Talks

Upcoming Talks

November 10 – 13, 2022. “Principi of Video Games.” Biennale della Tecnologia, Torino, Italy.

*I went dark during the pandemic in order to complete a number of book projects and to avoid anymore time in Zoom.

Previous Talks 

October 7, 2022. Talk on Feeling Leeds: Notes on Loving a Football Club from Afar. Franklin Hall, Indiana University.

April 1 – 4, 2020.“’As you get excited, you start to hug the game’: Industrial Design & The Shaping of Atari’s Game Play Experience.” Panel: “Cultural Ergonomics Beyond the Workplace: Mediated Experience, Interaction and Design.” Society of Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference, Denver, CO, . *Conference canceled due to COVID-19. Rescheduled for March 2021.

Took 2019 off to finish Atari Design.

November 28 – 29, 2018. “Video Games in Museums.” Keynote Speaker. Smithsonian Institution National Museum of American History and Lemelson Center For The Study of Invention and Innovation. Video Games and Interactivity Workshop.

September, 5 – 8, 2018. “Failures and Fragmentation.” Design History Society Publishing Workshop. Annual Conference, The Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, NY.

November 30, 2017. “Atari Modern: Towards a Design History of Atari’s Coin-ops.” The Next Big Thing Invited Speaker Series. Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany.

November 20, 2017. “Design History and Video Games.” School of Media and Communication, University of Leeds, England.

November 10, 2017. “Atari Modern: Towards a Design History of Atari’s Coin-ops.” Media History Research Center & The Residual Media Depot, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada.

September 1, 2017. “Atari Modern: Towards a Design History of Atari’s Coin-Ops.” Center for Computer Game Research, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

September 4, 2017. “Atari Modern Research Talk.” School of Art and Communication, Malmö University, Sweden.

September 5, 2017. “Atari Modern: Towards a Design History of Atari’s Coin-Ops.” University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

March 22 – 26, 2017. “11 Madeleines in White: Longing, Loving, and Losing as a Leeds United Supporter Playing EA Sport’s FIFA.” Panel: “‘Feel the Game’: Cultural, Historical, and Technological Perspectives on EA Sport’s FIFA series.” Society of Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference, Chicago, IL.

March 16, 2017. “Revisiting the Dump: The Atari Landfill Excavation Three Years Later.” Birkbeck, University of London, Keynes Library.

November 10, 2016. “Atari Modern: Towards a Design History of Atari’s Coin-Ops.” Learning Games Initiative Research Archives, University of Arizona.

Saturday, April 2nd, 2016. Game Studies SIG Workshop Editor’s Roundtable on Game Studies Book Series. Society for the Study of Cinema and Media Annual Conference, Atlanta, GA, March 30th – April 3rd, 2016.

Wednesday, March 2nd, 2016. “Atari Modern: A Design History of Atari’s Coin-Op Machines”. 6:30 p.m. Public Talk part of the “Silicon City” exhibition at the New York Historical Society Museum. 170 Central Park West at Richard Gilder Way (77th Street)
New York, NY 10024

Thursday, February 25th, 2016. “Designing Atari’s Coin-op Machines, 1972 – 1979.” 7:00 p.m. Public Talk part of the “Arcade Age” exhibition at The Cradle of Aviation Museum. 1 Davis Avenue. Garden City, NY 11530.

Saturday, September 12, 2015. “Atari Modern: Coin-Op Arcade Cabinet Design, 1971 – 1974.” Video Games as Design History Panel. Design History Society Annual Conference. California College of Arts, San Francisco, CA.

Saturday, October 10, 2015. History of Video Games as History of Technology?” Round-table panelist. Society for the History of Technology Annual Conference. Albuquerque, NM.

Friday, May 29, 2015. “Video Games and Design History.” Interactive Media and Games Seminar. Stanford University.Palo Alto, CA. .

Saturday, March 28, 2015. “Ping-Ponging Between Interaction Design and Industrial Design.” Inclined by Design:Engagements with Material Interfaces Panel. Society of Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference, Montreal, Canada.

Thursday, March 19, 2015. “Readiness-to-body?: Coin-op Arcade Cabinet Embodiment Relations.” Challenge the Past/Diversity the Future Conference. Gotenborg University, Sweden.  http://www.challengethepast.com/

Tuesday, March 17, 2015. “Behind the Bezel: Coin-Op Arcade Cabinets as Design History.” Humlab X. Umea University, Sweden. http://www.student.umu.se/english/calendar-of-events/displaypage/?eventId=9654

Monday, March 16, 2015. “Arcade Video Games and Design History.” Medea. Malmo University, Sweden. http://medea.mah.se/2015/02/medea-talks-raiford-guins/

November 19, 2014. “Act 1: They Meet – Coin-op Arcade Video Game Cabinets into Design History.” University of Rochester, NY.

September 18 – 19, 2014. “A Cultural Studies of Design?” Design Culture: object, discipline and practice. International Conference, University of Southern Denmark.

March 19 – 23, 2014. “Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man @ 50” Workshop co-organized with Charles R. Acland. Society of Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference, Seattle.

March 19 – 23, 2014.  “History of the Side: Desperately Seeking The Artists Lost in the Veneer of Arcade Time.” Debugging Game History: Forgotten Histories Panel. Society of Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference, Seattle,

October 22, 2013. “When Games Went Click: The Story of Tennis For Two.” Invited Documentary Screening and Discussant, NYU Game Center, Brooklyn NY.

October 18, 2013. “Curious Cabinets.” Invited Opening Plenary Speaker.  Containers: The 4^th Annual Graduate Student Conference, Department of Cultural Analysis and Theory, Stony Brook Manhattan.

October 10 – 13, 2013. “Design and Designation: The History of a Curious Appellation for an Analog Computer Tennis Simulation (or, how Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Tennis Programming No. EH1-900-1-3 a.k.a Tennis For Two got its name).” Society For the History of Technology 2013 Annual Conference, Portland, Maine.

October 4 – 5, 2013. “‘A Simplified Family Setting’: Parent Controls, Game Consoles, and Morality by Design.” Speaker and Panel Participant at “The Stuff Between Us: Designing Interactions Beyond the Object,” Design Symposium, Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland.

Friday – Sunday, June 21st – 23rd. “The History of Games International Conference: Working With, Building, and Telling History,” Montreal, Canada. I will Chair a roundtable discussion on “Working With Game History”. Organizers: Espen Aarseth (IT University of Copenhagen), Raiford Guins (Stony Brook University), Henry Lowood (StanfordUniversity), Carl Therrien (Université de Montréal). Link: http://www.history-of-games.com/

Saturday, April 27th. “Radical Entertainment Arts: It Needs to be in the Game”.  Different Games Conference. NYU Polytechnic Institute, Brooklyn, NY. Link: http://www.differentgames.org/about-different-games

Friday, March 8th, 2:15 – 4:00.  “Debugging the History of Game Terminology II: Critical Studies of Key Concepts Panel”. Society of Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference, Chicago, March 6 – 10, 2013. My paper will be on the etymology of the term “game console”.

Friday and Saturday, March 1st and 2nd. “Theorizing the Web 2013”. CUNY Graduate Center. Title of my paper: “Beyond Bridges, Speed Bumps, Seatbelts, and Hotel Keys: A New Design Paradigm for Control Technologies.”

Here’s a link to the conference program: http://www.theorizingtheweb.org/2013/program.html