pm EDT
Glyph Drawing Club daylong drop-in at the Collaboratory
Reg Beatty
The “Glyph Drawing Club” is an online tool for exploring pattern, poetry, and constrained drawing. GDC is described by its Finnish designer, Heikki Lotvonen, as “a modular graphic design and text art tool.” Feel free to come by and watch Reg demonstrate it. Bring your laptop and try it yourself!
The Library Collaboratory is accessed from the 3rd floor of the SLC Building: take the stairs to the 3rd floor and walk along the hallway past the elevators, or, if using the elevators, turn left when exiting: the Library Collaboratory is at the end of the hall, marked with large yellow doors.
STORIES IN PLAY
Tuesday October 29
Noon-1:00pm EST
Roundtable on the Unarchived podcast episode on The Devil in Me
October’s Unarchived podcast (released October 28th) discusses Supermassive Games’ The Devil in Me (2022), which builds on traditions that can be traced to the LaserDisc games of the 1980s like Dragon’s Lair (Cinematronics, 1983) and point-and-click adventure games such as The Secret of Monkey Island (LucasArts, 1990).
As part of the CDH’s Stories in Play series, this roundtable discussion involving members of the Unarchived team will use the podcast episode as a springboard for a broader discussion of the evolution of interactive narratives and their unique combination of gameplay and storytelling.