People
Staff
Lynn Hughes
TAG Centre Associate Director
LYNN HUGHES is co-founder of TAG (and of the Interstices Research Group with Jean Dubois). She teaches at Concordia where she holds a Research Chair in Interactive Design and Games Innovation. She has co-produced two large scale games, CUBID and Fabulous/ Fabuleux. Both of these use unusual custom-designed physical interfaces and focus on activating the physical environment and the body in relation to virtual space and sound. Lynn is passionate about trying to work with people in other disciplines, but also the community beyond the university.
Projects
Bart Simon
TAG Centre Director
BART SIMON is the current director of TAG and Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. His areas of expertise include game studies, science and technology studies and cultural sociology. His game studies research crosses a variety of genres, platforms and modalities looking at the relation of game cultures, socio-materiality and everyday life. Some of his work is represented in journals such as Games and Culture, Game Studies and Loading. His current research on gestural gaming is funded by the Social Science and Humanities Council of Canada and he is a network investigator for the Canadian network on New Media, Animation and Games.
Projects
Max Stein
MAX STEIN manages the TAG Centre website. He studied electroacoustic music at Concordia University. His work as a sound artist explores urban soundscapes through electroacoustic composition, online mapping, sound installations, and site-specific performances.
Projects
Stuart Thiel
Game Lab Technician
STUART THIEL is a software engineer and procrastination enthusiast. His research interests include enterprise application architecture, artificial intelligence, the intersection of testing/ design/ documentation/ implementation, concise yet comprehensive systems for getting stuff done, and supporting/ encouraging the narrative in gaming environments.
Jane Tingley
TAG Centre Coordinator
Jane Tingley is the Manager of Technoculture Art and Games. Beyond her day job she is an artist who uses new media, sculpture, and installation to explore ideas involving identity and contemporary experience. She is one of the founding members of the Modern Nomads and actively exhibits both nationally and internationally. Currently she is focusing on artistic production, as well as participating in Artist Residencies. You can see her website at www.janetingley.com
Projects
Executive Board
Jason Camlot
JASON CAMLOT is a scholar, poet and professor. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford and teaches Victorian literature at Concordia University in Montreal where he is Chair of the Departement of English. His current research focuses on the history of sound recording and literary recitation, and on new media adaptations of nineteenth-century fiction and poetry. His critical works include Style and the Nineteenth-Century British Critic (Ashgate 2008) and Language Acts: Anglo-Québec Poetry, 1976 to the 21st Century (co-edited with Todd Swift, Vehicle, 2007). His scholarly and critical articles have appeared in such venues as ELH, Book History and Postmodern Culture. He is the author of three collections of poetry. The Animal Library (2000), Attention All Typewriters (2005) and The Debaucher (2008). He also serves as the poetry editor of the Punchy Writers Series, an imprint of DC Books.
Projects
Mia Consalvo
MIA CONSALVO is Canada Research Chair in Game Studies and Design at Concordia University in Montreal. She is the author of Cheating: Gaining Advantage of Videogames, and is currently writing a book about Japan's influence on the videogame industry and game culture, and co-editing a volume about sports videogames. Mia served as product owner to develop the social network game Eksa: Isle of the Wisekind with the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab, in order to study social interaction in social network games. She has published her written work in Critical Studies in Media Communication, Games & Culture, Game Studies, Convergence, and many other journals. She has presented her research at professional as well as academic conferences including regular presentations at the Game Developers Conference. She is the Past President of the Association of Internet Researchers, and has held positions at MIT, Ohio University, Chubu University in Japan and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Projects
Jason Lewis
JASON LEWIS is an Associate Professor of Computation Arts at Concordia University. He founded Obx Laboratory for Experimental Media, where he directs research/creation projects in the use of interactive games to assist Aboriginal communities in preserving, interpreting and communicating cultural histories, devising new means of creating and reading digital texts, developing systems for creative use of mobile technology, and designing alternative interfaces for live performance. Obx Labs is deeply committed to developing intriguing new forms of expression by working on conceptual, creative and technical levels simultaneously. Lewis's artwork and writing about media have been featured in exhibitions and conferences on four continents.
Projects
Sudhir Mudur
Dr. Mudur is a professor and Chair of the department of Computer Science and Software Engineering at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. He has extensive research experience specializing in computer graphics since the mid 1970s including interdisciplinary research involving collaboration with artists and designers. He has published widely in this field and has supervised many Masters and PhD students. His current research focus includes new computational techniques for processing large data, either sensed or logged for application in games, entertainment, scientific visualization and 3D human computer interaction.
