A Short Summary of My Primary Areas of Research and the Pedagogical Approaches I Use in the Classroom
My primary research continues to advance along two distinct but strongly interrelated areas of study: the development and application of digital programming and multimedia interface technologies in media arts and the continued refinement of interactive production tools for literature, game-based or gaming narratives, and sound production. The nexus of my work is currently driven by the meteoric rise of LLM-based Generative AI devices and spatial/immersive production tools now emerging via faster and more accurate digital network technologies. Considered in terms of culture and education, these emergent digital communication tools herald an epochal shift in how we approach learning and professional media creation. In some ways, the innovations we are witnessing across digital networks are transforming our world in ways not seen since the advent of digital computing nearly 70 years ago.
Together, these developments remain for me an exhilarating fusion of technology, media arts, and the evolving landscape of digital narratives. Studies in digital humanities have reached a fascinating edge in the development of cutting-edge programming and multimedia interface technologies leading directly to an unprecedented modification of interactive production tools essential for literature, gaming narratives, and sound production.
In every class I teach, regardless of the topic or format, I emphasize how the historical emergence of “Modernity” and its defining characteristics as a new political and cultural period in the West remains the ongoing transformational impact of technological innovation on communication epistemologies. These innovations shape our understanding and governance of political economies—whether technocratically moulded like the EU or market-driven like the United States. As societies evolve their communication technologies, from the advent of print to the rapid ascent of LLMs and cloud-based digital networks, our perception and management of knowledge transform in parallel. Literacy, communication, and even our fundamental human interactions shift accordingly.
More detailed summaries and presentations of the books can be found on my Publications page, and titles and Links to my most recent articles can be found in my Curriculum Vitae
My most recent book publications are two anthologies, The Community and the Algorithm (Vernon Press, 2021) and The Art of Digital Storytelling: Narrative Play and Interactivity (forthcoming from Intellect Press in 2024) were inspired primarily by a broader intellectual interest in bringing together top writers with of variety of viewpoints and matching expertise on some of the more furtive and complex ways even a simple technological update to a media tool commonly in use like an iPhone can affect epistemology at fundamental levels. The introduction of Graphic User Interfaces (GUIs) in 1991, for example, as a possible model for using/“interacting” with personal computers quite literally informed the social and political evolution of political systems across the world by simplifying digital interaction with software for increasingly general and thus larger consumer markets. Once the PC became the work and communication tool general to all political economies, governments immediately evolved as market consumption changed its patterns and social, cultural, and economic collaboration methods reformed accordingly.
Current research for my third book is being edited now to produce a full monograph analyzing immersive, spatial, and other XR interfaces currently forming what I believe will soon become the new standard GUI of the 2020s, as exemplified by products like Meta’s Oculus device and the more recent Apple Vision Pro. This book closely follows my prior historical and theoretical approaches to digital storytelling movements evident in the first anthologies but argues critically that these latest technological innovations to digital interface and communication tools will be comparable to the historical transformation of society via computation technology just after the Second World War. The book will focus on spatial and immersive digital media and its increasingly profound effect on contemporary cinematic and visual art, as well as many literary art forms, especially poetry for submission to university presses. In essence, I consider my research to be a vibrant testament to the transformative power of digital technologies and their profound impact on our world, unlocking new realms of understanding and social interaction while redefining the very boundaries of human creativity.