Events in May at UCLA

Re-scheduled Friday May 28, 2010, 1-5 pm: Noah Wardrip-Fruin, "Meaning What We Play: Games, Fiction, and Expressive Processing"
(Visualization Portal, 5826 Mathematical Sciences Building)

Today's games have well-developed models of spatial movement, combat, and economics. But their models of fiction barely deserve the name. Even those supporting the most ambitious games are burdensome and bug-prone for authors - while providing the player quite limited ranges of meaningful choice. This talk discusses examples of more dynamic approaches to fiction, considering lessons past work presents for designers wishing to craft models that express their visions for playable fiction. At the same time, the talk argues that critics need to begin to interpret the computational processes of computer games (and digital media generally) and connect them to an understanding of audience experience.

Since this event is re-scheduled, even if you RSVPed to the earlier announcement, please RSVP again, letting David Shepard know whether you are able to attend on this date. See PEOPLE for David's contact info.

Monday, May 24, 2010, 4-6pm: Alkim Almila Akdag Salah, "The Role of Bibliometrics in Humanities"
(Humanities Building 193)

Bibliometrics has turned into a research area specialized in the analysis of growth, relations and interactions in scientific fields based on bibliographic information, such as citation data collected from scientific journals. For humanities scholars, an arduous investment is needed to achieve a level of 'visual literacy' to interpret the citation networks, which are one of the main outputs of bibliometric research. Without doubt, bibliometrics is a valuable tool for information retrieval, but the debate over reference or citation index is dominated by the aspect of evaluation. For humanities scholars the challenge is to gain insight to scientometrics in order to protest against positivistic attempts to evaluated humanities scholars, journals and institutions within the rhetoric of scientometrics itself, i.e. by rendering visible the defects in evaluation humanities based on citation counts.