Projects
Darren Wershler
DARREN WERSHLER is an Assistant Professor of English at Concordia, and is also part of the faculty at the CFC Media Lab TELUS Interactive Art & Entertainment Program in Toronto. His expertise is in the area of digital media and media history, with a particular focus on its relationship to the historical avant-gardes. Before joining Concordia faculty, he designed and taught the first Video Game Studies courses in the Department of Communication Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. He has also worked professionally as a writer and play-tester in the video game industry. His interests include nonlinear narrative, experimental games and the allegorical function of video games.
Faculty
Fern Delamere
FERN DELAMERE is an Assistant Professor and Recreation and Leisure Studies scholar in the Department of Applied Human Sciences. Her research is focused on virtual worlds, computer mediated communities of practice and the socio-cultural implications of these communities. More specifically, her research explores sociality and the development of communities in online leisure contexts with a primary focus on the intersectionality of marginalized groups based on disability and gender. Her work is also interested in slippage between boundaries and the social implications of ludic activities in and beyond online spaces.
Peter Grogono
PETER GROGONO is a software engineer and computer scientist who is interested in the technical aspects of computer games, such as computer graphics, animation, motion planning, collision avoidance, simulation of physical and mechanical systems, and all that stuff. He has developed only one game: the Snooker Simulation
Jonathan Lessard
JONATHAN LESSARD, Assistant Professor in Concordia’s Design and Computation Arts department, is a researcher and practitioner in the field of computer games. He left the mainstream game industry in 2001 to found his own studio, Absurdus, where he played the roles of designer, 3D artist, programmer and writer. His humoristic adventure games have been translated in eight languages and are played around the world. Prior to his appointment at Concordia, Jonathan has taught video game related subjects for seven years. He participated in the creation of Campus Ubisoft’s 3D modeling program where he contributed to the training of hundreds of professionals. He also taught game design and game studies courses at Université de Montréal. He is currently completing his PhD on the formal history of adventure games and plans to pursue research and/or creation projects in the fields of game design and game studies.
Lisa Lynch
LISA LYNCH works broadly at the intersection between culture, technology, and political change. Her research areas include emerging media, the changing practices of journalism, the cultural reception of genetics, disaster narratives, visual culture, and human rights. From 2004-2006, she was the director, along with Elena Razlogova of the Guantanamobile Project, a multimedia documentary about the U.S. detention of prisoners at Guantanamo. Her work has appeared in publications ranging from Literature and Medicine and New Literary History to Open Democracy and the Arab Studies Journal. She is currently at work on a book about the document leaking site Wikileaks and is exploring ways in which gaming might be incorporated into online journalism practice.
Projects
Elena Razlogova
ELENA RAZLOGOVA is an Assistant Professor of History and the Director of the Digital History Lab at Concordia University, Montreal. She studied history and cultural studies at Moscow State University, University of California Berkeley, New York University, and George Mason University. The Concordia Lab produces websites and tools that use digital media to encourage popular participation in interpreting and presenting the past. Elena co-produced websites on US history, contemporary politics and the Soviet Gulag, and published articles on U.S. radio history and public opinion in American Quarterly and Vectors. She is interested in games as a form of documentary expression and a research tool, on such subjects as historical radio sound and Cold War surveillance.
David I. Waddington
David Waddington is an Associate Professor in the Department of Education at Concordia. He received his Ph.D. in Education from Stanford University in 2006. His current research focuses on the connection between technology and citizenship in education, and he has a particular interest in American philosopher John Dewey's approach to science and technology education. In addition to his work on Dewey, he has dedicated time to other important topics linked to technology and citizenship, most notably the ethics of video gaming and the potential for video games to serve as citizenship education tools.
Projects
Affiliated Faculty
Dominic Arsenault
Shawn Bell
SHAWN BELL is a program developer, pedagogic councilor & coordinator of video game programs & interactive media at Dawson College, Ubisoft campus and École de technologie supérieure. Bell is interested in constructionist approaches to new media education and how interactive technologies and complexity theory enhance and expand the creative process in the traditional arts, cyberarts and game design. He is presently developing a pre-university interactive media arts profile, a game design diploma, The Montreal Games Incubator, professional workshops for Montreal video games studios, and online games-related courses at Dawson College. He was the recipient of a grant from CIAM (Centre interuniversitaire des arts médiatiques) and was a also awarded a residency at Lovebytes Labs in Sheffield, England in 1999 to produce a piece for Digital Space CD and CD ROM of “innovative new work using digital sound and multimedia”.
