MEET THE JURORS: JENNA NG

Jenna Ng, courtesy of University of York

The seventh edition of the Milan Machinima Festival features an international jury panel comprising four esteemed members, including Jenna Ng.

Jenna Ng is an accomplished multi-award-winning researcher, highly regarded in the fields of digital media and culture. With an impressive educational background, including a PhD from University College London, she has transitioned from a finance lawyer to a trailblazer in academic research. Her work is primarily focused on theoretical, cultural, and critical analyses that intersect digital and visual culture. Her areas of expertise are diverse, encompassing digital media, digital culture, creative technologies, AI and algorithmic culture, interactive storytelling, and interactive media.

Ng's commitment to digital media and culture is evident in her extensive publication record. She is known for her groundbreaking work in digital imaging, screen cultures, and interactive storytelling. Her innovative approach includes practice-based methodologies, leading to unique research outputs such as a second-screen installation for theatre performance, multimedia scholarship, video essays, and online open-access collaborative initiatives. Her latest project, a creative research website on the nature of virtuality, has earned accolades such as the John Culkin Award for Outstanding Praxis in the Field of Media Ecology, the Learning on Screen Special Jury Prize, and the MeCCSA Practice-Based Research of the Year award.

As an esteemed speaker, Ng has delivered over 25 invited talks worldwide, including keynotes and plenaries at major conferences like the Society of Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) and the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies (BAFTSS). She has also been a guest speaker at various public events and a juror for the Critics’ Choice Award at the Milan Machinima Festival.

Ng’s first book, Understanding Machinima: Essays on Filmmaking in Virtual Worlds (Bloomsbury, 2013), is a multimedia academic collection exploring the remediation of machinima in various fields. It has been well-received for its insightful exploration of machinima and is considered a foundational text for the emerging field of machinima studies. Her second book, The Post-Screen Through Virtual Reality, Holograms and Light Projections: Where Screen Boundaries Lie (Amsterdam University Press, 2021), delves into new theories of image display and has been awarded Honourable Mention for Best First Monograph by BAFTSS. Ng’s third book, currently in progress, will explore the existential tensions of living in the age of Artificial Intelligence.

In addition to her books, Ng has contributed significantly to academic journals like Cinema Journal, Animation, Games and Culture, and Screening the Past. At the University of York, she serves as the Head of Creative Technologies and has held various significant roles, including founding the Interactive Media BSc programme and establishing the MA Digital Media and Culture programme. Jenna Ng's multifaceted career and contributions to the academic world underscore her status as a leading figure in the study and exploration of digital media and culture.

Read more about Jenna Ng’s work

NEWS: ANNOUNCING THE MMF MMXXIII INTERNATIONAL JURY PANEL

The MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL is delighted to announce the 2023 jury panel: Simonetta Fadda, Stefano Locati, Jenna Ng, Marco de Mutiis, and Henry Lowood.

Born in Savona, Italy Simonetta Fadda is an artist, educator, essayist and translator. Her teaching activity include the Accademia di Belle Arti "Giacomo Carrara" (Bergamo), Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera (Milan) and Scuola Civica di Cinema e Televisione “Luchino Visconti” (Milan). Since the Eighties, she has been working with video art. Her artworks are featured in public and private collections in Italy and in Europe. She participated in major international events such as Movimenta – Biennale de l’image en mouvement, projet Mondes Flottants: Grandes Images, Nice, France (2017) and Parallel Program of the 13th Istanbul Biennial, Institut Français d’Istanbul, Istanbul (2013). In Italy she was featured, among others, at Festival del Nuovo Cinema di Pesaro, Pesaro – Italy (in We Want Cinema: cinema e video di ricerca 2018, and in Satellite 2016) and Bergamo Film Meeting, Bergamo – Italy (2010). A prolific writer and critic, Fadda is the author of the seminal Definition zero: origins of video art between politics and communication (Costa & Nolan, Milan 1999), the first Italian study on video as a medium of art and political activism (reprinted in an expanded format in 2017 by Meltemi Edizioni, Milan). In 2020, Franco Angeli published her new book, Media and art. Among her editing and translation work into Italian is Gene Youngblood’s Expanded Cinema.

Stefano Locati is a post-doctoral research fellow at IULM University in Milan, Italy. His research focuses on Chinese and Japanese cinemas, transmedia, adaptation studies, periodical studies. He holds a Ph.D. in Literatures and Media and a master’s degree in philosophy. Heis the author of Sistema media mix. Cinema e sottoculture giovanili del Giappone contemporaneo (The Media Mix System. Cinema and Youth Subcultures of Contemporary Japan, 2022), La spada del destino. I samurai nel cinema giapponese dalle origini a oggi (The Sword of Doom. Samurai in Japanese cinema from the origin to the present, 2018), Il nuovo cinema di Hong Kong. Voci e sguardi oltre l’handover (New Hong Kong Cinema. Voices and Sights beyond the Handover, 2014, with Emanuele Sacchi), and Evolution. Darwin e il cinema (Evolution. Darwin and cinema, 2009, with Elena Canadelli). He has co-edited with Dario Boemia the volume Book Reviews and Beyond. Critical Authority, Cultural Industry, and Society in Periodicals Between the 18th and the 21st Century (2021). He is a member of the Scientific Committee of the Ca' Foscari Short Film Festival in Venice and the artistic director of Sognielettrici/Electricdreams International Film Festival in Milan.

