Live recording held at the café at AS220 at 5:30 p.m on Wednesday, October 12, 2011. Click here to see the images from the live recording in AS220

Action Speaks looks at contemporary issues through the lens of history by using underappreciated dates of twentieth-century that have changed America. Join host Marc Levitt and guest panelists for some old-fashioned community exchange in the heart of down- town Providence's arts and cultural district. For Fall 2011, Action Speaks looks at how the border between conflict and amusement is disappearing and what it portends for good TV...are we all embedded?

With panelists Professor Fox Harrell from M.I.T., Dartmouth Professor/artist and author of Critical Play Mary Flanagan, Professor Randy Nichols from Bentley College and author of The Global Video Games Industry and world record holder in video games and public artist Michael Townsend we investigate the popularity of video games, their use in education, their relationship to the military and whether or not they are presaging the global expression of our utopian yearnings.

For links to video games recommended by our panelists, visit our blog.

Panelists

D. Fox Harrell, Ph.D is an Associate Professor of Digital Media; Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has written extensively on identity and digital culture and has published an article called Algebra of Identity; Skin of Wind, Skin of Streams, Skin of Shadows, Skin of Vapor for Theory Magazine.

Mary Flanagan, Professor of Film & Media Studies at Dartmouth College, is the inaugural chair holder of the Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Professorship in Digital Humanities. Dr. Flanagan is the author of Critical Play: Radical Game Design and is the inventor of the first web based digital game for girls "The Adventures of Josie True".

Randall Nichols is an Assistant Professor at Bentley University where his areas of interest are: the Political Economy of Media, New Technology, Media Industries, Video Games, Media Economics and Popular Culture. His essay, Target Acquired: America's Army and the VideoGame Industry is in Joystick Soldiers; The Politics of Play in Military Video Games edited by Nina B. Huntemann and Mathew Thomas Payne.

Michael Townsend is a world record holder in video games and has been focused on conquering them since first introduced to Pong. He has actively gamed through the evolution of all major platforms from the Atari 2600 to the PS3. Townsend supports his gaming habit by drawing with tape as an internationally renowned public artist. He has to stop gaming this Fall to find the time to write his first book.

Bibliography:

• Replay; The History of Video Games by Tristan Donovan; Yellow Ant 2010
  
• Joystick Soldiers, Edited by Nina B. Huntemann and Matthew Thomas Payne; Routledge 2010
  
• Reality is Broken; Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World, by Jane McGonigal; Penguin 2011
  
• Critical Play; Radical Game Design by Mary Flanagan; MIT Press 2009
  

Don't forget to check out Channel 36 at 9 p.m. Sunday evenings for a pre-panel documentary