Maude Bonenfant
Maude Bonenfant is Assistant Professor, at the Département de communication sociale et publique, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). She holds a Ph.D in semiotics and specializes in online social networks and communities, social web and online communication, mobile technologies and space, gamification and videogames. She is active with two research groups: Homo Ludens, dealing with communication and videogames and GRISQ, focussing on information and surveillance in everyday life. She has coedited three books: Socialisation et communication dans les jeux vidéo (with Charles Perraton et Magda Fusaro, Presses de l’Univesité de Montréal, 2011), La ruse, entre la règle et la triche (with Charles Perraton, Presses de l’Univesité du Québec, 2011) et Comment vivre ensemble? (with Charles Perraton, Presses de l’Univesité du Québec, 2009).
Carl Therrien
Carl Therrien is an assistant professor in the new video game studies program at Université de Montréal. He worked on a postdoctoral research project on the history of video games, and recently completed a Ph. D. thesis about the formal and psychological aspects of immersion in fictional worlds. Major publications include the opening chapter in Mark Wolf’s Before the Crash (Wayne State University Press, 2012), many entries inGreenwood’s Encyclopedia of Video Games (2012), a historical contribution in Bernard Perron’s anthology on Horror Video Games (McFarland & Company, 2009), and an upcoming paper on the rise of cooperative address in game design (IEEE Handbook on video games).
Bernard Perron
BERNARD PERRON is an Associate Professor of Cinema at the University of Montreal. He has co-edited The Video Game Theory Reader 1 (Routledge, 2003) and The Video Game Theory Reader 2 (Routledge, 2008). He has written Silent Hill: il motore del terrore (Costa & Nolan, 2006), an analysis of the Silent Hill video game series. The English version will be published in 2011 in the Landmarks Video Games, a new book series he is co-editing for the University of Michigan Press. He has also edited Horror Video Games: Essays on the Fusion of Fear and Play (McFarland, 2009). His research and writings concentrate on video games; interactive cinema; on narration, cognition, and the ludic dimension of narrative cinema; editing in early cinema and also comics.
Postdoctoral / Research Fellows
Kelly Boudreau
KELLY BOUDREAU has a PhD in Film Studies with a concentration in Game Studies. With an MA and BA in Sociology, her research focuses on player-avatar hybridity developed through the networked process of play in video games. Other research areas include forms of mediated sociality ranging from the dynamics of social identification in online computer games and virtual worlds to the fusion of internet activity and everyday life, research methodologies surrounding digital technologies as well as the role of indexicality on the player experience.
Projects
Shanly Dixon
SHANLY DIXON PhD is a digital media researcher who uses ethnographic methodologies to investigate young people's engagement with digital culture. Her work explores transformations in play, sociality, surveillance and privacy. She has taught a range of courses including the Sociology of Cyberspace, Theoretical Perspectives on Children and Technology and New Media & Popular Culture both at Concordia University and John Abbott College. Shanly also works with community organizations to provide digital literacy education. She is currently developing a game to help young people think through issues surrounding privacy and ethics online. She is co-editor of the book Growing Up Online.
Cindy Poremba
CINDY POREMBA is a digital media researcher, creator and curator, interested in the intersection between creation practices and technology-- specifically how meaning is read through digital technologies. Her research explores documentary in videogames and digital media, art and independent videogames (particularly the new arcade movement), emerging artistic/cultural practice related to photography, videogames and robotic technologies, and research-creation methodology in interactive art and design. Cindy is a former faculty member in Simon Fraser University's School of Interactive Arts and Technology (SIAT), and has published work in journals such as Eludamos and Games & Culture, as well as edited collections. She also organizes non-traditional exhibitions and arcade events as an independent curator and member of the Kokoromi game art collective. Cindy is currently a Postdoctoral Research fellow at the Georgia Institute for Technology. She is also co-curator for the Gaîté Lyrique's 2012 summer exhibition.
