Ian Bryce Jones

Ci3 at the University of Chicago
6030 S Ellis Ave
Chicago, IL 60637
ijones [at] bsd [dot] uchicago [dot] edu
https://intermittentmechanism.blog/
my pronouns: he/him/his

Education

University of Chicago, Chicago, IL

Ph.D., Cinema and Media Studies, June 2015. Dissertation: “Enough of a World: A Phenomenology of Videogame Weltlichkeit.” Committee: Patrick Jagoda (chair), Tom Gunning, James Lastra

Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY

B.A., Film and the Electronic Arts, May 2007. Senior project: The Tyranny of the Human Experience (Video/16mm film mixed media)

Research Areas

New media and digital cinema; videogames and their relationship to cinema; game design; North American avant-garde cinema and video art; found-footage filmmaking and machinima; film and videogame comedy; contemporary approaches to identification, empathy, and intimacy

Publications

Books in-progress

Tactile Abstractions: Game Interfaces, Identification, and Intimacy. (Book manuscript, currently in-progress)

Articles in peer-reviewed journals, published or forthcoming

“What Were Minecart Boosters? Minecraft, Digital Distribution, and Preservative Labor.” Journal of Fandom Studies 6, no. 1 (March 2018) | doi.org/10.1386/jfs.6.1.7_1

“Don(n’t) Hold Your Breath: The Human at the Keyboard and the Ethics of Unconventional Interfaces.” New Review of Film and Video 16, no. 2 (March 2018) | doi.org/10.1080/17400309.2018.1444460 | post-print version

“Do the Locomotion: Obstinate Avatars, Dehiscent Performances, and the Rise of the Comedic Videogame.” The Velvet Light Trap, no. 77 (March 2016) | doi.org/10.7560/vlt7706|post-print version

Co-authored articles in peer-reviewed journals, published or forthcoming

Macklin, Megan, Patrick Jagoda, Ian Bryce Jones, and Melissa Gilliam. “Game-based Health Education: The Case of Hexacago Health Academy.” Journal of STEM Outreach 1, no. 2 (April 2018). | non-DOI link | doi.org/10.15695/jso.v1i2.4501

Additional publications, published or forthcoming

“Three Dimensions of Bond: Fidelity and Coherence in the Videogame Adaptations of GoldenEye.” Co-authored with Chris Carloy. Beyond 007: James Bond Reconsidered, ed. Jaap Verheul (Chapter submitted; anthology forthcoming in 2019 on Amsterdam University Press.)

“Teaching (Like) Hannah Frank (1984–2017): A Tribute” Co-authored with Mihaela Mihailova, Jen Bircher, Robert Bird, Mariana Johnson, Ryan Pierson, Alla Gadassik, and Tim Palmer. The Moving Image: The Journal of the Association of Moving Image Archivists 18, no 1 (Spring 2018) | doi.org/10.5749/movingimage.18.1.0084

“Review of ‘The Art of Video Games: From Pac-Man to Mass Effect’ by Chris Melissinos and Patrick O’Rourke.” caa.reviews (2015). | doi.org/10.3202/caa.reviews.2015.19

Dissertation

“Enough of a World: A Phenomenology of Videogame Weltlichkeit.”  University of Chicago (Department of Cinema and Media Studies), 2015. Committee: Patrick Jagoda (chair), Tom Gunning, James Lastra | PDF

Public Humanities and Digital Humanities Projects

Writer, Ci3: The Center for Interdisciplinary Inquire & Innovation in Sexual and Reproductive Health. As a writer, I assist with writing and project management for grants, academic publications, and reports on Ci3’s three labs: the Game Changer Chicago Design Lab, the Transmedia Storytelling Lab, and the Design Thinking Lab. All three labs operate at the intersection of the arts, technology, medical humanities, and public health, creating and studying scalable, creative, participatory interventions to promote adolescent wellbeing.

Game Design Facilitator, Hexacago Health Academy summer 2016 youth program, Game Changer Chicago. Supported by grants from the MacArthur Foundation and the NIH, Game Changer Chicago is an arts/science initiative that teaches high-school aged youth to create digital stories and games. As the game design facilitator of the 2016 Hexacago Health Academy, I oversaw the development of three board games designed to educate urban youth on health issues, performing valuable community outreach and strengthening bonds between the University of Chicago and South Side youth.

