Public lecture blends culture and technology

The Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies (CCCS) will present a public lecture entitled "Designing Culture: The Technological Imagination at Work" on December 9 at UQ.

Presented in conjunction with The Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney, this talk will focus on the relationship between the digital humanities and techno-cultural innovation.

The lecture will be hosted by Professor Anne Balsamo who will be presenting work from her forthcoming book Designing Culture: The Technological Imagination at Work, which examines the relationship between the technological imagination, cultural reproduction and technological innovation.

Director of the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies Professor Graeme Turner said Professor Balsamo's work was part of a transformation of humanities research that had come from its engagement with digital technologies.

"In particular, she works with the new capacities for design that come with digital technologies, that enable all kinds of visualisation and new kinds of creative outcomes through the use of multimedia," Professor Turner said.

"Anne has been one of the pioneers of this kind of work, and we have begun to develop capacities of this kind through our appointment of a professor of e-history, Paul Turnbull."

Professor Balsamo is a professor at the University of Southern California and holds joint appointments in the Interactive Media Division in the School of Cinematic Arts and in the Annenberg School of Communication.

She is also the director of the Collaborative Design Lab (Co-Design Lab) for the Interactive Media Division.
Her work focuses on the relationship between culture and technology, and this focus informs her practice as a teacher, scholar, researcher, new media designer, and entrepreneur.

Professor Turner will be the chairman of the one-hour lecture, which starts at 2:30pm and will be held in the Social Sciences and Humanities Library Conference Room, Level 1 Duhig Building (Bldg 2), St Lucia Campus.

Members of the university community and the general public are invited to attend this free seminar. For further information please visit the website.

Media: Janardan Kewin at UQ Communications (07 3365 2619, j.kewin@uq.edu.au)