Projects
Jen Whitson
Jen is a SSHRC postdoctoral fellow at TAG and a researcher at the Hypertext and Hypermedia Lab in Ottawa. She researches social influences on game development processes, governance in online domains, the socio-economics of the game industry, and gamification. Some of her recent work includes a 2011 article on Social Change and Facebook Games in the First Monday Journal, and a 2010 article on Game Development and Rule Breaking inFibreculture.
Projects
Students
Kalervo Sinervo
Kalervo Sinervo completed his MA in English literature at Concordia in Spring of 2012 and is currently a PhD candidate in the Humanities program at the university's Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture, where he explores questions relating to digital materiality and differential media. In addition to media theory, he is interested in comics, detective fiction, social, puzzle, and adventure games, and the general debris of pop culture. His approach combines slapdash Actor-Network Theory with haphazard poststructuralism and a smattering of theories from other schools, always looking for the connections that keep objects active and circulating. To get a better idea of what Kalervo's all about, check out his tumblr Steamboat Wilderness (windowbox.tumblr.com) or drop him an email at kalervo.sinervo@gmail.com.
JoDee Allen
JoDee Nadene Allen, a.k.a b-girl Feisty, has been Breaking for over 10 years and has trained with street dance legends such as Ken Swift, Zulu Gremlin, and Don Campbellock. JoDee received her B.FA degree in Contemporary Dance from Concordia University in 1999. Since that time JoDee has worked as a professional dancer for various companies in Montreal and as a dancer/choreographer and co-artistic director for Solid State Breakdance. JoDee has competed in Breakdance events in Miami, Los Angeles, Toronto, Kingston, Ottawa, Montreal and London, England. She was also invited to judge the breakdance battles for "Aux Delà Des Préjugés" in Lausanne Switzerland alongside Ken Swift.
Ian Arawjo
Ian Arawjo is a 19-year-old game designer, programmer, artist, and idling physicist. He has been to over 25 countries, and has created two complete fictional universes - Karma Phala and Glitchman, both of which he is in the process of bringing to the world. He wishes he could just read physics textbooks all day, but sadly - - - he can't.
Projects
Jason Begy
JASON BEGY comes to Concordia University and TAG via the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab, where he has spent the last 4 years as a researcher, game designer, and teacher. His research interests center around modes of representation and meaning-making in games across media, and in this vein he studies simulation, metaphor, and abstraction. While at Concordia he plans to continue his ongoing study of the now-defunct MMO Faunasphere with Mia Consalvo, and to begin a new comparative study of how railroad-themed video games and board games represent history. His favorite games include Le Havre, SimCity, and Bridge.
Andrew Blakney
ANDREW BLAKNEY is a Concordia PhD student in Computer Science. His current research interest revolves around 3D Interface and Interaction design and prototype implementation, with a specific focus on tangible and spatial interactions, blurred action and perception spaces, and the development of formal models that can afford efficient analysis, comparison, and evaluation of new 3D solutions. In addition to domain-independent generic 3D interaction, he has also experimented with specific application interfaces for games and 3D soundscape design and experience.
Projects
Joachim Despland
Joachim Despland makes videogames and also studies them among other things. He's an interdisciplinary Master student at Concordia with a background in Computer Science and Game Design who enjoys working on creative projects, solving interesting problems, experimenting with technology, and figuring things out. Joachim believes in making people learn and laugh and think and use their imagination through play, and one day he will make a game that will bring about revolution. In the meantime the indie games that he creates are played at various events and shows around Montreal and the world.
Projects
Salvador Garcia-Martinez
SALVADOR GARCIA-MARTINEZ is a doctoral candidate in Educational Technology at Concordia University. His current research focuses on the design of video games and simulations for instructional purposes. He received his B. Eng. in Computer Systems from Universidad de las Americas in Puebla, Mexico and his M. Sc. in Computer Science from McMaster University in Hamilton, ON. Salvador also has professional experience as Software Developer and currently he works as an Instructional Designer at eConcordia. Other research interests include Computer Science Education, Usability Testing, Multi-Agent Systems, and the application of Artificial Intelligence in education.