Jenna Ng is Senior Lecturer in Film and Interactive Media at the School of Arts and Creative Technologies, University of York. She has published widely on digital media and visual culture, with research interests as well in the philosophy of technology, the posthuman, computational culture and the digital humanities. She is the editor of Understanding Machinima: Essays on Films in Virtual Worlds (Bloomsbury, 2013) and the author of The Post-Screen Through Virtual Reality, Holograms and Light Projections: Where Screen Boundaries Lie (Amsterdam University Press, 2021). Her latest work is a creative multimedia portfolio online piece, “The New Virtuality” (2022).

Marco de Mutiis is Digital Curator at Fotomuseum Winterthur and an artist working with different media and technologies and with an interest in issues of perception and communication. Often re­-engineering and transforming old analog and mechanical devices, De Mutiis creates kinetic installations that concern with communication, language and physicality. Graduated with distinction from the MFA program at the School of Creative Media (City University of Hong Kong), he has shown his works internationally in festivals and galleries. He has been the recipient of the Bloomberg Digital Arts Initiative in 2013. He has worked as a senior research associate and part-time lecturer at City University of Hong Kong and he is pursuing a Doctorate Program.

Henry Lowood is Curator for Germanic Collections and Harold C. Hohbach Curator, History of Science & Technology Collections in the Stanford University Libraries. As a curator, he is part of the Humanities Research Group in Green Library, the Department best known for the Lane Reading Room and a wonderful group of colleagues. Henry Lowood has written several essays on such topics as game studies, game preservation, and machinima. Among his most recent books are The Machinima Reader (2012) with Michael Nitsche and Debugging Game History (2016) with Raiford Guins, both published by MIT Press and Machinima! Teorie, pratiche, dialoghi with Matteo Bittanti in 2013, published by Edizioni Unicopli. Along with Guins, Lowood is now editing a new series for MIT Press about the history and culture of gaming. Since 2000, Lowood has headed a project first funded by the Stanford Humanities Laboratory and, since the demise of SHL, continued in the Libraries. Among other projects, Lowood curated the Machinima Archive for the Internet Archive, which is dedicated to the academic investigation and historical preservation of the emerging art form known as machinima. From 2008 to 2013, Lowood led the HTGG Stanford group in a project first funded by the U.S. Library of Congress called Preserving Virtual Worlds.

NEWS: JENNA NG ON THE UNIQUE NATURE OF MACHINIMA

In this video interview, Gemma Fantacci talks to Jenna NG — a member of the Festival’s jury panel — about the peculiar nature of machinima and the key themes of the MMF MMXXI.

Jenna NG is Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Film and Interactive Media in the Department of Theatre, Film, Television and Interactive Media (TFTI) at the University of York. She designed and taught a wide range of cinema and digital media courses, including convening and teaching the module "Coding the Frame: Space and Time with Digital Media", for the Screen Media and Cultures MPhil at Cambridge, and supervised several MPhil essays and theses. She was previously a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Cambridge. Jenna NG works primarily on theoretical, cultural and critical analyses intersecting digital and visual culture, with particular interests in the imaging technologies of CGI, mobile media, haptic devices, motion and virtual capture systems. Her research interests also include the philosophy of technology, the posthuman, computational culture, interactive narrative, and the digital humanities. She has published widely on digital and visual culture. Among her many publications is Understanding Machinima, Essays on filmmaking in virtual worlds (Bloomsbury, 2013).

Gemma Fantacci ha discusso con la studiosa Jenna NG, uno dei membri della giuria del Festival, della natura peculiare dei machinima e dei temi chiave dell'MMF MMXXI.

Jenna NG è Senior Lecturer (Professore) Associato di Film e Media Interattivi presso il Dipartimento di Teatro, Film, Televisione e Media Interattivi (TFTI) presso l'Università di York. Ha progettato e insegnato una vasta gamma di corsi di cinema e media digitali, tra cui Coding the Frame: Space and Time with Digital Media, per Screen Media and Cultures MPhil a Cambridge, e ha supervisionato diversi saggi e tesi di dottorato. In precedenza è stata Leverhulme Early Career Fellow presso l'Università di Cambridge. Jenna NG si occupa principalmente di analisi teoriche, culturali e critiche che intersecano la cultura digitale e visiva, con particolare interesse per le tecnologie digitali, media mobili, dispositivi tattili, movimento e sistemi di acquisizione virtuale. I suoi interessi di ricerca includono anche la filosofia della tecnologia, il postumano, la cultura computazionale, la narrativa interattiva e le discipline umanistiche digitali. Ha pubblicato ampiamente sulla cultura digitale e visiva Ha curato l’importante raccolta di saggi Understanding Machinima, Essays on filmmaking in virtual worlds (Bloomsbury, 2013).