The 2014 CHAT Festival is a single-day celebration of new media, arts, and humanities collaborations. All events take place on Friday, February 28, in NCSU’s Hunt Library, including the first-floor auditorium and second-floor rooms in the Institute for Emerging Issues. Guided tours of the Hunt Library are available at 12:00 and 5:00 pm. See Logistics for more information.

Session 1: New forms of Storytelling in Digital Media 

9:00-10:15 am, Room A, Institute for Emerging Issues

Storytelling lies at the heart of almost all forms of human communication. With the increasing ubiquity of digital tools (both hardware and software) available to artists, including the ability to publish to the web with a click of a button,  a vast space is created for new voices and stories to be presented and expressed. This panel features a group of artists sharing new approaches to artistic expression in the digital age.

• Scott Townsend, Associate Professor of Graphic Design, North Carolina State University
• Peter Kusek, Lecturer in New Media, University of North Carolina — Asheville
• Heather Freeman,  Associate Professor of Digital Media, University of North Carolina — Charlotte
• Darren Floyd, Visiting Professor of Art, Davidson College

Session 2: The Rules of the Game: Pedagogy and Performance

10:30-11:45 am, Room A, Institute for Emerging Issues

Lunch

12:00-1:30 pm (complimentary, but please register if you plan to attend)

Session 3: Making It Real: Collaboration in Practice

1:30-3:00 pm, Hunt Library Auditorium

This panel comprises on-the-ground perspectives from the working groups and institutions which are making CHAT-inspired collaborations a reality in the Triangle and beyond. While we celebrate collaboration as a worthy goal in intellectual communities, what does it look like on the ground? What are the institutional contexts and challenges necessary to its success? What are the opportunities to seed collaborative spaces, projects, and teams within and beyond the research university? And how might these collaborations extend scholarly work into the practices and outcomes of CHAT-related professions?

“Collaboration for Interdisciplinary Graduate Research,” The Circuit Research Studio, North Carolina State University

• Nick Taylor, Assistant Professor of Communications
• Jameson Hogan, PhD student in Communications, Rhetoric, & Digital Media (CRDM)

“Digital Portobelo: Collaboration at & beyond the Digital Innovation Lab,” Digital Innovation Lab, University of North Carolina — Chapel Hill

• Stephanie Barnwell, Programs Coordinator, Carolina Digital Humanities Initiative
• Renee Alexander Craft, Assistant Professor, Department of Communication Studies
  and the Curriculum in Global Studies, UNC-CH
• Sandra Davidson, MA student in Folklore, Department of American Studies, UNC-CH

“Interactive Pedagogy: Graduate Student Perspective,” PhD Lab in Digital Knowledge, Duke University

• “Expeditions in Digital Pedagogy.” Amanda Starling Gould, PhD Candidate in Literature, Duke University
• Anna Gibson, PhD Candidate in Literature, Duke
• Ashley Reed, PhD Candidate, Department of English and Comparative Literature, UNC-CH
• Erin Parish, PhD Candidate in Cultural Anthropology, Duke
• Aaron Dinin, PhD Candidate in English, University of Maryland

Plenary Session
3:15-4:45 pm, Hunt Library Auditorium

Experience Architecture: The Strategy of Digital Experience
Liza Potts, Michigan State University

Launched in Fall 2013, the new Experience Architecture degree at Michigan State University is a collaborative endeavor built across the university with industry partners. One of the first Humanities-based UX programs, the degree draws on curriculum in Writing, Design, Computer Science, and Philosophy. As a program co-founder, Dr. Potts will explain how we can build better user experiences by sharing her research from a large-scale study of social media use during times of disaster. By examining participation during a watershed moment, we can discuss how to build innovative and cooperative programs to answer a critical need for researchers and practitioners.

Liza Potts is an assistant professor in the department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures at Michigan State University. At MSU, she is a senior researcher at the Writing in Digital Environments Research Center (WIDE), director of user experience projects at MATRIX (MSU’s Center for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences), and collaborator at Creativity Exploratory. Her research interests include technologically-mediated communication, experience architecture, and participatory culture. Dr. Potts has worked for Microsoft, design consultancies, and start-ups as a director, information architect, and program manager. She is the Chair of ACM’s SIGDOC, and the editor of a new book series from the University of Michigan Press focused on Practices in the Digital Humanities. Her new book, Social Media in Disaster Response: How Experience Architects Can Build for Participation, is the first in the ATTW series in Technical and Professional Communication by Routledge.

Reception and CHAT/nexUX Mixer

5:00-6:00 pm, Institute for Emerging Issues Lobby, Hunt Library