Projects
Gina Haraszti
Gina Haraszti was born in Budapest, Hungary. She is an artist, filmmaker with a background in fine arts, interested in the experimental aspects and transmedial forms of the moving image. She holds an MA in intermedia, an MFA in film production and had worked in different media with regard to film, video, new media, gaming and design. She has experience working with cross-disciplinary teams in leading art & technology labs in both Europe and Canada. In her projects she often addresses the questions and narratives of faith, space and time. She has an interest in architecture, science and East-Asian culture. http://ginaharaszti.com
Jessica Marcotte
Jessica Rose Marcotte is a writer and editor currently completing a Masters in Creative Writing at Concordia University. She is the managing editor for Matrix Magazine and maintains a writing blog at http://jekawrites.wordpress.com. Her work has appeared in Soliloquies (16.2), the Incongruous Quarterly, The Link, and Peripheries (A Collection of Short Stories by the 426 Collective). She is a graduate of Concordiaís Honours in English and Creative Writing Program and CEGEP Vanier Collegeís Communications program. In her spare time, she enjoys scuba diving, writing, tinkering with art projects, photography, and, of course, gaming in various forms (from the tabletop RPG to just about any console). Her current approach to gaming and technology studies is to foster curiosity in herself and let that curiosity lead her investigations where it will.
Projects
Carolyn Jong
CAROLYN JONG is a master's student in Media Studies at Concordia University. After completing a BFA at Mt. Allison University she took some time off to wander around Europe, then moved to Montreal and dove head first into game studies. Her thesis work revolves around the archetype of the quest, romanticization, exploration, and role-playing games. She is also currently researching embodied gestural gaming and theories of learning.
Projects
Bérengère Marin Dubuard
beewoo is a new media artist whose work has explored mediated perception of the entangled built and digital architecture through photography, motion graphics, live video processing and interactive environments. Focusing her attention on Open Source software, she instigated and ran artistic creation programs such as Autonomy and Activism and Digital Ludology at new media center Studio XX in Montréal. Her current research creation investigates immersive architectural representation and tangible interfaces at the junction between fields of studies such as (media) arts, the history of architectural intentions and urban planning, and game studies.
Kaustubha Mendhurwar
Kaustubha Mendhurwar received his Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering from Nagpur University, India, and his M.A.Sc in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Concordia University, Canada. He is presently working towards his doctorate degree in Computer Science and Software Engineering Department of Concordia University. He has published several papers in the areas of computer aided design, image processing, computer graphics, 3D games, etc. He is teaching assistant for courses like advanced computer graphics, introduction to game development, advance game development, etc. He is the recipient of many awards including the Doctoral Research Scholarship (FQRNT), NSERC Engage Research Internship, Mitacs Accelerate Research Internship, Industrial Research Internship, etc. His research interests include Kinect based games, image processing, 3D game character development, 3D graphics, Multimodal data processing, etc.
Projects
Sylvain Payen
SYLVAIN PAYEN is a game Designer and PhD student in INDI Program with TAG. His thesis works revolves around the engendering of emotions in video game especially within ludic situations and without strong narrative context. Prior to beginning his doctorate he worked in serious games industry and held a BA in Computer science from Paris-XI and an MA in Video Game Design from ENJMIN (FR). During this time he was awarded prizes for his video games - Avenue de l’école de Joinville and Coeur. In his free time he continues to create indie game with the collective - Iterative Deepening.
Morgan Rauscher
Morgan Rauscher is working towards his PhD in the electronic arts at the Hexagram Institute (Arts and Sciences Faculty – Concordia) with a focus on creative robotics. Morgan’s research interests are focused building what he calls perceptual prosthesis via augmented reality immersive and co-generative media spaces. Morgan is a member of the A Lab and recently adopted member of the Center for Technoculture, Art and Games.
Renee Jackson
Renee Jackson is an artist and art educator currently working on her PhD in the Education department at Concordia. Renee is interested in the significant role that art education can play in the healthy development of children and youth in an increasingly complex world. Renee is working with Decode Global through TAG as an ethnographic researcher and writer. She will be primarily investigating the social impact of their first game, Get Water!.
Projects
William Robinson
Projects
Irene Serrano Vazquez
IRENE SERRANO VAZQUEZ is a journalist and a PhD Student in Communication Studies at Concordia University in Montreal, QC, Canada. She holds an MA in Literary Studies and a BA in Journalism. Prior to beginning her doctorate, she worked as a writer in various Spanish journals (El País, elmundo.es, soitu.es), magazines (Marie Claire, Cambio 16, Vanity Fair), and international media (BBC). Her research interest are a mix between new media, journalism, participatory culture, game studies and social networking. In her free time she still collaborates with Spanish media.
