Miami University

Cyberspace explored at conference

Miami’s Center for Interactive Media Studies (IMS) hosts “2003 Interactive Media Forum: Identity & Cultures in Cyberspace,” its fourth annual conference, Oct. 27-28 at the Marcum Conference Center.

An international panel of presenters will speak on virtual identity and ethnographics, open sourcing, using interactive media to preserve culture, interactive art forms and more.

Research presentations will push the bounds of interactivity into the spheres of human interaction and creativity. Miami presenters include Marvin Dainoff (psychology) and Christopher Wolfe (interdisciplinary studies).

H. Lewis Ulman, assistant dean of research and instructional technology at Ohio State University, will give the opening keynote speech, “Virtual Landscapes: Living in the Ecotone between Mediated Reality and Embodied Simulation,” at 8:30 a.m. Oct. 27.

Michael Heim, education consultant of Heim Seminars, will give a second keynote at 8 a.m. Oct. 28. Heim will speak on “Avatars in Academe: How Adventures in Virtual Reality Changed Education in the Past Two Decades and What We Can Learn for the Future.”

Several concurrent sessions and an IMS tour are included in the conference, which is free to Miami faculty, staff and students.

Miami’s Center for IMS offers an interdisciplinary course that attracts students from a variety of majors. IMS adds studies in e-commerce, project management and usability testing. The senior-level course functions as a consulting agency pairing top students with business clients to give students a “real world” view of working in the digital media industry.

IMS features a week full of events preceding the conference, including:
9 a.m. Oct. 18 in 184 Marcum, a lecture on hybrid communications;
Oct. 20 and 24 in 57 King Library, open lab for online course registration;
11:30 a.m.- 1:30 p.m. Oct. 21 at Shriver courtyard, ice cream and information;
11 a.m.-1 p.m. Oct. 22 in 57 King Library-open house;
11 a.m.-3 p.m. Oct. 22 meet P&G Fellows in IM.
Details are online: www.muohio.edu/ims/conference.

For more information, call conference coordinator Chris Starkey at 9-1637.

Conference details and online registration can be found at www.muohio.edu/ims/conference.

Date Published: 10/09/2003
Volume: 23   Number: 10