Conference Co-organizer, INTERPLAY graduate student conference. This interdisciplinary conference, jointly hosted by the University of Chicago and Northwestern University, combined talks by game designers with talks by graduate-level scholars across a variety of fields, and culminated in a showcase for local Chicago independent game developers. October 24–25, 2014, Chicago and Evanston, IL.

Research Assistant for Professor Yuri Tsivian. Yuri Tsivian’s Cinemetrics project is a large-scale, crowdsourced digital humanities tool for tracking patterns in the history of film editing. As his research assistant in 2013, I evaluated and produced formal report on the quality of community submissions to the Cinemetrics online database, cross-referencing data to identify roughly 4,600 out of over 15,000 submissions in need of isolation, deletion, or further review.

Graduate Student Designer and Mentor, Game Changer Chicago Design Lab card game design workshop. In this 2012 workshop, I collaborated with high school students in the initial stages of developing inFection4, an educational card game about the social and emotional effects of sexually transmitted infections.

Conference Presentations

Event Coordinator: “Unlimited Animation: A Tribute to Hannah Frank,” special event at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference 2018, March 14–18, 2018, Toronto, ON | link to event program

“Playbor in the Loop: eSports and Athletic Scholarships in Chicago Education.” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference 2017, March 22–26, 2017, Chicago, IL | link to blog post version

Chair: “Gaming’s Midway Point: Games and Game Culture in Chicago,” panel at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference 2017, March 22–26, 2017, Chicago, IL | link to announcement/abstract

“Interfacing Intuition, or, the GUIness of the Detective’s Gaze.” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference 2016, March 30–April 3, 2016, Atlanta, GA. | link to blog post version

Chair: “On the Subject of Hearing: Audio, Identification, and Address in Moving Images,” panel at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference 2016, March 30–April 3, 2016, Atlanta, GA

“A Generous Gestalt: The Labor of Letting-be in Phil Solomon’s In Memoriam: Mark LaPore and Psalm I.” The Berkeley Conference on Precarious Aesthetics, October 15–17, 2015, Berkeley, CA. | link to conference proceedings version

“Is Raw Data an Oxymoron? The State of the Cinemetrics Database as a Digital Humanities Tool.” Cinemetrics Across Borders, April 30–May 3, 2015, Chicago, IL

“The Emergence of the First-Person Body.” Society for Phenomenology and Media Seventeenth Annual International Conference, March 25–29, 2015, San Diego, CA. | link to blog post version

Chair: “Movement and Point of View in the Moving Image,” panel at the Society for Phenomenology and Media 17th Annual International Conference, March 25–29, 2015, San Diego, CA

“Alpha Waves: On the Fluid Geographies of Minecraft.” Society for Literature, Science and the Arts Conference 2014, “Fluid,” October 9–12, 2014, Dallas, TX

“Mapping the Synesthetic Interface.” Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) Conference 2014, “ the  of Game ,” August 3–6, 2014, Snowbird, UT. link to blog post version | link to conference proceedings version

“The Obstinate Avatar: On (the Lack of) Bodily Intelligence in Recent Slapstick Videogames.” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference 2014, March 19–23, 2014, Seattle, WA

“Special Effectivities: On the Intersection of Spatial Knowledge and Bodily Skill.” The Seventh International Conference on the Philosophy of Computer Games, “Computer Game Space: Concept, Form and Experience,” October 2–4, 2013, Bergen, Norway. | link to blog post version | link to conference proceedings version

“The Most Intense Micromanagement of Individual Leg Muscles: Unconventional Scale of Control in ‘Motor Strategy’ Games.” The Ninth Annual University of Chicago Cinema and Media Studies Graduate Student Conference, “Visions of Scale: Magnification, Duration, Perspective, Projection,” April 5–6, 2013, Chicago, IL

Awards & Fellowships

Mellon Foundation—University of Chicago Dissertation-Year Fellowship (2013–2014)

University of Chicago Graduate Aid Initiatives Fellowship (2008–2013)

Teaching Experience as Sole Course Instructor

School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL

Lecturer, “First-Year Seminar I: Frames, Claims, and Videogames.” Section of introductory course in the Liberal Arts Department, required for all first-year undergraduates, focusing on basic instruction in English writing, close reading, and composition. Spring semester 2017. 10 students. Held full responsibility for syllabus creation, all instruction, and grading.

