Beyond the black box – Lunch talk with Chris Baumann

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Lunch talk with Chris Baumann: Beyond the black box
Digital media players as interoperable systems
Wednesday, 11 January 2016 · 1pm · HIIG Kitchen

The paper presented deals with the sociotechnical infrastructure that organises and maintains digital media players. After laying out a framework for studying interconnectivity in complex systems, and introducing the notion of interoperable system as a conceptual intervention for the study of media technologies, Chris Baumann offers a case study of Microsoft’s Xbox One as a digital media player. He argues that the ‘seamless’ flow of data between people and technology that an everyday phenomenon like the Xbox One allows – one that is more often than not taken for granted by scholars of media and communication – is in fact made possible by technological, social, and organisational mechanisms that are deliberately negotiated and manipulated, and ultimately work towards the system’s functioning and stabilization

Chris Baumann is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Media Studies at Stockholm University, working on a doctoral dissertation that examines the infrastructure of streaming video in the connected home. His work on streaming technologies, digital media infrastructures, and media access can be found in NECSUS—European Journal of Media Studies, Montage AV, the edited volume Geoblocking and Global Video Culture, as well as in The SAGE Encyclopedia of the Internet. Chris is a regular contributor to the digital learning platform Clio Online, for which he has authored texts and designed learning activities on topics such as social networking and streaming media

The lunch talk is open to the public, please register via the form below.