Dr Chris Chesher
BA (Media and Communications), Mitchell CAE (1988)
MA (Interdisciplinary Studies: Studies in US Civilisation), University of New South Wales (1994)
PhD (Media and Communicatons), Macquarie University (2002)
Phone: +61 2 9036 6173
Address: Room S314, A20 - John Woolley
Email:
Dr Chris Chesher is Senior Lecturer in Digital Cultures in the School of English, Art History, Film and Media.His research investigates how various information and communication technologies become historically woven through social structures and cultural practices. Examples of his writing include an Innisian evaluation of technology and knowledge over time; cultural politics of educational software; blogs and the rediscovery of authorship; the relationship of console games players to their screens, compared with TV and cinema; and an actor network analysis of patterns of mobile phone use during a U2 concert.
He is currently undertaking research into the cultures of contemporary robotics, in association with the Centre for Social Robotics at the Australian Centre for Field Robotics, University of Sydney, and writing a blog following robots.
He previously worked at the University of New South Wales, School of Media and Communications (1997-2004), Macquarie University (1995-1997), University of Technology, Sydney (1990-1994), and University of Newcastle (1993).
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Research Interests
- medium specificity: what makes computers distinctive as a media form? What are the social and cultural implications of media change?
- conflicts and synergies in collaborative new media production work practices
- computer games as an emerging set of cultural conventions, and how they are articulated into wider contexts than traditional games subcultures
- emerging internet paradigms associated with the emergence of social software: new forms of publication including blogs, wikis, micro-blogs; new forms of mediated sociality including social networking, chat, media sharing and online games; new forms of broadcasting including streaming and downloads
- implications of residual materiality in information technology such as 'digital dark age', environmental impacts, (Harold Innis) and forms of exclusion
Publications
- Chesher, C, Crawford, K, Dunn, A, (2012 in press), Internet Transformations: Language, Technology, Media and Power, Palgrave, London
- Chesher, Chris (2012 in press) Navigating sociotechnical spaces: comparing computer games and sat navs as digital spatial media in Convergence. The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. Sage: London, Vol. 18, No. 3
- Chesher, C (2011 in press), Between Image and Information: The iPhone Camera in the History of Photography, Studying Mobile Media: Cultural Technologies, Mobile Communication, and the iPhone, Routledge, United States, 98-117
- Chesher, C, Howard, S 2011, Balancing Knowledge Management and Knowledge Mobility in the University, Knowledge Mobilization and Educational Research:Politics, languages and responsibilities, Taylor & Francis Group Ltd, United Kingdom
- Chesher, C (2009) "Converging mediations of space in computer games and spatial navigation systems" , Australasian Conference On Interactive Entertainment archive, Proceedings of the Sixth Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment, Sydney, Australia
Article No.: 1, ISBN:978-1-4503-0010-0, ACM New York, NY, USA - Chesher, Chris (2008) 'Binding Time: Harold Innis and the balance of new media' in Herbert Hrachovec, Alois Pichler (Eds.) Philosophy of the Information Society, Proceedings of the 30th International Ludwig Wittgenstein-Symposium in Kirchberg 2007, Frankfurt / Paris / Ebikon / Lancaster / New Brunswick: Ontos-Verlag, 9-26.
- Chesher, Chris, Cleland, Kathy and Marks, Peter (2008) Screenscapes, special issue of Scan Journal, Macquarie University http://scan.net.au/scan/journal/display_synopsis?j_id=13
- Chesher, C. (2007). Becoming the milky way: mobile phones and actor networks at a U2 concert. Continuum, 21(2), 217-225. http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/ccon/2007/00000021/00000002/art00008
- Chris Chesher, Alice Crawford and Julian Kücklich (Eds) (2006) Gaming Networks, special issue of fibreculture journal http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue8/index.html
- Chesher C. and Costello B. (2004) 'Why media scholars should not study computer games' in Media International Australia incorporating Culture and Policy, Volume 2004, Number 110, February 2004 , pp. 5-9(5), School of English, Media Studies and Art History and the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, University of Queensland. http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/griff/mia/2004/00002004/00000110
- Chesher, Chris (2004) ‘Connection unbound by location’ in Griffith Review, Meadowbrook: Griffith University and ABC Books, Autumn 2004. (http://www3.griffith.edu.au/01/griffithreview/get_content_file.php?id=235)
- (2004) ‘How to tell apart computer games and new media art’ in Interaction: systems, practice and theory: Creativity and cognition symposium, conference proceedings, University of Technology, Sydney, November 16-19, 2004. (http://research.it.uts.edu.au/creative/interaction/aw.php?papers=1).
- (2003) ‘Console games and the glaze’ in Scan: Journal of media arts culture, School of Media: Macquarie University. Online'>http://www.scan.net.au/scan/journal/display_article.php?recordID=19">Online.
- (2003) ‘Console games and the glaze’ Plaything Exhibition Catalogue Essay, Sydney: dLux Media Arts.
- (2006) ‘The Muse and the Electronic Invocator’ in Potts, John and Ed Scheer (2003) Technologies of magic, Sydney: Power Publications.
- (2003) Layers of code, layers of subjectivity in CultureMachine 5 (2003), http://culturemachine.tees.ac.uk/Articles/CChesher.htm
- (2002) 'Why the digital computer is dead' in Ctheory electronic journal: http://ctheory.net/text_file.asp?pick=334
- (2001) ‘What is new media research?’ in Brown, Hugh, Geert Lovink, Helen Merrick, Ned Rossiter, David Teh, Michele Willson (eds) (2001), Politics of a Digitial Present: An Inventory of Australian Net Culture, Criticism and Theory, Melbourne: Fibreculture Publications.
- (2001) ‘Colonizzando la Realtà Virtuale costruzione del discorso sulla realtà virtuale 1984-1992’ (Colonizing virtual reality, construction of the discourse of virtual reality, 1984-1992) (http://intercom.publinet.it/ic11/crv.htm)
- (2001) ‘Digitising the beat: Police databases and incorporeal transformations’ in Genosko, Gary (Ed) (2001) Deleuze and Guattari: critical assessments of leading philosophers. London : Routledge.
- (1998) ‘Digitising the beat: Police databases and incorporeal transformations’ in Convergence Summer 1998.
- (1997) ‘The Ontology of Digital Domains’ in Holmes, David (ed) Virtual Politics. Identity and community in cyberspace. Sage, 1997.
- (1996) ‘CD-ROM Multimedia’s Identity Crisis’, Media International Australia, ‘Digital Desires’ edition, No. 81, Aug 1996, 27–33.
- (1994) with McCarthy, Paul ‘When a floppy disk holds more than a CD ROM’ in Maher, Mary Lou, Coyne, R. and Newton, S., Proceedings, Multimedia and design conference, University of Sydney. September 1994, 191 – 200.
- (1993) ‘Colonising virtual reality’ Cultronix electronic journal, Pittsburgh, PA.
Current Supervising Postgraduates
Amit Kelkar (Completed)