NEWS: MEET OUR JURORS: JENNA NG

WE ARE THRILLED TO ANNOUNCE THE FOURTH JUROR OF THE 2020 MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL: JANN NG!

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).

In March 2019, Jenna NG gave a talk at IULM University titled “Machinima and the Allure of Ephemerality” in which she addressed the explosion of interest in the live streaming of gameplay as witnessed in the popularity of Twitch, whose latest number of daily active users has reached 15 million, as well as other major platforms such as YouTube Gaming, Mixer, and Facebook Live. Specifically, the talk linked the current phenomenon of video game live streams with machinima and its origins in game demos and captured game play, arguing not only for live streams to be the next logical evolution for machinima, but also for a critical theorisation of screen media that pursues a realist trajectory, one which potentially works its

The full video is available below:

GAME TALK #2: JENNA NG'S KEYNOTE

On March 13 2019, Professor Jenna NG discussed the past, present, and future of machinima at IULM University. Here’s the full talk:

MACHINIMA AND THE ALLURE OF EPHEMERALITY: GAMEPLAY, LIVE STREAMS & DIGITAL CULTURE

In this talk, Jenna Ng will address the explosion of interest in the live streaming of gameplay as witnessed in the popularity of Twitch, whose latest number of daily active users has reached 15 million, as well as other major platforms such as YouTube Gaming, Mixer, and Facebook Live. Specifically, the talk will link the current phenomenon of video game live streams with machinima and its origins in game demos and captured videogame play, arguing not only for live streams to be the next logical evolution for machinima, but also for a critical theorisation of screen media that pursues a realist trajectory, one which potentially works its way from neorealist cinema to drone culture.

Jenna Ng first trained as a finance lawyer in Singapore and London before switching to film studies, in which she obtained a PhD from University College London (UCL), and currently teaches film and interactive media at the University of York, UK. She is the editor of Understanding Machinima: Essays on Filmmaking in Virtual Worlds (Bloomsbury, 2013) and her current book project, Undoing the Screen: Space, Spectacle, Surface (Palgrave), explores the effacing of screen boundaries in relation to contemporary display technologies and the resulting erasure between images, objects, surfaces and spaces.

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IL MACHINIMA E IL FASCINO DELL'EFFIMERO: GAMEPLAY, LIVE STREAMS E CULTURA DIGITALE

In questo intervento, Jenna Ng discute l’esplosione di interesse per il live streaming videoludico attestato dalla popolarità di Twitch, il cui numero di utenti attivi su base quotidiana ha superato i quindici milioni e a cui si aggiungono piattaforme come YouTube Gaming, Mixer e Facebook Live. Secondo Jenna, il fenomeno dei live stream dei videogiochi è collegato al machinima e alle origini della cultura demo e dei replay e per questo motivo definisce il live stream come l’evoluzione del machinima. Jenna propone inoltre un inquadramento teorico dei media schermici che persegue l’imperativo estetico del realismo collegando il cinema neorealista alla cultura del drone.

Formatasi inizialmente come avvocato finanziario a Singapore e a Londra, per dedicarsi successivamente alla filmologia, Jenna Ng ha conseguito un dottorato di ricerca alla University College London (UCL). Oggi insegna cinema e media interattivi all'Università di York, nel Regno Unito. Ha curato l’antologia Understanding Machinima: Essays on Filmmaking in Virtual Worlds (Bloomsbury, 2013) e sta lavorando a Undoing the Screen: Space, Spectacle, Surface (Palgrave), che esplora il concetto di bordo in relazione alle nuove tecnologie di visualizzazione e la cesura tra immagini, oggetti, superfici e spazi

Discover GAME TALKS at IULM University.