Lecturer, “First-Year Seminar II: Avant-Garde Film and Video Art.” Section of introductory course in the Liberal Arts Department, required for all first-year undergraduates, focusing on basic instruction in English writing, close reading, and composition. Three sections taught in total, of 11, 16, and 14 students, in Spring semester 2016 and Spring semester 2017. Held full responsibility for syllabus creation, all instruction, and grading.

Lecturer, “First-Year Seminar I: Comedy and the Moving Image.” Section of introductory course in the Liberal Arts Department, required for all first-year undergraduates, focusing on basic instruction in English writing, close reading, and composition. Fall semester 2016. 15 students. Held full responsibility for syllabus creation, all instruction, and grading.

Lecturer, “First-Year Seminar I: Moving Images and Arguments.” Section of introductory course in the Liberal Arts Department, required for all first-year undergraduates, focusing on basic instruction in English writing, close reading, and composition. Fall semester 2016. 15 students. Held full responsibility for syllabus creation, all instruction, and grading.

Lecturer, “First-Year Seminar I: The Moving and Interactive Image.” Section of introductory course in the Liberal Arts Department, required for all first-year undergraduates, focusing on basic instruction in English writing, close reading, and composition. Fall semester 2015. 14 students. Held full responsibility for syllabus creation, all instruction, and grading.

DePaul University, Chicago, IL

Lecturer, “Introduction to Mass Communication.” Introductory undergraduate lecture course in Communication. One section taught autumn quarter 2015, one section winter quarter 2016, and one section spring quarter 2016. Sections ranged from 19–35 students. Worked from and modified a module-based skeleton syllabus; held full responsibility for all instruction and grading.

University of Chicago, Chicago, IL

Lecturer, “Introduction to Film.” Introductory undergraduate lecture course in Cinema and Media Studies. Spring quarter 2015. 19 students. Held full responsibility for syllabus creation, all instruction, and grading.

Lecturer, “Media Aesthetics 1: Image” First-year undergraduate lecture course in the University of Chicago humanities core. Autumn quarter 2014. 18 students. Worked from a module-based skeleton syllabus; held full responsibility for all instruction and grading.

Lecturer, “Comparative Media Poetics: Cinema and Videogames.” Advanced undergraduate lecture course in Cinema and Media Studies. Spring quarter 2013. 16 students. Held full responsibility for syllabus creation, all instruction, and grading.

Teaching Experience as a Teaching Assistant

University of Chicago, Chicago, IL

Course Assistant, “Framing, Re-framing, and Un-framing Cinema,” mixed undergraduate/M.A./ Ph.D. seminar offered through the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry, taught by Professor Tom Gunning in collaboration with digital artists Paul Kaiser and Marc Downie of OpenEndedGroup. Autumn quarter 2016. Contributed to the design and documentation of a Javascript-based VR-based video analysis tool, held regular labs to help students develop 360º immersive video essays, maintained course website, advised on all grading.

Course Assistant, “The Postwar American Avant-Garde Film,” mixed undergraduate/M.A./ Ph.D. lecture course in Cinema and Media Studies, taught by Professor Tom Gunning, winter quarter 2015. Held regular undergraduate sections, delivered written critiques of undergraduate students’ coursework, advised on undergraduate grading, maintained course website, guest lectured on the found-material cinema of Janie Geiser, Lewis Klahr, and Phil Solomon.

Course Assistant, “Acting in Cinema,” mixed undergraduate/M.A./Ph.D. lecture course in Cinema and Media Studies, taught by Visiting Professor James Naremore, spring quarter 2012. Held regular undergraduate sections, delivered written critiques of undergraduate students’ coursework, advised on undergraduate grading, maintained course website.

Course Assistant, “Cinema, Play, and Modernity,” mixed undergraduate/M.A./Ph.D. seminar course in Cinema and Media Studies, taught by Assistant Professor Xinyu Dong, spring quarter 2012. Delivered written critiques of undergraduate students’ coursework, advised on undergraduate grading, maintained course website.

Course Assistant, “The French New Wave,” mixed undergraduate/M.A./Ph.D. lecture course in Cinema and Media Studies, taught by Assistant Professor Jennifer Wild, winter quarter 2011. Held regular undergraduate sections, delivered written critiques of undergraduate students’ coursework, advised on undergraduate grading, maintained course website, guest lectured on the films of Agnès Varda.

Professional Experience & Academic Service

Research Assistant for Assistant Professor Patrick Jagoda. Created database on independently-produced videogames falling into the tradition of “personal” and “serious” games for future quantitative analysis. 2015.