Projects
Adam van Sertima
Nancy Zenger
Nancy Zenger is in the MA Media Studies program at Concordia University. After completing her BA in Communication at Simon Fraser University, a certificate in Political Science at Sciences-Po Paris, and a trip to South East Asia, she headed to Montreal. As an athlete on the Concordia Cross-Country team and a volunteer for the Canadian Olympic Committee's communication's team for London 2012, she is interested in how the athletic body is communicated. Her current research deals with looking how people who use mobile fitness apps understand their 'quanitified' selves, and how fit and non-fit bodies are subjectified and governed through mobile applications, including fitness games. Her other research interests include ICT policy, digital labour, game studies, religion and new media.
Projects
Visiting Scholars
Thorsten Busch
THORSTEN BUSCH is a Ph.D. candidate and Research Assistant at the Institue for Business Ethics, University of St.Gallen, Switzerland. Thorsten took part in the Oxford Internet Institute's Summer Doctoral Programme 2010 and was a visiting researcher at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society (Harvard University) in 2010/11. Currently, he is a visiting researcher at HEC Montréal, trying to finish up his dissertation on digital business ethics and online social networks. At TAG, Thorsten would like to study ethics and video games in terms of both industry practices and gameplay mechanics.
Angelique Mannella
ANGELIQUE MANNELLA is the founder of Decode Global, an international organization focused on developing mobile applications for social change. She has over 12 years of experience in technology product design and business development. She began her career as a semiconductor designer, and subsequently worked in consulting, business development, and mobile product management in Canada, Singapore and Finland. Angelique is a professional engineer, and has degrees from McGill University (BEng), the London School of Economics (MSc), and INSEAD (MBA).
Pippin Barr
Pippin Barr is a video game maker and critic who lives and works in Malta. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. His games address everything from airplane safety instructions to contemporary performance art. Pippin also writes a regular blog of game and game design criticism and his book, How to Play a Video Game, introduces the uninitiated and culturally curious to the world of video games.
Associate Members
Mohannad Al-Khatib
MOHANNAD AL-KHATIB [aka Psycho-Designs] is a passionate 3D and Digital Artist and a graduate of the Computation Arts program at Concordia University. Interested in complex character design and storytelling, he has worked at the Hexagram Concordia Research Institute as a 3D and VFX artist and teacher on various game related projects such as Skins, Otsi and TimeTraveller . He is also an active member of Obx Labs, AbTeC, and TAG.
Projects
Stéphanie Bouchard
STÉPHANIE BOUCHARD is studying at the intersection of design, art and technology in Concordia's computational arts program. She's a human-computer interaction freak with an obsession with creating more transparent and intuitive user interfaces. She spent the past summer at the MIT Media Lab developing a xylophone-ish tangible midi interface for Harmonix. When she's not building first person shooters, where you blow up stuff with mind control, she's a game designer for the Technoculture, Art & Games research group. Stéphanie will probably take over the domotics industry and turn your whole house into an augmented reality entertainment system.
Projects
Olivier Charbonneau
Associate Librarian
As an Associate Librarian at Concordia University and compulsive blogger, Olivier Charbonneau is fascinated by how law and information mingle. To get him going, ask him about copyright, cultural economics, open access and any social media trend. He is a doctoral student at the Faculté de droit, Université de Montréal. He has over 15 years of professional involvement in library or cultural communities. He holds two masters degrees from Université de Montréal, one in information sciences and another in law, as well as an undergraduate degree in commerce from McGill University. He has kept a research blog since 2005 in French at www.culturelibre.ca and a work blog since 2011 in English at OutFind.ca.
Saleem Dabbous
SALEEM DABBOUS was the TAG Centre Coordinator and Hexagram Game Lab Coordinator for two years before going indie. He is known to love weird and quirky games, with academic interests that lie in online markets, DRM, gender, and politics in videogames. He is the co-founder of KO-OP Mode - a videogame "record label" with fellow TAG alumni Bronson Zgeb.
Projects
Jason Della Rocca
JASON DELLA ROCCA is the founder of Perimeter Partners, a consultancy that provides strategic level guidance and expertise to companies and organizations on the boundary, or perimeter, of the game industry. For nearly nine years, he served as the executive director of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), a professional society committed to advancing the game industry and the careers of developers. Jason was honored for his industry building efforts with the inaugural Ambassador Award at the 8th annual Game Developers Choice Awards. He continues to be an advocate for the expressive power of games and their capacity to change the world.
