*** Apologies for cross-postings*** Department of Communication Mobile Gaming Research Lab Spring ‘21 Lecture Series Please join us for the Mobile Gaming Research Lab’s Spring ‘21 Lecture Series webinar: http://app.bronto.com/public/previewmessage/email/36892/1200600/html <http://app.bronto.com/public/previewmessage/email/36892/1200600/html>. To celebrate the release of the Retro Mobile Gaming Database (http://database.mglab.chass.ncsu.edu <http://database.mglab.chass.ncsu.edu/>/), this webinar will feature scholars whose research is at the intersection of mobile games, archives and history. The talks will explore the history of touch-based mobile game interfaces and how Pokémon Go contributes to the creation of digital memory. WHEN: April 7, 2021 | 1:30-2:30 p.m. EST Featured Presentations Instrumentalities of Touch in Mobile Game Interfaces Dr. David Parisi, Associate Professor of Communication, College of Charleston (USA) Touch-based mobile game interfaces, by opening up new sites of contact between players and games, participate in a fantastical re-imagination of touch that originated in 1950s theories of information transmission. According to this model, touch could be deployed as the standing reserve of audiovisual interfaces, an alternative pathway for transmitting messages that compensates for the overloading and overcrowding of seeing and hearing in the modern media environment. By mapping the gap between these imagined transformative uses for digital touch and touch’s comparatively mundane deployment in contemporary mobile games, this talk provides a framework for further explorations of the relationship between mobile gaming and tactility. Speaker Bio (https://communication.cofc.edu/about/faculty-staff-listing/parisi-david.php <https://communication.cofc.edu/about/faculty-staff-listing/parisi-david.php>) » Pokémon GO and Digital Memory Dr. Justin Grandinetti, Assistant Professor of Communication, University of North Carolina Charlotte (USA) Critical to the functionality of the location-aware augmented reality mobile gameplay of Pokémon GO are elements of pervasive data collection, storage, and processing. For the player, this manifests in location-aware log and journal features, but also through the new Pokéstop scanning process that allows developer Niantic to “crowdsource” AR maps. In this presentation, Dr. Grandinetti will examine the digital memory of Pokémon GO as posthuman cognitive assemblage (Hayles, 2016; Lee, 2018) and part of a lineage of a personalized relation to space. Speaker Bio (http://www.justingrandinetti.com/ <http://www.justingrandinetti.com/>)» REGISTER HERE: https://ncsu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Mxndqj3NQbCTlMS9aqoFmw <https://ncsu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Mxndqj3NQbCTlMS9aqoFmw> _________________________ Adriana de Souza e Silva University Faculty Scholar Professor Department of Communication NC State University http://www.souzaesilva.com <http://www.souzaesilva.com/>