Conference Selection Committee Member, The Eleventh Annual University of Chicago Cinema and Media Studies Graduate Student Conference, “Performing Bodies: Gesture, Affect, and Embodiment on Screen,” April 17–18, 2015, Chicago, IL.

Conference Selection Committee Member, The Seventh International Conference on the Philosophy of Computer Games, “Freedom in Play,” November 13–15, 2014, Istanbul, Turkey.

Graduate Student Representative, University of Chicago Department of Cinema and Media Studies. 2012–2013.

Conference Selection Committee Member, The Eighth Annual University of Chicago Cinema and Media Studies Graduate Student Conference, “Cinematic Diasporas: New Media Cultures and Experiences,” April 13–14, 2012, Chicago, IL.

Founding Member, the Ludic Union for the Investigation of Gaming Interfaces (LUIGI), a recognized student organization devoted to facilitating and encouraging the study and development of videogames. Duties included organizing game nights, and serving as an advisor the University of Chicago Library’s acquisitions department during their establishment of a videogame collection. 2011–2015.

Coordinator, New Media Workshop. Organized biweekly meetings of a student/faculty workshop on new media under the University of Chicago’s Council on Advanced Studies. 2010–2012.

Coordinator, Chicago Film Seminar. Held administrative duties for monthly symposia-style meetings in which faculty and graduate students from academic institutions in the greater Chicago area share and respond to ongoing research. 2009–2010.

Screenings Curated

“The Films of Mark LaPore,” November 14, 2014. Retrospective of 16mm films by American Avant-Garde filmmaker Mark LaPore, curated as part of the University of Chicago Film Studies Center’s Graduate Student Curatorial Program.

“Game On: Recent Video Work by Eddo Stern,” November 13, 2010. Video work by game designer and video artist Eddo Stern, co-hosted by the University of Chicago Film Studies Center and New Media Workshop, in conjunction with a visit by the artist.

Arts Education & Community Outreach

Videographer and social media strategist, Chamber Music Campania. Documented the organization’s summer 2016 chamber music festival in southern Italy via a mixture of photography and videography, and managed social media feeds.

Course instructor, “Media Production,” 2008 course in the Allegro summer program for gifted elementary/middle school students, Ashtabula County Educational Service Center, Jefferson, OH

Course instructor, “Video Production: From Script to Screen,” 2008 course designed for teen-to-adult students, Ashtabula Arts Center, Ashtabula, OH

Video Production Work Experience

Adobe After Effects image compositor for Elements: Air/Water, Part 1, Joel Meyerowitz Photography Studios, New York, NY. 2007.

Editor (Final Cut Pro) on The Pride, Dir. Gerard Hurley, Black Swan Productions, Tivoli, NY. 2007.

Selected Creative Work in Film & Video

OREO NABISCO secret planet POISON january 2018 Concealed Information CONFIRMED!!!! Video short. 2018. Screened as part of Heaven Is a Place at The Nightingale Cinema, Chicago, IL 2018.

The Lost Poetry of Johan Hoffman. Video short. 2008. Screened as part of Deep Leap Microcinema: ZAUM/BEYONSENSE video series, Portland, OR, 2010.

The Tyranny of the Human Experience. Experimental video/16mm film mixed media work. 2007. Awarded Bard College’s Jerome Hill Award for exceptional work in the documentary tradition.

Elegy. Video short. 2006. Screened at the Kent Film Festival, Kent, CT.

Laungages

German (reading comprehension)

French (reading comprehension)

Programming & Markup Langauges

Python (basic competency)

Ruby (basic competency)

Javascript (basic competency)

HTML & CSS (basic competency)

Professional Affiliations

Society for Cinema and Media Studies (2013–)

Society for Phenomenology and Media (2015–2016)

Society for Literature, Science and the Arts (2014–2015)

Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) (2014–2015)

References

Patrick Jagoda

Associate Professor, University of Chicago Department of English Language and Literature and Cinema and Media Studies

Tom Gunning

Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergan Distinguished Service Professor, University of Chicago Department of Cinema and Media Studies

Daniel Morgan

Associate Professor, University of Chicago Department of Cinema and Media Studies

Xinyu Dong

Assistant Professor, University of Chicago Department of Cinema and Media Studies

Ashlyn Sparrow

Design Lab Director for Game Changer Chicago University of Chicago Center for Interdisciplinary Inquiry and Innovation