Skawennati Fragnito
Skawennati is an artist and independent curator with a BFA from Concordia University in Montreal. Since 1996, she has been working in New Media, beginning with the pioneering, Aboriginally-determined, on-line gallery and chat space, CyberPowWow. Her own artwork, which addresses history, the future, and change, has been widely exhibited. Imagining Indians in the 25th Century, a web-based paper doll/time-travel journal has been presented across North America, most notably in Artrain USA’s three-year, coast-to-coast tour of the show “Native Views: Influences of Modern Culture”. A print version of this piece is in the collection of the Canada Art Bank. 80 Minutes, 80 Movies, 80s Music, her ongoing series of one-minute music videos, continues to grow; and her current production,TimeTraveller™, is a multi-platform project featuring a machinima series. Its website, www.TimeTravellerTM.com, won imagineNative’s 2009 Best New Media Award. Skawennati is currently Co-Director, with Jason E. Lewis, of Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace, a network of artists, academics and technologists investigating, creating and critiquing Aboriginal virtual environments. Their project, Otsì:!, a game mod created with students from Kahnawake Survival School, won imagineNative’s 2010 Best New Media Award. Skawennati has also been awarded a 2011 Eiteljorg Fellowship for Native American Fine Art.
Projects
Heather Kelley
HEATHER KELLEY , also known as moboid, is a media artist, curator and game designer. Currently, Ms. Kelley heads her interaction and experience design studio, Perfect Plum. Perfect Plum’s first product is the OhMiBod app, an intuitive and beautiful iPhone interface to control a connected vibrator. She is the co-founder of Kokoromi, an experimental game collective with whom she has produced and curated the renowned GAMMA event promoting games as creative expression in a social context.
Projects
Amanda Williams
AMANDA WILLIAM'S research centers on space and mobile bodies, and the ways in which they interpenetrate with, construct, and are reconfigured by computational technologies and media. She deals with tangible interaction, physical/social/spatial embodiment, DIY, and ubiquitous computing in urban environments. Because she has never been able to decide her disciplinary affiliation, she does design and ethnography, software and hardware hacking.
Projects
Bronson Zgeb
Bronson is a jack-of-all trades programmer, with several years experience as a web developer and server administrator. After losing interest in his work, he left his job to discover new frontiers by studying at Concordia University as a full-time student. Always seeking to push his limits, he began developing mobile applications for a variety of clients in tandem with his studies. Towards the end of his Bachelors degree, Bronson completed an internship at Funcom, one of Montreal's largest independent game developers, and returned to the world of startups. He is now the cofounder of KO-OP Mode, an independent game studio. Bronson is an avid learner, who voraciously consumes new challenges to nourish his skills and abilities. When not immersed in programming, he enjoys reading about Neuroscience, Performance Pyschology, Physics, and playing with electronics.
Projects
Alumni
Graham Candy
GRAHAM CANDY is a PhD student in Anthropology at the University of Toronto. His research interests include game studies, internet infrastructures as well as networked publics. A central focus of his research is China, where a massive growth of Internet and Communication Technologies (ICTs) use coincides with rapid social-economic change and government regulation. He is also keen on developing and adapting current anthropological methods to study these emergent issues.
Michael Fortin
MICHAEL FORTIN is a Concordia masters student in Computer Science, supervised by Dr. Peter Grogono and Dr. Sha Xin Wei studying means of interactively simulating fluid flow on large rectangular grids with the purpose of creating interesting visual effects that are intuitive for the TML [see test videos]. Within TAG he is currently working on the Victorianator project with Jason Camlot, Heather Kelley, and Pierre-Alexandre Fournier. Interests include creating prototype software on iPod/iPad to study how people interact with the device, calligraphy, issues related to multi-core programming, and simulations of physical phenomena.
Projects
Leif Penzendorfer
Researching deep into the haptic realm, LEIF PENZENDORFER is fascinated by controllers and control schemas as well as UI elements, and "immersion," a term he hesitates to use openly due to its poor reception and ambiguous definition(s). Synesthesia, cross-modality, and psychological impacts of technology are pet interests. Even after his time at Concordia he is still interested in finding a way to test philosophical theories using digital game conceits.
Projects
Katian Witchger
KATIAN WITCHGER is a Concordia PhD student in Humanities at The Center for Interdisciplinary Studies on Society and Culture. Her current research interests include digital objects, sound recording, online music, intellectual property law and the Internet.